nature and such

I visited nature yesterday intending on finding civilization and came close to dying.

Yesterday was an especially sweet Thursday.

Console.Write("\n"); //That's just a little C# for you.

Thursday started an hour later with my first class being canceled, continued through a programming test that was surprisingly not as hard as I had thought. My next class was canceled, so adventure began.

I had a photography assignment in emulating some ridiculous Mormon photographer that I wrote a report on (only because it was the first book I saw on a single photographer in the library). Since the dude took a lot of photographs of railroads and such, I decided to try my luck with our local rail. I remembered there being a really cool view of the train at night from Stephanies' neighborhood, so I headed up there. Daytime did not seem quite as picturesque, so I went above the rails.

Railroads on the side of a hill are crazy looking, so I tried to get a better perspective from farther up the hill. Stopping to take pictures at different tree breaks, enabled by a newly paved private-looking road. Before I knew it, I could see miles beyond Flagstaff and had lost sight of the railroad. But before me stood a dead tree and it said, "climb me." So I did.

There was no reason for this climbing of the tree and I knew for sure that it wasn't going to be easy and surely not safe. I pulled my body up towards the sky as the tree swayed with the wind and groaned against my limbs attempts to scale its weathered appendages. Myself upon the largest eastward reaching branch, the fear of ascent quickly transformed into the fear of a rapid descent, but as I loosened my grip so did my fear loosen its grip upon me.

In this place the presence of God is undeniable. Looking at the sky, the trees, the curvature of the Earth and my presence becomes smaller with every passing moment. I do not know how long I sat fifteen feet above the mountain top, but I know for sure that I spent a day with God, in the silence, sunlight and wind.



Today, although lacking the profundity of yesterday, was, well, a day of bike. I spent most of the day doing productive (alright, semi-productive) stuff before I could resist my urge to ride no longer. I went out as nightfall came close and rode out west on 66 until my bottom bracket started sounding weird. I came back to the bottom Highland Village parking lot to do my usual trackstand cool downs. I was riding pretty hard in shorts (it's getting colder, you know) and my legs were pretty tired. For some reason I decided to try a skid stop even though I've never had that kind of faith in my ability or my bike's ability, and guess what? I did it. The first time I actually did a couple hops, but then I was doing skids like a SF MASH-er (google it). Awesome.