Odd Days: Fear x 4

The four of us who are planning to climb Pikes Peak on Wednesday are each suffering some level of fear or anxiety. It doesn't help that we all spend significant amounts of time on the internet and are inexorably drawn to articles about the climb, one of which is titled, "The 10 most dangerous hikes in Colorado." And so we are each attempting to address our fears as best we can.

One of us is anxious about lightning. So we plan to start at 3:30 a.m., instead of 5:30, to try to beat the afternoon T-storms. Another of us is anxious about the length and steepness of the hike. So we will start at 3:30 a.m. to allow plenty of time. A third is anxious about the altitude. He is considering carrying oxygen, but probably won't. And the fourth is anxious about the scary places. She is contemplating taking drugs and probably will.

At this point, it's hard for me to think about anyone else's fear but my own. Here's how I'm dealing with it. Yesterday, I read as many articles as I could find about the climb. Then I noticed something odd. After reading the first article, I felt pools of water between my toes and flowing onto my flip flops. My feet were sweating! Weird. But in the end it was good because I figured I could test my acclimation by reading more articles and checking to see if my toes produced less water. Sadly, they didn't.

Naturally my mind began to turn to drugs. Could I somehow drug myself into complacency? Enter serax, a drug that purports to combat anxiety and fear. I figure I could pop one just before the sign for the cirque -- the sign that says "1500 foot drop to your left." What if I accidentally go left? I definitely need to be calm when I come to that fork in the trail!

Never having taken serax before, I decided to read up. I was stopped short by the potential side effects: mental confusion and lack of coordination. Wow, two effects that could easily make me veer to the left. Not good.

So the scientist in me decided to do a trial run: take some serax and see what happens. First I'd pop a pill and go for a run to see if I could stay on my feet. Durf suggested I climb a ladder to the roof of the garage. And I figured I'd try a quick game of scrabble to test my mental acuity. (Probably not a good test, given my less than impressive drug-free scrabble skills.)

And the final test: I sat down, closed my eyes and conjured the cirque and its sign. Then I checked my feet. The verdict: damp but not wet.

Hope lives!

Odd Days: Entrapment!

Now how do you like that! Durf entices me back and then bails out. Hmmmmm. Maybe if I make enough outrageous statements, he'll reappear. For now, however, I'm moving on to mountain climbing.

Living in CO as we do, we find it pretty hilarious when people in the east refer to their hills (hardly anything over 4,000 ft) as mountains. Hard to take such hills seriously when our house sits higher than the vast majority of said eastern mountains. In fact, when you go hiking in CO, the *drop-offs* are higher than said mountains. Which brings me to the topic of acrophobia.

I have it.

You saw pictures of our most recent Rocky Mtn hike, which we did partly in prep for our Pikes Peak adventure (coming right up) and partly to entertain (?) visiting friends. There were no pictures of the piles of snow that covered the trail in spots. That's because Durf's attention was fixed on me and my acrophobia at those points. I knew that if we wanted to survive, we had to traverse the piles of snow without slipping down the side of the mountain, and knowing that was making me decidedly short of breath.

So there I was on all fours (yep), crawling over a pile of snow, trying desperately not to look to my right where there was mostly just air. From behind me, I hear my friend comment light-heartedly on my butt, which she said was in her face and not moving forward anywhere near fast enough. The comments didn't affect me at all. I was concentrating. And with each successful inch of progress, I thanked all powers, real and imagined (god? gravity?), for keeping me in the snow and not pitching me over the side.

You might wonder why I torture myself. Well, I've read that you can overcome acrophobia by exposing yourself to high places. So I think of these activities as therapy.

Our assault on Pikes Peak (or its assault on us) is scheduled for Wednesday. Stay tuned.

Colorado score: +1 (we have real mountains)

I just decided...

...to retire from blogging.

Bye.

Who is Bill O'Reilly?

Even though I'm apolitical now, I decided to comment on this, after I stumbled on his comments by accident. It really isn't a political issue, it's just criticizing a media person.

Who is Bill O'Reilly?

I suppose it depends on your political philosophy. If you're right-wing, he's a guru; if you're left-wing, he's a loud-mouthed entertainer. Here are some things (and my comments) he said about the Casey Anthony case, a non-political issue.

"There is no evidence that Caylee Anthony died from an accident. None. It was a theory from the defense team, and when crunch time came they couldn't present a shred of evidence to back up the theory. Yet Jennifer Ford -- and I believe other jurors -- apparently believes there could have been an accident involved. Based on what? Maybe a Martian came down and put duct tape over Caylee's mouth? Juries have to operate on facts, not irresponsible, unproved theories."

