Monday, May 19, 2008

Utah's for Lovers...

...or people who want to do what they can to find a drink, and/or seek death in Mother Nature's arms.

I choose to do both of those things.

The initial two weeks here at USF have been going well. I'm loving rehearsals, loving my company members, and loving getting to wake up, go to the gym, go to rehearsal, have a drink, lather, rinse, repeat. I do well with this life. Or this life does well with me. Or something.

Also, I'm loving hitting the trails every weekend.

This last week I went on a solo hike in Zion National Park. I chose Angel's Landing, which is pretty much a 5 mile round-trip involving serious elevation gains and a lot of open exposure during the last half-mile. Here's the view from the top:



Which, you know, is cool.

I attempted to speed-hike the trail, which was all good. I made good time from the trailhead to the beginning of the climbing/scramble section.



But the tight trail-space and volume of touristas on the trail pretty much killed my goal of ascending and descending in 1:30. 'Cause, well, it's a tight space with massive drop-offs.



But that's cool. I still had a fantastic time.

Anyway, things go well, here.

More to come anon, and such.

Cheers,

Justin

I lived, by-the-way. Thanks for asking.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

The Road to Utah: Day 1


We're on the road.

Me, Drew, and Corey. On the road to Utah.

After an EXTREMELY exciting morning of packing up the car.

Ever duct tape a bike to the roof of an SUV?

You should try it sometime. Really.

And yes. It works. So far.

Although I keep waiting for the sudden sound of aluminum ripping away from its "secure" tape at 70 miles per hour, chaos ensuing behind our car as our bikes are turned to pollen by a semi-truck.

We. Shall. See.

So, after a pretty easy 8 hours, and multiple stops at Army Surplus stores, fireworks "super shops" and one too many Cracker Barrels, we arrived in Kansas City, KS (where Drew is from), only to be greeted by his parents with open arms and a tornado warning. Yep. Tornado warning. Good times.

However, the storm passed, we had some dinner, and all is well.

A note about non-urban Middle America:

All males must wear sleeveless t-shirts and sport goatees, on pain of death.

Apparently.

Something I do dig: the way you can drive for hours through farm country, sparsely populated, and then suddenly: BAM. Urban center, choked with life.

There's something kind of, well, soothing about it.

I don't know why.

Because I'm tired.

So it's off to bed.

Tomorrow, it's on through Kansas to Denver.

Cheers.