Monday, June 14, 2004
Dav and I woke up early that morning in our family’s San Francisco apartment, and packed up our things. We also hadn’t planned a specific route home yet–we just had some vague notions we wanted to visit a few key places. So we got online and printed out a few route options, figuring nothing was set in stone. Our only hard-and-fast deadline was that we needed to be in Orlando by the 25th, since I started work on Sunday, the 27th. With the help of our family, we got my bike and snowboard back on top of the car, loaded the trunk with as many boxes of my stuff as possible, filled the backseat with our climbing and hiking gear, and were off around 9am.
Our first stop was Castle Rock State Park, my “home” climbing area, being the closest to Stanford at about a 45-minute drive. There we met my college roommate and climbing partner Dan Urban for a morning of lead climbing and bouldering. We wanted to make sure to do some lead climbing under Dan’s more professional eye, to make sure that, if Dav and I wanted, we could set up our own lead climbs during the course of the road trip. So, we spent a few hours training and having fun, and then it was time to set off on the first major leg of our adventure: Yosemite.
We said our goodbyes to Dan and then made a brief stop at the Saratoga REI, where we loaded up on camp food and miscellaneous gear. Then it was off to the Valley–about a 4-hour drive away. It was an uneventful drive, except for a little apprehension on my part as it was the first time my bike and snowboard were subjected to sustained high speeds. But Yakima be praised–everything (including my self-guided installation of the rack) seemed solid.
We rolled into Yosemite about mid-evening and spent a little bit driving around, showing Dav some of the cooler formations like the Cathedral and El Capitan. When it got dark, we made our way to Camp 4, my resting place of the previous weekend. Being the summer, there were no campsites available, so Dav and I threw our sleeping bags on the ground somewhere on the outskirts of the camp and settled in for the evening. I didn’t sleep very well, since a lot of weird feelings were rolling around inside me regarding graduating, leaving my home, starting a road trip that wasn’t planned very well, being “in charge” and responsible for myself and for my brother’s safety.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
But the early morning came soon enough anyway, and so Dav and I packed up our things and drove to Happy Isles, where we picked up the trail to hike up Half-Dome–a trail which by now was looking very familiar, given the 4 times I’d traversed it just 10 days prior. I was feeling really good, and Dav was keeping up, so we blasted through the first section of the trail and kept a pretty intense pace up past both waterfalls on the stairstep sections. We’d started relatively late (6am or so), so we passed up a number of groups on the way up.
Dav and I practically raced the rest of the way, slowing down only near the final set of stairsteps before the cables, when Dav began to feel ill. As it would later become evident, he had contracted altitude sickness (undoubtedly due to our fast ascent). I didn’t think that was the case at the time, though, given Dav’s high level of fitness and the relatively low altitude we were at (say 7500 ft). So I unwisely pushed him to continue at a pretty decent clip. As we neared the cables, though, it soon became apparent that something was fairly seriously wrong, and Dav was having to take frequent breaks and fighting off intense nausea. We were close then, so he didn’t want to turn back; he manfully kept on, following me up the last, most difficult segment: the cables. And then we were up! I looked at my watch then to see how long it had taken us, and I was surprised: only 3 and a half hours! A whole hour and a half faster than the last time I’d done the hike, and that even with the relatively slow finish.
We thought having a good long rest would settle Dav’s problems, so we munched on energy bars and tried to take a little nap on the warm and sunny summit (such a different experience than the frigid night of the previous week), enjoying the view.
Dav and I on Half-Dome
Instead of improving, Dav’s condition worsened, and he eventually started vomiting up his food and water. At that point I began to get very worried, because if something was so wrong that he could not keep water down, it would be a pretty dangerous 8-mile trek back to the car. And then what? I didn’t know how to get any medical attention, even if we could make it back! I kept these thoughts to myself, and focused on getting us down. So we started down the cables, down the long stairs, and back to the “treeline”, where, wonderfully, Dav pronounced himself all better. It finally occurred to me that he had indeed been experiencing altitude sickness, and most of my fears went away. He was fine the rest of the way down, and we took it pretty easy.
Cool rainbow at the bottom of one of the falls
Me in the mist!
