Thursday, March 01, 2007

Strangest Things Seen on a Trail Run

Some of the strangest things (that I can post about) that I've seen on trail runs:

Pot-smoking paraphenelia.

Teen/twenty-somethings pot-smoking in the woods. (Well, not so strange, after all).

A wedding veil.

A live human, playing "army man" while laying on the side of the trail, after dark.

A horseshoe welded to a 3/4-inch box-end wrench. Whatdaheck???

A dead raccoon, hanging from a branch

A dead, bloated raccoon on the ground, that Kyle and James just missed stepping on.

A dead, bloated possum on the ground.

Various other dead or "skeletanized" animals.

Many live animals, including poisonous snakes that I've had to jump over.

A hive of mad, bald-faced hornets looking to sting any passing trailrunner (at the MN Voyageur 50-miler).

A dog with 3 legs trying to keep up with me, and doing a fair job of it.

A couple "coupling" in the back of an SUV on a cold winter day. The park ranger was at the trail head, waiting for them to finish (so he could have a word with them). Remember that one, Kyle?

Various other half-dressed couples caught fornicating in the woods.

Turtles mating in the middle of the trail...(for hours and hours).

A beaver gnawing on a tree.

A really large flock of wild turkeys taking off in the middle of the night (from their roosts), and us listening to them loudly crash into tree trunks.

Two passed-out Wakarusa (music festival) fans who'd partially set up a tent in the middle of the North Shore Trail in Lawrence, KS.

Debbie slapping the hell out of Julie. Julie slapping the hell out of Debbie. (They used the excuse of a biting horsefly).

A large, normally gleeful Russian ultrarunner not clearing a tree branch, yet again.

A large, semi-conscious Russian ultrarunner laying on his back on the ground, yet again.

A male trailrunner wearing a "Little Red Riding Hood" outfit. A trailrunner wearing a Darth Vader helmet. A trailrunner impersonating a large Russian ultrarunner. (Okay, it WAS Halloween).

A male trailrunner wearing panty hose in an attempt to keep ticks off of his legs.

I could tell you some other things that I've seen before, but I couldn't post them in this media due to FCC rules, the laws of my fair State, and the basic laws of Nature. I'll tell you out on a trail run, sometime.

What about you? What have you seen on a trail run?

Happy trails,

Bad Ben

8 comments:

Travis said...

- condoms
- an old wet stuffed animal that looked like it was from a crime scene
- a close encounter with a coyote eating a mole
-abandoned VW bug
- a huge groundhog that stared me down
- shoes, but never a pair, what’s with that? how do you lose just 1?

Anonymous said...

A homeless couple sleeping in the back of a pickup truck with a flat tire. They asked me if I happened to be carrying an air compressor. "Um , no."
A female wild turkey on with a bunch of hatchlings on a narrow cliff side trail in Zion National Park. It took me 45 minutes to get past her. She charged me several times.
Burning cars.
A couple fornicating in a truck and the guy still waved to me.

Shane A. Jones said...

Yellow Crime scene tape and a bunch of cops yelling at me after I surprised them by running right into the middle of their crime scene. They had the road blocked off, but not the trail.

Unknown said...

Two very large elk barreling down the side of the mountain about 50 yards ahead of us and then turning straight towards us, but luckily they were about 25 yards below us when they made their turn.

Unknown said...

After thinking about it, I suppose the elk in the mountains scenario wasn't that strange, but it sure was cool.

Caleb said...

The "Army Man" scared me too; the costume run with you guys, was I think my 2nd run with the Nerds...possibly....I didn't really know what I was getting myself into...I thought these guys are crazier than I am.

Ben, aka BadBen said...

Caleb,
You are wonderful, crazy addition to our sorry lot. You help keep us going in the right (insane) direction. Could you imagine us talking or carrying-on the way we do on a golf course? Well, maybe...but we'd definitely get kicked off of the course, and they might even call out the "white coats" to haul us off.
F*ck golf!

Anonymous said...

While running up the former "Crookedest road in the Nation" in a beautiful and absolutely deserted national park outside of Grand Junction (CO), I came upon identical twin girls running down the road dressed correspondingly opposite (red shorts black top on one, black shorts red top on the other). Have to admit it was a bit odd.
-K.