Courting fiascos
Sep. 3rd, 2003 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikSo the plan was that yesterday I was going to take my unreliable car, pick up ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tshar and head up to the blood bank, let them attempt to extract my pint of blood (which I should mention left me feeling pretty out of it last time) and then we were going to go up to Snoqualmie Pass to collect his car, and possibly do some hiking if I wasn't feeling too knocked out from donating blood.
You see the disaster potential here, right? But wait, it gets better, kind of.
So first my car stalled -- briefly -- on the way down the driveway. Got it going again... Then we went to the blood bank, and they didn't want my blood, because I was now slightly below the correct iron levels (which is really annoying -- last time was the first time I'd ever tested low iron, but that was the first day of my period. This time I was mid cycle, and I'd been making a point of eating iron rich foods) and I was running a slight fever. (Huh? Didn't feel sick.)
So we went up to Snoqualmie Pass. And tshar recommended that we hike up to Kendall Catwalk (which was "steep, but only three miles"). So after a bit of wandering around the ski lodge finding water (surreal, the place was desserted, the ski slopes covered with flowers, and music was blaring out of the speakers) we headed off.
Well, it was steep. Actually, it wasn't even that steep, just a lot of up -- 2700 in, 300 feet out, I guess, but most of it nicely spread out. And 10.5 miles. And the catwalk is really gorgeous, and it was completely worth it.
However... For the last few days I've been thinking about how much I wanted to start hiking with the water filter. Just for fun. And maybe with some backup iodine tablets. Why don't I ever listen to myself? I give myself such good advice... Anyhow, we reached a point where I thought to myself "if we want to really have enough water, we should turn back now" -- and I was right. And then I thought "well, going down isn't as hard, and it will be cooler then, so it won't suck too bad". And I was also right. And I really wanted to finish the trail. But if I'd known how long the trail was I'd have brought another water bottle.
Somehow both of us carefully avoiding thinking about how we pretty consistantly take 2/3 as much time going up as we did going down. We were going slow that last bit, right? (Going slow = the muscles around my SI joint, which are trying to support it now that the ligaments in the joint have been overstretched, were begging for mercy.) Anyhow, we didn't head back until mumble, and of course the sun is setting a bit earlier these days.
But that was alright, because we both had flashlights, er, little bitty flashlights on our keychains. Which did a pretty good job, really. And we both had PDAs as backup light sources if it came to that, though we didn't use them. (craigp tells me that there are programs that tweak the backlight to make your PDA a really good flashlight. Cool, huh?) So we walked along as it got darker and darker, and finally, when we really couldn't see the trail in front of us *at all* we turned on the lights and continued down. (And every time we passed a stream I thought longingly of my filter, and of getting the taste of sunscreen out of my mouth. Blech.)
Oh, did I mention that about a third of the way up I'd decided that I was catching something? But I decided that if I just kept going, but didn't push myself, it would be just like doing taiji, sort of. And I've used taiji to get rid of colds many times before... And weirdly enough, this seemed to work.
Gods but the stars and half moon were pretty from the side of that mountain...
And comments like "do you ever think that we might we walking right past a bear, or a cougar that we don't even see because of the dark" added just that something to the ambience. Um, thanks ;-)
So finally, after over an hour of hiking in full dark, we made it back to the trail head. And my cellphone collected my voicemail, including that Craig had just been interviewing with his insane/favorite/hyper energizer bunny boy ex-boss. (woo-hoo!) And I drank a liter of water. And my car continued to behave.
Summary: we were stupid, and suffered for it a bit. But all in all things went better than they probably ought to have. And it was really cool.
tshar and head up to the blood bank, let them attempt to extract my pint of blood (which I should mention left me feeling pretty out of it last time) and then we were going to go up to Snoqualmie Pass to collect his car, and possibly do some hiking if I wasn't feeling too knocked out from donating blood.You see the disaster potential here, right? But wait, it gets better, kind of.
So first my car stalled -- briefly -- on the way down the driveway. Got it going again... Then we went to the blood bank, and they didn't want my blood, because I was now slightly below the correct iron levels (which is really annoying -- last time was the first time I'd ever tested low iron, but that was the first day of my period. This time I was mid cycle, and I'd been making a point of eating iron rich foods) and I was running a slight fever. (Huh? Didn't feel sick.)
So we went up to Snoqualmie Pass. And tshar recommended that we hike up to Kendall Catwalk (which was "steep, but only three miles"). So after a bit of wandering around the ski lodge finding water (surreal, the place was desserted, the ski slopes covered with flowers, and music was blaring out of the speakers) we headed off.
Well, it was steep. Actually, it wasn't even that steep, just a lot of up -- 2700 in, 300 feet out, I guess, but most of it nicely spread out. And 10.5 miles. And the catwalk is really gorgeous, and it was completely worth it.
However... For the last few days I've been thinking about how much I wanted to start hiking with the water filter. Just for fun. And maybe with some backup iodine tablets. Why don't I ever listen to myself? I give myself such good advice... Anyhow, we reached a point where I thought to myself "if we want to really have enough water, we should turn back now" -- and I was right. And then I thought "well, going down isn't as hard, and it will be cooler then, so it won't suck too bad". And I was also right. And I really wanted to finish the trail. But if I'd known how long the trail was I'd have brought another water bottle.
Somehow both of us carefully avoiding thinking about how we pretty consistantly take 2/3 as much time going up as we did going down. We were going slow that last bit, right? (Going slow = the muscles around my SI joint, which are trying to support it now that the ligaments in the joint have been overstretched, were begging for mercy.) Anyhow, we didn't head back until mumble, and of course the sun is setting a bit earlier these days.
But that was alright, because we both had flashlights, er, little bitty flashlights on our keychains. Which did a pretty good job, really. And we both had PDAs as backup light sources if it came to that, though we didn't use them. (
craigp tells me that there are programs that tweak the backlight to make your PDA a really good flashlight. Cool, huh?) So we walked along as it got darker and darker, and finally, when we really couldn't see the trail in front of us *at all* we turned on the lights and continued down. (And every time we passed a stream I thought longingly of my filter, and of getting the taste of sunscreen out of my mouth. Blech.)Oh, did I mention that about a third of the way up I'd decided that I was catching something? But I decided that if I just kept going, but didn't push myself, it would be just like doing taiji, sort of. And I've used taiji to get rid of colds many times before... And weirdly enough, this seemed to work.
Gods but the stars and half moon were pretty from the side of that mountain...
And comments like "do you ever think that we might we walking right past a bear, or a cougar that we don't even see because of the dark" added just that something to the ambience. Um, thanks ;-)
So finally, after over an hour of hiking in full dark, we made it back to the trail head. And my cellphone collected my voicemail, including that Craig had just been interviewing with his insane/favorite/hyper energizer bunny boy ex-boss. (woo-hoo!) And I drank a liter of water. And my car continued to behave.
Summary: we were stupid, and suffered for it a bit. But all in all things went better than they probably ought to have. And it was really cool.
