A little training

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We’re on the final countdown, with only a week(ish) left before J and I finally start our hike. To-date our training has consisted of ordering fries AND a shake when we go to In’N’Out, but since some training is better than none, we’ve started putting some miles on our trail runners this week.

Yesterday we did a quick morning trip up Finger Rock Canyon in the Catalinas. It’s an incredibly charismatic canyon, with walls  of banded black and white gneiss and huge saguaro stands. It’s also really close to town, which means that it is a great place for sightings of bros working on their tans. We were lucky though, and saw a beauty of gila monster as well. 

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We saw it on the way up and the way back down. I had cruised right past it, but it hissed at J. Hissed isn’t really the right word – it was less sibilant snake, and more teeny angry velociraptor.

Today J and I figured that we should try to put in a few more miles, so we headed up to the Soldier trail on Mt. Lemmon. As soon as we got out of the car J said, “Hey,come look at this.”

“What is it?” I asked. I wasn’t wondering long because the rattler J had nearly stepped on instantly coiled and buzzed. A rattler makes eye contact with you and keeps it, it’s head floating menacingly over it’s coiled body, its venomous spring. No pictures of this guy – my phone doesn’t have a zoom lens.

Farther up the hike I was cruising through a section of tall grass when I saw the diamonds again. I rocketed back so fast I crashed into J, who had been 5 ft behind me. A second glance told me it was a big beautiful garter snake, but I was feeling a bit jumpy.

Spring is almost over in the Catalinas – the wildflowers were scarce this year, and are almost all gone already. But the cacti are just beginning to bloom. I don’t think there is any flower in the world as beautiful as a cactus bloom – the huge, lucious cups in impossible colors, sprouting out of the most inhospitable plants. Ihave whole file folders on my computer full of cactus blossom photos, but I keep photographing them; I can’t help myself.

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We were also lucky enough for a datura bloom:

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J was saying that he had read that in Haiti, daturas are known as zombie cucumbers. Apparently, after a zombie is taken out of their drug-induced coma, they’re fed datura flowers. Hallucinogenic plants can’t be good for your state of mind after all that – no wonder the people believe they are really zombies. The mind is vulnerable enough to the power of suggestion without that kind of help.

It got me started thinking about faith healings. The healer has such a convenient out – thy faith shall make thee whole – but perhaps it is not an easy out so much as a self-fulfilling prophesy. For those who truly believe, their brain will do the rest of the work. I wish I could believe like that, because I’m just four miles into a training hike and my left knee has worrying twinge. Hopefully it will just work itself out…

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(Ok, this one’s not from the hike. But the lunar eclipse was pretty neat.)

This better be my last test ever.

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I’ve spent the entire last week in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to transform myself into a civil engineer. An inverterate procastinator, only true panic can chain me to a chair 10 hours a day, as I go over all the topics I never learned in an undergraduate in geological engineering. Transportation, wastewater sludge digestion, trusses and beams… It’s all a big stew of numbers this morning. Time for the test.

I’ve been shocked at how physically I’ve been affected by studying for the PE, the gateway to my professional engineer’s license. It’s not as if the consequences for failing it would be so terrible – I’ll be out a couple hundred bucks and 8 hours of my life, and then I’ll have to take it again.   My mind knows this, but my gut is a mess, my heart feels squeezed, and I reek of the bitter, acrid smell of the cold sweats. Taking the test couldn’t possibly be more miserable than waiting for it.

I pull up to the office building where the test is being hosted and I see them, my people. There’s a crowd gathering in the lobby, and they are all engineers. I feel a sudden rush of confidence as I walk in, my long braids swinging, feet shod in my lucky chucks. I’ve done this before, and I was smarter than them all then, too. We’re on my turf.

Looking around at my fellow sufferers and examinees, I wonder what it is that makes engineers so identifiable. It’s not as if we were all stamped out of the same caricature of badly dressed, awkward young men in ugly, old, white tennis shoes, although those guys are there. So is the group of snappily dressed Turks,  the cowboy with his belt-buckle gleaming, the hipster with sleeves, the smattering of us women. It’s just that any stranger who walked into that lobby would have known that we were all engineers. I must have it too, that invisible stamp.  I wonder what gives me away. Today though, it’s particularly easy to spot us. The exam is open book, and there is an entire library of engineering knowledge waiting with us in the lobby.

In the backpacking world, they say you pack your fears. It looks like that applies here, too. For just 80 questions , what incredible collections of books! Bankers boxes stacked on dollies, moving boxes, and several people with full-size rolling suitcases straining their zippers. I’m towards the middle-low end of panic by this measure, with just one milk-crate brimming with binders. A few men walk around with a single jansport slung jauntily over their shoulders. The ultra-lighters. I judge them.

