50 Miles of Fun.

I have ended up in something of a sour mood today.

So I’m reading online about “fastpacking” which is just hiking really fast with a very light pack. Some people even do it running. Reading about this stuff always makes me feel better because I want to do it and reading about it tickles the parts of my brain that look forward to doing things out in the world. Right now I’m reading about the Trans-Catalina Trail which runs the length of the island of Catalina from end to end. The trail is 37.2 miles long but if you’re hiking it you’re going to do more than fifty miles on foot. In four days. I’m in a place today where that sounds awesome. Am I in good enough shape to do that? No way. Do I have the right gear for it? Nope. Is there 49% of me that would like to wake up tomorrow and drive down to the ferry and head out? You betcha.

This is a picture from Parson’s Landing when I went to Catalina in 2011.

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Reblogged.

From time to time I re-fall in love with life. I just had one of those profound moments of reflection.

Alfred Hitchcock said, “Drama is life with the dull parts taken out.”

Well I agree that 70 – 80% of life is tedium and monotony, but that other 30 – 20% is pure wonderfulness.

I realized that I have been to New York and Boston. I have been to London and St. Louis, Paris, Orlando, and I have eaten fried chicken in Philadelphia with my grandmother (whom I miss dearly). I have had sangria on the roof of the Met (one of my favorite places in the world) and I have watched the sky turn green in Ozark Missouri before a thunder storm. I’ve been to Branson and Las Vegas. I have stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower and at the top of the fake one at the Paris Casino. I have been thrown out of bars in San Francisco and loaned my jacket to a naked stripper in Fresno, who was trying to catch some ZZZs on the couch. I have been lucky enough to fall in love and unlucky enough to get stranded at Heathrow for two days. I’ve had fish thrown over my head at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle and I have stumbled ass backward into fist fights in Sun Valley. I personally discovered that the snow in Park City Utah is nature’s best beer cozy and also have experienced a couple of sublimely perfect days in Salt Lake City; there’s nothing quite as perfect as being in love in the cold. I have smoked cigarettes in San Diego while listening to Nada Surf live while landing jets passed overhead. I’ve driven a rented Vauxhall (on the wrong side of the road) all the way to Stonehenge and walked the world’s best museum in Shelburne Vermont. I have nearly died on a kayak off the coast of Catalina and I have been deliriously in love on 17-Mile-Drive around Pebble Beach. I have straddled the Prime Meridian and the US-Mexico border; for that matter I have flown a kite under a pier on a Mexican beach and personally haggled over the price of a lobster dinner. I have watched a Minute Man III missile launch from Vanderburgh before the sun had come up and I have stood on the flight deck of an operational aircraft carrier, with Tchaikovsky blaring in my headphones. I have known more amazing women than is fair and I have been lucky enough to love some of them and to be loved in return. I have unhooked corsets in dark rooms and made love on a bare stage (empty audience). I have been found guilty in court of a misdemeanor and I have cried in front of more than one therapist. I have fallen in love with the Brooklyn Bridge and been terrified by the Coronado Bridge. And next week I will go white water rafting on the Sacramento River and the week after I will hike into the Grand Canyon and then ride a helicopter out of it. There is no end to the things that I love about life, and while life never seems easy at the time, it is simply and always worth the effort.  

From time to time I re-fall in love with life.  

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It Hurts. So Much.

All four of you who read this blog are probably already familiar with the fact that I have been doing some outdoorsy things as of late. Weird, I know. It is like I have developed some tumor inside of my brain and the tumor really likes the outside. It is the only tumor in the history of Western medicine that has ever made someone healthier. Although who are we kidding, I’m not doing any of this to be healthy, I just want to look better naked. But even that is not the full extent of it. There is a part of me (the tumor part) that is lately very interested in just doing things. Wanta camp? Done. Wanta hike? Done. Wanta kayak? Done. Wanta run? Done.

Yes, that’s right, I have started running.

I have only been out a few times (because my body takes a while to recover, as you might imagine).