After we made it back, we enjoyed some burgers and beer at Curry Village, and even ran into some family friends from LA. Well, the first stop on Road Trip V2 had been a success, and so it was time to move on. We got the car ready, and navigated the confusing Yosmite road system, trying to find the eastern exit to the park.
On the way, we were treated to some of the most amazing scenery I have ever looked on, from majestic forests to granite cliffs and mountains, to bright green glacial meadows, to nearby peaks with snow in mid-summer. This was the area called Tuolumne, and I will definitely be visiting it again in future adventures. Here are a few pictures:
A random beautiful lake
An alpine meadow
On this route east through Yosemite, we went through Tioga pass, which marked the highest elevation my car had ever been: 9,945 ft. As proof:
Tioga pass gate
From there it was downhill into the elevated desert of eastern California. The plan was to hit Bishop, CA that night, camp, and boulder in Bishop the next day. We knew nothing about Bishop except that it was reputed to have some of the best bouldering anywhere. And we knew its location, thanks to our TripTik.
All told, it was probably about a 6-7 hour trip to Bishop. We didn’t see any boulders or campgrounds in the small town itself, though, so we decided we needed to ask around. Luckily, there was an awesome outdoors store that we stumbled upon, and its staff was more than helpful. We got info about campsites and bouldering areas, and purchased more camp food (dried spaghetti and meatballs), a guide to the bouldering in the area, and a road atlas of the US, Canada, and Mexico (something we’d left home without, and something which came in very handy).
Blurry picture of the sunset on our way out of Bishop
We left the store at dark and made our way to a self-pay campsite which we’d unknowingly passed on the way in, about 10 miles outside of town. It was supposedly close to the Happy Boulders, which was the bouldering area Dav and I had decided to check out in Bishop (there are several, as well as some good top-roping in a nearby gorge). Unfortunately, after we paid, we discovered that the campsite was hell. It was right by a small stream, which we thought would be excellent in the arid climate, but which turned out to mean billions of mosquitoes and other bugs. It got so bad that, even though the temperature had to be well into the 80s (even after dark), Dav and I put on pants, gloves and jackets, and fashioned turbans out of shirts. We then proceeded to protect our faces by smoking our pipes as furiously as possible while getting the dried spaghetti and meatballs wet and hot enough to eat over my camp stove.
After we executed the tactical move called “get your ass into the tent and don’t let any of those little shits in with you”, the night got considerably better, and we slept pretty well through the hot, moonless night.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
The sun rose early, and so did we. We packed our gear up amidst the bugs that were still faintly buzzing around, and drove to a nearby well where we pumped water into our nalgenes just like you’ve seen them do it on Little House on the Prairie, or whatever that show is that I didn’t see where people live in the country. From there, we took my little Civic on the most torturous dirt roads she’d ever seen. We cruised at a sweet 5mph over giant ripples in the dirt for about 2 miles to where we decided the trail to the Happy Boulders started.
Then it was up a steep trail for about a half a mile until we came to the south end of the Happies, and had a half-day of some excellent bouldering. We saw a few other boulderers (with whom we had friendly, climber-like conversations) but for the most part the region was ours, save for the vultures floating ominously overhead in the dry air.
We tried a number of bouldering routes that were outlined on the map we had bought, but most proved to be beyond our ability. To give you a sense of perspective, some of the routes in the area were rated V10 or V12, whereas the hardest route I was able to complete was rated V1 (I don’t think I pulled off a V2, which would have been fitting for the trip). That route was called Beer Tumor, and it was possibly the funnest outdoor bouldering problem I’ve done. It started at a pretty burly sit-start in a cave, then out through a roof up onto some really sharp crimpy stuff for an athletic mantle finish. (Of course, being a V1, words like “burly” and “athletic” should be taken relatively). Here’s a picture of me making my way out of the roof:
Me on Beer Tumor
As 11am rolled around, Dav and I started to wear down, and the sharp volcanic rock of the Happies started to rend our hands useless for further climbing. The temperature’s own climb into the high 90s also influenced our decision to call it quits for the successful day.
