Sentimentality...

I can't really describe the feeling of listening to an old album that has been collecting dust (metaphorically, since all of my cds are on my computer). It is like rekindling an old friendship--the friend never left you, you knew that they were always there to support you, but because of time or change or what-have-you, you lost touch. Coming back together is a flood of emotions and feelings that you had forgotten about. Sometimes this reunion is bittersweet, conjuring up memories from the past that you had wished to forget, while other times it just brings the simplest smile to your face.

I also love that, no matter how much time has passed, you still know all the lyrics to all the songs on said album. And each song holds special meaning. It is the small things in life that truly remind me of how wonderful life is. And how life without music or art or more aptly put, beauty, however you define that, is simply not worth tolerating.

Anyway, today, while perusing through my iPod looking for a suitable cd to listen to while I read my book, I came across Natalie Merchant's "Tigerlily."



I have not listened to this album in its entirety, I am guessing, since I was in junior high going through that whole Lilith Fair phase. (Who am I kidding, I am still IN the Lilith Fair stage, though I believe everyone else refers to this as "lesbian rock" and the artists have changed over time, but whatever). Thinking that this overcast day was the perfect opportunity to reunite with Ms. Merchant, I have now listened to the cd well over three times. And I remember every single word to every single song. And it brought back such a flood of sentimental memories, I had to go for a walk to sort of rehash through some things.

This cd reminds me of the Idaho mountains in winter. Not just the mountains themselves, but the smell, the feel, the taste, everything. And this is one of the things I miss most about Idaho when I am away for a long time. It is just a feeling. I think anywhere you grow up and have distinct memories of will elicit this sort of gut-wrenching yearning to be back in that place. Walking through the trees and knee-deep snow in the dead of winter, smelling fires burning, people making hot chocolate, the sound of the wind in the bare trees. The nights when the snow just falls perfectly under lights and there are no cars on the road. Everything seems so peaceful and so right (right up until you have to wake up the next morning and drive to work in "winter conditions," at which point my happy, little meditation state is replaced by me screaming at 2C drivers on the connector).

Celebrating America's Independence...

So I just noticed I haven't blogged in a while. It's not for lack of excitement, trust me. Wait. I take it back. I've been pretty boring the last few weeks. The weather kept shifting between extremely hot and not-so-hot, and I responded by doing nothing but laying in my underwear on the couch watching reruns of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and really bad German porn. What are you going to do?

This weekend, though, this glorious, glorious three-day weekend, I went up to Lucky Peak with some friends to *cough* camp. Wait, you didn't catch that? Fine, yes. I went camping...again. And this time was far more traumatic than last due to the lack of facilities on our camp site. Which meant I had to pee out in nature. More to come on that later.

Friday evening after I got off work, I drove up to Spring Shores and met Corey and Bob on the dock. The campsite they had chosen was only accessible via boat. Which meant that once I was there, I was stuck. The campsite they had so carefully selected was up the hill from the dock, where I would spend the majority of my time. There were a group of girls there that I had not met, and as it turned out, all of them were nurses. Which is awesome should, you know, I impale myself on a branch while trying to pee in nature. They had all been there since earlier that morning and had set up tents. I was told I would be sharing a tent with Baldwin and Joe. This is what the tent looked like:



If you're looking at this thinking "you've got to be fucking kidding me," that was the exact same reaction I had. There was no fucking way. So me, being the sneakster that I am, moved my stuff from the fucked up tent to my friend Corey's nicer tent. There was supposed to be a 90% chance of rain that night. I was not about to drowned in the fucked up tent that couldn't even stay upright (as an aside, later that night, while hurricane-force winds blew and rain poured down, it took Baldwin 30 minutes to get out of his tent to pee. All you could hear was "fuck, I'm stuck in tent. I have to pee.")

Corey, Nate and Bob had procured a keg for the night, in addition to several cases of beer. And don't you know, we drank almost the entirety of the keg the first night. Clearly we were not messing around (p.s. they had been up at the lake since 9 a.m. We're not THAT big of alcoholics).