I have been as mystified as anyone by this recent shift from non-physical activity to physical activity,. So, much like a Sherlock Holmes-ian detective, I took a step back and logically (though not really) retraced the series of thoughts and events that ended up with me – yesterday - huffing and puffing as I ran down a paseo by my apartment, while sobbing and screaming, “IT HURTS SO MUCH!”

Okay, here is what my completely scientific (though not really) investigation revealed:

1) I have always liked camping stuff, just not the outside. Show me a tiny multi-tool with pliers, 17 kinds of screwdrivers AND a bottle opener and I am all over it. I just never bought one because I never needed one because I never went outside.

2) Recently my friend Mike the Director and I wanted to get out of town and have adventures (without spending a ton of money) and we randomly settled on Catalina: kayaking and camping. Because it sounded like an adventure (and proved to be because of how bad we are at adventures).

3) Since I have skinny little chicken legs and arms, I started trying to get in slightly better shape so that I would not die on Catalina. This mostly involved walking around my neighborhood every night.

4) Which turned out to be a good thing because we did a lot of unexpected hiking on Catalina, which – despite expectations – I kind of enjoyed. I also liked the camping and wanted to do more.

5) Since camping alone is something I’m not skilled enough to do yet (and since almost nobody wants to go with me!) I started hiking so as to still have some of the outdoorsy thing going on.

6) In this process, I discovered the concept of “trail-running” which just seems (to me, for some reason) like the most badass thing that a mere mortal can do on a regular basis.

7) However I’m not in good enough shape for that yet, so …

8) In preparation for that awesomeness, I have started jogging.

As part of this whole process, I have done some fun hiking and some camping and some general exploring. I have read lots on the internet (which is a series of tunes) and now know even more about backpacks (which I have always loved) than I did before! And can tell you about them for hours on end if you would like to spend a few hours of your life listening to me talk about them (I do birthday parties! Book now!).

Also, did I mention that I am hiking the Grand Canyon in September? Yeah, that’s happening.

When next you see my facebook status and it says that I am going jogging, if you open the window of the room that you’re in and quiet your breathing so that t is almost silent, and turn your ear toward the wind, you might just hear the sound of me out there running. I will be the one screaming, “IT HURTS SO MUCH!”

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Adventure!

Recently I took a trip with my friend Mike the Director. We both needed to get the hell out of Dodge for a little while and we settled on a kayaking and camping trip to Catalina Island, which sits off the coast of Los Angeles (more or less.)

Catalina has two towns, Avalon which is the cute but tiny town where the cruise ships dock and where everyone drives golf carts. The other town is Two Harbors and it is so small that it doesn’t even necessitate the need for a golf cart. The camp site we picked was called Parson’s Landing and it sits at the top of the island.

In broad strokes, our plan was to arrive in Two Harbors, kayak up to Parson’s landing, camp, kayak back, then catch the “Safari Bus” down to Avalon and take showers.

Sounds fun and easy right?

I should mention here that neither Mike or I are what you might call “outdoorsy” and I had never been on a kayak in my life. Also, I have a general distrust of nature, wildlife, the ocean and rocks. I just try to stay inside most of the time.

Enjoy:

Catalina #3

For this post, things to know:
- Girl Scouts are rugged.
- The ocean is scary.


(Camp)

So I had a very cold night that first night, but when I work up about 7am it was sunny on the beach and even a little warm. It was nice.

The beach was wide and rocky and surrounded by hills and the view was pretty.

Mike tried to make a fire again, but couldn’t, so we just ate powerbars.

The previous day the lady at the dive shop had said that the small craft advisory would lift about 3am that morning, so our plan was to hike back and get our kayaks. I emptied out my backpack so that I could bring my tent (and base layer) back with me.

About 9am we started hiking back. I was not looking forward to it. About fifteen minutes into the hike we stopped to hydrate (that just means drink water, but doesn’t it sound cooler if I say “hydrate”?). As we were standing there in the shade of a tree hydrating, a gaggle of little Girl Scouts passed us going the other direction. Some of them were wearing flip flops and singing and – in my memory atleast - they were dressed in tutus, waiving princess wands at us. So, as you might imagine, Mike and I totally felt like big tough strong awesome hiker men right about then.

