Picture Me Rollin' (my ankle)

I might as well call this site "Running, Wonky Ankle and All."

Oh, never mind.

At start (the Southern trailhead), with my backpack (with Camelbak inside) and water bottle ready to go. This happens to be the only picture I was able to recover. I hate technology!

I had grand plans for this past Saturday. I wanted to run the entire length of the Ice Age Trail in the Northern Kettle Moraine forest. Click here to follow the yellow trail along a map. I wanted to take pictures along the way and enjoy a morning in the woods (not to be confused with something else, which I KNOW came to mind for some of you). Things didn't go exactly as planned after rolling my ankle big time at the 22 mile mark (It's a total of 31 miles to get from one end of the forest to another).

This trail is difficult in the best of conditions as it's covered in rocks and roots and hills. But when you cover all of that with all the fallen leaves and then sprinkle on about an inch of rain, and...well, what the h*!! was I thinking?

I took a lot of great pictures, too. Unfortunately, I can't download them. I really have no idea why, but you can add that insult (no pictures) to the injury (effed-up ankle--and yes, thats the actual diagnosis).

I've now tried to complete this run 3 times. Once I crashed and burned after only having a single water bottle and 2 gels with me. The second time I had Lyme Disease. And now this. I probably won't try it again this year, considering that Gun Deer Season starts this Saturday, but I promise that I WILL DO IT!

On the bright side, though, I did have a great weekend outside of the bad ending to the run. On Friday night Ellie's co-workers had a party, and I got to absolutely bring the house downembarrass myself at Guitar Hero:

Here's Ellie Jamming out with Phil, a co-worker. As you can tell by the look on my face, I'm mesmerized by her skillz:

Here I am pulling off a killer move. I don't think the game commonly known as "Guitar Hero" will ever be the same:

Next is me completely embarrassing myself. Items of interest in this video include (A) my attempt at doing a jump-kick to the rhythm of the song and actually performing some sort of spastic lower-half-of-my-body convulsion, which I really have no way of explaining or defending (feel free to tell me what you think it looks like in the comment section), and (B) Phil trying to perform a leg kick also and falling backwards onto the couch.

The voice you hear is Ellie (having safely arrived in Margaritaville) yelling, "Do a leg kick, Phil!" It is of my opinion she knew exactly what she was doing, despite the adult beverages, and wanted to document both my complete inability to dance (I've been banned from wedding reception halls in 3 states) and Phil's inability to balance on one leg, for even one tenth of a second, not to mention the fact we did NOT achieve "Rock Star Status" on that song because of Phil missing at least 3 seconds of notes while bracing his fall to the couch.

All in all, fun times!