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baked away the day

Monday night and what a welcome end to a long day.

Began around 7am when my boss called me from the airport.  I mean, I’ve not even made it into the sawmill yet and here I am listening to my boss in my ear as I fart around the house getting ready to go.

Yeah, I know, I’ve got to do more work with less people and less money.  Fix what went wrong on the last project but make absolutely no changes from the way they did things, uh-huh, right.  Sure, no problem.

I couldn’t even give Keaton a proper kiss and hug goodbye for holding the phone up to my ear to promise I’d “run some numbers” and estimate what might “fall off the plate” if I didn’t “get any upside” in first-quarter 2009.  I’ll tell you what’s gonna fall of the plate man… my faith in the fact that things can change… that’s what.

Ugh.

On top of this I’m buried in unread mail when I finally get to sit down at my desk.  Four-hundred bold-font missives stare blankly at me from my monitor… each of them threatening to make me think, make me do something.  I start to group them by subject, weed out the crap, the mile-long thread where thirteen people thank each other and reply with useless one-word statements like “OK” or “Sure.”  Past the near-ten pieces of corporate spam telling me they’re resurfacing the parking lot in front of building F or that the servers that run the Coke machines will be down for servicing Saturday night from 3am-5am.

Man, I could care less.  Is this where I landed for real?  I mean, I slept in a lecture hall one night in college we stayed studying so late.  We ordered pizza to the building, snuck in after the cleaning staff left, studied until 5am, slept on the floor until 7am, and studied again for an hour before the class began at 8am.  I worked that hard for this, eh?

I know, I sound sour – but I’m really not in that bad a mood when it comes down to it.  I guess I’m just in one of those moods where I want to stay in bed all day with Keaton and Sharaun.  When I got home, I put on some new music (an amazing series of rare 60s American “Northern soul” compliations called Talcum Soul) and played teaparty and “river” with Keaton.

And, after dinner I decided to have her help me bake some banana bread while we listened to the new Of Montreal (Sharaun took pictures).  So maybe the lyrics aren’t exactly the best for a two-and-a-half year old, but at least they don’t really swear… they just talk about “kicking it softcore” and “taking it both ways.”  It’s cool, she’s not listening anyway, she’s all tied up in cracking an egg into our banana-batter and licking the mixer/beater things clean when we’re done stirring things up.

Mmm… I’ve dried up.  Nothing left to write.  Let’s paste on this little closing job I did sometime earlier today when I thought I was gonna write this whole thing but didn’t.

Well folks, the LHC (which I’ve written about before) is coming online tomorrow.  Y’all ready for the Eeath to asplode?  I’m not.  In fact, I just sent out the invitation to our Halloween party… so I’m banking on at least another month or two of Earth, K?  K.

Oh, and I know I’m once again behind in getting new pictures of Keaton up… so to tide you over here are some new pictures Bill posted on his lil’ corner of the web, as well as one here from pro-photog Maygsters.

Goodnight.

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hey john, you can have your trail

Monday morning and, if I were the lying type, I’d tell you that I’m writing this after midnight Sunday… having just returned from our successful epic six-day JMT hike.

But, y’allz, I’m an honest Joe, so I’ll fess up: Early evening on Thursday we reached our third campsite after a long, but surprisingly bearable, sixteen mile trek and decided (in a groupthink snowball of unanimous rationalization) that we all felt accomplished enough with our ~40mi three-day adventure, and would rather be in a hotel eating a meatlover’s pizza and sipping some cold suds than bedding down again on the ground in our filthy clothes to wake with the sun and do it all again for three more days.  So that’s just what we did.  And, by late Friday afternoon we were in our respective homes, taking our respective showers, kissing our respective significant others, and easing into clean duds.

Didn’t bother me much to end early, and now that the trail has beaten us twice I think we’re officially done with it.  My pride is somewhat salved knowing we put in some good effort, and I’ve seen about ~70mi of the thing… so I count that as a neat experience.  Good enough for me, I suppose.  Oh, and I did blog while out there in the wilderness.  I saved the entries on the iPhone and upped them sometime this past weekend.  Scroll down to check them out if you’re interested.

Switching gear now, moving onto the normal stuff: I want to talk about Keaton for a moment.

