That title above. It’s a weird statement. I was just checking my Twitter feed, which I’ve pretty much neglected this summer and fall due to just being barely having enough time to check Facebook (well, obsessively trolling the FB for pictures of my new nephew anyway).

So I checked in on Twitter, where most of my climbing/outdoor friends live. I clicked through to a few blogs I’ve missed reading and skimmed over articles about friends climbing this, biking that, hiking this, offering various philosophies on the outdoor lifestyle and mindset. It took me back to 2009 and 2010 when I was reading them consistently and embracing it all.

Then I thought: “Wow. I feel like I don’t get out anymore.”

This year was supposed to be the year of getting outdoors – or rather, focusing more on backpacking as much as possible. The past few years have focused on rock climbing and training for big-to-me mountains. I missed just putting on the pack for a Friday-Sunday excursion in the backcountry. No expectations, no training, no ego. I wanted to try and do it on a regular basis, not just sporadically.

The last time I think I backpacked was May, in Untanum Canyon. MAY. At least that’s the one that sticks out the most, for many a reason. Or rather, I think that trip may go down in this year’s book as one of the most epic.

The other thing that I told myself this year would focus on would be my yard. I’d pretty much neglected it since I purchased my house in 2008 and was antsy to finally get my hands in my own dirt, rather than in the dirt of the  mountains.

So these two desires butted heads often. Halfway through the summer I settled with myself – if I wasn’t packing, then I’d be at home in the garden one day and biking the next.

So, here it is, end of October 2011 and I am literally knee deep in a digging project at home, trying to eradicate as much bamboo from my property as possible. What started as a simple digging project has escalted into fence removal, possible retaining wall replacement, french drain installation and a whole list of anxiety-driven projects for the backyard.

And I’m trying to recall what I did this summer. I did a lot of good things in my yard. It still looks like a construction site, but bamboo, ivy, old tree stumps and blackberry bushes are gone. I have a general plan of what to do for short-term and long-term landscaping projects.

Outside the yard, I think I went on a few day hikes. I know I biked a lot in May, June and July. OH I did the Warrior Dash. I held a birthday party in the park for a friend. Hosted and attended many BBQs and family dinners. But that’s all that comes to mind.

(Looking in calendar for any possible meet-my-outdoor-requirement-outings that I did.)

OK, here goes – Between May and October 2011:

Mt St. Helens 1.5 times (failed ski attempt, successful climb later)

Sasquatch Road Trip with Sara – oooohh that was awesome.

Mazama RockFest

Ozette Lake Trail hike

Rock climbing at Exit 32 with Sara and Charlie (oh that was NOT a good climbing day. Body and head were JUST not into it. Starting to acknowledge the painful history I have with that sport.)

Mt. Rainier Cabin with Seattle Girls – Skyline hike one day, then run up to Pebble Creek the next day.

The fantastic Lena Lakes-Scout Lake-St. Peter’s Gate-Putvin Trail trip (that ranks up there with the May trip).

The Backpack Retrieval Trip on Putvin

Failed attempt to hike to Royal Basin (felt icky and sick and turned around)

Failed attempt to hike up Mt. Vesuvio in Naples, Italy (got to the park too late).

Huh. OK. Between all that I did at the house and around town, plus what I did outside of town, that’s not too bad. Since it is October now, and backpacking season is closing down, or rather, I use that as an excuse to catch up on housework before the rains come, it’s time to focus on winter.

In November, there is a bike birthday trip to the San Juan Islands. Hopefully snow will come early and I can start warming up the legs on some easy little snow patches near Hurricane Ridge. I need to hit up Barnes and Noble to find a good book on classic ski tours in the PNW and start planning for when the snow really hits.

I think 2011 is going to go down as a success.

11:34 a.m.

Charlie, Me and Sara, after two days of "summer camp."

