it's 1750 hours, friday evening, listening to the "hunky dory" album by David Bowie, we returned from mountain climbing, this is my 100th post, i'm not quite drunk, i will be by the end of this though, probably.
so...K says "hey, let's go camping." i see her suggestion and raise her with "hey, lets climb a 14er." i decide on an "easy" one, we just have to walk up it. no gear, no ropes, everyone does it. she agrees and it's on.
it begins with quickly and badly packing, and a half assed plan, hastily and sloppily writing directions, and we go. "where will we camp?" she asked. "eh, we'll find something" i assured her. we drive on down to Ouray, i have a vague place in mind, we end up at a KOA. what the fuck??? it costs $32.50 to put up a tent. you gotta be fucking kidding me. oh well, ok, we do have nice facilities, so we set up camp. i have "camping food," ramen and cereal bars, but we say "lets get hot dogs and wine!" so we go to town. get a tasty bottle of red and ask where we can buy groceries. turns out, the one and only grocery store in Ouray closes at 6 pm, but there is a liquor/convenience store just up the street.
we go in, no hot dogs. they have lunch meat and bacon, no hot dogs. call the KOA store and see if they have hot dogs, alas, no, only lunch meat and bacon. WHAT THE FUCK??? we are at the epicenter of the great hot dog drought of 2012. it's like a bad joke, no hotdogs, only lunch meat and bacon .
we drive to Ridgeway, the next town over, stop in a convenience store, lunch meat and bacon, no hot dogs. go to the family dollar, same story. this is now a mission. Norwegians will compose great epic saga poems about our quest to find hot dogs and years from now, these saga poems will be passed on orally and through song.
we finally find a grocery store and get hot dogs and a can of chili.
back at camp we make and eat chili dogs and wash them down with wine. we are ready to tackle a 14,000 foot mountain.
next day we wake up, drive to where our mountain climbing base is, and embark. but first, we each make a stop in the most vile outhouse ever. this is seriously a portal to hell itself. sitting there my eyes were watering and burning, and i almost vomited twice. i had to fight to not vomit. it was absolutely horrible.
we start walking, and come to a little lake, which i vaguely remember. looks like the trail goes to the left, so we climb, and it's rocky and arduous and there is barely a trace of trail. i explain it's like this all the way to the top, from what i remember quickly reading the directions of the climb. we climb for about 15 minutes and stop to rest, look around, and see what looks like a trail on the mountain across from us. yup, we are on the wrong mountain.
we climb down, walk all the way over the other mountain, and start to climb. it gets rocky and arduous but there are people coming down the mountain and going up, so yeah, we are on the right mountain. we make it most of the way up, scrabbling, clutching to the side of the mountain. without trekking poles, we can't really get up the scree, we go up the boulders and boulder our way up, but we are tired, and it turns out, we don't much like heights, and it gets super steep. there will be crying and cursing soon, especially if i suggest we push on further. tired and slightly hypoxic, we both decide it's best to just say fuck it and go back down to our car and finish the bottle of wine.
we do that. at the car, we are sunburnt, tired, but happy and laughing. we both had a kick ass time every moment of the trip. it was awesome and we laughed and joked and got some kick ass pictures. it was beautiful, the weather was spectacular, the views were spectacular, we will probably try it again next year, with trekking poles.
it's nice to be home. my legs are tired, i have to work tomorrow, i had a great few days off. life is good.
now i shall proceed to get drunk. tomorrow i again begin the "weight loss get healthy and fit" routine.
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