Football Practice

My first week of school has been quite enjoyable. My professors all seem very nice, I have had almost no homework, and I have a swimming pool in my apartment complex. Life is good.

Today, I went with my roommate Jeff to the USC football practice. I was curious to see the practice of such an elite team, and since I was on Jeff's journalism squad, I was allowed entrance to the field. I was struck by how similar the practice was to those of my high school. Granted, our defensive ends couldn't crush rocks with their bare hands, but the structure of the practice, and even the guidelines the coaches yelled at their players were very familiar. I really miss the game.

After the practice was over, we rushed in with all the other journalists to speak with Matt Barkley, a freshman who was recently named the starting quarterback over sophomore Chris Corp. As we walked over, some of the other players tried to tell us they were actually the new starting QB, and the D-line broke for the locker room on a chant of, "Leave Barkley alone!" Nevertheless, he was surrounded four or five deep with pushy reporters. I held the recorder and got jostled by other perturbed reporters trying to get in on the action. It was interesting to be in such a locus of national attention.

We went to speak with Pete Carroll afterward, and Jeff was able to ask him a few questions himself, which was pretty neat. Pete's a very nice guy. He was taking pictures with people and signing things for a long time after practice ended. We also talked to a wide receiver about his thoughts on Matt Barkley. All in all, it was a pretty raucous good time.

South Sister

I climbed the South Sister up near Bend, Oregon, yesterday with my uncle and cousin and a bunch of other people, continuing my quest to climb every semi-difficult peak within a reasonable distance from my home. I think it and McLoughlin were the only two which fit that criteria. So I'm done, I guess.

It was a fun climb though. We woke up at four in the morning after carbo loading the night before with Katie, a girl my Uncle John works with at Les Schwab. We packed up all our stuff (except my turkey sandwich, which I left in the fridge on accident) and drove to a parking lot, where we met everyone else coming on the hike. John said he thought ten people would show, at most. We ended up with sixteen in the parking lot, a huge group. One of the other hikers had invited a few people, who had invited a few other people, and we had sixteen when it was all said and done (and a dog, who will play an important part in our story later on).

We got on the trail around six thirty or seven, and about a mile in one of our hikers decided to turn around. She had been battling the flu all week and didn't quite feel up to it. The rest of us carried on, eventually splitting into smaller groups. I hiked with Uncle John and Sean most of the way, responsibly bringing up the rear. The hike began in a rich forest which gradually petered out into rock and snow. We three stopped near the treeline to take a drink of John's patented energy mix, called Full Blown Extreme. We couldn't keep from laughing about the name every time it came up, but after drinking some of it the hike definitely got easier. Mostly because the unicorns bounding across the snow and the blood vessels bursting in my eyes were distracting me from the pain in my legs.

After a long scramble over loose rock, we finally climbed into the caldera on top of the mountain. South Sister is an active volcano, growing by some ridiculous amount of millimeters per year, and the caldera on top definitely supported its status as a volcano. The trail led us around the caldera about halfway to the real peak of the mountain at 10,358 feet. Woohoo! We took some pictures and had lunch with our group.

The hike down wasn't too eventful, aside from the various aches and pains which began presenting themselves as the day wore on, most notably the chafing. Uncle John calls the trail the "Howdy-Hi trail" because there are so many people, and we certainly greeted plenty of people. Sean and I told everyone we met they were almost there, even the ones at the trailhead. I think they appreciated the gesture.

Near the top of the mountain, there is a large glacier off to one side of the trail called the Lewis Glacier. I decided I would slide down it. I jumped off the path and ran down onto the snow. As I ran and slid, I was sure to steer clear of man-eating crevasses, of which I saw at least one. The snow wasn't great for sliding. I kept running and sliding, but I would eventually slow to a stop. After about two hundred yards I reached the bottom of the glacier and climbed back up to the trail. Immediately some cool hiker dudes asked me, "Was that as fun as it looked!?" Several more greetings along the lines of "Righteous, dude!" and "Sick moves, man!" followed. When Uncle John caught up, he told me it was a pretty dangerous move, and repeated what my football coach told me once, that I'm the dumbest 4.0 student he's ever met. It's a title I wear with pride. Apparently my other uncle, John's brother, Dan, did a similar move once and ended up spending the night up on the mountain with his friend, who fell into a crevasse and broke his leg. I'm glad I didn't know that before I ran down the glacier.

