Road to Cool
I write my best when I am devastated or blissfully happy. Right now, I’m just coasting. To avoid boring you all with the details of this week’s hiking adventure, I created a website: “hiking with the ex” which can be found by clicking on the link to your right…the one with the little hiking logo…not that one, the one above it, no…you scrolled past it. Yep, right there.
The photo of the day is still active, but I don’t think it is turning out to be what Kara had intended when she suggested it. It was to build her photography skills and to be honest, all but one of those pictures on my 365 were taken with my cell phone camera. She was doing fantastic and then we lost internet access at the house. Hey, either senior trip or cable/internet. She picked senior trip so for the last month we haven’t had either. It’s a sacrifice that we all to accept. Some better than others (me=better, kids=not so much)
The other night Kara came home from night school in a pretty good mood. My boyfriend was over having dinner and they began to talk about one of her projects that she has coming up. I was only half paying attention as I pushed the uneaten pasta noodles down the drain and tried to get the marinara sauce off the stovetop.
I leaned back from my spot in the kitchen and listened to their conversation. Kara is so passionate about equality that sometimes it’s hard for her to see straight. I’m thinking at some point she is going to have a mini stroke at a rally or finally be able to shoot sudden death rays from her glowing eyes and kill people.
She pushed her chicken around and listened to how to debate a mock bill from a position that the other guy doesn’t feel like he’s being attacked. This was the first real conversation these two have had since he came back into my life. Of course it would be about gay marriage and morality. They carried the conversation into the genocide and Jewish death camps. At one point in the conversation I looked at my daughter and thought, “Who are you and where did you learn how to sound so damn smart!?” It was then that I realized that her passion had finally fed that ‘you’re dumb’ place that had ruled her for so many years. She had found something that she felt so strongly for that she pushed past how far she would normally go to learn more. This single act had given my daughter confidence to be able to speak her mind and she wasn’t faking shit, my daughter is smart. REALLY smart.
Speaking of smart and to drag you all back into my hiking realm; I was smart yesterday. Last week Dan and I hiked 13 miles. The more we hike the easier it gets. This week we took a route we hadn’t taken before. The first three miles is straight uphill. I have done the 1.5 miles straight up before, but this was a bit more. Only once did I decide I needed to hear myself squeak, “I need to stop smoking all together and I want my mommy.” After 7 miles I told him I was done for the day. He was disappointed that we weren’t going to tack on the other 3 I had suggested, but if last week was any indication of the recovery time, I didn’t want any part of it. Last Sunday I spent the day in bed with mental and physical exhaustion. This Sunday I’m fine. It could be from the 45 minutes I soaked in a hot tub with jets and the half a bottle of wine I ingested while I was boiling my tense muscles might have helped. Today I was able to get right out of bed and not have to crawl to the bathroom.
I was talking to some co-workers that said they were interested in hiking Lassen this summer and they pointed out that I’m ready for that hike and I had to agree. I am more than ready. I might not be the fastest, but I will finish. The other day I decided to skip the gym and do some street running/walking to get ready for the 5k I signed up for. I didn’t make it as far as I had hoped because, and I’m not sure if you know this, but the pavement is MUCH harder than my trails and that treadmill. SHOCKING HUH? It’s also ridiculously boring. The streets I was running were the same streets that I drive and have seen for the last 13 years of my life. No waterfalls or mud pits to run through. I realized with the time I have left before that run that it’s not about getting a good time, it’s about getting there that morning and finishing it. That’s it. That is what it was when I started all of this and then somewhere in the middle it was about how fast I could do it and just yesterday it was about how far I could go. I’m getting tired of ‘how fast? How far?’ and I am no longer fully enjoying the time out of the house and the feeling I get from doing it because I’m focusing too much on beating the last time or distance. I’ve decided to go back a month and find the joy I had by plotting out a ‘good’ hike and not a ‘distance/incline’ hike. I’m done the training for Lassen, I got that one!
I did decide that I do want to get up at 4am one day next summer and hike Mt. Whitney.
I “met” a woman on the trail to Cool yesterday who was wearing a shirt that said, “50 miles is the new 26.2” or something like that. This means she has done one of the qualifier races for the 100 mile endurance run. She was 69 when she did it. This year she said, “I will do the 50 mile if I am feeling good. It all depends on my health…I would like to do it at 70, that would be neat.” She said her goodbye and began jogging uphill.
HOLY FUCK WOMAN! For reals, that woman was jogging up a rocky incline.
Dan and I decided to name this trail, “The Humility Trail” as we were passed by training endurance runners who were on probably their 3rd trip back and forth and by people who doubled our age.
“They started at the same place we are…” and that is what I have to keep reminding myself.