#2 - Take a Road Trip to Somewhere New

The road trip fully entailed a drive out to the Salton Sea detailed in the previous post about my camping trip, but the ride home was certainly more eventful than the trip there.

Our first stop on the way home was Bombay Beach, a once popular tourist destination in the 60's that was hit by hurricanes in back-to-back years.  Yes, hurricanes.  There are still folks who live there but there are also still the remains of washed-out homes and trailers from the 70's.  It's spooky.

Our second stop was Salvation Mountain.  Salvation Mountain is a strange place that an artist created with mounds of trash, hay bales, adobe mud, and paint.  It's visited by strange people.  It's surrounded by Slab City with is a bit of an off-the-grid living environment in the middle of the desert.  Chris MacCandless wrote about it in his diaries and it was featured in Jon Krakauer's book and later the movie Into the Wild.  The volunteer at Salvation Mountain told us we had just missed a rager of a "prom" the previous night, where men dressed in tuxedos or tuxedo t-shirts and women in ball gowns, some they come wearing, and some they select from the racks of donated dresses available.  He told us that it was cool though because they were having an end-of-the-season party the following weekend we were welcome to attend.  Thanks, homie.  It was super strange but I loved every minute of it.














Then we headed home.  I'm sunburned and happy.

The last stop was for gas and milkshakes in Pine Valley.  Delish.

#50 - Go Camping. For Real This Time.

Our campsite.

Remember that time I bitched about how often I'd had the "You've Never Been Camping?!" conversation?

Me too, and guess what?  I WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN.

I am so excited.

I am so excited never to have that conversation again that I'm having trouble focusing on just how fantastic my first camping experience was.


Since no one ever followed through with organizing an actual camping trip with me, I found another route to get myself into a sleeping bag on the ground in the middle of no where.  I asked Mark Ceder if I could be his teaching assistant for his Outdoor Leadership course at the University of San Diego.  He graciously accepted even though my outdoor experience did not include any camping or real outdoor overnight experience at all.

One component of the course is a class camping trip.  We debated a bit on where to go and landed on the Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert in California.

The Salton Sea is a weird place.  A WEIRD PLACE.

We left USD around 5pm on a Friday and drove to the desert in a van with a trailer full of kayaks.  We got some looks.  We stopped at El Centro for some In and Out and made it to our camp site around 10pm.

We set up our tents by the light of headlamps and had some s'mores around the fire.  Emily and I decided that the 4-person tent looked a little squishy for 4 actual people, so we set up our own and then had no idea how 4 people would fit in a tent that size.  Until we got up in the morning and realized that we had set up a 2-person tent that was half the size of what everyone else was sleeping in.

I don't have much to say about sleeping in a tent except that I really don't mind it it all... as long as I'm not 400 yards from train tracks of a line that runs regularly all night.

Mark, Scott, and Weston cooked us a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers and hash browns with apples that the 10 of us enjoyed all together around the picnic table.

Then we headed out on a hike of the Painted Canyon.  The rock was in a variety of colors but those browns, blacks, whites, and grays were the only colors in the Painted Canyon since it's the desert.  So that was weird for me.  But there was a bit of variety of terrain in that we entered in the canyon, climbed some ladders, headed through some slot canyons, found ourselves on a ridge, and then hiked down into a wash for lunch and then the trek out.  I really like hiking and it was fun to chat with some of the students I hadn't gotten to know as well.  Retroactively, I really liked that Mark kept vowing to jump into the Salton Sea when we got back.  A ranger had stopped by in the morning and announced how refreshing the water was.

After 4-5 hours on the trail, we stopped by the visitor's center for a short video about the weird place we were in.  Then we headed back to camp for some down time.  Mark convinced a couple students to join him in his swim, so I followed them to the shore with my camera.  (Because of my professional background, I don't really enjoy recreational swimming.  I definitely don't enjoy it in waters that have substantial warnings about eating the fish that come out of them.)

We quickly found a pile of decomposing fish.  Then we walked across what should have been sand but was really just crushed up fish vertebrae that are extremely uncomfortable to walk on and get into flip flops very easily.  Then, at the shore, we noticed how snotty the water looked and the film that seemed to lie across the edge of the sea.  It was disgusting.  We stood around and commented for awhile.  Then we headed back to the site.  I accidentally stepped in a marshy section of fish bones and got the nasty fish water on my feet, which then made the fish bones stick to it more.  Gross.

Everyone washed up and then we had a delightful burrito dinner, and, in true California style, that included avocado, cilantro, limes, and Tapatio.  Obviously.

Then we lit a fire, Mark made us apple cobbler.  We played Hot Seat.  I loved how open everyone was to sharing, even some difficult stories.