Lately, she’s been protesting naps and bedtime more and more.  Saturday, for instance, she refused to go down for either – repeatedly getting out of bed, opening her door, and leaving her room. After several frustrating rounds of this back-and-forth game, I decided we need a way to “keep” her in her room (the bedrooms in the house don’t have locks on them).  So, call me a bad parent or whatever you’d like, but I improvised a door-locking mechanism out of a bungee cord and the nearby hinge of another door.  We used this “lock” with success Saturday night around 1am when Keaton just refused to say in her room/bed.  I secured her door and got back into bed with Sharaun.  And, after about ten or fifteen minutes of tearful protest she finally accepted her lot, crawled back into bed, and drifted off to sleep. Yeah, I feel kinda bad for having to “lock” her in there… but it’s what’s working for now.

Well folks, it’s creeping up on midnight and I better hit the sack and send this thing to the presses.  Love you and hope I didn’t lose you last week while the blog languished during the hike.  Talk to you soon; same place, same time.

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second day: hard

Our shadows stretched out long in front of us as we made our final ascent down to the lakeshore that is tonight’s campsite. It was a long day, much more arduous than yesterday – partly because we had a 1,900ft cumulative elevation gain and partly due to the altitude and second-day soreness.

At some point during the day we all encountered difficulties, although Anthony had the worst of it – succumbing once again to altitude sickness and losing his lunch and the day’s liquids somewhere along the trail (and then twice again before hitting they sack). Erik’s also showing small symptoms of a possible cold, with a sore throat and cough. But, tomorrow is another day… and we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Actually, it’s eight o’clock right now and all of us are tucked into our bags for the night (it’s not even fully dark outside). However, we’re all more than drained and it’s just too chilly to sit around outside. So, we decided to retire early. With luck, the night will restore our bodies an spirits (and be bear-free).

Tomorrow should be a little easier, with a mostly downhill morning and a small climb in the afternoon. If we feel OK, we may entertain the idea of pushing on into the Mammoth area… but, after today, that’s a big “if.”

Until tomorrow (or when I have a connection to post this), keep sending us positive thoughts!

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Day one & feeling good

It’s around 5pm on Tuesday and we’re all sitting around in a circle at our first campsite.

We ended up trekking a bit more than a mile further than we’d planned as the rangers warned us about an “aggressive” bear active in the area where we’d originally planned to stay the night. And, actually, having been able to check out the intended site on the way here, we’re at the better place.

Asking around the circle, everyone seems to be in good spirits, and I think we’re all happy with our stamina the progress we made. Then again, we’re still hiking on (relatively) fresh legs and aren’t trail-beaten yet.

It is absolutely gorgeous up here, and the trails aren’t as crowded as we expected for the holiday-led short week. I’m trying to take in more of the scenery this time around, instead of watching the feet in front of me and the terrain coming up.

Tomorrow sees us at our highest elevations for the whole of the hike, and likely our most brutal day in terms of exertion.

Wish us luck!

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John Muir Trail half through-hike: 2008 re-do

Happy Labor Day folks.

Hope you’re enjoying your time away from work.

As promised, I’m posting a detailed rundown of this week’s JMT hike.  And, as you read this, the guys and I are probably halfway to the Eastern side of Yosemite National Park, where we’ll begin our journey with high hopes of finishing what Anthony started last year and couldn’t finish.  Tomorrow (as you read this), we’ll hit the trail around 9:30am after gathering our passes and bear-canisters from the ranger station.

Below you can see the waypoints we’ve fed into the GPS we’re taking, and sort of track our progress.  Day two is our highest elevation day, while day five is our longest haul.  We pass through civilization only once when we go through the Mammoth area on day four, stopping in the Red’s Meadow area and maybe grabbing a real sit-down meal and a thermal shower from the hot-springs.  Aside from that, it’s miles and miles of scenic high-Sierra backcountry.  Check it:

Sorry for the fuzziness, I didn’t do it all html-table fancy like I did last year and just used a screencap of our Excel file.

If you’re so inclined, you can click on the following links to get an aeriel veiw of where we plan to camp each night (providing we stick to the schedule above): Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday afternoon (exit point).

And, that’s about it.  If we happen to have wireless access at Red’s Meadow I think I’ll try and scramble off a quick post on our progress up until that point.  If not, look for me back here in a week.

Wish us well!

