Thursday, October 19, 2006

Hi Mom!

I know, I know...I've been lagging on blogging lately. I'm not sure if the reason is that my life has become extremely boring or that my mother is reading the blog.

Yep, you read that right: Momma Glib has obtained the blog address and reads it.

I knew she had it a while back - when my brother was off being an idiot and I was blogging about my family frustrations. I knew then because she made a somewhat defensive comment on the blog that I deleted because, well, it's my blog and I don't like having my mom say bad things about me on it. I immediately chastised her for reading the blog as it's kind of my public diary. She promised not to read it anymore. I believed her.

Flash forward a year or so to our road trip to Texas to pick up the zebras. As happens when traveling for long periods, we got to talking, mostly about my constant state of singlehood, indomitable independence, and her subsequent lack of grandchildren. Then, out of the blue she asks, "Have you heard from JP?"

Let me just say that in the real world, JP is not JP's real name, merely two letters which comprise his initials. I have never referred to JP as JP anywhere other than on the blog, and my mother knows JP's real name and has used it before. The only other JP I know is my good friend PD's brother who I used to give kisses in exchange for rolling the Star Free Press for my paper route after school during junior high. I didn't think she was referring to that JP and deduced that she was referring to my JP of recent years and that she had, in fact, been reading this very blog to keep up on my life. Oh the horror!

I must admit it angered me a bit to think my mother had been reading my blog, not only because she said she wouldn't, but also because she's kind of conservative and already has one heathen child to worry about without having to think about me running around in Catwoman outfits or on dates with men with poo bags.

Then I got to thinking about it and thought how ridiculous it is for me, a grown woman, to worry about offending my mother via a website that may at times be occassionally embellished, and that she has been expressly forbidden to visit but that every other soul on the planet is free to peruse and comment on. After all, if I were a mother and knew my daughter wrote of her exploits for all the world to see, I would most certainly be reading the site on a regular basis.

So I guess I get it: She wants to read this stuff. She's an adult. I'm an adult. Sometimes she'll be mad about some stuff, sometimes she'll be happy that I turned out somewhat decent, other times I'll refer her to far worse blogs to make myself look better.

That said, I'd like to welcome her to the blog, ask that she identify herself and only say nice things about me in the comments section, and congratulate her on finally becoming a grandmother.

Oh yeah, my brother's crank skank girlfriend (yeah, the one who sent him to jail and broke his car windows) apparantly gave birth to a surprisingly healthy looking baby boy a month ago making me the now twice-estranged Auntie Glib (sister has a baby too - yes, I have a sister).

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Lone Pine Trip: Part 3 - Alabama Hills Arch

So you know how sometimes someone invites you on a trip and you say yes and then they offer to drive and you say yes and then they decide to stay an extra day and you can't say no? Well, that's what happened to me Sunday. We were supposed to be home by dark but it turned out Monday was a holiday of some sort and little A had the day off so R, J, A, and I got to spend another day camping and would presumably be home by noon Monday.

So Monday morning came and R and J had "gone fishing" and left me to cook outmeal and entertain a 6 year old. We grabbed my new hiking guide to the Sierras and took the opportunity to search for the elusive, yet oft-photographed Alabama Hills Arch - a window to Whitney.

Here's the arch as you see it from the trail:After a scramble up some rocks we found the arch and I was able to get a decent shot of my favorite mountain through the arch:Note to photographers: If you go in search of the arch, take some climbing gear and/or a ladder because it's up high and rather precarious to get to the back side of to take the famous shot. Oh, and don't take a gutsy 6 year old as it's unnerving to watch them scramble along large boulders as you contemplate how you'd explain the fall to the parents.

Finally, here's my favorite shot of the arch, taken of my trooper of a hiking partner, Ariel, who made me promise to summit Whitney when she's 10 and her lungs are ready:Gotta love that stuff.

