5am: “I need to put an extra hair tie on the list. Rar Rar Rar. Aaaah!” I flailed my arms about. Aidan: “I’m not participating in rar-rar-aah.” He flailed his arms about, mocking me and smiling. 5am: “Good call. You’re totally right. No more rar-aahs. We’re going to be on vacation in a few hours.” Go time. I hung out at work for a while. Absently pushed some papers around my desk. Watched as I twirled a pen Read more…
I sat in my office, sipping on a delicious iced coffee, feeling grateful for the little heater I named Fred. Fred keeps me sane. He stoically combats the relentless air conditioning that blasts me in the head all day. Then I saw the weather report for the Yosemite Valley through the weekend. Sunny and a million degrees. I turned Fred off. Maybe I’ll just appreciate some cold weather for a bit. We decided to leave all unneccessary tiny-expensive-items in the truck in Tuolumne Read more…
We had a friend who was going to run, literally, our resupply up Kearsarge Pass and meet us on the trail. Even the offer was amazing. Pre-trail magic? Then she scored an awesome new position and was unable to take the leave needed to make the trip. We’re super happy for her, but we needed a new plan. So then, for about one solid day, we entertained the idea that we would do something super sketchy Read more…
“Hey buddy, where’s my sock?” Sherlock tilted his head. “What did you do with my sock? This sock.” I held up my lone Injinji sock. He touched it with his nose. “Good boy, show me SOCK. Yes, SOCK.” He touched it again and swished his tail…and did.not.move. I tore the house apart. This is not the best time on the planet to lose one sock. I tore the garage apart. Sherlock followed me around, Read more…
Do we have too much food? Not enough? It’s really hard to tell. In spite of our careful calculations and meticulous math, we can ultimately only hope we’re close enough for government work. Here’s our resupply for Red’s Meadow… I don’t know. I do know that by 8pm last night we’d worked on the remaining resupplies for 8 solid hours and we were wholeheartedly sick of trying to figure it all out. “I’m hungry,” Read more…
“Hurry up,” I tell my wrist, “You’ve got five days to heal.” Last week I got up early to work out. I got my weights out and set them by the door. Half-asleep, I skipped around the room to warm up, and immediately tripped over the weights I’d just placed there. BAM! On my face. I went down hard, graceless and shocked. That’s a quick way to wake up. I fancy I’m going to climb Mt. Read more…
Being bored of food with no way of acquiring anything different just plain sucks. Reminds me of college. We needed a large variety of consumables. We thought about dehydrating food and putting together little recipes like we’ve done for smaller trips. We have three dehydrators, after all. Time to put them bad boys to work! I drove to Costco, purchased giant gleaming crates of all-organic delicious strawberries, drove home, sliced them up, plugged in the Read more…
The second spot was the best, of course. It always is. Aidan chose White Rock Lake for our anniversary weekend getaway. The idea was to remove us from the hectic pace of planning the JMT. We found a decent spot, but as usual, we checked out just one more, and the treeline opened, revealing the campsite of our dreams. Fire pit and flat tent site, plenty of room with private lake access. And plenty of Read more…