A small woman opens the doors to testing rooms and they escort us to our seats, one at a time. I check my pockets at least five times to make sure I left my phone in the car – no point in getting kicked out now. The nervousness has returned and I’m trying to chat it off with my table-mate. She tells me this is her third time taking the test.

…

Eight hours of testing later and I’m like a wrung-out dishrag. I hit a wall at hour 6, slugged back a caffeinated beverage and tried to rally. I finished in time to check my answers, which I hadn’t been able to do in the practice exams I’d been taking. I may pass this thing after all. I’d feel relieved, but I mostly just feel squished.

Less than two weeks left before my walk-about!

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Places left behind

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I’m not sure why, but Suriname has been on my mind lately. Maybe the prospect of a new adventure has reminded me of my last one. It’s strange to think that I haven’t lived in Suriname, in Tutu Buka, at the back of the futbol field, for four years now. My Saramakan is getting rusty, and I never call the village because I’m embarrassed.

But every once in a while I miss it so bad it hurts.

On my last night in Tutu, I sat down with Simo and recorded him with my little voice recorder, as we sat under the full moon, under the calabash tree. You can hear the buzz of the jungle behind him.

 

You’re my brother,
I’m your brother too,
Hold me in your hand.
Together, we’ll work until God comes again.

Nothing can happen to us
When we walk together.
Nothing can happen to us
When we live side by side.

Where love is, I promise you, it will hold you over.
Where love is, I promise you, it will get you through.
Where love is, I promise you, it will take you there.

You’re my brother,
I’m your brother too.
Hold me in your hand
Until God comes again.

Nothing will happen to us.
Nothing will happen to us.

My sister,
Where love is, I promise you, it will get you through.

And never, never, never
Must we hate each other.
And never, never, never
Must we hate each other.

We must, we must, we must
Love each other.
Alright.

Of the laws God gives us,
Love is the boss of them all.
Of the laws God gives us,
Love is greater than them all.

Love must be.

Check that off the bucket list

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Well, I can check root canals off my bucket list now.

I hear my alarm go off this morning, so I turn it off and roll over. A bit later, it seems like it’s getting pretty light out. “I wonder what time it is,” I think. I check the clock – plenty of time to get to work – then I remember: “I’ve got to get to my dentist appointment!”

No time to stress, and I’m out the door in five minutes, on time. The endodontist office is very swank. The endodontist himself is young, clean-cut, wearing a hawaiian shirt. He introduces himself by his first name. After looking at my x-rays he tells me that chances are really good that I don’t actually need a root canal, just a regular filling. That’s exactly what my dentist said, so I’m feeling hopeful. I even keep my fingers crossed as the drilling begins.

“Whoa, this is really big,” says first-name endodontist. He follows up with, “yes, there’s the pulp. Looks like it’s a root canal.”

I want to swear, but there’s a dude with his hand in my mouth. I say “uhn” instead and uncross my fingers.

The root canal itself isn’t bad. There’s a tv on the ceiling with a looping dvd of Dale Chihuly glass pieces set in gently moving grass and on ponds. It’s surprisingly soothing, and I think about flamingos while the endodontist dude grinds the decay away. I wish for earplugs, but then think that I’m probably hearing the drill vibrations straight through my jawbone. When he finishes I realize I’ve sweated through my shirt.

Now I just need to find out how long it’s going to take to get a crown made and put in. It looks like this is going to be the limiting factor for my PCT start date, as it will take a few weeks. I really want to get started before May. I’d cross my fingers again but it hasn’t been that effective so far. Anyhow, can’t take off while I’m missing bits of my teeth, so maybe there will be time to train a bit after all.

Root canals and chores

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The great fount of knowledge, the internet, tells me that more and more PCT hikers are starting the trip EVERY DAY. Every day. And while my engineering exam looms frighteneningly large, the extra week and half to starting hiking seems like a long ways away.

Which is good, really. I’m not ready. I finally went to the dentist today, and now I’ve got to cram in a root canal along with all my other chores. I should have gone to the dentist last month. Last year, or even the year before would have been the real adult thing to do. The only thing worse than procrastinating my 3 year overdue dental appointment to 3 weeks before I start hiking would have been to not go at all… So there’s that.

This adult business is still a stretch for me sometimes. I’ve got high school buddies with four kids and counting, and I can’t make myself a dental appointment. I wonder how they do it. Does becoming a parent magically make you more responsible? Maybe it’s some hormone, your body secretes during pregnanacy. Or perhaps there is an evolutionary reason why you can’t remember your first 4 years of life. The universe was just trying to cut your parents a break.

Speaking of parents, J’s were in town this weekend, taking a sunshiney break from what’s turned out to be a very long northeast winter. Seems like it’s been 75 and sunny here forever. (We had a partially cloudy day a week ago, with what *might* have been the faintest sprinkling of rain, and half my office congregated on the balcony to watch it mist.)