Lone Pine Trip: Part 2 - Devil's Postpile NM

Turns out my friends R and J are really outdoorsy and have made it a hobby since marrying to attempt to fill their joint National Parks Passport with cancellation stamps. I didn't know what a National Parks Passport ws either but it's basically a little book you pay $7.95 for and take with you to all the National Parks, Historical sites and Monuments you visit. At each park there is a "cancellation station" with a stamp that says the name of the park and the day you visited. You collect these in the book just like a regular passport. I think they'd make a cool gift, especially for families and kids as it gives them something to do together. You can order them online here.

Because they are into the passbooks they wanted to head up to Devil's Postpile National Monument just outside of Mammoth Lakes so I hitched a ride and bought a passbook upon entry into the park.

Here's a shot of the famous formation:It is a pretty cool thing to behold - basically 60 foot tall hexagonal columns of shiny lava that look like Superman's secret hideaway in the North Pole.

And here's what the park service has to say about Devil's Postpile and the geologic phenomenon it depicts:
Approximately 100,000 years ago, a lava flow erupted two miles upstream from the location of today's Monument. As it flowed down the Valley, it eventually ran into an obstruction which served as a dam to the lava's path. Pooling up to as deep as 400 feet behind the natural dam, the lava cooled. Conditions were such that the lava--that was incredibly uniform in its mineral composition--cooled at a very slow rate. As it cooled, it contracted and cracked, forming hexagonal columns. 80,000 years later, a glacier flowed through the same valley, overriding the formation and eventually revealing the sides and tops of the columns. Glacial polish can still be seen today at the top of the formation.
What is perhaps more cool is the view from the top:Those are the tops of the columns and are about a foot and a half across. It's like walking on fancy yet primitive tile and if you're at all into geology it's well worth the trip.

Also at the park is famous 101-foot Rainbow Falls, the tallest waterfall on the San Joaquin River:It's called Rainbow Falls because the splash from the waterfall usually creates a big rainbow at the bottom when the sun is shining. We arrived a bit late in the day and this was the best rainbow I could capture in the fading light:The 2.5 mile hike to and from the falls would have been a leisurely stroll through a sequoia forest just 14 years ago. Unfortunately, a pesky fire that burned 7,000 acres ravaged the place in the 1992 Rainbow Fire and this is how the trail looks today. Incidentally, that's the back of a Mammoth area ski resort up on the left top of the picture.

Also in the park are a bunch of wild mules. We saw them in a meadow:Accomplished animal expert that I am, I have never dealt with a mule, a cross between a male donkey and a female horse, and did not realize that the female mules, called mollies, can't breed because they only have 63 chromosomes and you need an even number of chromosomes to divide. Perhaps we could start a national plan to remove one chromosome from every stupid person so they can no longer breed? In the meantime I'll just try to stay away from asses.

Lone Pine Trip: Part 1

Headed up to Lone Pine for the Lone Pine Film Festival with my friend J and her daughter A on Friday morning. We were to meet a couple of other folks for some camping, quad riding, and general hanging out. J has spent considerable time in this lovely mountain hamlet on the edge of the Alabama Hills and the Sierra Nevada mountains as her sister lives there. Being somewhat of a local she somehow procured a BLM permit for us to camp in the actual Alabama Hills, a rare treat. Here's our campsite:We were soon joined by the rest of our crew for the weekend, J's hubby R, couple JD and L, and father-son duo R and C. Among the participants we had three quads, a kid-sized dune buggy, two motorcycles, and two days' worth of s'mores.

I'm not really a motorized-vehicle kind of gal so I chose to go for a rock scramble/hike while everyone suited up and headed out on their various modes of transport. This is a view I got of them as I turned during my hike:Because the film festival was going on the local film history museum had put up plaques at various locations in the hills pointing out where famous western movies and tv series were filmed. I took a quad and visited the exact places where the likes of Tonto, the Lone Ranger and Captain Kirk rounded boulders, shot bad guys, and discovered new life forms. Here's what Wikpedia has to say about it:
The Alabama Hills are a popular location for television and movie productions (especially Westerns) set in an archetypical "rugged" environment. Since the early 1920s 150 movies and about a dozen television shows have been filmed here including Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, and the Lone Ranger. Classics such as Gunga Din, Springfield Rifle, and How the West Was Won, as well as more recent productions such as Tremors and Joshua Tree were filmed at sites known as Movie Flats and Movie Flat Road. In Gladiator, actor Russell Crowe rides a horse front of the Alabamas, Mount Whitney in the background, for a scene presumably set in Spain.
Pretty nifty stuff.