Sean and I made it down the mountain at about the same time. We jogged many of the steep parts. It's easier and faster to let gravity do the work rather than resist with every step. We waited for about ten minutes, and Uncle John and Sean's uncle, Carlos, showed up together. We all got a drink from the cooler and sat around waiting for the rest of the group and talking. I walked into a nearby lake.

We realized after about a half hour at the bottom that there might be a problem with a couple of the girls with whom we were hiking. They were the first on top, but everyone else had reached the bottom and they were nowhere in sight. Uncle John called them and discovered that their dog was refusing to walk any further. The rocks must have been really hard on his feet at the top, and he was really hot. John organized a rescue party and headed back up the mountain.

I'm not sure what happened up there because Sean and I were asleep in the car. But the smell of John's shirt corroborated his story of carrying the seventy-pound dog, with Carlos, for over a mile down the trail. The girls were very happy for his help and immediately rushed the dog off for emergency veterinary care. If such a thing exists, we're not really sure.

So all in all, the trip was a huge success and I'm very grateful to Uncle John for taking me up with him. The hike was 11 miles roundtrip, with a 4900 foot elevation gain. So that's 9800 feet elevation gain roundtrip. Pretty serious stuff.

Fanny Pack

Laurenne, I need pictures of your glorious fanny. Pack.

This is a post regarding an excellent creation of mine. Over the past three weeks, I have been hard at work knitting a fanny pack out of recycled plastic bags brought home from England. I completed it on the train ride to Utah, and gave it to Laurenne amid jubilant, crazed yells of appreciation and adoration for my extreme knitting talent and creativity.

First, I had to make the yarn. I took a plastic grocery bag, and folded it twice so it was layered four times. Then I cut off the bottom seam and cut the bag into one inch strips until I reached the handles, which I threw away. After I had these strips, I looped them together and voila, I had plastic yarn.

My mom had to teach me how to knit. I know, it's embarrassing that I didn't know how to knit, but now I do. I practiced a bit on real yarn, then got to work on the bag, my work loosely based on a paper prototype I made. The knitting took a long time. As I finished the first couple sections, I hand-stitched them together using a needle I fashioned out of a plastic fork. I finished all the pieces and assembled the bag on the train, then, using a nail I found in the garage, I poked holes into the fabric around the zipper I found in my mom's sewing machine and attached it to the bag. Then I put some straps on the back, and put my homemade belt through the loops, and I was done!

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the fanny pack before I gave it to Laurenne. She gave me a hat a year ago, so I figured I better pay her back. It's a nice hat, maybe I should put a picture of it on here.

I still can't really believe that I knitted a fanny pack. I'm not really sure how to think about it. Is it really, unbearably cool? Was it fun? Does it mean I'm a grandma? Will I do it again? Is this my career? Will this spark the biggest movement in fashion since leg warmers came back into style? These are questions I just can't answer right now.

The End of Utah

Blogging is hard work! I haven't had a chance yet to debrief the rest of my trip to Utah, and I can hardly remember it by now, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Laurenne took me to the Center of Excellence one day, the training facility for the US Ski Team. She said it cost 30 million dollars. She gave me a tour of everything, from the weight room to the basketball court to the skate park to the kitchen to the pool room....I might have gone a little out of order there. In the skate park, they had a basin full of blue foam cubes which you could jump into or crash into when you're doing a gnarly move, which I thought was pretty cool. It was fun to see a lot of people I had met working out in there.

Laurenne had to take a ten-minute ice bath, so I sat with her and got to meet Ted Ligety, an Olympic gold medalist. He owns a company called Shred, which makes helmets and goggles and sunglasses and such. He seemed like a pretty cool guy.

Let's see, I remember doing some rock climbing too. Perilous rock climbing. I led a couple of 5.9s, and the first was kinda pumpy because I got lost off the first arete because I didn't have any beta, but I sent it after all. (Sweet rock climbing talk, huh?) The place we climbed was above a freeway, so the speeding cars added to the danger.

The trip home was pretty fun. We stopped at some salt flats, and saw where Morton salt is made. There were huge cones of salt, probably fifty feet tall, just sitting in the desert outside of the factory. We saw a really strange tree sculpture too, which was guarded with a barbed-wire fence. Very strange.

Laurenne was really annoying on the way home. I had to punch her a few times and tell her to shut up over and over again. No, that's not true. I only had to punch her once, because I punch really hard.