[This might be a shock to Bill, but the defense doesn't have to provide proof of a theory. They just need to create doubt. That is our legal system.]

"If alleged murderers can get acquitted based on theoretical fantasies, then our entire justice system has collapsed. It's that simple."

[Displaying yet again complete ignorance of our justice system.]

"Judge Perry gave Ms. Anthony the maximum sentence because I believe he believes she's guilty as hell. I also think the judge did an excellent job in a very frustrating case, as the defense team tried every trick in the book to confuse the jury. Of course, no proceeding is perfect and the judge made some mistakes, but overall Judge Belvin Perry is a patriot."

[He believes he believes? Well, that's impressive. And how does "patriot" belong in this conversation at all?]

Who is Bill O'Reilly? He's a partisan bloviating dipwad with no regard for facts, and it's a sad commentary on the state of our political discourse that he has a job in the media.

Rocky Mountain National Park hike.

Twila was raring to go

Alberta Falls

Just a place

and another

Almost there (the big lake)!

B.B.

Today is an odd day, I know, but, then again, aren't they all? Maybe not, and maybe that's a lot of the problem, but I digress. I'm trying to blog on Twila's day because I've been suffering from the dreaded "Blogger's Block".

When I was in NY and couldn't think of anything interesting to blog, I blogged about NuSTAR. Back in CO and empty-headed, I could always rant about politics - until I became apolitical. Even though I'm on Medicare now, I'm not at the point where I want to talk about my bowel movements, although they have been really excellent lately. People don't steal my passwords and, if they did, I don't have the chips to complain as elegantly as Twila. Now, I know I just have to do *something*, so here is my attempt, a potpourri of random thoughts.

We had some serious rain today, plus thunder and lightning and all that stuff. It's a +1 for Colorado. We're sitting on our back porch now, smelling the air, looking over our yard and our lake… I'd say it's another +1, and our expert would probably agree.

Hmmm…

Well, Twila said that if there is one mosquito in the area, it will bite her. But that is no longer true! (If you eat orange rinds, mosquitos won't bite you. They don't bite me, even if I haven't had an orange rind in a while, and I don't really know why. The alcohol content of my blood? My lightning-fast bug slap? That I'm a sour kraut? Whatever.) Today we were in a mosquito-intense environment and Twila was not bitten! Her theory is that the zinc oxide based sunscreen she was wearing kept them away, and maybe that's true. Unless she encounters a mosquito with a cold, she might be okay from now on.

Oh, yeah, our environment. We have friends from California, one of Twila's classmates from high school in India and her family, who recently bought a pied-à-terre a couple of blocks from us. (I hate saying "pied-à-terre". I don't even know what it means. Isn't there an English word that would do the job?) They are in town at the moment, so last night we had a nice dinner together and today we went on a hike that proved to be more interesting than we'd anticipated.

We went to the Glacier Gorge trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park, headed for Alberta Falls. It was the same route Twila and I attempted a couple of months ago, when the park was almost empty and snow was 4' or more deep on the trail, and on which we became hopelessly disoriented and never even came close to Alberta Falls. We still don't really know where we actually went. But it is a popular trail, nowhere near as difficult as Round Mountain, and we expected it to be a walk in the park. Twila didn't even wear her regular hiking boots.

It was mostly a walk in the park for a while, as it happened. The trail was almost all uphill, but gently, and it was comfortable walking. There were plenty of people going up, and plenty coming down. Before long we arrived at the falls and it was magnificent, angry water fed by an unusually deep snow pack. We took photos and smiled and were satisfied. And then, somehow, perhaps overcome with confidence, we decided to hike farther, which absolutely no-one else was doing.

It got more interesting right away. It was clear there was a trail beyond the falls, but it was rocky and uninviting. In moments we were beyond the crowd and on our own, heading into the unknown. In retrospect, if the unknown had been known, we would have made a mutual decision to turn around, mostly because of one particularly hairy segment.

It was, really, a great hike. The views were magnificent. (I'll do my even-day job by posting some photos.) But the trail was both poorly-marked and poorly-made, and several times we found ourselves scratching our heads in the wilderness. It was also very uphill. We struggled from vista point to vista point. (Twila and I didn't really struggle, mostly, and I have a facility for recognizing trails, which helped, I think.)

The trail itself was narrow and very rocky. The hardest parts, though, were over snow. There were really slippery places on slopes, snow bridges over raging streams, and then we came to the biggest test of all.