Day two started with several motor enthusiasts going for another ride and me finding a sunny perch on a rock to read on. After everyone returned we decided to head north to Rock Creek to check out the fall colors on the aspens and do some trout fishing. On the way we were lucky enough to see some Tule Elk grazing:We cruised up into the mountains and arrived just in time to catch some of the leaves turning along the creek:We stopped for a while and the kids caught some nice rainbow trout but, seeing as how I was the only one who eats fish and I do not like to clean them, we released them back to be nabbed by some other 6 year old's Mickey Mouse rod and reel.

While the kids were fishing, I caught a gaggle of photographers diligently staring at the same hillside, undoubtedly in search of the perfect shot:In the end think I got the best shot of the afternoon.

Across the River and Into the Trees

Blogger ate my previous post on this subject but certain people (MM) have requested that I recount the events of Saturday, September 20, 2006 so they are forever floating around the blogosphere to remind us all why mojitos, sangria and seedy bars are a dubious combination.

So some friends had been threatening to visit the safari for a while and we decided that the weekend during which I was babysitting would be best. At first it was just BH and AG, along with Bailey the dog, that were to visit. This somehow turned into MM, RMA, BS, and two strangers, J and K, also coming by for a campout in my living room on a Saturday afternoon.

The thing with having so much help with the bottle feeding was that I had my hands free and was able to have a beer or two while my friends played with the kids. Here's RMA with Max, the camel:Beer somehow evolved into mojitos, Ernest Hemingway's second favorite drink - a cuban concoction involving rum, mint, lime juice, more rum, and some other stuff. We all decided to grill up some shish kebabs and all was going well until someone decided to do something with the grill. It somehow toppled and all our kebabs either fell on the grass or remained stuck to the grill. This did not deter us as the five second rule applied and, well, we were drunk. Here are MM and K proudly showing off their dirty kebabs:

After the kebab debacle we started a campfire and were just settling in when someone had the brilliant idea of driving into town to partake in the local social scene. I assessed my group, donned my "I Heart Rick Springfield" shirt, seen below, and took them to Tehachapi's most illustrious drinking establishment, The Red Caboose, for some small town tweaker karaoke.That was at about 10 pm.

Upon arrival MM honed in on a lovely lady at the bar with a zebra tattoo. He approached her with the ever-popular pick-up line, "Nice tattoo, I just fed a baby zebra today." He may have asked if she wanted to smell him too, I'm not sure. Anyhow, the line didn't work on this discerning Tehachapi native and he was summarily dismissed.

I don't remember much from the bar but vaguely recall singing karaoke, our group having stolen the dance floor and karaoke playlist, and dancing with a local with a large moustache and striped leotard shirt. I believe I asked if he was one of the Village People. We closed down the bar and headed back up the hill.

For some strange reason RMA and I were wired and got the brilliant idea to drive up to the mountain estate at 3:00 in the morning. He grabbed a bucket of sangria and we hopped in my truck and drove up the dirt road to the trailer. It was cold up there so we returned rather quickly and on our way down the hill RMA asked to drive. Note to self: Do not allow drunk friends to drive unfamiliar, winding dirt roads in truck at 3:30 am. RMA promptly had us in a couple of 360 degree spin outs and one grand spin out that led to our ending up taking out a couple of fenceposts and some barbed wire. During the spinouts all of the possessions in the back of my truck, including a 40 lb bag of dog food and AG's napsack, were ejected from the vehicle. By some miracle, the sangria bucket remained in the vehicle:The next morning we fed the leftover, saturated fruit to Hogitha and the camel and went on a reconnaisance mission to find the ejected items and found only a trail of cheap red wine, soaked fruit chunks, and wavy tire tracks. The dog food and napsack were never recovered but I'm sure I'll hear about it at our next board meeting for property owners up there.

Oh, and since MB couldn't make it up for the safari, I snapped this shot I knew he'd appreciate seeing as how it has both Monolith and animal arse in it: