Hell-a-Thon on the Palmetto Trail

Cliff and Tom...about to embark on their two day journey

through the Francis Marion National Forest and Palmetto Trail...a.k.a. the Hell-a-Thon.



Cliff and our friend Tom embarked on an adventure a couple of weekends ago that many would shake their heads at. It took place partly in the depth of the Hellhole Swamp area. Aptly named? Obviously! A challenge of epic proportions? Absolutely!

You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

Cliff and Tom were going to run two - back to back - marathons through the Francis Marion National Forest and a portion of the Palmetto Trail that runs from the coast of SC to the mountains in the upstate. Cliff planned this for months. He made several trips to the trail to chart, map or plot GPS coordinates. The plan was to begin at the trail head near Moncks Corner, SC and run for 13 miles or so, stop for lunch, rest a little while and then run another 13 miles or so for marathon #1. And then do the same thing the second day until they ended their journey at Buck Hall on the intracoastal waterway near Awendaw, SC.  Part of the plan was to have someone to meet at predetermined points with nutrition and hydration and then at the end of the day with their camping supplies.

That someone was me! And let me tell you, this turned out to be an adventure for me as well. Now, Cliff and Tom can tell you all about the trail...about carefully running the course dodging holes, small stumps, roots, logs, a snake and the list goes on. They can tell you about the beautiful scenery along the way and the people they encountered in the deep woods. That is their story to tell. This is my story...the sag story.



It began early Friday morning. Cliff had prepared all sorts of backpacks, coolers, sleeping bags and other gear to embark on his wicked cool adventure. I was the sag, not to be mistaken for hag. Sag, people, sag! As in 'support and gear'. We drove to Buck Hall to drop off his vehicle and to meet Tom who was also dropping off his vehicle to have there when they finished Saturday. They piled in my car and we drove to the Palmetto trail head in Moncks Corner.

I made an observation. They both smelled really nice and fresh. Bet that wouldn't last.

The Palmetto Trail



 It was cold that morning. Cliff and Tom were putting on hats and gloves and extra shirts. Cliff filled his water bladder and Tom strapped on his nutrition belt. They were so excited. I nearly wanted to join them, but then I thought better of it. Trails through the deep woods, the unknown, snakes, possibly bears and wild hogs, coyotes, gorillas (well ok, I made that part up), 52.4 miles in 2 days, banjo music...no thanks. So, I watched as they descended upon the trail and then left to go perform my first duty....to make lunch.

I stopped by the store to pick up ingredients to make chicken noodle soup. I hurried to buy them because if all went well, I would need to meet them in roughly three hours at their half-way point with lunch. Now, I live at least 40 to 45 minutes away and it took about 20 minutes in the store so that only left me about an hour and a half to prepare lunch and then drive about 30 minutes to get to the lunch rendezvous. I arrived home and as I pulled into the driveway, I hit the remote garage door opener in my car and nothing. The door on my side of the garage wouldn't open. I tried the second door...still nothing. So I got out of the car and tried to open it manually....you know, typing in a code. We have two codes, one for each door. I tried both and it was not working. I beat on the box and still....nothing. My mind started racing. What was I going to do. I couldn't get inside to prepare their lunch. You are probably thinking, just go unlock the front or back door, right? The problem with that is that I lock the storm doors from the inside and I have no key to unlock them. Well, I knew for sure the front storm door was locked. My only hope is that the back storm door wasn't.....yet again, there was only one problem with that option. I saw a snake on the back door steps the day before. OMG! OMG! OMG! So I slowly started around the back of the house, looking everywhere to make sure I didn't see the snake. I was freaking out! I made it to the top of the steps and grabbed and jerked the handle to the back storm door so fast that it would make your head spin. Lo and behold, the storm door was unlocked. I quickly unlocked the back door and ran in. Thank goodness I had remembered to disarm the alarm system with the remote before entering the house or that thing would have been blaring. And it's loud enough for the sheriff two counties over to hear. Anyway, I went to the door that enters the house from the garage and tried to open it using the door openers there...still not working. All of a sudden, it dawned on me. There were no lights on in the house. I tried an overhead light and nothing. Ahhh, that's why the garage wouldn't open....we had no POWER. And I have to cook chicken noodle soup. Well that wasn't happening anytime soon. I called the power company and reported the outage. Apparently, there was a tree down across a power line and a team had already been dispatched to remove the tree, but it was going to take at least 30 minutes before the power would be restored. Well that's just great. My cooking time was diminishing by the second. So, I did what any red-blooded American woman would do....I called Mama. She makes the best homemade vegetable soup eva and I was hoping she would have some in the freezer that she could thaw and heat for me to take to Cliff and Tom. Oh...the C-word...she did not. Next, I called a restaurant in town to see if they served soup. After making my request to the young girl that answered the phone, she yelled back to the kitchen..."Neesie, do we sell soup?" Then she laid the phone down, y'all, and didn't come back.  I hung up and decided that I would try the Piggly Wiggly on my way out of town. So, I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, packed some cookies and was getting ready to head to the Piggly Wiggly when, all of a sudden the lights came back on. Well, Praise Be! I had just enough time to make the soup after all. I headed to the rendezvous point for lunch on day one.

