Reality Check

Snippets from my running log during the time we traveled to/from Boulder, Colorado and Galesburg, Illinois/Knox College this past week:
- 8/31 p.m.: "concrete tour d'hotel at nightfall" (Lincoln, Nebraska)
- 9/1 a.m.: "lost in Lincoln" (but we still made it to Elmhurst IL in time for Paul's 5 p.m. college xc debut!)
- 9/2: "hotel -> Paul/campus -> hotel. Good thing Paul was tired from his race"
- 9/3: "Galesburg...creaky...."
- 9/4: "Nebraska farm road drills"

Also on September 4th, we meandered off the interstate and onto a likely route for the Boulder-to-North Platte portion of next summer's run. Lots of farmland, a pony express station, a portion of the Lincoln Highway, feedlots, hawks, corn, some good road, some not so good. Traveling along, looking at road shoulders, evaluating traffic levels, passing through towns with double-digit populations, seeing a whole lot of sun and very little shade....it all became very real. Just prior to this back-road exploration, I read a plaque in The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument (a fine museum that pays tribute to those who passed through Nebraska via the Oregon Trail, Mormon Trail, California Trail, Pony Express, the first railroad, the Lincoln Highway (the first transcontinental highway)):
The cowards never started
The weak died on the way
Only the strong arrived
They were the pioneers