TITLE: Running on the Road: Carefree, Arizona
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 14, 2006 9:06 AM
DESC:
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BODY:
(The sixth stop in the Running on the Road series.
The first five were
Allerton Park, Illinois,
Muncie, Indiana,
Vancouver, British Columbia,
St. Louis, Missouri,
and
Houston, Texas.)
Back in 1998, the still relatively new
Hillside Group
spun off a third conference in its "Pattern Languages of Programs"
series, the mysteriously-named
ChiliPLoP.
The name is a double entendre, one part based in the southwestern
US culture and cuisine that are spicy by national standards, and
one part based in the conference's intent to bring together
patterns folks working intensely in groups on "hot topics" of
interest. Since the beginning, I have been a regular, meaning
that each spring I travel to Arizona for a great three or four
days working on patterns and interacting with the some of the
most interesting folks I've ever met.
The first three years of ChiliPLoP were held in the rural area
50 miles northwest of Phoenix, at the wonderful
Merv Griffin Wickenburg Inn
and
Dude Ranch.
At the time I was still just a casual runner, so I jogged
about the compound on gravel and sandy paths for 20-30 minutes
at a time. In 2000, Merv donated the ranch to a charity,
for use as a camp for wayward boys, and ChiliPLoP had to
surrender its great Western luxury and find a new home.
Since 2001, ChiliPLoP has been in Carefree, northeast of
Phoenix, at the
Spirit in the Desert
retreat center. That may not sound exciting, but it has
been a great place to hold a working conference -- quiet,
with lots of open space and kitchen area, autonomy, and
a great staff. And, more to the point of this article,
Carefree offers great running.
Carefree
is a young town of about 3000 people up the road from
Scottsdale and neighboring the older and larger community
of Cave Creek. It's basically a tourist community, with
restaurants, trinket shops, and art galleries. Many of
its residents live in expensive homes in the land that
rings the small center center.
When I run in Carefree, I go for three different kinds of
outing.
In Town
My shorter runs tend to be in and around the town area.
There isn't really much town, but the streets in the
vicinity of the retreat center wind around, folding back
in on each other, making it possible to run for a few
minutes without ever running in quite the same place.
Just south and east of town, the roads are like the country
roads I remember in rural Indiana, with a few houses,
narrow streets with no shoulders, and little traffic.
I can easily piece together a 5-6 mile run by aimlessly
wandering streets with names like Bloody Basin, Nonchalant,
Long Rifle, Sidewinder, and Breathless.
The Outlying Areas
Farther to the east but especially to the north, I get
into the "wild". There are still homes to be found, but
they are fewer and harder to see, hidden atop hills and
behind the desert's flora. These runs are much hillier,
with a few big hills and many, many smaller but still
significant rises and falls. I like to run early, and
I often see
javelinas
and
coyotes
out -- the javelinas in packs, sometimes near the roads,
and the coyotes alone or in pairs, scouting the ridges
above the roads.
My favorite runs are north of town. I take Tranquil Trail
north across Cave Creek Road and follow streets where they
lead me. Occasionally I hit a dead end at the top of a
steep incline, so I double back to the latest choice I
made and make another. We all study about backtracking
algorithms in our CS courses, and I've tried them all as
I explore this area. I don't worry much about distance,
because the hills change my speed profile so much; I just
run for an hour, or ninety minutes, being sure to stop
moving farther from town near the 2/3 mark. One run of
this sort is the strength work-out I need for a week,
replacing any speed work-out or hills I might do at home.
The Mountain
When I started running more miles in 2002, I began to hear
a siren call: Black Mountain. This 3700-foot mountain lies
east of Carefree and south of Cave Creek, and it dominates
the skyline as I look out the window of my room at the
retreat center. I was running more mileage, and now I
realized that something was possible that before had never
even been conceivable. The mountain called to me: run all
the way around me.
That first year, I mostly wandered the retreat center's
tranquil grounds and imagined. But I looked at local tourism
maps and guessed that the roads around the mountain's base
form a loop of 10 miles or less, and the call got stronger.
I also could not resist one other attraction of this run.
The south border of mountain is called
Carefree Highway,
and all I could of was the old Gordon Lightfoot song, which
I loved, and the prospect of telling my friends that I had
run down Carefree Highway.
In 2003, I did. The run convinced me that the loop --
beginning on the northeast side of the mountain at the
corner of Tom Darlington Highway and Cave Creek Road,
counterclockwise on Cave Creek around the north and west
perimeters to Carefree Highway, east back to Tom Darlington,
and finally north again to Cave Creek -- was only 8.5 or 9
miles. With a half mile or so to and from the starting
point, I figure this run is in the 9 to 9.5-mile range.
It has plenty of rise and fall, but not dramatic changes
in elevation; the inclines and declines are long and gradual.
This run is now a ritual of my ChiliPLoP visits. The roads
of this route are two and four lanes and are the major roads
into and out of Cave Creek and Carefree. So they are busy.
That, coupled with the fact that I do have work to do at the
conference, means that I usually start early -- no later than
5:30 AM, certainly, and as early as 4:15 AM. I start in
darkness and end in light, much like the conference itself.
Indeed, I have seen some remarkable sunrises as I come around
the southwest corner of the mountain and turn east, when the
sun seems to come alive all at once as the mountain no longer
blots out my eastern vista.
I hope no one is listening, because I often talk to the mountain.
The first year, I spoke to it as a motivational device, because
I'd never run such a hilly 9-miler. Now, I speak to it as an
old friend, a partner that has seen me go from novice runner
to old hand. Yesterday morning, I thanked Black Mountain for
another glorious run. Unlike Coleridge's
Ancient Mariner
who bore the burden of guilt for slaying the albatross, I grew
with the mountain and became its companion.
~~~~~
The software patterns movement is changing, as patterns and
the OO software development that engendered it become a part
of the discipline's mainstream, and I don't know how much
longer conferences like ChiliPLoP will continue to exist as
viable entities. I can only hope that it lasts for a while
longer. I need my annual excuse to run in its world.
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