I think that this day is the early frontrunner for my favorite day of the whole trip. I was partnered with Jack, our resident Londoner and token foreigner, for the 10 miles. I mean, we hit two national parks today… how can we top that?!

First we ran through the Grand Tetons. The views were just unreal. The way that the Tetons formed resulted in the jagged mountains rising up into the sky without creating any foothills in front of them, so there are these crazy long valleys (where we were running thank GOD) directly adjacent to these intimidating, stark mountains. It’s quite a contrast and it’s really unbelievable. Also we saw a huge herd of bison that was awe inspiring!

We also ran alongside the Snake River, where we had a pretty fun (for me) encounter. We asked a guy to take our picture and he said “ok” with a rather heavy accent. My suspicions were aroused. Then, when he took the picture, he said, “un, deux, trois.” Now, I was certain. I burst into French, asking the guy if he was French or Quebecois. He was so taken aback that I was speaking French, HAH! He kind of stumbled over his words and was just like, “uhm, wow, your French is great, I’m from France……how do you know French?” It felt pretty good. Hopefully I helped to rectify some of America’s public-image issues abroad. After explaining to the man what we were doing for the summer (in French, hell yeah!) he had perhaps the most French reaction of all time and simply said, “Oh, that’s really cool, good luck” before walking away, seemingly exasperated. I think it really only could have been more French if he had puffed a cigarette as he walked away.

I’m done humble-bragging about that. We went to Jackson Lake in Grand Teton Nat’l Park after that. Proud to say that I honored my commitment to Coach Ringwood and I did indeed swim in this body of water! On our way out of Teton and into Yellowstone we stopped on the banks of the Snake River and I was feeling good, so I took another dip. Another body of water down! The Snake River was a bit intimidating, the current was REALLY swift. It was truly an in and out affair. Both bodies of water were glacial as hell, but when else am I going to be out here? Hopefully soon…

We drove through Yellowstone, and stopped by Old Faithful, the geyser that erupts (not sure if that’s the proper term or not but we’re rolling with it!) on the most regular schedule. We only had to hang around about 15 minutes until we saw the real deal. It was phenomenal. Awe-inspiring. But I’m going to talk about Yellowstone much much more in the next post.

We didn’t really fully celebrate Evan’s birthday because we had a 5 AM wake-up the morning after. However, we had a full rest (ie no service event) day in West Yellowstone on Saturday, so all bets were off for Friday night. We were told by locals that Buffalo Bar was the place to be, so we walked on over. Evan showed up and attempted to order a draft beer. I stopped him in his tracks and told the bartender that he’d be having an AMF. If you don’t know what that is… google it, and you’ll have an idea of how our night went from there on out. Gotta say, Evan had a dope birthday! Schoch OUT!

Today’s miles were dedicated to Bill Watson, Caroline Watson’s father, on the first anniversary of his death from gallbladder cancer. Last summer Caroline, one of our directors and my friend, lost both of her parents to cancer in an incredibly short period of time. I have to take a moment to shout out Caroline here because, had I been through what she went through last summer, I think I’d still be in bed. There’s no way I’d be running across the country. We are so, SO lucky to have her leadership and maturity guiding us along our route!

I was partnered with Brenna today and we were cooking with GAS on our legs. We outran the van like 2 or 3 times. This run was really cool. We found an abandoned train early on and took some cool pictures with/on it. Nothing crazy to report about our run into Jackson, other than the fact that Jackson is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been!

This day was also Evan’s 21st birthday. What better place to celebrate than Jackson?! We took him out to the Silver Dollar, a cowboy type bar that was awesome. They had live music that rocked and they had strong drinks, what more could you ask for? I got to try some local brews and a local whiskey (y’know, because cowboys) which was fun, and Evan had a responsible buzz going. Might have spent a little more money than I planned to, but it was so worth it.

When we got back to the host I was able to convince everyone who came back with us to sleep outside with me and holy cow, the stars… it’s just DIFFERENT out here! I used to think that the stars in PA where Cait and I would camp were beautiful but man it’s a different game out West.

Keeping this post short, again, because I’m REALLY tired and I want to catch up, but the bottom line is that this was an emotional day for Caroline, and for all of us who care so much for Caroline. It seemed like the whole team was here for her to pick her up on a tough day, and it felt good to be a part of that. We love you Caroline and you ROCK! Schoch out!

Alright, in keeping with previous posts, I’m going to be keeping this one short because, in keeping with previous patterns, I’m still up at 11:15 and have to wake up at 4:45 AM! Joy!

Alright so for Day 11 we had a 12 mile day and I was partnered with THE Ally Rising. Ally is super cool and absolutely hilarious, our run chats were top notch (at times raunchy) throughout the day. Always a pleasure to run with Ally, because with Ally one often has to stop running to laugh. Crossing the Utah-Idaho border was really cool. Climbing the Idaho sign was perhaps cooler.

I would be remiss to talk about day 11 without mentioning our dedication for the day! As some may know, I’m not the only Tyler on Team Boston. When I first found that out, I’m not going to lie, I was pretty pissed. I love being the only Tyler in the group. I definitely felt threatened. But then I met Tyler Berge, who is an absolute RAY of light in this dark world in which we live! Tyler is affectionately known as Girl-ler, Lady-ler, She-ler, and Femme-ler, being that she is the female Tyler (of course, I’m known as Guy-ler, Mister-ler, He-ler, and Masc-ler).

Anyway I’m getting distracted, as I am wont to do. The point of this story is that Tyler’s younger sister, Tatum is a Hodgkin’s Lymphoma survivor. I’m not going to go into details about Tatum’s story because you can read about Tyler and Tatum in this awesome newspaper article!!! Tatum had an important appointment on day 11, so we all dedicated our miles to Tatum, Tyler, and the Berge family. Thankfully, the appointment went well and Tatum is still in remission and doing great! I only have older siblings, but I can’t even begin to imagine how Tyler must have felt while Tatum was sick. I’m so so happy that so far Tatum has had a relatively good outcome 🙂

Upon arriving in Pocatello we literally ran over to the Pocatello Running Company before they closed, where we met the shop’s awesome owner, Brian. We told Brian what we were all about and asked if the store would be willing to make a donation of some nutrition products like GU gels and Nuun electrolyte tablets. Brian was honest and told us that we had come at the worst possible time, as the store was moving down the block and inventory was kind of sketchy. Nevertheless, he told us to shoot him an email and come back in the morning and he’d put something together for us! He also offered us half off apparel, so we’re now proudly repping the Pocatello Running Company across the country! The store seemed to have a really awesome community of runners and it reminded me a lot of Falls Road in Baltimore.

Ok, that’s all for the moment as I really need to catch up! Sorry for the lack of posting, everybody. We’ve been doing so many awesome things that I want to make the most of my time out here and, frankly, I can blog any time! Schoch out!