J and I took his parents up the Santa Ritas one day and then on a jaunt on Mt Lemmon the next, to squeeze in the whole eco-spectrum of saguaro to oak to ponderosa pine. In an extra stroke of luck, Mt Lemmon was blooming with every wildflower I’ve ever seen.

We did two 7 mile days in a row… I’m really tired… I’ve got a feeling the PCT is gonna be a rough start.
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Weekends all the time

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The weekend is here early! This will be my last “weekend” for a while – the last weekend that has work looming on the other side. Wowzers!

It’s nice to feel that my trip is actually coming up soon, instead of remaining impossibly far away. It’s been feeling like the carrot on the end of the stick – so close, but never closer. And there still remains the herculean tasks of moving, bills, logistics, taxes, 8-hr engineering exams. Heaps of the mundane. I think the world doesn’t like you to try and break out of the ordinary, so it makes it seem impossible. It overwhelms with you ordinary. “I could just go backpacking on the weekends,” you think, “then I wouldn’t have to figure out how big of a storage unit I need to store all my stuff.” 

Looks like I’m really going to make it out of the grind though.

Flotsam and gearsam

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There are so many tiny odds and ends that I still need, that I just know I need, for this trip. I keep acquiring these bits, flotsam and detritus of gear, tiny LED lights, bitty leathermans, featherweight mirrors, lengths of skinny cord. I don’t think I’ve made it all the way to the lightweight mentality yet – what’s lighter than lightweight? Nothing. Oh well. I’ll shake the crumbs out as I go. Can’t turn myself into hiker trash overnight.

Today I went to REI to fill my need for consumer goods. The aisles filled with nifty gadgets and ingenious gizmos failed to contain almost everything I was looking for. Shiny items all down the row and an empty hanger for me. I paid for most my new, pricey crumbs with a refund on a broken water filter (if anyone decides to buy the katadyn vario, be careful with it – the intake nipple broke off on the first use). Despite having had the filter for years, the first time I tried to use it was a few weeks back, and it broke. Looks like I’ll be replacing it with something else.

Then when I tried to take it back at the checkout, the manager at REI informed me that the return policy had changed. What?? Isn’t the magical return policy the entire reason anyone shops at REI? I always wondered how that policy was working out for them; turns out it wasn’t. (For the curious, you can now only return items within the first year after purchase.) After hassling me a bit the manager ended up giving me the refund anyway, looking the whole time like I’d spat in her breakfast. Serving up favors with a side of scowl, I guess. I can’t see the point of helping somebody out if you’re just going to be mean about it, but I’ll take the refund and skedaddle.

I wish it was time to go, that all the chores were done and apartments cleaned and boxed and licensing exams writ and nowhere to go but forward.

Gearing Up, part 1

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Deciding to hike the Pacific Crest Trail turned out to be just one of many decisions. My initial online sleuthing sent me out into deep morass of innumerable options. The internet quickly informed me that the backpacking gear I already owned wasn’t good enough, light enough, or awesome enough, but couldn’t seem to come to a consensus about just what gear WAS good enough, light enough, or awesome enough.

About this time, I ended up randomly chatting with a guy at a coffee shop who had hiked the PCT the year before. Not only that, he’d managed to squeeze all 2,660 miles in his summer break from med school. His secret? The Ray-way, pioneered by Ray Jardine.

“He’s the king of backpacking ultra-light,” said random guy. “I carried less weight and hiked 30 miles a day.”

Well!

I’d heard Ray Jardine’s name before, but only in a climbing context. He invented a new piece of gear, the “Friend”, that ended up revolutionizing traditional rock climbing. I’ve taken falls on them before myself, and a Friend in need truely is a friend indeed.

Anyhow, gotta trust somebody.

Craigslist dude

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I was surfing around on craigslist the other day and happened across a listing for a bear canister for sale. “Perfect!”, I thought. “I need one of those!” I ended up going over to buy the canister that evening. I walked up to the address the seller had given me and looked in. The front door was open, and inside was a dude and his girlfriend, sucking face.

“Uh, knock knock?” I quiered. Dude and girlfriend quickstepped apart. “Uh, you must be here for the bear canister”, said the dude.

We chatted a little bit, exchanging post-transcation pleasantries, and somehow rock climbing came up. So, naturally, I invited the dude to come climbing with me sometime. Right after I said that, I realized that inviting a total stranger that you just met from craigslist to go out into the wilderness with you and hold the rope that keeps you from crashing into the ground was possibly a weird thing to do. I can be so awkward sometimes.

But, it looks like it was awkward for the win. J and I met up with craigslist dude today for some casual Saturday climbing. Craigslist dude is great, and hopefully a new friend. The weather was perfect. I redpointed a project. It’s spring in Tucson, and the sun is shining, and the smell of citrus blossoms haunts the streets.

I sometimes wonder how many good, interesting people that I’m surrounded by that I will never meet. How many lifelong friends living down the street, that I never introduced myself to. It’s strange to think about.