in front of God and everyone

Today I woke up at 5am and, despite laying quietly in bed for another 15min, couldn’t make myself fall back to sleep. Since getting back from Taiwan I’ve once again been lucky and experienced no “jetlag,” but I can’t help but think my early-morning pep is somehow related to the 15hr time-change I went through this weekend. I already decided that if it happens again tomorrow I’m going to make the best of it and go spray the yard for crabgrass before work. Intro paragraph over.

Whooosh!! (Sound of the blog being sucked through a hole in time, back into the year 1990.)

As a new relatively new teenager, I can remember walking from my house to my then-girlfriend’s house, she lived about a half-mile away (if you cut through some backyards, crossed a ditch, and walked through the woods). I used to love that walk because I knew we were going to make out when I got there. If her parents were home, we’d “go for a walk” and end up off in the woods somewhere rolling in pine needles. If her parents weren’t home we’d just watch TV on the couch when we came up to breath. It was exhilarating, nothing in my life yet could compare to it. I fondly recall swigging a couple gulps of mouthwash prior to leaving my house, maybe a squeeze of toothpaste too for good measure, and trying to swish it around in my mouth for the whole walk to her house. The thought being I’d be minty-fresh upon getting there. To this day I can recall walking under the smothering Florida heat while my cheeks burned, begging me to spit out the Scope.

We had different places to go, but our main objective was to get as far away from civilization as possible. I mean, if any items of clothing were going to get removed, we wanted to be as far out of sight as possible. We’d follow firebreaks or worn trails into the woods for ten minutes or so and then track off into the brush, blazing our own trail to a nice secluded spot. We’d hit the dirty dusty prickly ground as if it were a featherbed, lips instantly locked and hands instinctively roaming. Something about being outside made it all the more exciting, two semi-clothed, hormone-filled kids wrestling in the underbrush. Usually we’d head for nice “hidden” areas, a small copse of trees or grass-rimmed depression we could slip out of sight into. A couple times though, I can remember deliberately walking extremely far out into an open field of knee-high grass and going through our whole routine standing up in front of God and everyone. I mean, where we were there was no one around for miles – but to stand in an open field with the sun beaming down on you as pull her shirt through arms stretched high above her head is, at fourteen, otherworldly.

Whooosh!!

Two big weekends coming up. This weekend we’re headed south to Mt. Whitney, where we’ll attempt to summit the tallest peak in the “lower 48” states. I’m actually pumped because we’re taking both Friday and Monday off work, and camping on a Friday and Monday instead of working on a Friday and Monday just sounds so much better. We’ll spend Friday night camping at about 8000ft in a bid to acclimate our bodies to the higher elevations before moving up to the ~14000ft mark to summit. Should be a great time, and I think with the extra days I may be able to set a pace that will see me to the top and back – providing I don’t get sick. The following weekend I’m off to Houston for a customer visit, and instead of flying home will be meeting Sharaun and Ben in Portland (they’ll have road-tripped their way up earlier in the day). Then we’re headed for a weekend of hiking, camping, and possibly fishing at Smith Rock. I’ve never been to Whitney or Smith Rock, so I’m really excited to see, camp, and hike both.

Then that’s that then. Dave out.