Saturday, August 13, 2011

Fourteener Shmourteener

For the past few weeks, the boyfriend had been trying to talk me into hiking a fourteener. For those of you that do not know, that means hiking to the summit of a peak with an elevation of more than 14,000 ft. (aka hiking really effing far). Being as incredibly out of shape as I am, I told him I would think about it, all while thinking to myself that there was no way I would go. Plans were made and just my luck, the hike was scheduled the weekend I would be getting home from a four day shit-show in Vegas for my mom's birthday. I figured the altitude change and inevitable crap-tastic hangover that comes with returning from Vegas would be a good enough excuse not to go on the hiking trip. But alas, the Vegas trip was not as much of a shit-show as I had previously experienced, and I really missed the boyfriend and wanted to hang with his friends, so I agreed to go.

Sunday morning we woke up at way-too-goddamn-early (4 am) to get everything ready to go and headed towards Grays and Torreys around 5 am. The plan was to start our hike around 6 am to get the majority of the walking done before a. it was too hot and b. any storm clouds moved in. Once we got started, I suddenly had a burst of self-confidence. I was keeping up for the most part and I started to think that I may have sold myself short, maybe I could actually make it to the top! I AM GONNA KICK THIS MOUNTAINS ASS!!!! WATCH OUT YOU ROCKY SONOVABITCH, I'M ABOUT TO WALK ALL OVER YOU!!!

Then reality set in. I was having to stop more often and longer than everyone else. My knees hurt, my hips hurt, my lungs hurt and I already wanted to eat my lunch. The boyfriend was great and stayed with me every time I took a break, but I could tell he wanted to make it to the top and I couldn't keep up the charade of the badass girlfriend who was going to make it to the top no matter how tired I was, so I told him to go on without me and I would continue at my own pace. We had two-way radios and there were people every where so I was pretty sure I would not be eaten by a mountain lion. After he went on, I sat a little longer and gave myself a little pep talk. "You can do this, now you can go at your own pace and it's really not that much farther!" So I started walking again. Five hundred feet later, I threw in the towel. Not only was my hip joint killing me (gawd, I'm an old lady) but my hiking pants had started chaffing my inner thighs, which was a whole other brand of pain.

I started my descent back down the mountain feeling pretty crummy about myself. And of course, because I am me, I had a few mini woe-is-me-meltdowns on the way to the bottom. Thank GOD no one was there to see those because they are pretty ridiculous. By the time I had made it to the bottom of the mountain, the rest of the group was on their way to the second summit, so I decided to take a nap. Yes, I was sleeping to recover from my portion of the hike while everyone else huffed their ass up the SECOND summit...whatever. Two hours later, everyone was back. Boyfriend was still feeling pretty good (although a bit sore) and there I was walking around bow-legged because of my stupid pants rubbing my legs raw and on top of that, I had thought I had no sunscreen so I had burned to a crisp. Now, I am talking BURNT. Like, holy-crap-what-happened-to-that-girl's-face? burnt (realized later that I had sunscreen in my bag the whole time *facepalm*). And I won't even get into what happened when I tried spraying solar-caine on my chaffed legs...let's just say it was not pretty.

So that's about it. I attempted to hike a fourteener and failed miserably. But I did try. My next hike will be to the nearest Dairy Queen. I think that sounds more feasible. WATCH OUT SIDEWALK, I'M ABOUT TO KICK YOUR ASS! Oh, there's a hill? Damnit, nevermind.

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