had a great great weekend. we drove down to the skull hollow campground near smith rock. we went the mt. hood way, and saw all the runners beginning the hood to coast race. for all of you from out of town, "hood to coast" is a relay race from timberline lodge on mt hood to the oregon coast. teams of 12 people divide up the 5-8 mile legs. it starts on a friday and ends mid saturday. j's father runs it every year, and his brother has done it several times. each team has two vans which each carry 6 people, and they take turns dropping off runners/cheering on each other and sleeping. j was a driver one year for his brother's team. we've volunteered for it in the past. i was reticent about going that route, but j promised it would be normal traffic, and he was right. the traffic was just a little snarly going the opposite way.
we reached the campground around 9:30pm and set up our tent & hung out until all our friends had arrived. some were mountain biking the next day, and some were climbing. we went to bed around 11:30pm and woke up around 6am & reached smith rock around 7:30am. yep. smith rock. no mountain biking. we opted for rock climbing instead. it was just j & i. we did a couple of really easy climbs. j lead climbed each route (set the gear/anchors), and then i took forever to make it up, then j would climb it again and clean it (pick up all the gear).
i'm still mixed about rock climbing. i can't exactly say i enjoy it, that it's fun and something i look forward to doing. i usually dread trips a little.. i get really nervous before starting a route, not to mention mid-climb. i often cry from frustration. however, after climbing a route, i do have a small feeling of accomplishment. i'm just not at the point yet where i'm NOT completely terrified during a climb, and i'm not sure the terror is worth the feeling of accomplishment. hanging from rock and trusting my weight on tiny nubs is not fun for me. i don't get a happy rush from completing a climb. i definitely get a rush, but it's more negative than positive, more relief that the scariness is over. i suppose i'll continue to try the outdoor climbing, but just under certain conditions. i don't like it when people watch, especially people i know. climbers usually go out regularly to the same places, and in groups, so it's sort of hard to NOT run into people you know. it's a very social sport. i realize that when people are watching, they're always rooting for you to make it, to enjoy it. but i'm a private person. i don't enjoy attention. i have always preferred working on things by MYSELF. i've never been the type to practice & learn music at work; i don't enjoy group exercise, like yoga or aerobics; i prefer exercising by myself. i feel uncomfortable working on a bouldering problem with others observing. climbing at the gym would be more fun if nobody were ever watching. j loves the climbing so much, and i'd like to be able to share that with him, so i guess i'll keep trying it. i do think it's good to push oneself and stray out of one's "comfort zone"... it's all about balance in life. i'm still trying to figure out what that means to me, how to apply it to my life.
anyway, by 10:30am it was getting really really hot near the rock, and i started feeling nauseated, so we found some shade & rested & drank tons of water, and finally decided to call it a (short) day. we drove into bend & showered at j's brother's house. we met a friend of mine for lunch who is from nyc who was in town playing clarinet for the cascade music festival. i hadn't seen him since we were roommates in 1999 in park city, utah for a summer festival there. good times!
we walked around downtown bend for awhile, and enjoyed some drafts at the deschutes brewery. the little league championship was on tv, so we watched the tail end of the game between some team from georgia and a team from beaverton, oregon (which happens to be our town- we're more in beaverton than portland, luckily -for our taxes- caught in that unincorporated part of "portland"). unfortunately beaverton lost. oh well. it's a big accomplishment for them to just get that far. weird seeing closeups of such young people on tv. lots of em were just as the boys were spitting - just like the pros- the moms must be so proud. :)
as it was super hot out, and b & c were still off working on c's classroom, we opted to see a movie. we hadn't been to the movie theaters since we saw capote with b & c at thanksgiving (we're netflix people). we saw talladega nights: the ballad of ricky bobby. it was one of the few playing with little wait. it was funny at times, but i was falling asleep, partly due to the beer from before, partly due to the movie. glad we saw it as a matinee. it WAS fun, though, to see a movie on such a large screen. it does make a difference. it'd be nice to get one of those projector tv/dvd player things sometime in the future. it wouldn't work anywhere in this house, but if we ever move, i'd look for a place that had a nice large wall in the rec room.
after the movie, we met b & c at a wine bar that's walking distance from their house & tasted a few wines, before walking to a restaurant also nearby. we enjoyed waffles they cooked this morning before our drive back. we swung by a grocery store to pick up ingredients for pasta salad on our way home, and spent the afternoon at a friend's bbq, celebrating the "real new year", the beginning of the school year. this friend owns a smoker, and sure knows how to use it. he had beef, pork, and salmon for us to enjoy. we ate for a good 3 hours... nice way to say goodbye to summer!