Sleepless in Seattle
Very sleepless as currently poorly. This is probably why:
I hiked for miles over mountains, through valleys, along knife edge morraines, looking down on to glaciers, to the headwall of the valley at the very edge of the Columbia ice field. A round trip of some 15 miles from 1500-2500m altitude, as I go to get my camera to photo the headwall the clouds descend, followed by torrential ice cold rain, so no photo and I have to retrace my steps all the way back again, in the rain.
The second soaking. I trekked 3 miles to the trail head, checked over my shoulder and an angry black ball of cloud is skudding its way down the valley. Okay I'm out of here and I skip down the valley towards the nearest shelter. As the rain begins I hide under some tall trees which provide good protection. Bang! a thunder clap that near bounces me out of my shoes, bugger this, so I rapidly sprint across the open ground to make for the village. There is a railroad crossing just before the first building. Rain is starting to down harder. Noooo, from my right comes a freight train. To say it was a mile long is an understatement. When I started counting there were 84 wagons to the end of the train. So I stood their in the middle of the highway, the sky black, the rain is coming down so hard its bouncing up the inside of my coat. Sometimes you have to accept you were meant to get cold and wet.
But the Rockies are beautiful. There are nice flowery meadows and lots of little cute critters. Loads of weird fungi too, the sort of strange colors and shapes I'd associate with undersea reefs.
Its amazing the number of bear shaped shadows there are in the forest!. Just to fill you in. Bears run faster than horses, they have 6cm long claws and can bite clean through pine trees, oh and they're a little touchy about anyone being in their space. I found pretending they dont exist is the best approach and a big stick. It wont do anything but it makes you feel big and tough. Besides I'm too skinny to eat.
Oh so I end up with a really bad bought of flu, so I went to Seattle to chill and eats lots of meds (and chocolate).
The guy at the home made fudge counter must have felt sorry for me as snidely slipped me a whole kilo, nice guy.
Finally, I made it to my first ball game Seattle versus the Red Sox. It's neat as people bring beer and food to you, so you dont have to move, and you dont have to pay attention as the important bits are replayed anyway. Even better I did nt pay for ticket as another good guy I met gave me a spare, cool. I could not figure out the ticket, so I did the obvious thing go ask someone one where the best seats were and sat there. No one complained. There was a 1 in 40,000 chance it was the right one! By chance :-) it happened to be next to a pretty girl who was working for the Seattle Times. True as I checked her column the next day; and she bought the beer!
Maybe its a ying and yang thing .
I hiked for miles over mountains, through valleys, along knife edge morraines, looking down on to glaciers, to the headwall of the valley at the very edge of the Columbia ice field. A round trip of some 15 miles from 1500-2500m altitude, as I go to get my camera to photo the headwall the clouds descend, followed by torrential ice cold rain, so no photo and I have to retrace my steps all the way back again, in the rain.
The second soaking. I trekked 3 miles to the trail head, checked over my shoulder and an angry black ball of cloud is skudding its way down the valley. Okay I'm out of here and I skip down the valley towards the nearest shelter. As the rain begins I hide under some tall trees which provide good protection. Bang! a thunder clap that near bounces me out of my shoes, bugger this, so I rapidly sprint across the open ground to make for the village. There is a railroad crossing just before the first building. Rain is starting to down harder. Noooo, from my right comes a freight train. To say it was a mile long is an understatement. When I started counting there were 84 wagons to the end of the train. So I stood their in the middle of the highway, the sky black, the rain is coming down so hard its bouncing up the inside of my coat. Sometimes you have to accept you were meant to get cold and wet.
But the Rockies are beautiful. There are nice flowery meadows and lots of little cute critters. Loads of weird fungi too, the sort of strange colors and shapes I'd associate with undersea reefs.
Its amazing the number of bear shaped shadows there are in the forest!. Just to fill you in. Bears run faster than horses, they have 6cm long claws and can bite clean through pine trees, oh and they're a little touchy about anyone being in their space. I found pretending they dont exist is the best approach and a big stick. It wont do anything but it makes you feel big and tough. Besides I'm too skinny to eat.
Oh so I end up with a really bad bought of flu, so I went to Seattle to chill and eats lots of meds (and chocolate).
The guy at the home made fudge counter must have felt sorry for me as snidely slipped me a whole kilo, nice guy.
Finally, I made it to my first ball game Seattle versus the Red Sox. It's neat as people bring beer and food to you, so you dont have to move, and you dont have to pay attention as the important bits are replayed anyway. Even better I did nt pay for ticket as another good guy I met gave me a spare, cool. I could not figure out the ticket, so I did the obvious thing go ask someone one where the best seats were and sat there. No one complained. There was a 1 in 40,000 chance it was the right one! By chance :-) it happened to be next to a pretty girl who was working for the Seattle Times. True as I checked her column the next day; and she bought the beer!
Maybe its a ying and yang thing .
posted by Richard at
4:07 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home