Lunch Day-1

I arrived there just minutes before Cliff and Tom came walking up. They sat and rested while I served lunch.

Cliff and Tom picked up a stray....

A few minutes later, another man walked up. Scared the bejeebies out of me. Cliff and Tom didn't seem alarmed at all. Come to find out they had met this guy out on the trail. Huh, just goes to show you can make new friends anywhere. I fed him, too. He thanked us profusely and then he was off to finish his own adventure. All rested and refreshed, Cliff and Tom were ready to head on down the trail, too. So I packed up and drove back home because now, I had dinner to make. Dinner tonight would be chicken pilau (pronounced per-lo, this is a chicken and rice dish we make in the low country), string beans and rolls. Cookies for dessert. They needed their carbs.

Dinner and a fire....ah, the life of an outdoorsman.

Dinner done...they starting setting up their hammocks. Sleep would come soon.

Some thirteen miles later, Cliff and Tom met me at their campsite for the night. They did it! Twenty-six miles later and Day-1 Marathon was complete. Cliff started the campfire, I served them dinner and then I was out of there. I wanted to get out of those woods before dark. Didn't quite make it, but it was close enough. I drove home and settled into the recliner for the night. I was going to just relax and watch a little television. At 7:30 p.m., I started dozing off. Then I got a text from Cliff that he wanted me to meet them the next morning at 6:30 with breakfast. So at 8 p.m., I thought it would be best to just go on to bed. I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed, closed the door and then OMG!! Sirens! Sirens were blaring! The house alarm went off. Scared the bejeebies out of me! Good thing the sheriff from two counties over could hear it, because I was sure someone was breaking in. Then I realized I had closed the bathroom door too hard and the glass-break option on the alarm was set off. HaHa! The things I get myself into. I disarmed the alarm and gladly went to bed.

Day 2 - Finishing breakfast and waiting for the fire to die down.

Waiting on Kenny. Just wait, you'll see.

Do you think Cliff looks a little tired?

Saturday morning, the alarm went off at 5 a.m. And I kind of hit the snooze button a couple of times, which made me late getting up and preparing breakfast. But, I worked quickly and made the guys egg sandwiches and coffee for breakfast. Tom had also brought chocolate muffins that his wife, Cammie, had made. So their little breakfast was shaping up to be quite scrumptious. I arrived back to the deep woods of the Palmetto Trail in the Francis Marion National Forest in the Hellhole Swamp area and noticed that they had already starting packing up their gear for me to take back home. They still had a small fire going and we sat around it while they ate breakfast. I got to hear all the stories about what happened during the night. The darkness, constant fire stoking (no wonder Cliff was still tired), the noises, Tom having seizure-jerks in the hammock, speaking in tongues, the sounds of twigs being stepped on, the coyotes howling, the owls screeching, a man with a flashlight and more. Physically, Cliff's legs were sore and his feet were starting to hurt. Tom seemed to be okay. Now, it was time to head out on Day 2. So, they walked me and the rest of the gear to my car. Cliff needed to retrieve his phone that he had put on the car charger earlier, when I first got there. I got in to start the car and nothing. Tried a couple more times and still nothing. Dead battery...right there in the middle of the Francis Marion National Forest...13 miles from the nearest town. Good thing Cliff had people he could call. He called Kenny. Kenny was deer hunting, but came to our rescue. He jumped me off and I quickly headed back home. On the way, I was trying to decide how I would go about parking the car when I got home, just in case I had to call someone to jump me off again. But then thought, heck no.....I'm going straight to the parts store and that's just what I did. Bought a new battery and they installed it for me and I was out of there within 30 minutes. Good thing, because I needed to prepare lunch for Day 2. Today it was left over chicken pilau, sandwiches and cookies for dessert. I also had grapes and bananas and all sorts of other food stuff for the two days. Cliff and Tom ate good. As I was preparing lunch I got a text from Cliff who had decided that he had determined by physical examination on a log that the ailment in his feet was MENISCUS HURT FOOT. I know him well enough to know that they were really giving him problems. And just as I was about to leave to take lunch, I got a second text that read, "I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it, let me know when you leave and I'll give you the coordinates to find me."

