Mile 2128.7: Mt. Hood

9/3/2010

Sweet 16 and I hitched a ride out of Government Camp up to Timberline Lodge. Our ride was almost immediate, it was a marketing director or other such type. His car and his man-toiletries smelled so good, and we smelled so bad. Microburst wanted to hike the five miles up to Timberline from Barlow Pass, I would have been super-worried or changed my plans to go with her, but she had said during our stay (and argument) at Breitenbush that she never gets any alone time and how much she just wants to get some space sometimes. So I inquired after her mace, her cell phone, and any desire for company, and left it be at that.

Sweet 16 and I got there right as the buffet was starting, and my-oh-my was it a buffet: waffles with all sorts of toppings, pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, biscuits'n'gravy, fresh squeezed orange juice, croissants, pastries, scones, toast, cheese, granola, yogurt, nuts, berries, oatmeal...mmm. We stuffed our caves, and just as I was about to push back to digest, Microburst showed up several hours before we were expecting her (her hitch was impossible that early and she beelined for Timberline).

After much ado about nothing later, we hiked up to Paradise park. It was so beautiful! Lush alpine meadows in bloom with Mt. Hood in full glory as the backdrop. The sky was free of clouds, except for one lenticular cloud (that's nerdy for [standing] wave cloud) kept forming and re-forming over the peak. We ran into Nonstop, Maybelline, Sunshine, Shannon, and Rif-Raf.

Unfortunately, to get into Cascade Locks/Hood River at a reasonable time, we had to do 20 miles today after the brunch, which put me into camp at 9:30. I got tired of saying "Hey-O" over and over again, so I started quoting Monty Python every few minutes. At first I was conserving the silliness, but then after a large, persistent, localized rustling in some brush, it was nonstop. I had just finished up with a terribly botched song about the universe ("well the sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see... so just when you're feeling small and insecure (blah blah blah) how unlikely is your birth, and just hope there's something intelligent out there, 'cuz it's all just tugged down here on earth") and had started in on "Every Sperm is Sacred" when I saw headlamps: lots of them. Rather than rationally figuring that I was close to camp, I thought I had stumbled into the tree-people who had kidnapped that Olympian outside Bozeman to make her someone's wife. But it was ok, it really was just camp.

- Typoed on my iPhone