Toilets I have known.

We've got all sorts of lovely vacation photos to download, and ballet pics to share, and fun heartwarming stories, but until our technology catches up with us, I'm going to share a few toilet classification ideas.

First, we travelled to Seattle, and then we went camping, at a campground, and spent a few days at Glacier National Park. Then I ran a 10K this morning, and the kids and I spent the day at the adjacent city beach. This has entailed a LOT of public toilets. I submit that the following questions must be asked when one is evaluating a public toilet (on merits other than cleanliness, which really speaks for itself and does not warrent analysis.)

One: Does it flush? If no, you are probably using either an outhouse or a porta potty. Outhouses come in basically two varieties: with enclosure, or without. This week, we have used the former, but not the latter. It was at the trailhead for the Trail of the Cedars in Glacier, which we didn't happen to hike this time around, but it was a close stop when we had an urgent potty need. Outdoor outhouses are typically in sparsely populated regions, which we're not quite ready to camp in yet.

Outhouses are the toilet of choice for events like organized footraces, and they also come in two varieties: with hand sanitizer (highly preferred!) or without (which is just awful.) Luckily, the 10K I ran had the first kind. Unluckily, the only one at the top of the mountain where I waited for the start of the race with a hundred or so other people for an hour was *locked.* An enterprising and desparate runner jimmied it open, and although the lock was damaged, nobody cared. Some people just used the bushes instead, but that's usually a last choice as far as I'm concerned.

Flushing toilets, it turns out, also come in more than one variety. There are multi-option flushers, designed for maximum water efficiency. Our beloved aunt and uncle have one, and I saw one this week in the new visitors' center outside of Apgar, complete with a set of instructions that included the phrases "number one" and "number two." I have never before seen this on a government-issued sign.

There are also fancy Swedish flushing toilets with knobs on the top of the tank, which we saw in the restrooms at the top of Logan Pass, a hair-raising drive up the mountain in Glacier but totally worth it (funny photos, not with toilets, coming soon.) The goal here is also water use efficiency, and they also came with instructions to PULL the knob, and to NEVER twist or push it.

Another interesting question that isn't quite toilet-specific: what kind of handwashing options exist? We saw three at various campground restrooms: one was soap and cold water, one was hand sanitizer and cold water, and one was cold water on its own. This ranks between the porta-potty-no-hand-sanitizer option and the porta-potty-hand-sanitizer - better than the first, but not quite as good as the second in terms of your confidence when exiting that you're suitable for society again. (Reminder: we're not talking basic cleanliness here; clearly the porta-potties would rank (!) below the flush toilets in any comparison along those lines.)

Finally, we happend to need a toilet at a gas station in a little town 16 miles from the freeway (don't ask) in Washington State, and the guy running the gas station let us use it even though he's technically supposed to direct people over to the nearby Wal-Mart. We opened up the door to the little office building attached to the gas pump structure, and found a toilet... with no stall door. Just office, toilet, sink, mop closet. It was clean enough, and with plenty of soap, but the total lack of door made it clear why this really didn't qualify as "a restroom."

Aren't you thankful there are no visuals for the above discussion?

editing to add: my 10K time was 57:10, or 9:13/miles, which is about a four minute gain over my previous 10K time from last fall. I'm itching to do a 5K again to see if I can do sub-nine-minute miles - a modest goal, but it would be a huge gain from my first race.