After weeks of walking only the paved, horizontal, oh-my-gosh-you-shouldn’t-even-call-that-exercise road between two overlooks on Sugarloaf Mountain, today I decided to…hold on to your hats…go a little bit vertical.
This was entirely brave…you could even suggest foolish…for the following reasons:
- I went alone! Neither my punks, nor My Captain accompanied me. This means I had no one to encourage me, hold my water, hold my car keys, hold me, offer me assistance on the steep drops, or promise me cookies at the end of the trail. What the heck was I thinking?
- I didn’t even take my cell phone. If I had twisted my ankle, I would have been stranded until a bear, or a banjo-playing redneck, or bouncy college co-eds (who would pity my age, girth, and frailty in their taut, energetic supple youth) came along. THAT was risky!
- I was going to be frightfully far from anything resembling a potty, and I stink at peeing in the woods…it always ends up down my legs and in my shoes.
- Did I mention no one would be there to hold me?
I pushed on, locking my car, glancing at the time, and confidently crossed the street to the trail. I looked at the trail map, and it showed that from my current position, I could go UP, or I could go DOWN. Either way, I’d have to turn around and do the opposite to get back.
I took the downside trail, figuring it would be a good warm up but also knowing that it would entirely suck on the way back up.
1 minute into it, I came across an older man with a dog who slimed me. (The dog, not the man. Geez, people!)
2 minutes into it, my butt muscles hurt. My thighs hurt, too. All of those steep step-downs over rocks and uneven trail were KILLING my atrophied bottom half. But eventually I got about 3/4’s of a mile down and decided to turn around. It was a beautiful morning and I only walked into roughly about 3000 spider webs.
I began the ascent.
1 minute into it, I ran into the older man with the dog who slimed me again. He asked if I had stopped to rest, probably because he had lapped me on the trail, and HE was going up, while I had been going down. I told him “no” I had not rested, but that this was my fifth lap on the trail this morning. I don’t think he bought it.
2 minutes into it, my butt muscles were SCREAMING. On the way down, they hurt, but going up was ENTIRELY different. I stopped and envisioned all the reasons why I shouldn’t have attempted this alone this morning. I actually pictured a bear chasing me, and I would just stop and say, “Dude, whatever. My butt hurts.”
But I made it, obviously, up the trail and back to the car and my cell phone and my water and civilization in general. I wept with joy! Of course, by the time I crawled back to the parking lot, my everything hurt.
Be sad for me about that, because I WILL whine until someone pats my head about it.
On happier news, I’m excited to say that my first contest is off to a screaming start! I’ve had three entries so far, and we only have until tomorrow afternoon before it’s over! It’s a contest to name my newest dessert (aka breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack) idea, which is pictured in the contest post. The winner will be receiving something VERY special from my kitchen junk drawer. And if you’d ever seen my kitchen junk drawer, you would realize only treasures are found in that stash! Honest!
So if you are creative in finding names for cool food, and intrigued by the notion of what might be in my drawers (wait, what??), go to the previous post, and leave your idea in a comment box! Good Luck!
Mama Boe 