Some hiking.

From The Daily Update (5/9/09)

Hello.

I finally made it all the way home this morning at around 11. I tried
to collect my life a little bit, but it has mostly just been a time
for napping.

On Thursday we decided to go for a hike. This was the first day since
I had been in NC that the sky had not rained on us relentlessly. We
walked about a mile of the flat trail in the woods before we came to
the major break with the sign post and the arrows and the choices to
make. Of course, there are usually two choices. The first is that
you can keep hiking, but make it a quick little hike over to some
thing somewhere and it not be that big of a deal. The other choice is
to climb the mountain. This is going to take some doing.

The way this works is like this:

Brooks: "These are our two choices. Either way is fine."

Rest of the group: (Silence and foot shuffling and rock kicking).

-At this point I believe that it is fair to mention that no one is
going to say one way or the other because it really does depend on
me. I'm twice the size of everyone else. I work twice as hard to
climb. So no one is going to say anything until I say something.

So I say: "Let's climb the mountain."

And climb the mountain we did. It was beautiful if not very wet and
muddy along the trail.

The total hike was about 8 miles. It took us 5 hours. The amazing
thing is to watch other people hike- those with the nimble ability to
never lose their breath. Take Scott Gillard. This guy was just ahead
of me at one point- and I promise you he looked like Fred Astaire on
the trail. It was more like dancing for him. He would just slide and
glide from one end of the trail to the other, picking sticks, doing
the charleston, spotting wildlife. I would be behind him in a heap of
sweat and mud and oxygen deprivation.

But it was great fun.

Afterwards we went over to someone's house whose name was "Tom" and he
cooked us an amazing meal. God bless that person and I am sorry that
I passed out on their couch for 45 minutes immediately afterward.