Twila, the strongest person I know, has acrophobia, and walking on a trail that has a steep drop-off on one side will generally freak her out. Today we hit the exacta. We had gone far enough that turning back was uninviting. We were on a steep part of the mountain, with a drop-off on our right that we would have had no chance of surviving if we fell. Twila was eating her fears and moving on. Until the snow.

With the terrifying drop next to us, the trail disappeared, replaced by a 30-yard long slab of icy snow. There were some faint tracks across the snow, but hardly a path. I was in the lead - what to do? I just went on.

It was creepy, even for me. I had to kick my feet into the hard snow to make steps to support myself and those following. Even then, they were tenuous footholds, nothing that would inspire confidence. I kept moving, knowing that drawing attention to our circumstance would totally freeze Twila. Every few steps I glanced back, and she was bravely moving on, staring resolutely at the steps and supporting herself with her bare left hand on the snow. I had an idea what she was going through, but there was nothing I could do. It was all up to her.

She made it. She was shaking when we finally got off that steep snow slope, but she had done it. I was very proud of her. It isn't easy to face and overcome your deepest fears.

After that, we did know one thing - no matter how difficult the trail ahead of us might be, we weren't going back. There were some scary places, but finally we emerged from the "unimproved trail" section and enjoyed the easy hike back to Bear Lake and the park shuttle.

Odd Days: Uh Oh

Trouble finds me wherever I go. That doesn't mean I'm troubled. It just means that if there's only one mosquito in the area, it will bite me. Or if Ford sells only one exploding Pinto, I'll be the one to buy it. And if only one person has their password stolen at Denver International Airport, that person will be none other than yours truly.

I would say that I take normal precautions in all I do. (Unlike Durf, who takes extraordinary precautions in all he does.) But in spite of, or perhaps because of, taking normal precautions during the internet age, I have had innumerable fraudulent charges on various credit cards, leading to hours of PITA conversations with PITA bank people to get the charges removed.

And get this: Within the last five years, I bought a hat at a neighborhood "wigs for cancer survivors" store where they still use credit card slips with carbons. The clerk there stole my credit card number and began charging his online "resume creation service" fees to my credit card (at $1.95 a pop). What an idiot.

I confess I have pooh-poohed the whole idea that someone might capture my passwords as I type them over a public wifi network. Well, the pooh-poohing is behind me. It happened at DIA this last week during my trip to MA. The good news is that nothing really bad happened (so far). The bad news is that the sleaze bucket who stole two of my passwords hijacked my facebook wall. I'm telling you this so that if you see something on my facebook page that indicates I've become a jesus-loving republican, you'll know the world hasn't come to an end after all!

Moniti estis!

Odd Days: Another thing to do before you die

If you haven't yet had an opportunity to become an officiant and marry two people you are extremely fond of, I recommend that you go in search of such a couple and start campaigning for the role. It is an experience you really should have before you shuffle off this mortal coil.

You all know what a ham I am, so you might expect that I would have no jitters before participating in such an event. But in fact, as I stood waiting for the happy couple to stroll down the aisle, the sweat was sliding down my torso in torrents. Consequently, not only did I have to worry that I might say something weird (I feared a sudden onset of a tourette's-like affliction), but I also had to worry about dark and damp stains under my arms and smelly pits. Ok, too much information.

As if that weren't enough, I knew the family rabbi would be in attendance, and would no doubt be tossing virtual tomatoes and flogging me with his stern eyes. What if I blurted out something that violated some esoteric Jewish law. Would he clutch his head, jump to his feet and call a halt to the proceedings? I confided in my own friend, Rabbi R, that I was concerned about having a rabbi in the audience. She told me to give her his name so that she could call him and tell him to behave. I didn't though, because I knew she *would* call him. In the end he behaved far better than my armpits did.

Bottom line: it was a great wedding, with lots of laughter, great conversation, excellent food and... no blunders. Whoooo hooooo.

I know after reading this you will want me to officiate at the weddings of your sons and daughters and grandchildren. However, I'm retiring my certificate. Nobody will mistake me for Brett Favre. I know how to quit while I'm ahead.

Odd Days: Wedding Bells

Today I will be marrying a happy couple in the great state of MA. Last night I spent a good part of the time I should have been sleeping talking to myself. Mostly I was telling myself all the things I should not say at the ceremony (you know, by accident). Unfortunately, those little chats tend to implant the very words you are trying to avoid right into your permanent memory.

Cross your fingers!

What it is.

The weather is beautiful here in Colorado. I took the tree to the recycling place today, that was my big adventure.

Yesterday was our 27th anniversary.

Today is an odd day, but Twila is in Massachusetts, getting ready to be a celebrant. Or officiant, or whatever.

Everything is pretty much suckworthy.

Except the weather.