WoW. I am sore. Here’s why:
Friday night there was a wonderful wine club. It comprised 6 lovely ladies and absolutely no wine. Instead, we had pomegranate-orange martinis and no water. I think I had 5… maybe 6. This is not so bad all by itself, as it was Friday and I’m an adult. BUT! If you mix this with planning to climb a mountain (literally) on Saturday, then it is just dumb dumb dumb.
Saturday morning at a little after 6am I was headed up the stairs to my apartment to ready myself for a three hour drive (which, thankfully, my Man would do while I sat there, hungover as hell) and some mountain climbing at Tuckerman’s Ravine in New Hampshire. I stuffed some warm clothes in a bag and headed back downstairs to the Man’s car. After a quick stop off at Dunkin’ Donuts and then another stop further along for some lunch foods for the top of the mountain, we got to Tuckerman’s at about 10am.
We had to park WAY far away because so many people were there since the weather was so nice. We made a pit-stop, applied some SPF45, and started up the mountain. I should interject here that my Man was carrying what was probably a 40lb pack with our food, his ski gear, and extra clothes, while I carried a water bottle and some mini-snickers for sugar on the way up… I’m a lucky lady.
So, we walked. UP. A long, long way. And let me tell you something about that guy I love: he is apparently a cyborg. No really. He can walk UP without stopping at quite a quick pace. For. Ever. Or at least I assume it would have been forever but we’ll never really know because I had to stop three times in the hour and a half it took us to get to the first stopping point. We’d walked UP through rocks, streams, and a bunch of snow, and when we got to the first rest area and had some salt and vinegar potato chips I thought I would die from ecstasy, salty delicious ecstasy. After that we only had another half hour of walking UP, but this was basically in a single-file line as the trail was very narrow.
When we got up to the ski-able “bowl”, I immediately came down with a case of vertigo. People were skiing down what looked like completely vertical cliffs. Dang!
We found a good spot, I hunkered down, and my Man started the 30 minute trek up the final part of the mountain in order to ski back down. As he climbed, I took in the crazy skier, snowboarders, and tubers around me. Some people were in pajamas or shirtless. Other brought their dogs up the bowl while they snowboarded down. I think I learned something about those people and that subculture: they are crazy. Well, maybe not crazy, but certainly they like a certain amount of danger. I was happy to see my Man ski down and make it in one piece, without falling. On his way up he found several friends and we chatted for a few minutes before beginning our descent.
Let me tell you about the craziest person we saw the whole day, soon after we started climbing down to the rest area. It was a French woman, traveling seemingly by herself, but carrying on her back: A BABY. I’m not good at guessing children’s ages, but this child was obviously too young to walk. He was in a carrier on the woman’s back. And as we were all hike-sliding down the slushy, narrow path, she (of course!!) fell right on her back, on the baby.
Now.
We were right behind her. The baby had a scratch on his face and was screaming bloody murder, but I’m sure he was actually fine. But COME ON. If your only job is to keep a baby alive, why oh why would you think that it was ok to take that baby up a steep, rocky, slippery mountain?? The woman was crying, and I felt compassion for her, but I also wanted to punch her repeatedly in the face for her stupidity. I was SO very angry. She was lucky that some men who were coming in the opposite was decided to turn around and help her carry her baby-in-a-pack back down to the rest area. STOOOOOPID.
Once we got to the hut we stripped off our jackets and tightened our shoe laces and headed back down. I didn’t have to stop on the way down but I did have to go a little more slowly than my man because it was quite slippery and slushy. We made it down in (probably) just over an hour. We sat on the grass for a while at the bottom and then made our way back to the car for a quick change and re-packing.
We stopped for coffee and some food on the way home, and sang together to the Beatles and Nirvana and lots of other songs on the iPod. Once back to Somerville, we took showers and collapsed on the couch together.
Sunday was pretty laid back, starting with breakfast burritos. I ran some errands while my Man went surfing (he seriously DOESN’T KNOW HOW to take it easy) and then had a quiet dinner while watching a movie.
I wish the weekend was a little longer….
*It's my butt-muscles. Owie!
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