Travel - Yosemite

As you can imagine, I do a lot of driving. Fortunately, that driving is usually spread fairly evenly over the year, as not to drive me utterly fucking insane. Well, that's not the case this year. Several national park, NorCal, and SD trips, and the year isn't even close to being over. At tis point, there are very few places I'm willing to drive to that won't elicit some kind of pissy response from me, and unfortunately, Sequoia and Yosemite happened with only a week of downtime in between. Fortunately, Yosemite is one of those areas, that I've been wanting to visit for years. I've been there as a kid, but as a small snot-nosed brat, how could I possibly take in the shear majesty that is Yosemite?

One of our good friends recently moved to England, and before he left, he organized a camping trip to wasp hell Hodgdson Meadow Camp Ground. We had a pretty loose plan on what we wanted to do once we were up there, "Oh yeah, Yosemite. We...should...hike?". Now, I'm always prepared, I immediately sprung into action early on in the planning phase, to make sure we had plenty to drink. Homebrew? Check. Whisky? Check, Case of 2-buck chuck? Check. The first night, the whole group getting to the campgrounds as late as we did, hiking was out. We lit a fire, and immediately went to defcon one (because no matter what TV tells you, one is the highest stage of alert. Go ahead, check wikipedia) on the imbibing scale.

I know what you're thinking. Yes, it can hold an entire bottle of wine.

After a rough night of sleep due to tent-camping (I SWEAR IT WASN'T THE BOOZE), we slowly get mobilized to head into the main valley and find a hike. I'm sure everyone knows this, but large groups are really goddamn difficult to get moving. It usually isn't one particular person's fault, everyone just moves at a slower pace, on the assumption that they're waiting for some other, slower people. Getting everyone out, coupled with a fews' crazy desire for caffein, we don't actually hit the trail until we're well into the afternoon. We chose a hike that ended up being around 7 miles round trip (seems to be my lucky number in painful hikes). Everyone in the group is in pretty good shape, so we don't really think of the distance. "Oh yeah, 7 miles? Sounds like a lovely jaunt up the mountain!". The beginning of the trail is all switch-backs, dozens of them, and steep. The worst part, is that we're only 15 minutes in, and a trail of smug and accomplished faces start walking down past us (THEY COULD HAVE WARNED US). We pass the first main section of switch-backs, and there's a good mile or so of in between. This is one of the best parts of the hike, there are even a few downhill parts and plenty of opportunity for pictures.

No pain, no elevation gain

Fun ends, cue more switch-backs. For most of us, this part is all mental. There's a sense of accomplishment you feel when you conquer a billion switch-backs. Once you hit the smooth part, you pretty much think you're done...then there are more. My mind, body, whatever, had had enough. For the first time since I can remember, I got a terrible fucking hangover. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but a while back, something physiologically clicked, and my body became immune to hangovers. I'm pretty convinced this is the next major step in human party evolution. Something I hope that I genetically pass on to my children, making them near invincible. My body is shot at this point. I have a pounding headache, I'm rapidly going through all of my water, and we're still a good distance to the top. Naturally, we start desperately asking people, "How long to the top?". Turns out the top is 10 minutes to 10 days away since no one can give us an accurate answer.

We make it to the top, and I'm dying. I'm questioning why people who get hangovers ever even drink. It just doesn't seem worth it. As you'd expect, the view was astonishing, but there was no time for majesty, only passing out on a warm rock, eating everything we brought. It's starting to get dark at this point, so we made the slightly less horrible descent to the cars. The was no defcon 1 that night, everyone was pretty shot. We cooked off an indecent amount of food and passed out pretty early.

I'm really not as invincible as I think I am. I'm sure my fiance will tell you the same, especially given how many times she's all but begged me to go see a doctor. I'm certainly still young, but not to the point where my body bounces back from ridiculous injuries and consecutive nights of drinking and poor sleep. Suffice to say, I'm a little burnt out on majesty for a bit.