No more stroller driving for me

Today's San Jose Fit walk was 11 miles (after a fierce compromising effort) at the Sawyer Camp Trail. This trail is paved and reasonably flat, which made Mrs Notthat's plan possible: since we were watching the grandkids, she would meet us there with them and the stroller and walk along with us for as long as they held out. At least that was the plan.

I met up with the rest of the group in a Nordstrom parking lot. (I'm not going to mention that Coach Luap - not his real name - chose for us to meet up at an upscale clothing store. I'm sure this means nothing. At all.)

We had a surprise guest, Wel (not his real name) who is one of the Bull Goose Loonies of this winter walking program. We also had an appearance by Hteb Yram. Notice that the street lights are still on - this is a bit after 7 AM and it was pretty foggy and cold out. Our intent was to car pool to the trail early and get reasonable parking places. (We failed. This place is popular with people that get up WAY too early in the morning.)

Once we got there and finally found a place to park (about a quarter mile from the entrance, which seemed more like a whole mile at the end of the walk), we met Mrs Notthat and the grandkids.

We did our warm ups and got ready to go. That is Verp on the left and Uidualc (who took part in last weekend's walk at Lake Chabot). Note the cold foggy conditions. Note that Uidualc is in shorts.

Here I am getting ready to push the grandkids. They are excited because they know I'm a fun pusher and will do some moderately wild things.

Here are two very disappointed grandkids and a crippled stroller - it turns out that grandpa's moderately wild things can be hazardous to a stroller. So Mrs Notthat and the grandkids said goodbye and headed back to their car while we continued on. I felt awful, the grandkids felt cheated, and the stroller was hoping it had a good HMO plan (it doesn't). The only good thing about this was that it happened early in the walk so they did not have to walk that far back to the car.

Sadly, this trail does not have any porta-potties - instead it has these non-porta things that still provide the same satisfying experience. Werdna (shorts!) and Wel are waiting their turn (or trying to decide who has to go after Laup who has, ummm, broken in the thing).

This is an "out and back" trail where you walk out then retrace your steps back to the start. The long walkers were to walk 12 miles, the shorter walkers 10 miles. To make the carpool work better, we decided to just have everyone walk 11 miles. In this picture at the 5.5 mile marker, Uidualc is pointing to the hill he wants to climb. Instead, we followed the plan and headed back.

Some deer we saw along the trail. (I think there are four in this picture.)

A general picture showing most of the group crossing the dam at the Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir.

All along the trail are these math quizzes. We tried to guess what they are actually used for, but failed to come up with anything very clever. I even tried mighty Google and still am no wiser.

At about 1.5 miles from the end of our walk, we were surprised to see Mrs Notthat and the grandkids, who returned with an emergency backup stroller (from the grandkid's house). The first thing that Darci said when she saw me was that I was NOT allowed to push this stroller.

And as an added punishment, I had to carry Darci on my shoulders. Eve (whose name confounds my secret code) pointed out that she had walked a lot further than Darci, so it should be her turn.

By the time we reached the end of the walk, coaches Luap and Werdna were firmly planted on a bench. Careful viewers will note that Darci and Eve are running up to the fence. Some people don't really get the concept of being tired. Riley has the concept down, and was sound asleep at this point.

Here are Eve and Darci still running.

After watching them run a few laps, everyone finally agreed that it was time to call it a walk and head home. Other than the first stroller, everyone ended up injury-free.

Although some were suffering from grade school math class flashbacks.

That's it - move along...