The two day Hell-a-Thon was about to come to an end. I found them just shy of the half-way point. Cliff had had it. No more running or walking for him. His feet were hurting pretty bad. This was the perfect opportunity to get back at him for all the times he told me to hurry up or run faster during my races. I said, "Cliff, you were almost there. Couldn't you just go ahead and finish?"

Giggle.

And then I asked, "Why don't you just have your lunch and rest and then try to finish?"

Giggle, giggle.

He finally said, "No, I'm done. I can't walk another step. My feet hurt too bad." Alright...I took pity, and left him alone. But not before telling them how bad they stunk.

Giggle, giggle, giggle. 

We headed back to Buck Hall to get their vehicles and then headed on home. What a weekend. I'm telling you, when we have adventures in our neck of the woods......we have us some adventures.

What's next? Lord only knows, but I hope you stick around long enough to find out.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. It's my favorite time of year! And, I may have a little Thanksgiving adventure to report. I'm just saying.......

Later,

Laurie 

I Lost Mama in Wal-Mart



My mama doesn't drive. She depends on us kids to take her where she needs to go and I am so happy to be able to do that for her. Whenever she has doctor appointments, I'm the D.D. She is really good about scheduling them on the same day, for times sake. Yesterday, was one of those days.

Mama is in her 70's and is basically healthy. Although, she does have some bummed-up feet and ankles, which makes walking distances a little challenging.  But, she never complains, ever!

I picked her up promptly at 8 a.m. yesterday morning for her first appointment. Our usual thing is that I drop her off at the doctor's office and I go run a few errands and by the time I get back, she is usually finishing up. Yesterday, mama informed me that she had to fast for her first appointment, so she would be needing breakfast soon after. So, I offered to make breakfast for her at my house because I had some things I needed to do at home and that suited her just fine. We had breakfast and just hung out for a couple of hours until we needed to leave for the second appointment. Well, I say we hung out. She is one of The Weather Channel's biggest fans. And she was glued to the T.V. Have you ever tried to listen to two people at once? You look at the person talking to you and appear to be interested in what they are saying, but at the same time trying to hear what's happening on t.v. You turn your head quickly to catch a glimpse of the t.v. and then turn back to the person talking to you. And who knows which you heard or if you were even listening.  HaHa, well that's what mama was doing to me. She cracks me up!

Now, mama had already planned where she wanted to go for lunch because it was close to Wal-Mart and she needed to get a couple of things from there, if we had the time. She wanted to go to Firehouse Subs. She reminisced about how when daddy was alive, they went to Wal-Mart every Friday night and either went to Taco Bell or Firehouse Subs for dinner, afterwards. Only thing was, when we arrived there yesterday, Firehouse Subs was no longer open. It had disappeared, since her last trip to Wal-Mart, apparently. So she decided that since we were there, we should go to Wal-Mart first and then grab a sandwich from Subway when we were finished. She had already told me that she hoped to get out of Wal-Mart without buying anything other than what was on her list. She only had two things on it. And I jokingly told her that if she did, she was getting 50 lashes with a wet noodle. We were starting to push the envelope on time, but I didn't say anything. I wanted her to be able to do what she needed without feeling rushed. But, to expedite the Wal-Mart trip, she went one way and I went the other. I needed a couple of things, too. Mama told me that if she got finished before me, that she would just have a seat on the bench up front and wait.

I finished picking up the things I needed and scanned the check-out lines for mama but, didn't see her. I continued on through the check-out line and walked to the said bench and still no mama. So, I walked slowly to the car, unloaded my bags and decided to go back inside once more to look for her. I checked in the pharmacy section, which is where she was supposed to be. No mama. I walked back to the check-out lines and no mama. It crossed my mind to have her paged. I was going to have the clerk say, "Ms. Pat, paging Ms. Pat. Your daughter has wet noodles waiting for you in the check-out line." OMG, she would have died. HaHa! So, instead I decided to head to the grocery section and check up and down every aisle. Still, no mama. How could one woman with bummed-up feet be so elusive? I called my sister, Carla, and said, "You think mama can't walk around that good? Well let me tell you....just take her to Wal-Mart. I can't find her and I have been all over this store. I HAVE lost mama in Wal-Mart."  HaHa!!! Carla said, "Check up front. When she gets tired she will sit on one of the benches and wait." I told her that I had already done that...twice. We started laughing and all of sudden I run right into her. Mama was in the Movie Section.