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smiled all the way through

Hi guys, it’s Friday.  I’m ready for the weekend.  Ready to pack, and take to the skies around 10am Monday to get to the trailhead for our early Tuesday hike-start.  Let’s do this.

Tonight around ten o’clock, and after doing the dishes after watching Barack after eating dinner after playing with Keaton after taking off my workclothes and putting on gym shorts with no shirt after turning off the iPhone that was streaming the freshly-leaked Mogwai album after pulling into the garage after leaving work after running my staff meeting after working like three men again after grabbing Indian buffet for lunch after working like three men after grabbing my coffee and a fuji apple for breakfast after driving into work while listening to the freshly-leaked Mogwai album after getting dressed after showering after waking up, I decided to make a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios to satisfy a latenight craving for something sweet.

Sharaun was in the living room stretched out on the big couch and had a good vantage of the countertop where I placed the empty bowl I pulled from the cabinet.  She watched as I pulled the box of cereal down from the cabinet and poured it into the bowl.  Here’s a pretty good approximation of how that went:

Oh my God David, how much cereal are you putting in that bowl?  Did you leave any? Why do you fill it that much?  Who makes bowls of cereal like that, anyway?  I saw you use your hand to push it down so it would fit!  What do you think it’s the Mongolian Grill?  Is there going to be any for Keaton in the morning?  Where are you even going to put the milk now?  Seriously.

I didn’t leave my side of the conversation out of that either, I just sort of stood there chuckling as she went on.  Sometimes these unprovoked rants really crack me up.  And, even though she was half-joking, there were definitely shades of the three-hundred babies thing from blogs of yore.  Anyway, I thought it was funny, and smiled all the way through my enormous bowl of delicious Cheerios.

Goodnight.

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Random and scattered today

It’s the end of Wednesday and I swear I’ve done a week’s worth of hard work in this first half.  Between making up for my vacation last week and trying to get a little ahead to take the edge off my vacation next week, I’m cramming…

Random and scattered today, be prepared.

Today, I got re-excited about our hike for a whole new reason.  Turns out Ben has a pilot buddy who owes him a favor and is likely going to be in town next Monday.  In recompense, he may be willing to ferry Anthony, Ben, and I to a small airstrip in the Sierras close to our trailhead.  This would be a in six-seater twin-engine job, flying from here down there in a fraction of the time it would take to drive, and, probably more importantly, salvaging my marriage by taking the burden of the eight-hour roundtrip drop-off from Sharaun and Keaton.  I can just imagine packing into a private plane, all geared out for our hike, loading our packs up and taking off into the mountain skies.  I mean, it’s like a whole super-bonus beginning to what stands to be an incredible adventure already.  And, while it’s not 100% confirmed at this point, I would say we’re trending positively (sorry for the sawmill-speak, laymen).  So rad.

Late last night the new New Kids on the new New Kids on the Block album leaked, and today I downloaded it for Sharaun.  Oh man was she happy.  What?  Oh, you didn’t know the New Kids on the Block were back together?  Yeah, they are.  All their songs sound like the last Akon or Chris Brown song you heard on the radio, right down the the thinly veiled sexual lyics and robotic pitch-shifting voice effects ala Cher’s Believe.  But, my wife, whom I love to death, loves this band to death… and has spent ungodly amounts of dosh on concert tickets for their upcoming shows (where, in the apparent fulfillment of one of her lifetime dreams, she’ll actually be going to “meet and greet” the band).  Anyway, we listened to the album most of the evening – it was even our dinnertime soundtrack.  And, let me tell you guys… it’s bad.  Real, real bad.

Today Keaton and I had a teaparty with three of her dolls, Finny, Claudia, and Hannah.  Although, instead of tea we had coffee… and we doctored it with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg (her idea, I promise).  We had “biscuits” with our tea, which were actually tiny pieces of plastic fruit (go figure).  Sometimes I like to play the big brother role and do things like pretend to spill coffee or “accidentally” knock over one of the babies… maybe you think that’s mean but I enjoy seeing how she reacts to things.  Sometimes her reponses to situations floor me, she’s so mature seeming in some ways (well, for a two and a half year old… or whatever).  Parts of my insides cry when I think how fast she got here though… so I want to enjoy as many teaparties as I can, while I can.

Goodnight people.