The awesome thing about camping near a lake is that if/when you need to pee, you can just wade out to about stomach level in the water and pee there. Until it gets too cold. Then, well, you've gotta drop trou. Since I had never peed in nature, I was given a tutorial by my friend Ashley. Paranoid that I was going to pee all over my one pair of track shorts, I hiked myself up a hill, found a bush, and completely disrobed from the waist down. I was not going to risk peeing on any article of clothing. Which meant that, should anyone happen to come around a corner, they would have seen me, bare-assed, attempting to not pee on myself with quite possibly the widest stance you've ever seen (8 years of gymnastics prepared me for this moment). After successfully peeing, I put my clothes back on and decided I hated peeing in nature. Someone wouldn't have invented toilets if they weren't meant to be used. This is why I don't like nature. It's so...primitive. I prefer the comforts of the Hilton, thank you very much. So I tried SO HARD to keep the seal intact for the rest of the night. I think I convinced my body that the need to pee wasn't real. It worked...sort of.

Peeing out in nature aside, we did all the normal camping stuff: we made burgers and beans;



we did keg stands;



and we got drunk and drew mustaches on our hands.



When we all decided that it was time to go to bed (combination of cold weather, rain and overall drunkenness), we went to our respective tents. I was sharing a tent with Ashley and Corey on the air mattress. Being as drunk as I was, I could not figure out how to zip up Vickie's sleeping bag, so I ended up just using it as a giant blanket. At some point during the night, Baldwin, being wasted, started singing songs. I can't quite remember right now what songs he was singing, but soon all tents joined in. I'm sure the people at the campsite down the hill from us loved us.

The next morning, I decided that one night out in nature was plenty for me. I went back to the shore so I could go home and shower and nap (since I hadn't really slept the night before). Here's what I found out: apparently when you pay for day parking, they don't do a 24-hour cycle. If you show up at 6 p.m. and intend on staying until noon the next day, you have to pay for two-days worth of parking. Okay, fine whatever. So I didn't understand their instructions. Does that mean I need a fucking $75 ticket???? I mean, for fuck's sake. It was $5 a day to park and $75 if you violated that, quite innocently? Why not just ass-rape me--I would have charged you less. Fucking douche-bag cops. Anyway.

I went back up to the lake on Sunday so I could work on my tan. At some point, more people had shown up. Enjoy photos:







Oh, and my favorite part! I got to see Raelynn! Finally! Going almost a year without seeing your best friend is way too long! (Holly, that's a note to you, too, but I will see you in a few weeks!)



So all-in-all, I had a fantastic weekend at the lake. Next time, I'll bring a little portable toilet.

Sawtooth Relay--aka learn to breathe at higher altitudes.

I've been semi-consistently running for the past five months now. I consider myself *fairly* in shape. But nothing, I repeat NOTHING could have prepared me for the Sawtooth Relay this weekend.

The Sawtooth Relay is a run starting in Stanley, Idaho which goes to Sun Valley (Ketchum), Idaho. It's roughly 62 miles. There are six people per team, and each person runs approximately two 5-6 mile legs. The goal is to get to Sun Valley in less than 12 hours, I suppose. There are all sorts of crazy people that participate in this race, including hard-core people who are actually trying to win, but for the most part, it's just an excuse to run with friends and see some great scenery.

The awesome part about this: the race starts at 5:00 a.m. Some people start even earlier, depending on how long they think it will take their team to complete the race. So if you start at 5:00 (which our team did), you have to be at the start line by 4:15. Which means you have to be awake even earlier than that. F. That.

Even better: we decided to camp the night before. In a tent. Out in nature. Did I mention that I had never been camping before? Oh yeah--I've never been camping before. I've done things that I think may be considered camping, but as far as staying overnight in a tent in a sleeping bag...no. Fuck no. I do not like nature. I like to look at nature; I like to take pictures of nature. I do not want to be out IN nature. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. So we drove up Friday evening, set up camp and did what I suppose are considered camping things: grilled hamburgers (in my case, vegan burgers) in a fire, made s'mores, drank beer (well, I drank beer), etc. When we were setting up camp, due to my inexperience, when I asked what I could do to help, I was told to go make friends. That's right. My job was to walk around the campsite and make friends with people. Sweet. I could totally do that. I happened to make friends with a group from the Air Force running in the relay. They had such fun nicknames as "Nader" and "Knuckles." Very nice group of people, who were at nearly every exchange on the run.

Neither here nor there. Here are some photos from the campsite. I will give nature this: I've never seen anything quite so magnificently beautiful.











See? Stunningly beautiful. That's about where my love of nature ends.

We finally went to bed I'm guessing around 11. This being my first time really sleeping in a sleeping bag in a tent, I was not sure what to expect.

1. It was 18 degrees that night. 18. That is not a typo. FUCK that.

2. Apparently the side of the tent gets "moist" with condensation. So when I wake up and roll over, I get a face-full of wet tent side. SICK.