Cool bags on Cilogear.com, oh and Feathered Friends, I’ll pick out my color and size for my new vest soon. Hmmmm, Google Images – was that local route setter Bryan Burdo who worked out the knots on my back after I kiddingly mentioned how Rockfest 2011 needed a sports massage chair? I was sunning on a bench on my belly, waiting out the pancake coma that I just put myself into and next thing you know, there were very strong hands on my back! Before I got up, he had scurried off before I could say thanks! OH and what WAS that awesome route I climbed on Saturday afternoon at Fun Wall that kicked my butt but felt amazing? (Still need to research that one).

On the grass at Goat Wall View in Mazama, there is Eddie making rounds, sporting his 15th outfit of the weekend, each with a different hat while Jackie sports her bright blue  new OR hat. She, Sara and Graham are teaching Charlie how to do cartwheels in the grass. Mark’s 2.5 month old puppy golden retriever steals the show, as every conversation is stopped immediately as people drop to their knees to cuddle with this rambunctious ball of fur. 

***

The food at this event was a climber’s dream: breakfast Saturday was  egg/sausage/veggie scramble with hashbrowns and bagels, with copious amounts of coffee and orange juice before all-day climbing sessions. Then blueberry pancakes on Sunday morning. No oatmeal and stoves of boiling water for this crew. We needed that carb-heavy breakfast for hauling buckets of gravel for a trail maintenance project.

***

Believe it or not, this WAS a rock climbing festival. But it was more like a summer camp.

Rockfest had been moved from Leavenworth to Mazama for 2011, and hosted by American Alpine Club. It was a small turnout, maybe 50 people total, including guides, vendors, plus the industry and non-industry related attendees. But I really couldn’t have imagined it to be much bigger.

Afternoon sesh at Fun Wall.

Most everyone took a clinic and if they weren’t in a clinic, they were in the same area climbing with the rest of us, creating this wonderful small-community feeling. While most of us find that feeling in the climbing areas we frequent, this weekend, we all started the day together and ended it together. It felt more like summer camp, for these reasons:

Saturday Breakfast/Meet N’ Greet – the egg scramble and carb loading, breaking the ice, sharing climbing and dog-owning stories, why they were here, what activities they wanted to do.

Morning Activity = Clinics/Climbing ( I took a wonderful multi-pitch anchors clinic with Dave from Petzl and Eddie from Black Diamond. Thanks to Eddie for letting me use his trad rack to make anchors!).

Lunch/Snack = Everyone on their own, plus snacking on mini Clifbars while getting ready for Afternoon Activity. “Camp Director” Eddie milled about, taking pictures while sporting a fancy cowboy hat.

Afternoon Activity = Clinics/Climbing (I took the Intro to Leading from North Cascades Mountain Guides – again, a great clinic!). Shoemaker 5.10 hung out with demo shoes for everyone to try.

Free Time = Climbing with new friends or wandering back to camp to rest up before Evening Activity.

Game = Cornhole at the OR tent. Rumor was that Sonnie Trotter had a pretty good aim.

Dinner/Drama= BBQ and beverages! Raffle for awesome gear and Silent Auction for even more awesome gear (hence, my new Feathered Friends vest. Thank you Graham for not outbidding me). Even better? All the dough went toward Washington Climbers Coalition, raising $1,600 from our small group!

Only 1/3 of the swag Sara, Charlie and I won during the raffle.

Show & Tell = Hilarious slideshows from Will Stanhope and Sonnie Trotter, two completely down-to-earth guys who have seen some beautiful countryside and had us in stitches with the stories behind the climbs.

Late Night Activities = Bonfire with new friends and/or giggling in your tent with your tentmates.

Sunday Breakfast= Blueberry pancakes made by Petey and Phil from Mountain Gear!  Best part of the breakfast? Syrup out of cycling waterbottles!

Best. Idea. Ever. Syrup Waterbottle.

Morning Activity = participating in an American Alpine Club trail maintenance project that involved hauling buckets of gravel. Nearly everyone who participated in the previous day’s event showed up and put in some sweat equity, much to the relief of local AAC folks who thought there would only be about 5 people helping – we had about 20!

Afternoon Activity/Breakdown Camp = The folks who worked the event scurried off to climb, while those who attended started to breakdown camp, did cartwheels in the grass and hugged each other goodbye.

