October 2019: Baby, it's cold outside: Harrison v Laramie

It's cold. More like the Eden 'cold' than I've known in almost fifty years, and that was before the weather report included a 'wind chill factor," or a "feels like" comment to the temperature. Laramie winter of 1983 was probably colder, but the dry, almost warm winds made it feel warmer than the announced temperature. I ran outside there year-round. That academic year -- August 1982 to May 1983 -- was the most productive running year of my life. I regularly ran forty miles a week, hit my lowest weight ever, and ended up with an ankle stress fracture that created the inflection point for the demise of my running career. I was never quite the same after that.

The altitude effect was myth, at least in my experience. I recall I did a good 7-8 mile run the first day I pulled into Laramie and felt no issues at all. I would run into the nearby mountains, at times out to the sheep herder hit east of town. I ran along the barbed wire that a few years later would gain international notoriety, as the place where Matthew Shepherd was killed.

Laramie itself is pretty flat, a high desert plateau.Close to the east were one range of mountains, location of the highest elevation of any US interstate (I-80) on the pass between Cheyenne and Laramie. To the south ran a well-maintained two-lane road (State 287) that led wove through less hills to Fort Collins; this road had a reputation as a deadly passage for those drinking too much in Colorado and not being able to navigate the way to Laramie. I think that a van full of cross country runners also had a terrible accident along this road.

I remember a howling blizzard the day of the San Diego State football game, where they shortened halftime to reduce the pain and any kicking against the wind was a comedy worthy of any blooper reel. At game's end, the public announcer reported that the roads out from Laramie -- there were not that many -- were closed and that fans were welcome to spend the night in the local armory.

I remember when they would actually swing a barrier across I-80 when the weather got to bad for travel through the high pass. It was the last time I ever used chains on my snow tires, and I regretted my infatuation with my sporty Mazda RX7, with its rotary engine and light back end. I remember that a blizzard could sock us in overnight and by afternoon bright sunshine and clear roads would be the order of the day.

I lived in a one-bedroom basement apartment with a tiny, windowless bedroom. I remember how I could look out and see blue skies above and, not seeing the snow on the ground, mistakenly assume that it was a warm day only to discover it was true winter weather.

I won a teaching award teaching two large introductory management sections each semester, and volunteered to teach a free overload required supervision course in the spring. I had my second experience with cougars -- older women, not the animal -- and generally enjoyed the solitude awarded to a visiting single professor in a family town absent any sort of professional 'yuppie' demographic. My last day in May, I loaded up the Honda Accord I picked up in a trade for the erratic if sexy Mazda, and ended up leaving furniture on the curb, more trouble to move than to jus abandon. It included this very heavy wood table I had used as my catchall work desk and dining table.

I also had my first experience with USA Today, at that time a godsend in the relatively media-free world of southern Wyoming, with no television, slim local and college newspapers, only one or two radio stations.

I experienced a relatively rugged 'cowboy bar,' where the joke was that they would frisk you for weapons at entry and, finding none, they would give you a gun. There were mean looking hombres in long coats, coming in from the oil pipeline work not too far from Laramie.

It was perhaps the first and last time I experienced a state budget boom, where Wyoming prospered with a severance tax on oil and coal extractions during another 'oil crisis' period.

An overall pleasant experience, sort of a bucket list year of experiencing cowboy boots, pick up trucks, and the Rocky Mountains, yet despite some publications and text work, in some respects just a holding period for my personal development.