My recreational interests center on doing things the hard way, and on being miles from nowhere.
In recent years, these interests have taken the form
of trail running , orienteering , and homebrewing.
Los Alamos was a great place to live if you love running in the backcountry: the town is at elevation 7500 feet, but 11000 feet is just a few miles away, and nothing in between but National Forest. Nearby Bandelier National Monument had some officially developed and fenced-off pre-Columbian Anasazi ruins, but we in the backcountry community knew of much more interesting sites, sufficiently remote to keep them unvandalized. (One of these days, I'll digitize some photos and link them from here.)
Our arrival in suburban New York was extreme culture shock. All my co-workers at Watson said ``don't live NORTH'' and ``don't live on the other side of the Hudson River.'' So we ended up looking NORTH, on the OTHER SIDE, and it's wonderful... It's a well-kept secret that there is an extensive amount of undeveloped backcountry (open to the public on foot, except for West Point) almost within eyesight of the Manhattan skyline. The ``mountains'' here in the Hudson Highlands top out at only 1600 feet above sea level, but the river is just about sea level, so you can get in a lot of climbing very quickly. There's also abandoned Revolution-era iron mines and other history lurking in the woods. Black Rock, Storm King, Bear Mountain/Harriman, or even Schunemunk. (There are stories and photos here, too. One of these days, I'll link those in as well.)
For close to ten years, I ran in organized trail races, including the inaugural Massanutten Mountain 100 (1995), the Leadville Trail 100 (1996) the Finger Lakes 50 (1997), the Vermont 50 (1997 and 1998), and a whole pile of Groundhog Fall 50's.
However, in the end 1998, I realized that achieving any more goals in ultra-running (e.g., run them much faster---I actually had a few top 3 finishes out west) would require more time (e.g., 8-hour runs, once a month) than family and work would currently permit. So I've decided to take a few years off...
...and focus on new sport:
When I arrived in New York, I hooked up with the local off-road running community via the Ridgefield Hash House Harriers (no link, sorry---they have a private Web site on the Schlumberger intranet). And these folks quickly introduced me to orienteering. You get a map (1:10000 or 1:15000) with a sequence of marked locations, and you need to go run through the woods and find the flags at those locations. At the more interesting levels of the sport, you need to be precise when you look for the flag: if it says ``North side of the 1-meter boulder,'' you won't see it if you're on the north-east side---or if you're at the wrong boulder. (Folks who were once scouts may be familiar with a watered-down version of this.) Compass and pace-counting play small roles---much more important is how to read the map, how to relate it your surroundings, how to pick good routes, how to navigate accurately along this route, and how to keep running through all of this, if possible.
It's a blast: the next logical step in trailrunning, where you keep running, but eliminate the trail!
This part of the U.S. is a very good place for it: we're in the overlap of two clubs with national-team-level folks and lots of meets:
Plus, West Point usually puts on a meet or two as well.