Dav and I posing with the car after bouldering
So we got into that car and headed south from Bishop, down the eastern edge of the Sierras. The terrain in this part of California was very interesting, as to our right we had the Sierras with their snow, and to our left the deathly dry and hot salt flats, or dried-out lake beds, or whatever it was. Once we almost ran out of gas going up a very long incline, and stopped to refuel in Johannesburg, CA. As the following picture proves, it is a very small town.
Post Office, grocery store, and gas station, all in the same building
Well, eventually we’d got far enough south, and decided to head southwest, towards LA. The idea was to hit the 10, which we would then take east to the 62 (or whatever road it is), north to Joshua Tree national park. We found the 10, and immediately wished we hadn’t (as does anybody who’s driven on the 10, probably). But after the sucky traffic in the middle of nowhere that didn’t make any sense, we got out into the real nowhere and headed north to Joshua Tree. We drove in around 6 hours after we’d left, scored one of the many campsites (Joshua Tree is very hot and empty in the summers), and went back outside the park to the actual town of Joshua Tree for some dinner (at the same Sam’s Pizza and Indian Food restaurant as this last time I went to Joshua Tree, when I almost died). We got this amazing picture on the way:
Sunset leaving Joshua Tree
After dinner, we headed straight back to the tent and tried to get some sleep in preparation for the next day of bouldering we had planned. Since it was such a warm night, and since I felt very comfortable in Joshua Tree after the last time I’d been there, I decided to sleep outside under the stars, on the rock. It was beautiful.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
We woke up with the sun again, in order to conserve as much coolness as possible, and drove over to the Wonderland of Rocks to mess around on some boulders. We worked on a few problems, and then stayed at Gunsmoke, a real, live V2, for a while. Gunsmoke is a really fun, very long traverse which works various cracks along two sides of a corner wall.
Dav on Gunsmoke
Me at the same place on Gunsmoke
Neither of us did the whole problem from start to finish, but we did enough for me to proclaim it the trip V2, if only so that we have something to justify the name!
From there we moved to another area of J-Tree, and did some more problems, but it was starting to get insanely hot, and our energy was sapped more and more by the minute. So again we called it quits around midday, and packed up our campsite to head out.
Our next destination: Phoenix. We didn’t know exactly what we would do there, but we used to live there (I was born there, in fact), and have a good number of friends there, so we figured we could stay for a day or two and hang out, or recover from the intense, showerless few days that had passed.
Another 6 hours on I-10, and we had made it, through some of the craziest desert headwinds I’ve ever been in (I’m sure the bike-shaped sail on top of my little 4-cylinder car didn’t help). On the way we had made plans to stay with the Carusos, family friends from when we were little kids. We pulled into their place in south Phoenix (or it may have been Tempe) just before dinner, and frightened them with our grizzled appearances.
After showers, they recognized us, and we had a wonderful dinner with Jim, Marla, Amy, and Kaitlyn (Amy and Kaitlyn are Dav’s and my age), catching up on life since the last time we’d seen them (which was probably closer to 10 than 5 years ago).
Friday, June 18, 2004
The following day, Dav and I woke up late, and took a drive around Phoenix, seeing some of the places we used to visit whenever we’d come to Phoenix in the summers as kids. We drove around ASU, where my parents met and got married, and went to lunch at In ‘N Out (just because I’d forgot to take Dav to one in California). We tried to get in touch with some other people we knew, but on such short notice it didn’t work out.
That night we went along with the Carusos to their weekly family dinner, with relatives who lived nearby. It was a fun group, and cool to see so much family that had stayed in one place and made it a point to get together frequently. In fact, they’d all purchased some land and were planning on building houses together.
To close off the evening Dav and I went over to Amy and Kaitlyn’s apartment and watched Legally Blonde, and did some more catching up and talking about life with them. It’s awesome to have friends who, no matter how often or when you met them on the path of life, there still seems to be something of a common bond and a shared experience within which you can talk about just about anything.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
On Saturday, Dav and I drove up to Rimrock, AZ, where my aunt Cindy and uncle Jeff live. Jeff is a volunteer firefighter, among other things, and Cindy works at a nearby hotel. It was good to spend the day with them, since of all my close relatives we probably see them the least!