Post-climbing fest and trail maintenance with AAC, in Mazama, Wash.

Hopefully, next year, we will do it all over again – make a beeline for our old friends, make new friends and together, pour syrup out of waterbottles on to our pancakes…

It’s quite late in the morning and I still feel like I just rolled out of bed. It was a sorta early morning, with the alarm going off at 6:15, but in usual form, I didn’t drag out until 6:50ish, after hitting the alarm 3 or 4 times (?). My roommates in college hated bunking with me. I don’t know where I picked up the habit.

I’ve been telling myself the past few days that my work schedule would be writing in the a.m., video and photo editing in the afternoon. I’ve kept up the afternoon schedule, but the a.m. schedule has been a little more difficult. Other things come up – phone calls, stuff to post to our blog/web site (which takes way longer than I really ever think it should, for some reason).

I thought I’d do a little warm up, try to crack open the brain a little so I can crank out what should be a relatively easy story that is already written in my head.

The early morning wasn’t for going to the gym, which is customary for Tues-Wed-Thurs mornings, but it was for an MRI on my left knee. Stupid hamstring keeps cramping up while sitting still and bending but not bothersome while playing sports; doctor thinks it’s tendonitis in knee. Bah. That’s a new one I haven’t had yet. Add it to the list.

It will probably interfere with racquetball. I’ve been quite excited to learn how to play as it will be something nice, different and contrary to most of my sports, extremely cheap and accessible.

Oh I KNOW why I’m still bleary-eyed. It’s because I got to take a nap in the MRI machine. It’s similar to when I wake up at 6 a.m., decide I don’t want to go to the gym, reset the alarm to go off in another hour and then don’t really sleep. Then feel bleary all day.

I do hope I’m awake enough for tonight’s mountain bike ride. Don and Erin are tired of me making excuses for not joining them, so they started a campaign against me (rather, “FOR” me, as Erin says) to make sure I get my stuff together and have it ready on time. Don said, “Dude, I’ve seen your living room; it takes me 10 minutes to get my gear together.”

He’s right. I really don’t have an excuse. And yes, it did take me 10 minutes to get my stuff together. Less than that actually.

11:21. ummmm how much left. till 11:28. Right. Math. Hard. Not for me.

I never do this, but I’ll explore on a lovely little date I went on Monday night. It was really quite nice. Dinner at the Pub on Bainbridge Island, then picnic blanketing at Fay Bainbridge State park as we watched ship traffic go by, the clouds change formations and got to know each other. It was really one of the most pleasant dates I’ve had in a while.

What else what else what else – Oh Sister is due in early July, but she could pop any second – apparently she’s full term and well, she’s looked it for months. She’s allowing me to call her “The Ripe One.” My friend Brad coined that phrase a few years ago and I’ve been dying to use it. Thankfully, my sister is accomodating to her older sister’s ridiculous humor and has embraced it. Only to embrace completely freaking me out with her huge stretched out skin, stretched out belly button stomach. Everytime we get on Skype, I don’t see her face but The Belly. Then she dances for me. It grosses me out. That kid is going to have an interesting up bringing. I really hope that Kate and Michael get orders to come to Bremerton, that’d be so much fun. I was thinking yesterday how I could take Mike mountain biking and I’d get to teach the kid all sorts of things that his mother won’t let me teach him.

Ah, two minutes! Who would have thought I’d run out of things to say at two minutes!? The summer is shaping up nicely to be filled with absolutely nothing but fun – no training for ANYTHING – OK, maybe that Tour de Kitsap  that Erin and Don are making me do and the Warrior Dash, but NOTHING serious like last year. Good god that took a lot out of all of us who participated in that climb/fundraising/etc. I”m stoked that my July and August weekends are open but are quickly filling up. Now if only I could get into the routine of working weeknights in the garden and keep each weekend open for camping …

11:28 a.m.

I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be a journalist.

I mean, I haven’t been a traditional journalist for five years. But my job is pretty much a journalist job. I seek out stories, write them, take pictures and throw in the occasional video. These days it feels more like a traditional journalist’s job than usual. But I’m not complaining.