That hike was pretty much the same story, but it was nice to be outside, but it took about three hours and we were covering the same ground as the day before, so it did start to get annoying because it just felt like backtracking. And I hate backtracking.

As we crested the last hill over Two Harbors, we could see kayaks putting out from the dive shop! I was so happy! It meant that we would be able to rent our kayaks and would not have to do the hike again!

We made our way down into town. Mike wanted to eat again, so for two days in a row on our camping trip he had cooked food. Because that’s how I camp.

Turned out that the small craft warning had only been extended from 3am to 11am, but about1pm we were able to rent our kayaks. I put my tent in my pack and put my pack inside a trash compactor bag and put it inside the drywell of my pretty blue kayak (a drywell is basically the trunk of a kayak).

Before we left, I walked over to the general store and bought a Durflame log and bought two more lockers of wood and water at Parson’s Landing. Mike said we didn’t need a Duraflame log, that he just needed some lighter fluid, but I bought the log anyway. I’m not sure if it was entirely legal to take a Duraflame log to our campsite because Catalina has some weird fire restrictions, but let’s just go ahead and assume that I broke no laws.

A note here about kayaks: These were the sit on top kind, not the sit inside kind, so they are much easier to use if you have no clue what you’re doing (its like they invented these things for me).To launch a kayak you get about 90% of it in the water, with just the tail on the beach. Then you hop on and use your paddle to push off. There are virtually no waves in Two Harbors, so this was pretty easy. But then you’re floating and your brain goes all “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING! THIS IS SO NOT RIGHT!”

Because there are boats moored at Two Harbors, I only had about fifty feet to learn how to steer the damn thing or I would have collided with some very expensive sail boats. But luckily it was not all that hard to learn.

After a few minutes the initial terror of being on a tiny boat goes away and it gets to be kind of fun. It is not as hard to paddle as I had feared, but it isn’t terribly easy either. It goes pretty smoothly, but a kayak doesn’t glide on its own, paddling doesn’t create a lot of momentum. Once you can get a nice rhythm down, it gets easier. You have seen it one TV I’m sure: you dip the paddle on the right side and push forward with your left arm, then slide the paddle up and out on the right and dip the left end into the water and push forward with your right arm. It is kind of a windmill motion and once you get going and learn how to let the fins of the paddle glide in and out of the water, it even becomes fun.

At first we stayed relatively close to shore, following the coastline in and out of the coves. The water was blessedly calm. Soon we started gliding over the thick kelp forests. I did not like these one little bit because you could only see a few feet down into the water, so it meant that we were constantly gliding over these dark, massive shapes and only when right above them could you see what they were. And it was really scary to look down into them, because the blurry dark masses would materialize suddenly into fish or rocks. Suddenly all of those jokes I had been making about sharks were not funny anymore. I had these images in my head of a giant mouth full of teeth appearing out of the dark kelp shadows.

Since Mike was filming while we kayaked along, I had to keep stopping so that he could keep up, which would have been fine, but when you stop kayaking, the waves try to turn it around and push it into shore. And each time you have to start kayaking again, it takes forever to get back into a rhythm. Or perhaps it just takes me forever since I have no actual physical coordination.

But none the less, we made our way up the coastline. Moving in and out of the coves and having a good time. The weather was good and the water was smooth and the views were great. We passed over schools of slim silvery fish and even some small jelly fish. Those look like little ocean ghosts. Probably the stranded souls of kayakers who got eaten by Great White sharks.

We had to kayak 4.2 miles and the first four miles of that was along the eastern side of the island. Then we had to round a point and at that point we would be in a different current coming in off the Pacific Ocean as we headed more North West to Parson’s Landing. I had had some concerns about rounding that point because I am smart enough to know that two different currents would be coming together right there. So I didn’t think anything of it when the water started to get more rough and choppy as we approached that point. It got windy and I even turned my hat around so that it wouldn’t blow off. But I consoled myself, telling myself it was just because of the point.