We imposed on the Carusos for one more night, and went with them to see a local league indoor soccer game, where guys from their church played some other team. It made me remember how much I missed playing soccer. And that’s really all there is to say about that day.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Dav and I slept in on Sunday while the Carusos went to church. We woke up and did some laundry, then packed for the remainder of the trip. Incidentally, this is when I used their computer to check e-mail and weblogs, and noticed that this weblog (along with the rest of what was on my two web servers) had been deleted. Threatening letters were sent to my hosting service, but to no avail. Also, when I was working on the computer, it died, and the contents of its hard drives were erased by a virus (which had been downloaded before I used it). All in all, not a good day for information technology as far as it related to me.
At 2pm, we thanked the Carusos for their hospitality, and started the drive to Texas. We planned on driving from Phoenix to Austin, straight through the night, and it was supposed to take 18-20 hours, depending on any number of variables. So we were off!
The drive through the Arizona and New Mexico desert was without incident and quite beautiful–the stretch of I-10 from a few hours east of LA into El Paso is one of my favorite pieces of highway in the country. When the evening hit, we stopped at a Love’s truckstop in New Mexico, where we got dinner and I lost one of my nalgene bottles. Then, David got behind the wheel for the first time of the trip. I had a fair bit of anxiety as Dav had never really driven stick before except once or twice, and I was giving him all sorts of verbal instruction pulling out of the truckstop. Thankfully, it was an easy, non-hilly move onto the highway, and we were again on our way.
We hit Texas around 9pm, and drove through El Paso, with the big, white, American Interstate lights above us and the softer, yellow-gold, haphazardly-placed lights of the Mexican city Juarez to our right, just across a border which was invisible in the night.
A few hours east of El Paso, we ran into an inspection station, where Dav experienced his first stop and go traffic with a standard vehicle. The only problem was, the car wasn’t going–he kept stalling it! So a huge space was opening up in front of us, and I was worried that the officials would notice something odd going on, get suspicious about our vehicle, and want to search it. We had so many boxes in the car, I didn’t want that kind of wasted time on our hands. So I gave Dav 3 tries and then told him to switch seats, even though I could tell he really wanted to do it on his own. Thankfully, nothing strange happened with the inspectors–they asked me if the car belonged to me, and that was it. Not a fruit inspection as usual, so I wonder what they were looking for.
So I was driving again after a few hours’ rest, through the dark of west Texas. There was a large storm up ahead which took up the whole eastern sky, and would periodically expose the stubby trees in a ghostly blur with beautiful lightning as the car sped past them. I’m somewhat paranoid when it comes to Texas storms, though, especially in the summer, since I’d experienced a fair number of tornadic or near-tornadic events; this meant the storm, beautiful though it was, made me unsettled. What’s worse, it seemed as though we were getting closer only slowly, which meant that it was probably moving in the same direction, which in turn meant that getting through the storm would take that much longer.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Luckily, I-10 took a more due-easterly turn, and so we seemed to be on a course which would circumvent the bulk of the storm. Still, for hours upon end, it stayed on the horizon, menacing and wild.
Eventually I began to get sleepy and the car needed gas, so we pulled off somewhere after Sonora, TX, where we refueled and I gave Dav another chance to drive. He did fine without the pressure of the inspection station, and I was soon fast asleep as he drove, listening to David Gray.
I woke up again before dawn, only a few hours outside of Austin. When we needed gas again, and when we left I-10 in favor of a more direct country road, I took charge of the car and took it all the way to our destination: my uncle David and aunt Sarah’s house in west Austin. I don’t remember exactly when we arrived; it was probably 7:30 or 8:00 am. Our aunt was ready for us, though, and had made up some beds so we went right to sleep.
Dav and I woke up a little after 12, and spent the afternoon hanging out with our little cousin Ryan, who is like 5. He likes video games, so Dav and I had no problem entertaining him and ourselves with whatever console my aunt and uncle had.
