Case of the Mondays

I'll try not to jinx our living situation, but luck may finally be on our side. After much work in the trenches, Lindsay has found us a place to live in Tacoma. Bayside Gardens is the name, and it is a mere .5 of a mile away from the hospital where Lindsay is going to be spending her next assignment.



Mabel, in an anxious fit of "where the hell is my daddy?!" ate the foam pads lining the insides of our car's cupholders.

The Albatross

Thursday night I raced in the Corporate Cup 5K down in Montpelier. Among the 2,000+ runners were some (if not most!) of Vermont's finest road runners. I raced fairly well, coming in at 34th place overall, and feeling pretty spry crossing the finishing line. I remembered why I liked this event so well...though the course is fast, it pales in comparison to the warm cider doughnuts waiting you when you cross the finish line. Top that off with a slug of Gatorade, and you're feeling like a million bucks again.

More of the same shenanigans this weekend from the young Mabes. She is becoming quite the force to be reckoned with. Her fierce bark makes her nobody's first choice for a sidekick, except, of course, for her unconditional owners.

The demons need to be exorcised from her.

I spent some time in the Adirondacks climbing with LG this weekend, as well. Our plan was to climb at a relatively secluded spot so that there'd be no chance Mabel would flip her lid if, god forbid, another climber came around. We struck gold with Spanky's Area and devoured the Sunshine City section of the cliff, sending most of the routes with panache, despite having our rears handed to us on a platter by a couple of the more demanding lines. We also scouted out the Birch Wall and decided to climb the Wall's premier route, "Chocoholic". Oh yes, and it is creamy season once again in New England, therefore, it has become custom to get one after each day of climbing. (For all you mid-Atlantic folks reading this, a creamy is the same thing as soft serve or custard.)

Sunday was dedicated to packing up our house and moving it into storage. We've rented this little 10X15 climate controlled unit a couple towns over from here. It amazes me how much a place like this can cost. I supposed you're paying for peace of mind.

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Since our last entry a lot has happened. The place we thought we were going to be staying in out in Tacoma fell through, so Lindsay has been on the prowl, recently, for a place that will lease to us for 3 months, as well as accept a German Shepherd. Some discussion has developed around where we should go after the PNW...more about that later.

Our home is beginning to get that vapid look again. Blank walls, empty spots around the house where once a dresser stood or bookshelf leaned. With Lindsay not around regularly, it is hard to sit here after the dust settles from a day of packing. Our little townhouse isn't as cozy anymore, and it is losing its "lived in" smell. Now, boxes and piles fill not the voids, but the waiting line marching out the front door and into the temporary storage space for a year's duration.

The sun shines brightly on the silver streak of asphalt and adventure awaiting our wheels and minds and bodies. The automobile will be packed, the direction will be decided and the albatross of innumerable choices will begin to unfurl its broad wings.

Sandcastles

There are firsts for everything: first steps, first words, first birthdays, first loves...the list is endless. However, this weekend, young Mabel surprised both Lindsay and I with a first of her own--She pooped sand...yes, beach sand. Let me set the scene for you:

We decided to spend Saturday afternoon at Hill's Beach on the Maine coast. This was to be Mabel's first encounter with the salty ocean, waves, and the beach. Perhaps it was the similarities of how it felt underfoot, or the ease at which she could press her nose into it, but Mabel seemed to think that the beach was snow, her favorite medium for fun. Soooo she commenced to dig, nose poke, flip up into the air, and eat the sand. Why she didn't realize after the first mouthful that this thing she was eating was not snow is beyond human rationale. She just kept shoveling it up and swallowing it down with alarming ferocity.

Then she discovered the foam from the crashing waves. She really didn't understand what that was, so she barked, and bit, and drank the salty sea water until she realized that it made her gag.

Late that evening, Mabel awakened with great urgency and requested to go outside...pronto. Once outside, Mabel made fast work of finding a choice spot to make a doggie deposit. To our surprise this deposit was pure sand. Miniature sandcastles, folks. You know, like the kind children make when a little water is added to the sand? I think we used to call them drizzle castles, or something like that. That was not the last of sandy poops. Over the course of 3 hours, Mabel made several visits to the nearest patch of grass only to find herself leaving more evidence of her embarrassing misjudgment from earlier in the day. A lesson learned.

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All poops aside, the rest of the weekend was stellar. Lindsay and I climbed a few days in North Conway, NH at Cathedral and Whitehorse Ledge. Surprisingly, we saw very few people over the course of 2 days at the crag despite the fall-like temps and sunny skies. On our last day we spotted a pretty righteous bumper sticker on a PA climber's car that gave us the feeling these guys were not messin' around. We agreed that people who have bumper stickers like this wear doo-rags and hammer pants.

Oh, we also received $80 in cash for going on a "quick" tour of a local hotel, and we ended up investing in something that we'll hopefully reap benefits from sooner than later.

30 days and counting...

Shepherd Haters

We're off to Tacoma, Washington this June. To help our friends and family become educated about what has been referred to as the armpit of Washington state, I've compiled a list of little known facts about our new destination:

1. Tacoma--our new destination--is actually referred to as "The City of Destiny"...coincidence, I think not.

2. The first woman to climb Mount Rainer was Faye Fuller, a Tacoma School Teacher. She achieved this goal on August 11, 1890.

