I'm a Maniac

So, summer is coming. And what does that mean? MUD RUNS!

This past weekend was the Rugged Maniac, my first of the season. I have four more planned, but I may add a fifth beyond that.

The RM was held at the Portland International Raceway. I was signed up for the first heat at 9 a.m. I like grabbing the early slots because the course isn't torn up yet from all the other runners. I had a friend who raced in a later match and learned a secondary reason to show up early: you avoid the lines at the obstacles, which can really eat into your finishing time.

And time is one thing I'm concerned with. I track my races at Athlinks, so I can compare my performance to others and most especially to myself, to see if my daily gym visits are really paying off. While there have been races that didn't have official timing, this was the first time I had to pay extra for the timing chip. This is a little sensor that tracks when you cross the start and then the end. You tie it into your shoe and it should stand the abuse. Most races, this is free if it is offered at all, so everybody gets one and you really get a sense of how everyone performed. With having to pay a bit extra ($10!), there were far fewer takers.

When I arrived, the sky was not looking too promising, and within five minutes it started to rain. The registration desks hadn't even opened yet. Bad omen? No such thing.

This race did have a nice feature that I haven't seen before. The start area was actually blocked off by a small wall, similar to those you would probably find peppered throughout the course. I thought they would be moving this once things got started. But nope, they called in the runners with instructions to scale the wall. It became a bit of a "You must be this athletic to run this course" kind of litmus test. I vaulted it pretty easily and was the first to do so. The announcer noticed and called out my bib number: instant fame (of a sort).

The thing I noticed first about the race was that we were at a race track, so the land was pretty level. I was guessing this would make the whole thing much easier. I would soon find this wasn't really the case. The first obstacle was a stream that ran across the course. It was about a three foot drop to the water and about six feet across. Some were climbing down into the water and out the other side. I went the path of the more adventurous and leapt across.

Next came some some short walls to toss ourselves over. This was quickly followed by a theme for this race: bleachers. There were two small sets placed back to back, forming a small pyramid to climb over. Throughout the race, much larger bleachers were encountered that we had to run up, across, and down. Nothing too taxing, but they were metal and we were covered by mud by this point, so the footing was treacherous.

Other obstacles included the tires in the classic football training arrangement, hanging from ropes in a cage that you have to crash through, and a hill of the things trying to suck you in or spill you out. Several trenches had been dug out, some we had to jump across in quick succession, others we had to crawl through. These crawl trenches were covered and pretty long, so the interior was pitch black. There was someone in front of me and I was able to keep tabs on them by the reflectors in their shoes. But suddenly these disappeared and I knew there was a turn in the tunnel. This slowed my down a bit as I didn't want to ram my face into a wall.

About two thirds of the way through the race I finally ran out of breath and had to slow down a bit. This cost me my target time. I was hoping to complete the race in thirty minutes flat. My final time was just over thirty-five minutes. Not bad, but on par with what I'd been racing last year, so it's hard to say that I had any improvement.

After the end of the race and showering off I jumped with the kids through the bounce castle and then took my first ride on a mechanical bull. Held on pretty long but the cost was my pinkie finger. Mashed it up pretty good, scrapping a good chunk of the knuckle off, and leaving it swollen for a couple days.

With the first mud run behind me, my Saturday was far from over. Next was the Portland Starlight Parade. I marched with the Portland Zombie Walk group. Dressed in my zombie best, we scared the kids and adults alike, all in good fun. We even had a set of zombie Disney Princesses. Before the parade, we were hanging out with a Mardi Gras band, the Grimm float (but I only knew a couple of the folks that were there), and the cheerleaders from PSU. There was much revelry (including me leading a crowd in the Chicken Dance).

What sort of summer adventures do you have planned?

Grimm tidings

So, some time ago I spent a day in Estacada at an old lumber mill musing over a crime scene. Seems a federal agent had been murdered, so I was called in to take over the case from the local law enforcement. The hitch was they only needed two FBI agents and there were three of us on hand. I was odd man out.

But I just got a second chance. Once again there is a murder, an abandoned car our only clue, and I would be on hand to help.

This is how I returned to the set of Grimm.

We had a very early call time, forcing me to leave home long before I normally wake. I had to head out to the remote reaches of north Portland's industrial district. Actually, the Grimm studio is right down the street from where the Tomato Fight had occurred.

I was really excited because this time I would get to be a uniformed police officer. Last time I wore my own suit, trading in the suit jacket for the blue FBI field windbreaker. Both times I got a gun, but police have a utility belt which comes with "mace" (a live can of training mace), handcuffs (let the fun begin!), a radio with shoulder mic, and a telescoping beat stick. I played with all of my toys while waiting for filming to begin.

For the second time in my extras career, my "character" actually had a name. From the random grab bag of name tags I was given "Oster". That's Officer Oster to you.

Our group was composed of several cops, a couple detectives, and a few perps. We were filming on the main PDX police station set. I've never watched the show (although I nearly did once, which is almost a story of it's own), so I can't say what kind of action has taken place there, but I can tell you where this fictional police station sits within downtown Portland. Since the building is just an artificial set in a warehouse, the view outside the windows is a huge photo panorama. Pictured is what you'd see if you were standing outside Whole Foods Market looking south (on Burnside and NW 13th).

I wasn't working with Nick (David Giuntoli) and Hank (Russell Hornsby) this time around (but I did when I was an FBI agent, though they were rather stand-offish). However, I did have Sgt. Wu (Reggie Lee), and he's a really nice guy. We were just goofing off, trying to stay out of the way while the crew set up the lighting for the scene. We were joined by Captain Renard (Sasha Roiz), all of us checking the doughnut box for treats (unfortunately, there were none).

When this episode airs, I'll probably just be this blur way in the background, as the scene takes place inside the Captain's office while the rest of us are out in the main area. When it came time for filming, my job was to get some coffee. I got a surprise here. Unlike the doughnut box, the coffee machine was not empty. It was full of nightmare. A horrific black sludge, probably made by Cthulhu the last time the stars aligned, poured into my prop cup. The rest of that coffee table was just as scary. There was a half empty cup of joe behind the machine that was hosting its own little evolution experiment.

We did the scene many times and then headed back to base camp. Most of us changed into street clothes for the next scene. We were taken down to Union Station to act as passengers coming off the train. Obviously, our ride was interrupted by a freight train blocking the back road we were on to get between the studio and the station. When the train came to a complete stop several minutes later, still holding us up, we decided to take another route. Once on location, I was paired with a woman and we were to be a couple arriving from St. Louis. We were asked to improvise our story, so I soon became her whipped boyfriend.

It's a difficult thing to maintain control of a public space, especially one where there is constant in and out traffic. We closed off part of the street and part of the sidewalk, but people continually tried to walk through, or become gawkers while on camera. The cool bit was when an Amish family came out of the station in time to be in the background of our final take. I just image trying to explain what we were doing to them.

After we finished, we piled into the van to return to home base, catching a ride with Reggie who thanked us for our help.

That was the end though, a short day overall. The biggest disappointment being that they didn't feed us!