For dinner that night, the 5 of us went out to a supposedly classic restaurant near UT which I’ve forgotten the name of, but was known for its “down-home cookin”. There we met my other aunt Sarah, who lives a ways north of Austin. She gave us a surprise during conversation; she had just found out she was pregnant! So I have another cousin on the way. If all goes well, that will bring the total cousin count to 2.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Dav and I said our goodbyes to family on Tuesday morning, and started the 3-hour drive north to the Dallas area, where we were to stay for a few days. We used to live in Cedar Hill, TX, which is a suburb of Dallas. Cedar Hill is full of interesting landmarks like this one:
The water tower
We got in about midday to the Morrises’ house. The Morrises are family friends like the Carusos, and were some of our best friends in Texas. As it happened, David had been dating Ellen Morris since the previous October, due to a number of circumstances which there isn’t time to relate. But anyway, they had become serious in their relationship and Ellen was moving to Gainesville so she and David could relate to one another in a short-distance sort of way. We spent the next few days helping her pack and get ready, as she and David were going to drive her car to Orlando while I drove mine. Caravans!
I hung out with Nathan Pettijohn, my best friend growing up, that night. While I was waiting for him at Barnes and Nobles, I randomly ran into a few other friends from high school, which is odd, because I’ve never ran into anyone from high school in Cedar Hill since I moved. So Nathan, Claire, her friend, and I hung out, listened to music, and had beer at Bennigan’s until late in the evening.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
The next day, I indulged myself and allowed myself to visit CD Warehouse, which, in the Cedar Hill / Duncanville area, tends to have some of the best and newest indie-type music around. I picked up some cool stuff by Muse, Elliott Smith, the Doves, and Aimee Mann.
Importantly, David took Ellen’s parents out to dinner that night, and asked for her hand in marriage, while I stayed behind with Ellen and her cousin and her aunt and talked about what David was doing (for some reason there wasn’t much of a secret). Well, there it was: just a matter of time until my brother was (probably) engaged. Crazy.
That night I took a drive up Central Expwy to Cafe Brazil to meet a friend from Stanford, Joe-Joe Chen, who was living in Plano at the time. It was pretty crazy to see a Stanford friend in that environment, since Stanford and Texas have never mixed for me, since I’ve been living in Orlando as long as Stanford was a potential or actual part of my life. In fact, only Tyson Vozza, of all my Stanford friends, has ever visited me in Orlando. (That will change in a month, however).
Anyway, I got back late, which was very bad, because we were planning on leaving at 6am for the long, straight shot to Orlando, which was supposed to be around a 21-hour drive.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
On Thursday, I did the most driving I’ve ever done in one day in my entire life. Originally, Dav, Ellen, and I had made plans of rotating drivers and giving the off-driver a chance to sleep. However, the two lovebirds were obviously having such a good time hanging out by themselves in their own car, that I ended up driving my car the whole way by myself.
Ironically, I was the most tired at the beginning of the drive (probably due to only getting 5 and a half hours of sleep), through the gently rolling hills and forests of east Texas. We were in Louisiana before I knew it, though, and from there it was just more and more of the same.
Some bridge in some south-eastern state
The only problem was, it rained for roughly 95% of the trip. In fact, the only time I can remember seeing sunlight was when the above picture was taken. Not only did this slow us down, but the constant storms demanded a lot more mental control and energy to drive safely in. We finally passed through them just as night set in, after hitting the Florida panhandle.
Me rocking out in my car, getting close to (or possibly in) Florida
We were in Florida for at least as much time as we were out of it; the panhandle is surprisingly long. Apart from stops for food and gas, though, we made good time. Right about Tallahassee, I started feeling a bit drowsy, so I pounded some of those caffeine drink things and pretended they would help.
Friday, June 25, 2004
And that’s about all there is to tell; we stopped in Gainesville (home of the UF Gators) to drop off Ellen’s car, since David’s was in Orlando and they could drive that up the next day. So Ellen, David, and Hunter Trek (Ellen’s dog) slept soundly in my little car as I drove the last 2 hours home. We finally pulled in around 2 or 3 am, and my parents welcomed us into the townhouse that serves as their interim home, and is where I still live.
After a lot of sleep, I woke up and began to unpack, a chore that would not finish for about a month (and still can’t be said to be complete, I suppose). David and Ellen drove back up to Gainesville to settle into their apartments and start summer school. And I braced myself for the next adventure: starting work!
