You can't go back and see it the way you saw it then, nobody can

You'd think that I would've had enough of the great outdoors with my mountain biking trip last weekend, but one of my friends is moving to Alaska on Friday and she wanted to hike to top of a nearby mountain. How can I say no to that?

Here are some of the pictures I took while on the trail.

Some fall colors:




On the forest floor:


Some gnarly roots:


Meadow on the ridgeline:


Dead wood:


Steep cliffs:


If there's one thing people have always been good at, it's leaving their garbage lying around:


The summit that we wouldn't make it to:


Because of this:


It wasn't so much the rain, but the thunder we were hearing that made us turn back. We didn't want to be the stupid hikers that got struck by lightning. It was probably for the best as I was so sore I could hardly get out of bed this morning. It was apparently too much for an old man like me to do in one day (we hiked ~15 miles with a 4000 foot increase in elevation). Still, it was totally worth it. Next time, I'll make it to the summit.

The whole wide world is at it again showing me how it feels good to bleed

A week or so ago I was with a friend while she was trying to find a birthday card to send her father. I did some other shopping (mostly for candy) while she was looking at cards, and then joined her at the card rack. Standing there, I saw a section that I hadn't ever noticed before. A section labeled Goodbye Cards. I picked one up, read it, and started smiling.

Her: What are you smiling at?
Me: Oh nothing. This card just made me think of something.
Her: What?
Me: I shouldn't say.
Her: Well you can't do that. Now that you've brought it up you have to tell me.
Me: Ok, but you asked. I was just thinking that it would be so much worse for someone's loved ones if they wrote their suicide note on a Hallmark card. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Her: That's bad, you shouldn't be thinking about stuff like that.

To be continued . . .

(if I feel like it)

You and me and my old friends, hoping it would never end

I just had to say goodbye to two of my close friends. They're the ones who got married in Massachussetts last month. They're moving to Boston, and they leave tomorrow morning.

It should be a good move for them. He's starting a Ph D program at a great school, with an advisor who does some cool work. Plus it puts them closer to both of their families. That still doesn't mean I have to be happy about them leaving.

I've known it's been coming for a while now. I think the decision was made last spring, but it hasn't really hit until now. They threw a going away party for themselves at their house tonight and both of them invited their friends from work. Even though the movers had already packed up their belongings, and the house was basically empty except for the people, it didn't seem real until I hugged them both goodbye and walked out the door. I won't say that I cried, but my eyes weren't the driest they've ever been.

I'm going to miss them a lot. And not just because I found out tonight that she works with an attractive woman that I'm not going to be able to have her set me up with.

Leaving Las Vegas

Last night I went to dinner with a friend who is moving away at the end of the week. I've tried to eat healthy ever since I found out my cholesterol was borderline high almost two years ago. I usually try to go with the veggie options on the menu, and it's worked so far. I've managed to bring it down, but don't really want it to go skyrocketing back up again so I'm sticking to the diet. At least most of the time. However, sometimes it's hard to find vegetarian dishes on the menu, or even if they're on there, they might not sound too appetizing at the moment because other options sound better. Especially when the place is called The Cheesecake Factory.

Me: I'm having trouble finding anything healthy that sounds good.
Her: You could go with the chicken, that's healthy.
Me: Yeah, but it's still an animal product, so it's going to have cholesterol. Maybe I should just not worry about it tonight.
Her: True. After all, how many chances do you get to have a going away dinner for me?
Me: Not enough.

She said that another friend of hers gave her a card, and wrote something like "I've been waiting 7 years to say goodbye to you."

I know, we're all such nice guys around here.

And if you feel a little left behind

I hate saying goodbye. I'm not very good at it, but I just had to say it to some friends of mine. They're leaving town tomorrow morning, for good. I don't know, it's something about finally graduating and getting a real job or some lame thing like that. Things are going to be different around here without them around, there's no question about that.

As a group we've been trying to hang out a little more than usual over the past week. It's one of those things that just seems to happen when you know it's going to be your last chance to do something. I had lunch with my friend yesterday, and as we were finishing up and heading back to our offices one of my friends asked him if we were going to hang out last night, since it was the last time we could before the movers came.

Lame-O moving friend: "I want to, but we'll have to do it earlier in the afternoon. I can't do it at night because my wife has a party with people from work. Maybe you guys can come, I'll see if there's going to be any free stuff."

Me (at the same time that he was saying the bit about the free stuff): "Are there going to be boobies? Because you can definitely count me in if there are. Especially if they're free."

Lame-O moving friend: "In my experience there's no such thing as free boobies. There's always some kind of a cost."

Truer words have never been spoken.

That's the kind of wisdom that I'll be missing out on from this point on.