Extra Poundage

Sometimes I come up with these ideas that in my head sound like the most phenomenally fun thing I've ever done, and then the actual implementation of that activity winds up being a bit...well not bad, but not really as fantastic as the imaginary experience. That's because in my mind everything runs smoothly, and I don't make idiot decisions. In real life I do.

Sarah left town to go on a business trip to NY. She took Winnie, but she left Thor behind...with me. I decided that it would be really great to take him hiking to Stewart Falls. It's short, and I figured he could hike a good portion on his own before I would have to heft him the rest of the way up in the backpack carrier.

The first part of the plan backfired when I failed to find the trail head. That's because I also failed to read the directions about how to find the trail head. I know they are not hard or complicated, but they are if you don't read them. As a result I wound up having to be directed around a dump truck by the same UDOT construction worker not once, twice, or even three times, but FOUR times before I finally discovered that I was miles from the trail. Neal came with us, and he pointed out that the guy was undoubtedly wondering what's wrong with me. I responded to Neal that I'll never see him again...or I was hoping we wouldn't be seeing him again for at least few hours anyway, and that if I chose to drive back and forth all day, he'd still get paid, so what does he care? Neal's right though, he had probably decided that I'm an idiot.

We finally got on the trail and Thor wanted to ride in the backpack. I strapped him on and we started off. He loved the backpack and wasn't really interested in doing any hiking. What seemed to be an easy trail became significantly more intense when I strapped 35+ pounds of dead weight to my back. That's dead weight that kept leaning back and forth trying to touch the trees and begged to be bounced up and down. Dead weight that drank so much water out of Neal's camelpack, that you'd have thought that he was intentionally trying to make himself heavier. While he was sucking down fluids at a record pace I was sweating them out at an equally impressive rate. When I told my inconsiderate little passenger that we were getting close to the waterfall he started jostling around back there and shouting "Hurry Jewy! HURRY!!!!" I think that if he'd been wearing spurs he would have used them.

He loved the falls, and crabbed at us quite a bit when it was time to go. He also got scared riding in the backpack where the trail was a little narrow on the way out and whined at me until I let him out. He hiked for a quarter of a mile or so at a turtle's pace until Neal and I lost patience and bribed him to get back in with some little strips of fruit leather and graham crackers. The way he was waving his arms around doing the motions to some of his little primary songs we were singing to him, I'm certain I finished the hike with little bits cracker and fruit clinging to my hair.

I passed the UDOT construction worker for the fifth time that day on the way home. Aside from that annoying incident, or rather incidents with the construction worker, this one wound up being pretty much just as fun as I had imagined.