Post-Op

I'm back home. Everything went fine. Docs took out two stones and a salivary gland and I spent the night at the hospital. Today is pretty much downtime and do nothing. Let alone run. I feel about the same as I did when this gland stuff acted up in the first place, alot of discomfort in my throat, and pain when I jolt it. So when that eases I'll hit the roads again.

In the absence of running, I have some time to kill. I did some virtual cross-training, going back in my blog a little before I got the gland problems, to March 4, where I had left off my Chatauqua. Here I finished mapping out the first 694 miles that I ran in 2006 and had ended up in West Liberty, Kentucky, just past the Pink Palace, otherwise known as the East Kentucky Correctional Facility. I guess I finally made it out on parole, and have just tracked another 300 or so miles which takes me up to 1000 miles and New Harmony Indiana. According to my log I would have passed by here on April 22nd.

I remember New Harmony from a college class I took called American Utopian Communities with Jon Andelson, who, 20 years later, I see is still teaching at Grinnell. Scottish industrialist Robert Owen bought New Harmony and tried to create a society that tried to abolish money, commodities, social classes, etc. However, as these things often go, this social experiment only lasted for a few years before it all fell apart. And now the internet is full of pages with glossy pictures of idyllic small town life in New Harmony complemented by antiques and shopping and bed & breakfasts and gleeful commodification of its history. I think where I part with my old professor is that it's this cooptation of history that interests me more than the original utopian society. But for a prime example of that I only have to drive about 50 miles west to Lancaster County.

I don't expect to be running tomorrow and so plan to continue my cross training to complete the remaining 400 miles and have the Chatauqua fully updated again.