In the past week, I sought out the same location of a historic photo so I could take a “Today” shot, stood in a river taking pictures of biologists taking fish egg samples from gravel, watched 160,000 juvenile fish be transferred from one hatchery to another, took pictures of biologists count thousands of slippery shiny silvery perch, counted fish from a smolt trap, and learned how SONAR is being used to count fish.

Huh. There’s a lot of fish counting in Indian Country.

The rest of the week will be way more diverse – finding otters and river dippers, testing the dissolved oxygen levels of a major creek and planting kelp in Puget Sound.

For feeling extremely sedentary this winter (which, unfortunately has been grayer than usual and has pushed most of the Puget Sound population to the edge of insanity, more so than the annual Spring Depression. Even the LOCALs have agreed it’s been an extremely hard winter), the busyness of recent weeks has been refreshing. It’s kept me on my toes, kept my brain fresh. It’s even helped me focus getting back to the gym on a regular basis, oddly enough. It goes back to high school, I think – when I’m at my busiest, I’m at my best. When my mind is engaged on a regular basis, good things happen.

what else (hey, the prompt on the “full-toggle” mode says “just write.” I like that).

The first 3 months of 2011 pretty much sucked. For some reason, there just didn’t seem to be anything to look forward to. I knew why I was feeling that way but it was hard to address. Then vacation came and went. While that vacation wasn’t deserving, I am absolutely convinced it was required. Ever since I got back, I have been the most productive, the most happy, the most energized I’ve been in a very very very long time. It’s weird because I haven’t really done anything different. Maybe coming out of hibernation helped too. The sun has been coming out more. I can still see light in the sky from my dining room table right now.

The shoulder/rib issue is getting better though. The doctor told me – “at your age, it takes 18 months for things to fully recover. In six months, if it’s still bothering you, come back.” In six months it will be 18 months and I’m feeling way better than I did a year ago when all this nonesense started. But what got me was, “At your age…”! What, am I 80, in need of a hip replacement?!

One last note – I was so sad to hear that The Best Ambiance on KEXP was going away, but tonight, its replacement is focusing on Latin music. Totally digging it. Adds a nice kick to Monday evenings.

BAM. 9:43 p.m.

It’s too early to say if I’m in love, so rather, I think of this as a moment of lust. I can tell you the second when it hit me though, so much so that I fell over.

How I love thee, so light and sweet...

Sunday. April 17, 2011. About 3 p.m. First time ever out on backcountry gear. We’d just finished lunch at a high point near Blewett Pass. It was time to ski down. I was exhausted already from the climb up (2,200 feet and 4 hours of continuous skinning) and was a little nervous about heading down. When I get tired, I fall and when I fall, things hurt. And when things hurt, I fear injuries.

But I tried to keep a clear head. This is what it was all about. Sweet, sweet fresh spring snow. The sun had softened the surface just enough. My playmates skied ahead. I watched them carve, and then gave myself the whole field to enjoy.

During that first turn, I immediately fell in love. It was so easy, so swift, so smooth, so comforting, like bouncing around on a bed of pillows covered in 1,000-thread count pillow cases. I found myself talking out loud… “oh wow … oh my god …oh my god, this is so so so good…”

It was the most blissful run I’d ever had. And I was so caught up in the moment that as I turned the corner to meet with my group, I immediately fell over and yard sale’d.

Kevin and Jim came over to help me up and asked if I was OK. I looked at Jim and said, “Jim, that was amazing. That’s almost better than dating. I’m about ready to cry, that was so amazing.”

After that, I was done. I was bit. I had it in me. There was no looking back.

——-

I never really had any intentions of engaging with you. When I first learned about what you were all about, I was hesitant. The only people I knew who skied the mountains were boys – boys who I could barely keep up with hiking and who were far more advanced climbers than me.

But when I saw some of those boys sweep down that gentle hill spotted with little trees that one spring morning in 2008 near Mt. Rainier, while I was struggling on old school cross-country skis, I was immediately jealous. I wanted to do that. I wanted to be free, not traversing in a line of people.