3. In 1990, Money Magazine named Tacoma the 4th best place to live in the U.S....what's it been doing for the past 18 years?

4. Bing Crosby was born in Tacoma on May 3, 1903.

5. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is the 5th largest suspension bridge in the world.

6. Guy Larson, cartoonist of the "The Far Side", is a resident of Tacoma.

7. It's been 10 years since Tacoma has been considered an "All American City".

8. The Tacoma Dome is the largest wood arena in the world!

9. Point Defiance Park is the 2nd largest city park in the nation, second only to Central Park in NYC.

10. Over 200,000 people live within a 5-mile radius of the center of Tacoma. That spells traffic.

We're departing sometime around June 13th, and driving across the country via the northern route, possibly stopping somewhere to climb, but the jury is still out on the verdict. Lindsay has been working frantically setting up a place for us to stay once we're there. Thea's Landing is going to our home away from home while we're in Tacoma. Apparently, this was the only place in all of Tacoma/Seattle that would accept a German Shepherd. I guess the resident of Washington are scared of the wrath of the Shepherd, thus having a strict ordinance against certain breeds. What the eff!?

Waterfront views, we'll be able to see Mt. Rainer from our window, and the interstate is withing a stone's throw from our front door. Squamish is 4 hours away, Bend is 5 hours, and Hood River is about 2.5 to 3 hours. More later...

More later.

The Random Cairn

Sunday was spent suffering on the eastern side of the 4th Brother in the sleepy John's Brook Valley of Adirondack State Park. My friend, Elizabeth, and my trusty pooch, Mabel, joined me for the day in an attempt to find the elusive Courthouse Cliff. I warned Elizabeth that there was no guarantee that we'd find said crag, or even find the climber's path leading off of the Phelps Trail for that matter, but it didn't seem to bother her in the least.

Before we began, we stopped off at the Mountaineer to buy Mabel some tasty Zuke's treat (shameless plug), and to get some "encouragement" from the local shop employees. The only words of encouragement we received were to make sure we were wearing pants because the stinging nettles were unforgiving, and because the amount of moisture and bushwhacking was going to drive us mad. Thanks guys...

The bushwhack lasted roughly 2 hours, of which the majority was spent either slogging straight up hill following the random cairn, or slipping up wet, mossy slabs. For comparison's sake, though, the first third of the hike is along the Phelps Trail, a meandering yellow blazed trail cut lazily along the forgiving contours of Mt. Marcy's broad skirt.

We thought we'd found the cliff, but ended up just cliffing ourselves, so we reversed our path thinking a much broader loop around the front of the slabs would spell certain success, but all we received was more thick underbrush up our pantlegs, and uneven ground to fall all over.

On our way out, though, we spotted several interesting things. Off in the distance a skunk's tail (at least that is what was postulated) was seen (Luckily, not by Mabel!), as were some large unidentifiable birds, countless piles of scat of varying size and shape, some bulbous fungus,

and a branch shaped like the letter "J".



And moments after I threw in my cards and gave up for the third time, I looked over my left shoulder and spotted the cliff through the trees. The damn thing seemed to be laughing at me from what seemed like less than a 1/2 mile away. The path from there, at least, seemed pretty obvious. Next time...



The weather also took some pity on us. The warm sunlight tickled us from time to time with its reticent tendrils, and we even managed to squeeze in a surprise (read: Dry) rock route at the Jewels and Gems Wall on our way out of Keene Valley.


I figure a day spent hiking around the woods, never finding what you've embarked to find, suffering and cursing through trivial landscapes and around uncertain corners is certainly not a day wasted. In fact, those are the days most often remembered.

May Day

Let's start off with a fun fact about today: Pilots around the world know the distress call "May day! May day!" But what they may not know is its derivative. French pilots were the first to use this call. They would say: "M'aides! M'aides!", which translates into "Help me! Help me!" in English.

It's been a while since our last post...in fact, it's been almost a month. Our house's innards are getting packed up into boxes, the snow has melted and our flowers are blooming, and Mabel is beginning to realize something is afoot. Lindsay has begun to narrow down where she wants to be for her next assignment, and I was down in Kentucky for a week of climbing with a few dear friends.

Lindsay's job has been rather nutso (can somebody say Compton in Portland, Maine?!) and her job hunt is getting a little batty. The job she really wanted in Bend, Oregon has been filled, so she didn't get that, but 4 other hopeful placements have crested the horizon: Bellingham, Washington; 2 in Seattle, and another in Portland, Oregon. We're keeping our fingers crossed that at least one of these pans out. More later.


The trip to Kentucky was pretty fun, and many awesome things happened, but it was punctuated by the following key events: Getting hit by a drunk driver then initiating a citizens arrest after cutting the girl off before a toll booth outside of D.C., a bluegrass band urging the audience to purchase their CD so they could buy cigarettes for their keeedz, Sarah running a route out 30 feet to the anchors, something exploding, and a truck in the parking lot having its tires stolen.


Saturday is Green-Up Day here in Vermont, so get your green bags and go pick up some trash!