The next morning we got up for a sunrise paddle (kayak) on the sea.  However, once we were up, Mark informed us that it was way too windy so we should go back to sleep and we'd go for just a quick paddle from the Visitor's Center back to camp in a bit.

That was awesome.

We had bagels and fruit for breakfast.  Then we headed to the Visitor's Center.  We had a quick paddle school at the boat launch and then spent some time practicing in the marina, which it was pretty calm.  Then we headed out to the sea, which was not calm.  It went really well, except for every time someone got sprayed or splashed with sea water, there was a cry of disgust.  We got to camp in about 10 minutes and checked kayaking in the Salton Sea of our lists.


We packed up and headed out.  See #2 - Road Trip Somewhere New for the fantastic tales of the trip home.

#33 - Go Curling

I thought I'd click this one off during my 31 years living in the Midwest, but somehow it happened during my less than 2 years in Southern California... with a fellow Midwesterner Tara Edberg.  Wha...?

Either way, curling is ONLY THE MOST FUN I'VE EVER HAD.

That might be an exaggeration but only a slight one.

I don't have many words for this experience, so here's a quick history.

2010: I was quite obsessed with watching Olympic curling as were many of my friends.  In fact, I think I texted into work, more than once: "Hey, I stayed out too late watching curling at one of the late night bars* so I'll be in later."

*Let's be serious.  It was Bluelight.

2011: My boss Dave Merrill lives on a lake and is a ridiculous person, so he started making his own curling stones from concrete.  This took much longer than anticipated.  I got to throw a couple when he'd finished a few, but there were so many more pieces of the puzzle, like how a hack is actually extremely important and just pushing off teammate's feet is not an effective alternative.

Tara yelling nonsense at her sweepers.

2012: There was a bonspiel planned for the winter but the stupid weather did not cooperate.  In August, I moved to San Diego.

2013: No progress.

Sweepin like a mofo.

2014: Due to this stupid thing called "academic rigor," I was unable to watch curling in the Olympics but... what?  Tara wants to curl too?  And she found a curling club in San Diego?  Sold.  Spots purchased.  (Special thanks to Adam Borson for casually mentioning that it was at 10:30PM not a.m.)  I was wearing red, white, and blue, but Tara said she was sticking with grey and black, so I changed, obviously, so I could surprise her with my team spirit and we could go on to crush the competition united.  We ended up with a fun group of dudes who were equally competitive.  We did some drills.  Fun.  Then we played 4 ends.  Super fun but CRAZY hard.  But we dominated.  Obviously.

Thank you to the San Diego Curling Club!

#94 - Go to Wineries in Temecula.

I have been too busy to actively pursue things from the list, but they just keep coming to me anyways!

#94 came to me by way of facebook invite by way of birthday by way of Emma Borgeson by way of Sweden :)  I really didn't have to do anything except show up.



15-20 of us drove up to Temecula (about an hour away) to have lunch for Emma's birthday.

I didn't expect it to be like Napa but more like Napa than it is.  It was also kinda weird because the vineyard we went to Callaway was clearly not in growing season so it was just rows and rows of leafless grape vines in dirt.  The lack of color was a little weird.

We had a lovely lunch though.  I only ordered the ceviche but my neighbors (a.k.a. new friends) shared potatoes, bread, calamari, and even a bit of fantastic steak.  We shared bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel.

It was just a lovely afternoon.  I hope to go back and do some winery hopping but this was a lovely introduction.













(I also enjoyed catching up with Emma on the ride home!)

UPDATE:  Ma & Pa Krone and I took a day trip to wine crawl in Temecula in November, so much requested bonus points for them!

#52 - Golf 18 Holes

What is all this stuff?

You: "How have you never been golfing?"
Me: "I know, right?!"
You: "No, I mean, how have you never been golfing?"
Me: "Yeah, I know.  It's about as weird as how I've never been camping?"
You: "Wait, you've never been camping?!"
Me: "No."
You: "No, I mean, YOU'VE never been CAMPING?!"
Me: "No, and no, you're not -"
You: "OMG!  We are totally going camping this summer."
Me: "No, we're not, see -"
You: "Yes, we totally are.  You are going to love.  Seriously."
Me: "Yeah, totally.  I would totally probably love it, but we're not going to go."
You: "Why not?"
Me: "Because I've had this same conversation with like 22 other people, and someone has yet to take me camping.  The same thing happens when I tell someone that going on a blind date is on my list."
You: "I would love to set you up on a blind date!"
Me: "Sure, maybe you would, but you won't, so can we stop talking about it?"

Whew.

