Pool Mishap

May 26, 2008 at 5:13 pm (Misc Adventures)

The pool table attacked me. It just jumped out and bit me. Wham! I’ve even got the injury to prove it.

Or….maybe I’m just still not good at pool, and a bit uncoordinated with the cue stick. Take your pick.

Okay, okay, so I slammed my finger against the table. The table was standing perfectly still, and it never made a move for me at all. It didn’t even do anything to ask for it. It never did anything. I was the one who came out of nowhere and hit the table. Wham! Why hello Mr. Pool Table. Have I introduced you to my knuckle yet?

I was trying to break. I can’t break. I can’t hit the ball hard enough to break. I try and the ball rolls forward at a good speed but not good enough. A few of the balls on the periphery of the rack take up that small bit of energy and dislodge from the pack, but for the most part they remain, tightly grouped and laughing, laughing at my pathetic attempt to interrupt their pow-wow.

Or, like today, I try too hard to put the necessary force behind it, screw up, and slam my knuckle against the table.

I’m sorry Mr. Pool Table. I didn’t mean to hit you. Maybe someday I will be able to break more successfully. For now I’ll just wear my make-shift Kleenex bandage, tied on with a strip of plastic, and let Brian do all the breaking. I think we’ll both be better off that way.

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Yellow Coats

May 25, 2008 at 6:12 pm (Misc Adventures, SNAMP Field Season)

Yosemite made a killing this weekend.

Who would have thought that they’d do so well on a weekend as crappy as this one. The rain has been almost non-stop. The views are all obscured. The first day we couldn’t make out the top of El Capital. Hell, you couldn’t make out the half-way point. By Sunday we had a clear window long enough to see El Cap but the sky was grey and cloudy and Half-Dome was still completely hidden behind the unfortunate weather. I felt bad, considering how many in our group had never been to Yosemite and had few opportunities to come again. I’ve been to Yosemite many times, and unfortunately this one ranked as worst. Even the trip where my dad’s car got broken into by a bear beat out on this one. By Sunday we had decided it wasn’t worth staying, and we all spent that evening and the next day elsewhere.

Yet Yosemite wasn’t hurting for it. It was, after all, still Memorial Day Weekend, and despite the weather, the people were out in full numbers. It was packed. I was shocked, trudging up the steep path to Nevada Falls in the pouring rain, by how many people were out there. Most came unprepared. They wore cheap tennis shoes that were far from waterproof, they carried umbrellas or wore garbage bags, arms and heads sticking out through torn holes and bags wrapped over their hair like turbans. But mostly, they wore the yellow rain-parkas that the park was selling.

That was the most remarkable thing about the hike: all that yellow. It was like fall! Everywhere you looked there was another Yellow Coat trudging up or down the path. There were tall Yellow Coats and small Yellow Coats, thin Yellow Coats and fat Yellow Coats. They walked with hoods up and bodies covered, uniform and anonymous. The park was selling them for $8 each.

Like I said, the park made a killing this weekend.

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Divorce Flats

May 23, 2008 at 10:10 pm (Misc Adventures, SNAMP Field Season)

I must admit that I’m not very optimistic. I’m with Brian, driving around just outside of Yosemite National Park looking either for the Owl Crew or an empty camp site. It’s Memorial Day weekend, the Owl Crew left for the park a few hours before us without definitive plans as to where they would be camping, and there’s no cell phone reception. Like I said, I’m not very optimistic. I don’t think we’ll find the group tonight. I don’t think we’ll find a camp site. I expect that we’ll be making camp on a random spot on Forest Service land somewhere.

After a bit of driving around without success, we decide to try the final two unmarked campground signs we passed further from the park before settling in on a campable patch we found on the road to Hetch Hetchy. When we spot the first sign, marked with a brown tent and an arrow pointing to the right, I make the turn into Sweetwater Campground and follow the one-way loop road through the campground. It’s small, only 10 to 15 sites, and the crew’s vehicles are nowhere in sight.

We’re two sights from the end when we realize that the empty patch of dried grass to our right is an unclaimed campsite. We deliberate for only a second before I put on my reverse lights. I’ve just barely passed it, and there’s another truck coming up behind it, and we want to claim the site for our own. Success! Who would have thought we would find an empty campsite late on Friday night on Memorial Day Weekend?

We step out of the truck just as the ranger, camped in the last site just adjacent to ours, steps out of his. He comes straight over to us and greets us with a smile, breaking straight into a friendly barrage of information about the campsite.

Now that site there, he says, pointing to the picnic table in the site next to ours, nestled in a shady copse of trees, we call it the Honeymoon Suite. It gets shade all day long. But this, as he directs us back to the barren patch of yellow grass we’ve claimed, is not as nice. We call it Divorce Flats. We laugh and joke appropriately, vowing to enjoy this weekend, then, since it will supposedly be the last of our relationship.

Oh, but you probably won’t find anything else right now, he warns, as if we were actually considering giving up this site for the hopes of something better. We’re not that dumb. Even Divorce Flats is luxury for us. We have no bears here, and no poison oak. The other sites, they all have poison oak. But not here. I like this guy. He’d make a good salesman.

And so we settle in to Divorce Flats for the night, just Brian and I, and leave finding the rest of the group for tomorrow. The rain has let up long enough for us to light a nice fire and enjoy it, and even though the sky opened up and dumped a shitload of rain on us while we slept, we remained warm and dry in our tent and decided that despite the name, Divorce Flats wasn’t all that bad after all.