However, it just wasn’t time yet. I continued to stick to the resorts and my way-too-small ski boots. I started to lose interest.

Then I came upon Second Ascent’s 20% sale in October 2010. Girlfriends had been making noise about starting to buy your gear. Naturally, as a former journalist who doesn’t know any better when I’m curious, I inquired about which skis would best for me.

An hour later, I’m the owner of a new pair G3 skins and Karhu’s Betty skis. Six months later, after some smart shopping, research, networking and demo’ing, I had Scarpa Gea boots, Dynafit Vertical ST bindings, an avy beacon, shovel and probe in my possession. The boys at Marmot Mountain Works, who sweetly installed my bindings and fitted my boots all in one morning, were impressed with my setup and happily offered advice on all of my gear’s neat tricks, switches, knobs and advantages.

I swear, I didnt plan on being matchy-matchy. It just happened that way. Really.

I was ready to go…. But were you ready for me?

After the recent Blewett Pass outing, my first day ever on backcountry gear, first day ever skiing continuously for seven hours and first day ever sking on unadulterated hills, I think we’re off to a good start.

Jim and Kevin showed me what you were all about – skinning on trails to skinning up steep slopes, using my heel climbers, learning what it’s like to traverse through trees without skins and that there is not only powder out there but also sheets of ice. I love skinning up steep hillsides possibly more than I love the skiing down. I love the quiet of the hills with just friends and hearing an occasional holler of joy. I love the never-ending possibilities of open hillsides, skiing through the woods and the occasional fast cruise down a logging road.

Our love maybe a bit premature, therefore, I’m only declaring our relationship to be lustful. However, like the drug of love, I’m addicted and need more.

xoxo,

Tiffany

I have no idea how much time i have left on my hostel internet card here but i’m going ot try and give this a go for a 15 minutes post.

After 20  hours of travel and a day that   wa taken away due to crossing the international date line (i’m assuming) i’m in the southwest corner of Australia, in the town of Glenelg, a small beach down just SW of Adelaide, the major town in South Australia. It’s very much a beach town, neighborhood. The weather thwarted our  beach plans, so yesterday was walkning along boardwalks and neighborhoods in Glenelg, then buying food and cooking an amazing meal of shrimp sauteed in butter and garlice, plus salad and bread with cheese, and amazing Australian wine. I bought Tim Tams and they are pretty goo d- c hocolate covered biscuits.

Today, March 22, we went into Adelaide via the tram ( i SO love public transit  outside the  US) and walked around a large enclosed market area, not unlike Pike Place Market. Rather, I ATE my way t horugh the market… first coffe and a Lambington (cake covered in chocolate and coconut) and then a Spinach/Feta parcel, then a nectarine, then an afternoon Australian tea while Reba and I walked around downtown Adelaide even more. Tonight – marlin and tuna, with salad, bread and vegetables cooked in cheese and creme friche. Totally stoked about it.

it’s a pretty sleepy town here, Glenelg/ The hostel is chill, an 1800s buliding covereted in to  a hostel. Tomorrow, Reba And i fly up to Ayers Rock for three days of hiking  in The Outback , then back to Adelaide to meet Jan again  for a day before we head northeast to Barossa Valley for two days of wi ne tasting.

OK, may or may not be 15 minutes, bu ti’m posting before i get kicked off … until later…

(Major thanks to Randy, Candace and Clayton for ALL their help, in the past and this weekend, for elevating this poor little bathroom to a decent level of luxury.)

When I first looked at the house in July 2008... by the time I moved in, the walls had been drywalled and a "new" medicine cabinet had been installed.

Following the November 2008 semi-remodel, with new tile floor...

Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011: Removing the old vanity, medicine cabinet and light fixture...

Saturday, Jan. 15, 2011: New vanity, faucet and lights. Plumbing still in progress.

Monday, Jan. 17, 2011: Plumbing fixed, mirror installed, updated outlets, baseboard installed. Paint colors are still to be determined. But it's done - it's DONE!