Geez, I should probably be nicer to my friends.  Especially since I have had this conversation SO MANY TIMES.  So many times that I now have a script.  In case you are ever about to say these things to me, my answers are above.  And yes, I will totally go camping with you, and yes, you can set me up on a blind date, but I don't want to talk about it anymore because it never happens and I'm tired of having that same conversation over and over where I pretend to believe you.

Wow.  Where is all of this coming from?  I had a fantastic Saturday afternoon golfing with Tara Edberg and Marianne Woldrop last week and here I am complaining about a repetitive conversation.

Anyways.

I have been to the driving range multiple times.  I have played part of a par 3 course.  I have played the 2 holes at camp over and over.  I have played the holes Dave dug into the intramural fields at NEIU.  We even once played in the snow with cones.

But FINALLY I got the chance to play a full 18... even if it still were a par 3.

Tara & Marianne were talking about golfing one evening over wine after class.  I overheard and busted in on their conversation.  They very warmly invited me to join them for a round of golf a couple weekends later.

Marianne, our expert, picked the course.  She beat us there and bought us a few buckets of balls to warm up at the driving range.  I tried to remember everything the camp golf coach and Edmund Cruz taught me over the years, and I will say, my swing is much better than it used to be.  I only scrape the top of the ball instead of hitting it 50% of the time or so now.

After a wee bit of warm up, we headed to the course.

Tara made me carry her stuff EVERYWHERE.

Now, the last time I attempted to play a course -- a 9-hole, par 3 in Ann Arbor -- I hated it.  I went with my then best friend and another friend.  They were both very good.  They were both very good naturally.  I was not.  But, my sports history and PE major training taught me that to do better at something, you just try harder.  You focus your adrenaline and play harder.  That....... doesn't really work in golf.  I sucked more.  Mostly that came in the form of just blatantly missing the ball altogether.
I hated it.  I hated it even more because my friends couldn't help me.  The game just made sense to them.  They knew how to adjust and when.  But because it was so natural to them, they had trouble explaining it to me.

That horse was SO rude.

This time, however, from the very start, I had 2 very supportive and knowledgeable coursemates.  (I don't know what to call them.  I'd say we were a threesome but then we end up having the kind of conversation we did much later in the night when accompanied by some fantastic wine.)  They both gently gave me bits of helpful information from the driving range until the end of the course.  I learned a bit of course etiquette, technical course stuff, playing etiquette, and even some skills :)

My best hole.

The other great part was that we just walked and chatted for a couple hours in the middle of a beautiful afternoon.  (Yes, in February.  We have beautiful afternoons in February in San Diego.  No need to get fussy and tell me to stop bragging.  I live in a beautiful place and I like reminding myself how beautiful it is.  If you hate it so much, you can move too :))

Anyways, I wasn't as terrible as I feared.  I even hit par a couple times.  That's a major improvement.









Thank you, mucho, to Marianne for taking us, being full of wonderful and also gentle teachings, and for letting me use those stellar clubs of yours, especially that 4 :)  Thank you to Tara for being my driving buddy, keeping me entertained on the course, and for a super entertaining ride home.  Let's do that again soon!

#47 - Don't Drink for at Least 14 Days

I wasn't able to conquer this one last year due to my love of whiskey and wine as well as my susceptibility to even the most minor of peer pressure to grab a glass of wine after class or a rough day at work.

This year, however, I spent 10 days in Sri Lanka, where the majority of the population is Buddhist and believes in being free from intoxication... though many exempt caffeine as tea is plentiful thanks to the British.  There are still bars and stores that sell beer, wine, and liquor, but our group stayed completely sober for the duration of the trip, so just tacking on a few days at the end was no problem!

#95 - Summit a New Mountain

Climbing Sigiriya Rock in Sri Lanka was not quite what I had in mind when I added this list item.  I was imagining an actual mountain, going along a trail, even if it were just a short, couple-hour hike.  However, once we reached the top of Sigiriya Rock, I knew it exceeded all of my expectations for a fantastic climb.

12 of us climbed 1202 stairs.  First we went up the front stairs where we could see a meditation cave, 2 species of monkeys, and several iguanas.  We could see the remains of the moats, walls, gardens, and pools of the king who made this natural fortress his home.  Then we went up some narrow passageways along the face of the rock to see some paintings 1500 years old.  We then reached a spectacular landing where we snapped some photos before going through the Lion's Throat.  Two paws of the original lion remain, flanking the stairway to the top.  There used to be a lion's head, so climbers would literally go into the lion's throat.  Many more steps later, we made it to the top, which is covered with remains of the king's palace.  The views were incredible.

Sadly due to injury and illness, Cheryl and Neda could not come with us to the top physically but Karen called them to the top during one of my favorite moments of the trip.

I really loved this stop on our trip.