But just to be safe, I’ll cross my fingers and hope we last the weekend. :-P

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Geocaching

May 10, 2008 at 4:48 pm (Misc Adventures)

The coordinates can only get you so far. It’s here somewhere, the cache. The GPS tells us so. It is within a few meters radius of here, when you account for the accuracy level. The inaccuracy level. The GPS got us this far. The rest is up to us.

There are so many options.

On the north side of the trail is a pile of rocks, a perfect hiding spot and a popular one. Around it, bushes. Lots of bushes and shrubbery that offer great cover for a camouflaged cache. But there’s the south side of the trail too, and here there’s a pile of branches and sticks. It’s a large pile, offering limitless hiding spots for a micro or traditional cache alike. So where do we look?

I begin with the rock pile but soon turn to the branches, and it’s not long before I spot it. The piece of wood that catches my eye is a bit lighter than the rest in the pile, and looks out of place somehow, even nestled as it is among the others. I pull it out, turn it over, and sure enough there it is. Lodged into a recess carved into the underside of the wood is a film canister. Bingo! I’ve seen a cache like this before. That’s how I knew to look for it.

I call out the find to Brian, and I smile as I sign the log. Ferks & Ribs. It’s not a competition between us, really, but there is a certain satisfaction to making the find.

We mark the find on our GPS units and point them to the next geocache. We have a lot still to find. There’s no lack of geocaching in the Davis area. Especially when you’ve been gone for 3 months.

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Tiz Alex

April 19, 2008 at 10:45 pm (Misc Adventures)

“Greetings!” says the voice, with that distinct clipped accent I know so well. “Tiz Alex here.”

Of course I already know this, what with caller ID and all, but still I’m excited.

“Holy shit! Alex, how the fuck are you!?” I’ve been drinking White Russians with the crew and I’m warm with the effects of the alcohol, but my excitement is genuine. I haven’t heard this voice in ages. I haven’t seen its source in years. It’s Alex, calling from the land down under.

And just like that, it all comes swarming back. All those memories. All those adventures. All those good times.

Just like that I’m back. I’m there. I’m in Australia once again.

I’m kayaking the Swan, a pod of dolphins jostling playfully nearby. I’m out on an early morning paddle with Zoe and ML, leaning back in my kayak to watch the sun rise over the water as I slowly drift down the river. I’m paddling frantically, jostling for the ball in a wet and wild game of kayak polo. And I’m tipping, I’m under, I’m wet and cold and blind, banging the side of my boat and reaching up to use Simon’s boat as leverage to Assisted-Eskimo-Roll my way back to an upright position. I’m having a go at kayak surfing the pristine Perth beaches and running small rapids at Dwellingup. I’m walking barefoot in a Rashie and Bordies, a neoprene skirt hanging from my waist, hauling a kayak up the beach and across the street and back to the UWA campus.

I’m walking through downtown Perth with Fi, harness slung over my shoulder, climbing shoes clipped to my belt. I’m laughing in a warehouse hidden down a dark alley on the edge of town, lounging on a worn orange couch as chalk rains down upon me from above. I’m heel hooking my way up a climb at the Rockface, Paul cheering me on from his belay position below. I’m shouting beta to Frank as he powers up an overhang, German-accented curses thrown down to me good-naturedly. I’m fist-jamming my way up a crack climb over the crashing sea, as Alex hangs beside me snapping photos. I’m sore and scratched and bruised, feet cramped and stinky, hands dry and cracked from all the chalk. I have white handprints all over my clothes.

I’m dancing with Paul, swinging and jiving around the dance floor, only half knowing what I’m doing. I’m dancing in a group under the stars in a wet footy field, lit by the headlights of Simon’s car, wearing PJs and kayak helmets, following Aaron and Nari’s lead. I’m dancing in a pub with Pete and Claire, Paul and Alex, crashing into people as we try to swing dance in the tight throng of drunken Aussies. I’m wearing a rainbow thermal top and a pleated black skirt over thermal leggings, dancing in the flickering lights of a campfire at the ODC Thermal Ball. I’m line dancing with near-strangers at a cattle ranch in the middle of the outback.

I’m trying it all. I’m attempting pathetically to windsurf at Pelican Point with Simon’s instruction. I’m working up a sweat running back and forth across the Squash court with Paul and Dani. I’m holding a sea-cucumber in the waters of the Great Coral Reef, listening to Parrot Fish crunch away at the coral. I’m blowing into a Didgeridoo, slinging spit and producing no more that the most appalling sounds. I’m scrambling barefoot with Zoe through the slippery channels of the Miracle Mile in the amazing gorges of Karijini National Park. I’m having a blast.

I’m leaving them behind. I’m leaving Alex, leaving Pete, leaving Simon and Paul and Zoe and Marie Louise. I’m leaving Fi and Andrew and Erin and Aaron and Nari, leaving Pepper and Sprite. I’m leaving the Swan, leaving Rockface, leaving the kookaburras and the willy wagtails and the galahs and the darters. I’m leaving Perth. I’m walking down the streets of Byron Bay, half a continent away from them all, and I’m missing them already. I’m going on a whim into a hair salon I happen to see, and I’m chopping off my hair, because I’ve left Perth, I’m leaving Australia, and soon I’ll be back home. Back in California. I’m chopping off my hair because the year in Australia changed me, and I’m afraid when I return home no one will know that change except for me. I’m chopping off my hair because I need a physical change to represent this other one, this more important one. I’m leaving my hair in Australia.

One day, I know I must return. One day, I’ll head back to the land down under. It’s good to know I’ll sill have a place to visit, people to see. It’s nice to know I’m not forgotten. After all, Alex is still there. And so is my hair. :-)

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