3. I cannot sleep in tiny sleeping bags. As someone who suffers from severe claustrophobia, I about lost my shit. I woke up almost every hour in a complete panic because I could not move. LAME.

4. Even with a foam pad underneath, ground = not comfortable.

I guess the good thing was that we had to be awake at 3:30 in the morning. So my stint with sleeping in nature really only lasted four hours. Still, that was four hours of hell. I was afraid to go pee because the bathrooms were so far away, so of course I had to pee the entire time (why, body? WHY?). I thought I would get eaten by a cougar or something. It's Idaho. Stranger things have happened.

So let's all flash forward to 5:00 a.m. and the start of the race. It's cold. We're all tired. But we're pretty stoked. Nikky ran our first leg and I ran the second. You'd think as a seasoned distance runner, I would be smart when it comes to putting on the proper clothing for running a race. I'll give myself props for having the wicking shirt on, but I lose some serious cred for having my hooded sweatshirt on. Granted, it was only 35 degrees when I started running, by the second mile, I was sweating balls. And I couldn't take off the sweatshirt because I had this damn reflective vest on with my number. Rules, rules, rules. Here's a pic of said reflective vest:



I finished my first leg, which was 5.8 miles, in 1:01. Not too bad, but I'm sure I could have gone faster if I had not been swimming in my own sweat for an hour. As soon as I crossed the exchange point, I started stripping off all my clothes. By the time I got to the porta-potty, I was down to my spandex shorts and sports bra. And it was still only 42 degrees outside. Sarah = smartest person alive. I also got a rash on the side of my neck from where the sweatshirt rubbed against my skin. I so lose more points for that.

Sally ran our third leg, Kent ran our fourth leg, Katie ran our fifth leg and Jake ran the summit and the last leg. Here are some photos from the race:









The sixth leg, which belonged to Jake, was this awesome 1400 foot hill climb up "Galena Summit." I'd like to call this death. Just DRIVING up this hill made me tired. I have no idea how Jake did it, or how he did it so quickly, but big kudos to this kid.



Here are some pictures from the top of the summit, and Katie and I being total dorks.







After the summit, the next six legs are pretty much a cake-walk downhill. Please enjoy the following pictures (in case you couldn't tell, this is a blog primarily dominated by photos).





I ran my second leg, which was a little over five miles, in 49 minutes. This is slightly closer to my actual mileage pace. I would have gone faster (and not had to walk part of it) had it not been for the huge difference in between Boise and Stanley. No kidding. I didn't think that elevation would make that big of a difference on my ability to breathe but oh my dear God, was I wrong. I thought my lungs were going to get coughed up and I would trip and them and probably tear my knee again. I'll keep this in mind for when I decide to hike to Base Camp at Mt. Everest.

Apparently while I was running, a group of women, who had stopped on the side of the road to cheer on their teammate, asked me how I was doing. I whined that all I wanted was a beer. And don't you know, one of those women met me at the exchange with a PBR. I almost cried. I gave her a hug. It was truly a touching moment.



We finished the entire relay in under 10 hours, which is super awesome. There was a fun little picnic at the end where I got a t-shirt, a medal and free beer. I also made friends with a volunteer who is from Boise. Because I'm one of those people that just loves making friends. Overall, I had a fantastic time, and I'm kind of bummed I don't get to run it again next year, but I definitely think this is a race I will keep up with, even if I move away from Idaho.

I hate Idaho Drivers

I had another moment today, driving to work, where my anxiety level went from 0 to 400 in a matter of 10 minutes. First, who the HELL thought it was a good idea to close the center lane of Main Street for construction work between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. on a f*cking work day?? Second, just because people have to merge into your lane due to said lane closure does not mean you have to let in every F*CKING car that needs to get in, douche bag! I sat at the same light for nearly 10 minutes because the car in front of me insisted on letting every single person into our lane. See, how it generally works is you let one in, I let one in, the person behind me lets one in, etc. And you wonder why I came | | <---- this close to repeatedly ramming your car out of the lane and onto the side of the road.

I'm sure it's not just Idaho drivers. But they are, perhaps, the most inept drivers on the west coast. I know one of these days I am going to just hit someone like bumper cars. I don't have enough self control not to, as is evidenced by my three-year relationship with alcohol.

On a different note, due to my insomnia, I almost finished _Mrs. Dalloway_ for the third time last night. One of the greatest books ever written.