Then I got around the point and I could see for miles out into the ocean and it was completely different.

I realize now where the term “sea change” came from. It was a completely different ocean that I was looking at.


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Catalina #4

For this post, things to know:
- The ocean is dangerous.

For the first four miles of the kayak trip the water had mostly been nice and smooth. The little waves we went over were small and round and pleasant enough.

When we came around the point and turned left the ocean ahead of us was terrifying. We were heading into the current, so the waves were coming toward us. What I saw was a jagged field of waves several feet high. These were real waves. When they crested they pointed forward sharply and then collapsed down heavy. There was so much wind that water blew off the crests of the waves straight ahead – straight into my face – so there was a misty layer like rain above the waves. And the current was fast – in the wrong direction – so it was pushing us back and sideways. On this side of the point there were no coves to pull into for safety or rest, just cliffs with rocks at the bottom.

The graceful windmill motion of paddling didn’t work anymore. I had to stick the full paddle straight down into the water and push hard, levering myself forward. And then had to do the same on the other side, and fast, otherwise I wouldn’t be pointing into the waves anymore. If I wasn’t pointed into the waves, they would push the kayak sideways and the water would crash over the top of me and if the length of the kayak got hit with a wave it would nearly flip over. This came close to happening more times than I care to admit.

After about ten minutes of difficult progress, it got to the point where I couldn’t even move forward anymore. All my paddling did was keep me in place against the current. The waves were so high that when I was down between them and looked back, I couldn’t see Mike anymore.

I considered turning around, thinking that we could pull in to a cove on the safe side of the island and just hike to camp, but the problem was that I could SEE our camp from where I was. I could SEE IT! And I would have had a problem with turning back at that point.

So we kept on going. It was scary and probably the only time I can think of as an adult when I felt that I was in real, physical danger. Like actual peril. If I had been knocked off the kayak, if it had flipped over, I don’t think I would have been able to flip it back over and get back on. I’m not sure what would have happened at that point.

So I just paddled and paddled and paddled my little heart out. As I got inches and inches closer to the camp, I saw that it was rockier than I had previously realized. There were formations of rocks that had been under the water, but the waves were so high now that they first engulfed the rocks, then withdrew, leaving the rocks above water and totally exposed and dangerous.

I was able to kind of aim the kayak in between some of the rocks and then a wave scooped me up and pushed me in, but it turned me sideways as it did and so I hit the beach with my kayak turned sideways, I hopped out and tried to drag it up the beach but by then another wave came in and pushed the kayak into me, knocking me down. I scrambled up and dragged the kayak up out of the water and then promptly collapsed on the beach, exhausted and still a little scared.

Mike came in a couple minutes later and made just as graceful of a landing as I did.

It had taken two hours to go the first four miles and it took a full hour to go the last 0.2 miles.

Also, I was now completely terrified of the ocean, and not just because of the sharks.


(Our kayaks on the beach the next day)

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Catalina #5

For this post, things to know:
- Durflame Logs are fiery awesome!
- I am not graceful at all.

Remember how there had been a small craft advisory? And that it was lifted shortly before we got the kayaks? Well about an hour after we took the kayaks out onto the water and paddled away from Two Harbors, another small craft advisory was called. Which means that most of the time we were on the water that day, we were innocently and naively scooting along on water that we shouldn’t actually have been on. So that explains why some of it was so bad. Only we didn’t know any of that at the time.

Once we made it to camp we spent awhile just doing nothing. Just trying to catch our breath and repair our spirits. I have to be honest with you, I was a little shocked by what had just happened.

But as the sun got nearer to the horizon, we decided to get set up for dinner. I got out my Duraflame log and Mike built some sort of wood tripod around it. We lit the thing up and suddenly there was fire! Hooray! It was a nice big hot happy awesome fire.

I set up my tent. I was very happy to have a tent. The wind started to pick up and it started to get dark. We boiled water and made dinner and actually had a nice time. It is amazing how much a nice warm fire will do to pick up your spirits. Mike had some hot chocolate and it seemed like the greatest thing in the world.

