This past week we took a trip up to seattle. It was amazing- friends, sun, dancing, crossing the border, food- everything was great. Here are just a few photos. I did wear other clothes on the trip, just not in these photos!

Jane, me, and the Robot- Sunday night party with friends, Seattle



Dip- Me and Dennis, dancing with Steph, Seattle

Lost

I'm hauling out the contents of my room, piece by piece, looking for my lost W2. Now that the bed is full of shoes, clothes, papers, and old notebooks, it's time for a break. The lost W2 makes me angry and mad at myself, this happens every year, I try as hard as I can to save one piece of paper for a few months until tax time, usually by sticking it someplace "special". Well, yet again, I've forgotten where that oh-so-"special" place is. Mental boot to the head.

So, back to the point, it's time for a break. I found an old copy of a magazine a few of us put together a few years ago, sort of a hip-churchy publication for single women. We only made one issue, but the travelogue I did for that issue is reminding me of other happier times, so I'll reprint it here. Enjoy!

TRAVELOGUE
Saturday October 20, 2001

Have decided to go hike Mt. Timpanogos with some people from work. Get up at 4:45am, go to the store and get mini peanut butter and jelly bagels (a Harmon's specialty), chips ahoy cookies, and two apples. Something about the early hour makes me think this is a balanced meal to take up a mountain. No protein, but hey, who needs it. Meet two guys from my work and one brother-in-law in the parking lot of our office building, and we head up. Have to follow them going 80 mph down the freeway. Don't follow them so much as the black tire streaks they leave on the asphalt road. My car, called "the muffin car" for a reason, barely keeps up. Make it to the mountain, and start climbing. They stop sometimes to let me catch up, but really I'm pretty happy to go at my own pace and think thoughts. There is something reassuringly clean and fresh about a mountain. Must be the air. Can understand God more here for some reason, so the thoughts flow through me like waves. Am sure I've figured out the solution to world peace, although it will escape me as soon as I leave the mountain. Oh well.

Like the hiking fine until the snow gets pretty slick. Still okay, though. Reach the flat meadows that extend for a few miles until the final push up the mountain, and can barely walk. No air up here in the air. We stop for lunch, and I tell them I could use a few hours just sitting in the meadow while they climb to the top and back. They are hesitant to leave me there, but in the end I convince them. They head up the big mountain, and I find a rise nearby and sit. Can see them as they go along the rock field up to the saddle, a flat part on the mountain ridge where you can see down both sides. I decide to at least make it to the saddle, and start up about an hour after them. Have to cross a rock field covered by a foot of fresh snow by following their footprints. This is my mantra: "follow the footprints to the sun, follow the footprints to the sun..", which I repeat outloud to myself. Later find out they were on the saddle watching me with binoculars to be sure I was okay. Probably saw me talking to no one. Gotta do what you gotta do. I reach the saddle and sit quietly in the sun on bare rock and look all around at the lower mountains and valleys, and feel very pleasant. There is a guy in a parka a few yards away doing the same thing, and he seems to be feeling very pleasant too. I find I try to think thoughts with no success. My mind is a blank. The presence of the mountain seems to overwhelm my usual senses. Wonder if the parka guy is having the same sensation. I sneak a glance at him and decide probably not- he's talking on his cell phone.

Finally they come back down from the top, and don't see me sitting there, and it's weird to hear them talk about me, asking each other where I am. I wave, but they don't see me. The parka guy smiles because he sees that they don't see me, though I am right there. I walk up to them and give them a surprise, being right there. Pretty funny. We start down feeling happy and running. Ouch. After a while, I just walk. Sometimes one of them slows down and we talk for a while about life. I am alone and only about a half hour behind them as I come into the parking lot. We say goodbye and make the hour drive back home. By the time I get to my apartment, everything is stiff and every tendon hurts. I get inside, lay on the floor, and order pizza. When it comes I put it on the floor next to me and spend the night there because it hurts to move. It hurts to even breathe. But I am happy.