fall break

School is inching towards the unbearable yet again, and I'm getting burnt out on reading poetry and running the same traffic-y strips of concrete over and over again. I also might be turning into a vampire from spending so much time in the darkroom for photography class. (Totally worth the lack of Vitamin D, by the way. I'll share some sweet black and whites later on.)

My huge and imposing Senior Independent Study project (it's so important it gets a capitalized name) is coming along nicely. I'll be spending this year producing a magazine about the outdoors in Ohio. Hopefully people will read it and enjoy it so I can feel justified in getting shitfaced with the rest of the senior class in March.

So for fall break (those blessed four days off from school) I'm planning dusting off my mountain bike for a tiny vacation. I'm trying to hit all the best singletrack in Ohio and write some trail reviews along the way.

While it's not quite as grand as a trip to Colorado, it'll be nice to get out of Wooster for a while. I need some more trees in my life.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

So I'm not very fast right now - right now I'm barely clinging to the 3rd spot on the team. But that's okay, because my favorite part of cross country season isn't really the running.

It's the team activities,

the team cheers,

and the new friends.

It's also the pre-race anticipation.

and then the post race endorphin rush.

And the long, long weekend long runs through the dried-up farm fields and the changing leaves of northern Ohio. These are best when they're followed by pancake breakfasts.

So that's all I've got for now. Here's to a new season and a new school year with a shit-ton of miles to run and a shit-ton of books to read.

Hope everyone's having a delightful fall after the hottest summer on record ever.