ok, note, the rest of this post is going to be scrambled, I've got 15 minutes before I have to leave the library. Ready, go
I put up these to pictures to illustrate why Jeff is on Night Team and Stephanie is on Day Team with me. The balance of the times and places where our crew's brains work best is probably the most beautiful thing about our friendship.
Cousins in San Diego! What lovely people. I loved all their stories and it was so great to see them at the beach BBQ.
Jeff, inspecting the coals on our last night beach BBQ. Me and Alison picked up lots of fresh produce while we made friends in Whole Foods. Grilled Portabello mushrooms and Black Pepper Steak Kabobs with Gouda cheese just about made me lose it on the beach. So delicious.
The girls capturing bright moments during our lives in marvelous times. We played frisbee and fought off homeless couples who wanted to make out next to the heat of our fire.
We kept having conferences before we went out to party, and we kept coming to the conclusion that if we partied hard enough, the problems would resolve themselves. Consequently we slept both nights in San Diego in Jeff's Toyota Corolla. The first night was a magical bonding experience, and the second night we were like, are we sleeping in this damn car again? The first night was red wine, Mos Def and motivational speeches, followed by 3 hours of dancing at Tiki Bar to a great live band and an hour wrestling and swimming in the Pacific Ocean to cap the night. I don't have any good pictures of us at the St. Patty's day parade the next day, but I'm sure there are lots of them out there on other people's cameras. One float had a live band playing "What do you do with a drunken sailor" on repeat, and we went crazy, dancing alongside it at full tilt until we collapsed 1.5 miles later. The guys on the float ended up being from the band at the Tiki Bar the night before and told us to jump on. I felt sick for an hour after that insanity, like I was going to throw up from the exhaustion of dancing. They offered us beer on the float, but we both turned it down and asked if they had any water...no dice.
Joshua Tree, remember we're reverse chronological again, sorry guys. The cholla garden.
Steph and Jeff reach the top of Ryan Mountain, a hulking 5,000 ft. peak that was "Strenuous" to reach and takes 3 hours round trip. Scratch that, we did it in 1 hour. OK, so we're kind of egotistical about our fitness now. We all have our shortcomings. Our bellies are full of delicious Mexican food, a common theme on our trip.
Alison found a nice relaxing spot on the awesome boulders above our campsite at Indian Cove in Joshua Tree. This place is like a giant playground, with massive granite boulders strewn everywhere. The climbing is fantastic. We spent 3 hours bouldering and scrambling all over this place. We accidentally flushed out two Western Screech Owls as we nearly descended on top of them, and it was beautiful to see them flying below us in broad daylight, even if we felt bad for "disturbing the wildlife". On our final descent, Alison and I did some technical bouldering. The real climbers whose camp we were above commended us on our "epic scramble" which made me feel good.
Who is that man?!? I need to go back to J-tree.Shout out to the amazing crew on this trip. We collapsed into the car at night, exhausted from dancing, and then had dance parties in the street the next morning. Stephanie won a dance competition at the St. Patty's day parade. Jeff finished the "El Jefe" 32 oz margarita and then hiked to the top of a mountain. We all got free CDs from "Tornado Magnet" (the album...double wide) for dancing as hard as they were playing. We slept less than 4 hours a night and lived on happiness, friendship and music. We made strangers smile and then made them our friends. This was a damn special trip with some damn special people. 10% condition, 90% response. Survival mathematics.
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