Oh, woe is me! I am no longer a vagabond, no longer freely floating wherever the wind may take me. I am sleeping in a bed, going to class, even showering on an almost regular basis (2-3 showers a week is a regular basis, right?). To top it all off, I have been in San Luis Obispo for the past four weekends straight.
FOUR WEEKENDS STRAIGHT! (Which, for the record also means four weeks straight as I have not been ditching class to take trips during the week either)
That is unthinkable, unheard of, absolutely absurd! Last year, I spent a maximum of ONE weekend per quarter here in SLO, for a total of three weekends throughout the entire school year. And here I am, in one place for a month straight. I should rename my blog “Life Off the Road.” Sigh…
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| I haven't been to J Tree in so long |
How can this be, you may wonder. Well maybe you aren’t wondering that, but I sure am. I think one of the biggest problems with my inability to get away is that I have a Friday class. Up until this point in my college career, I was unaware that classes could exist on Friday. I mean, who would go to them anyway? (My four Engineer roommates are probably getting ready to slap me at this point). But really, I major in Playing Outside for crying out loud! Doesn’t that dictate that I should have long weekends, every weekend, no exceptions!?
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| Shouldn't you two be in school? Who, us? No way! |
Last year, Chelsea and I developed a pattern. It went something like this: Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Bishop, Tahoe, repeat. Every weekend we were gone. Or depending on how you look at it, every Monday and Tuesday we were in SLO (Wednesday through Sunday totally qualifies as ‘the weekend!’). The drives to those locations are 4, 6, 6, and 6.5 hours respectively. But we thought nothing of jumping in the car, just as soon as we had gotten back from one trip and embarking on another!
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| We had Wednesday off for Veteran's Day. So we went to Joshua Tree for the whole week. |
This year however, having only a TWO-day weekend makes driving six hours seem almost not worth it. The one weekend I did get away this quarter, I went to Bishop. I personally spent $120 in gas and 12 hours behind the wheel. Not cool!
Aside from the gas price and half a day of driving time, Titan got bit in the eye by another dog, Star decided that my tent need more ventilation and created a new ‘window,’ it was so crowded in the Sads that I couldn’t get on my project or even hardly turn around without running into someone, and the road to the Buttermilks turned into a sticky mud river so the other car in our group was unable to make it up there. Not the best weekend! Not quite as much fun as the relaxing pace of our road trip, when time was on our side.
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| On this trip last spring, we had a day off mid-week for Ceasar Chavez day. Naturally, we took the week off to go to Tahoe. Even though we had just gotten back from Spring Break. |
I will of course, have to give SLO some credit for keeping me here. After all, it has been 75 degrees and sunny out for the past month. The rolling hills have been a lovely shade of green, the ocean a sparkling blue and my bike a shining beacon of white, beckoning me to come play. So despite not climbing, my life has still been alright :)
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| I used to be so hard core. What happened? |
So here is a ray of climbing hope. This weekend is a three-day weekend. Made easily into a four-day weekend by means of creating a clever holiday strategy (aka not showing up to class on Friday). Four days of glorious freedom to climb beautiful, beautiful rocks. Where should I go? Joshua Tree? Bishop? Hmm, let us check the forecasts for these wonderful places…
Bishop:
Tomorrow: Windy
Friday: Rain/Snow Showers
Saturday: Rain/Snow
Joshua Tree:
Saturday: Rain. Yes, rain in the desert.
I also checked Red Rocks, Yosemite and just about every other climbing destination in California. Rain, rain, rain. Whyyyyyyy?
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| I was a carefree weekend warrior last year |
So here I am, relegated back to my rank as a weekend warrior. One of those people with a “normal” life who loads up the car on weekends (or doesn’t if you’re me lately), drives somewhere to climb, gets settled into the groove just as its time to leave, and gets insanely jealous of all the dirty kids who get to stay and play for as long as they want.
I wanna be the dirty kid again!
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| Oh yea, and then there was that one weekend where we drove out to Colorado right before final exams |