Eventually we each crawled into our own tents to sleep. With the rain fly on my tent, I couldn’t see out, but I could hear how loud the waves were when they broke on the beach and it scared me a little to think about while I drifted off.

We woke up about 6am the next day. We needed to get an early start because we had to catch a bus in Two Harbors at Noon. So I got up and broke down my tent and packed everything up and loaded it into the kayak. It took Mike a little longer to get packed but that was okay because I was drinking some coffee and staring unhappily at the ocean (It was a very cinematic moment! I felt like I was in a movie about someone who hates the ocean!).

It looked like the sea had calmed down some, but the waves were still breaking really hard on the beach. Remember, this was only the second time that I had ever put a kayak out into water.

But finally it was time. Mike went out first and he managed to time it just right so that the suck-back from a wave pulled him out.

I went next, but didn’t time it right. I tried to ride a wave out, but a bigger one came in a second later and pushed the kayak sideways and back up the beach. It knocked me over onto my back and the kayak rolled over the top of me in the water. I jumped up, completely soaked and rolled the kayak right side up. I pulled it back out into the water and tried to line it up into the waves, I went a little further out, so the kayak was completely in the water. Another big wave came and went over my head, so both the kayak and I were pushed back into the beach.

At this point I must have looked like such a pitiful drowning rat that a guy ran out from one of the neighboring campsites to help. I remember he shouted to me, “I’m glad I’m not putting out in this!”

We only had a second before the waves came in again. He held the kayak pointed straight out and when the wave came in I jumped up onto it and paddled like crazy. I hollered back at the guy, “THANK YOU!”

That dude was awesome, whoever he was. The patron saint of under-skilled outdoorsman, that guy was.

Once I got out past the rocks and into the ocean, I took inventory. I was completely soaked all over with sea water. I had lost my bottle of water when the kayak rolled and I could tell from the way the boat moved that I had a lot of water in my drywell (the trunk) which was also where all my stuff was.

Luckily the current was pushing us back to the point. The waves were still rough, but nothing like they had been the day before.

As we neared the point, seals started popping out of the water. At first they were far away, but then they started to come in closer to bark at us. I think that they wanted to play. Or maybe they were like, “What the hell are YOU doing out here? Don’t you know there’s a small craft advisory right now?”

For my part, I was not happy about the seals because sharks eat seals and I was convinced that the seals were bringing the sharks closer, so I would yell at them, “Seals! Go Away! I do not like wildlife!”

Shortly after that several dolphins popped up between Mike and I. I barely saw them, but Mike said that there were a bunch. Several seals continued to follow my kayak while I yelled insults at them.

To save time we stayed further out to sea than the day before and made more of a straight line down the coast. With the current at our backs, we made it in about an hour and a half. By the time I pulled up onto the beach in Two Harbors, my clothes had dried, but I was covered in a thick layer of dried salt. It was pretty weird. I pulled my stuff out of the kayak and everything was soaked (even though it had been inside of a trash compactor bag).

We had enough time before the bus that I unpacked everything onto a picnic table so that it could dry.

We also got lunch (Mike’s third hamburger during out camping trip. I had a corndog. That’s how we camp, you got a problem with that?) Also, and quite happily, I had a Jack and Coke at the bar.

The “Safari Bus” we took from Two Harbors to Avalon was basically an old Blue Bird school bus. It was hot and dusty, but we kept the windows open for the breeze. It was a bumpy ride (imagine going off-road in a school bus and that’s about it), but the roads out of town led up along the high ridgelines, so the views were beautiful.


(View from the bus window)

It took about an hour to get to the little Catalina airport, where we switched buses and rode down (another hour) into Avalon.

Arriving in Avalon was like rolling into the big city! Multi-story buildings! Golf Carts! More than one restaurant!

The bus let us off basically around the corner from our hotel.



(Your humble author after surviving two days of hiking, camping and kayaking)

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Parson's Landing Catalia, 2011

Some cool long exposure night shots Mike the Director did at our campsite.