I said, "Mama, I have been looking all over this store for you. Are you ready? We need to hurry, if you still want to go to Subway." She just ignored me and kept right on walking. She was on a mission to find a certain movie and nothing was slowing her down until she found it. And that wasn't even on her list. I said, "Wet noodles, Mama!" She just laughed. Obviously, she didn't take me seriously. HaHa!!

Well, we had just enough time to go through the Subway drive-through and make it to her doctor's appointment on time. All was well! But listen, getting blown off by your 70-something-year old mother twice in one day?  I just plain don't know what to think about that. And don't be thinking you could have done anything differently. Mama may not drive and she may hobble a little when she walks, but do not underestimate this woman on her Wal-Mart missions.

Loving My Mama,

Laurie



I've Been Tracked Down

Well heavens y'all, it's been three and a half weeks since my last post. I knew I needed a rest, but that was more like a sabbatical. Not much going on these days. I've kayaked a few times, visited my grandchildren, kayaked with the grandchildren, biked once and have only been running a few times at shorter distances. After my half marathon last month, I sort of went into a runner's slump. I think it's pretty normal, though. You prepare for the big race, anticipate it, then it comes and goes so quickly and all you're left with is the question, "What now"?

Really?

Well yes, really! So, I did what any red-blooded runner would do. I sat down with the computer and my life planner and started registering for more races. I don't know about you, but having something in my life planner keeps me on task. If I have planned races, then rest assured I'll be training for them. Back on track and it feels good! Holler!

Speaking of tracks...there are all kinds. There are track records....and then there's tracking down someone. I'll explain...

First of all, I realized that I slipped when giving you my monthly stats, hence the track record. And I know you must be wondering. So, let's get to it.

Exercise Stats....

September 2013:
Ran:               82.78 miles
Best Pace:     12:59
Longest run:  12 miles
Bike:               89.41
Longest ride:  20.01
Races:            No races this month. Gearing up for October's Half Marathon

October 2013:
Ran:               41.18 miles
Best Pace:     12:47
Longest run:  13.1 miles (half marathon)
Bike:              10.44 miles
Longest ride: 10.44 miles
Races:           Georgetown Bridge to Bridge Half Marathon (Yes! I did it)
Kayak:           15 miles

Running plans for the near future:
I've registered for two 5Ks. The first in a couple of weeks and the second in December.

2014 Running plans thus far:
Jan -  May run the Charleston Half Marathon
Mar - BFF 10K (Breast Cancer Awareness)
Apr - The Divas Half Marathon

So, that's my running track record.... I feel so blessed to be able to run. I truly do love it. Thanks for hanging in there with me as I bombard you with all these stats. Hopefully, I can inspire you to get your running shoes on. Just do it...I promise you'll reap great rewards.

Now speaking of reaping great rewards...... I mean, you hope you can inspire someone along the way. But, how great is it that you actually do. I had an experience today with someone who tracked me down. Literally! I couldn't believe it.

I answered the phone this afternoon and on the other end was a lady that said, "I hope you don't think I'm weird for tracking you down."

What in the world?

I could not imagine.

She went on to tell me that she ran the 5K Race in Georgetown last month and was looking over the results, saw my name on the Half Marathon roster and that I was from the same town as she....and literally tracked me down. She's the secretary for the Methodist Church and asked around at work if anyone knew me and someone told her that they thought I went to the Baptist Church in town. So, she called the Baptist Church secretary and of course, she gave this lady my number. The lady called my home number and didn't get an answer, so she called my mother-in-law's number which was next on the list. My mother-in-law then gave her my cell phone number. And finally, I got the call.

Apparently, she wanted to tell me how awesome she thought it was that I ran the half. She told me she has just started walking/running and wondered if I could give her some pointers and tell her some safe places to run in town. Well, I was blown away. I mean, you would think that I could inspire someone I know, someone in my circles or even someone who may read this blog. But, never would I have imagined that I would inspire someone who saw my name on a Race Roster. Huh, you just never know. Well, one thing led to another and we spent nearly an hour on the phone and made plans to run together some, possibly next week.

I'm humbled to say the least and I am so thankful I made a positive influence on someone. I think I'll keep on running.

Do you have a passion that could possibly make a difference in someone's life? Let me encourage you to keep doing it. You never know when someone is watching.

Carry on,

Laurie