Floating on

Day 77

At the local YMCA in Ketchum they have a climbing wall. It was being completely overrun by very young children and a few girls who were trying to get the attention of the resident climbing expert. And then I showed up and dominated everyone. No one else was man enough (not even the young teenage girls) to tackle the bouldering cave, but to be honest even I was a little skeptical since they decided to rate the routes using the damn skiing symbols like blue square, green circle, yellow pot of gold, and red balloon. Though since I love Lucky Charms, it was pretty easy to devour everything they threw at me. Well, the double black diamonds were a little too hard. Stacey even tried to do some climbing, and she was pretty good except for that she was only able to do two routes before her arm muscles turned to jello. She remained sore two days later.

Billy and Stacey went out on a date to a sushi restaurant, which left me to partake in may favorite pastime: eat a humungous burrito. When they returned we watched “Burn After Reading,” which I’ve already seen, but it was still pretty funny. Those Coen brothers are mostly amazing.

Day 78

I started walking to Avis to rent a car to pick up my friend Mike at the airport in Boise, thinking that if I biked then when Mike and I drop off the car, I’d bike back to Stacey’s house and leave Mike to trek back alone. But then I realized that it would take me a very long time to walk there, and I could always take the car back by myself. So I turned around to get my bike. As soon as I got back to Stacey’s I heard a thunder clap and it started to pour. Huge drops. Part of me thinks that I’m a mad genius that can see things in the future, like temperamental weather, and maybe grocery store sales, and part of me thinks that I was just kind of dumb to begin with and my first plan was terrible.

It stopped raining when I had to leave on my bike and I thanked the sky lords that let me arrive at the car rental safe and dry. And when I entered the airport to go to the Avis counter, I entered a Seinfeld episode. I go to the counter, say that I have a reservation for a car, and they tell me that they don’t have a car for me. I so badly wanted to say “you know how to take a reservation, you just don’t know how to hold a reservation. And that’s really the most important feature of a reservation - the holding.” Instead I waited patiently for 45 minutes for them to figure out what to do. They eventually gave away another woman’s car who wasn’t due to show for another hour, but they charged me more because the car was larger than the “small car” that I had reserved. I told them that I didn’t ask for this size car, so I didn’t want to pay the extra cash. It went back and forth but I eventually gave up because I needed to get to the airport.

The drive was uneventful, and picking up Mike was a painless process, but we had to hurry back because we were meeting Stacey and Billey at South Valley Pizza for the best pizza in the area. The place closes at 9 and we had about 2 hours to make it there in time. We hauled ass and were treated to some delicious pizza. One of the pizzas had the following: onions, olives, cilantro, pineapple, jalapenos, garlic, with half red and half barbeque sauce. So very good.

We topped off the night with some “Religulous,” which Stacey was a little too tired to fully partake in, but Mike and I enjoyed revisiting. It’s a great movie to prompt some discussion about life, death, certainty, uncertainty, and the stupidity of certain senators and “scientists.”

Day 79

This was a day of adventure, floats, and confusion. The day started off with two consecutive floats down the river, but since we didn’t have a large truck for the tubes Mike and I had to hold them out the window of Stacey’s car while she drove. People stared at us and a few people even got the hell out of the way, thinking perhaps they’d get thwacked by the rubber donut. The floats were great, but since we went earlier in the day, it was a bit colder than it was the last time we floated down the river, resulting in some chilly splashes.

That afternoon involved a float of the root beer variety, consumed by Mike and me at the farmers’ market while we listed to Stacey and Mia play music. It was a nice hot afternoon spent sipping homemade root beer in the shade of a tree while live music sang out in the background.

I gave Mike a bike tour of the area, riding down along the river and then back up along the hillside. I think I’ve now gone on that loop a dozen times, but I still enjoy it. In fact, these last two weeks mark the most biking I’ve done since I lived in Davis without a car. It’s been a great change of pace, and biking to the grocery store and the river gives you a great sense of belonging in a place.

Mike and I finished off the day with a screening of the movie “Inception,” which was equal parts awesome and confusion. The awesome came from a really cool concept with some sweet action sequences, and the confusion came from literally every other aspect. So much went unexplained, leaving Mike and me discussing the possibilities for roughly one hour after the movie ended. In fact, it was so intriguing that we opted out of dinner in favor of considering the intricacies of hijacking someone else’s dreams. I contemplated calling my brother to have him explain the movie, but I chose not to in favor of compiling a list of questions to send him in an email.

Day 80

In the blasting heat of the day Mike, Stacey, and I went for a long hike through the most beautiful section of Idaho that I’ve seen to date. Rolling green and brown hills with smatterings of trees and outcroppings of rock surrounded us while we got our legs covered in a combination of dust and sweat. And because we were so hot and sweaty by the end of the hike we decided that it would be a great cool-down to float down the river. So we held the rubber donuts out the car window again and headed to the river. Something happened, though, by the time we got the river: the clouds had rolled in. As we hiked down to the water’s edge it was actually quite cold. And, of course, the river’s temperature was the same as always - butt ass cold. We “manned up” and took the plunge anyway. Our reward? We enjoyed the last half of the trip accompanied by a lightning storm. We sort of feared for our lives, but we made it out of the water just as the storm got close and the rain started pouring. I really can’t tell if we were lucky or unlucky.

I cooked dinner for Mike, Stacey, and Stacey’s friend Amanda, with whom she has a gig next week and who was visiting to do a rehearsal. We had a delicious stir fry with quinoa (a van trip staple), with a nice salad, and what Billy brought for dessert, which was fruit and cream. It’s like we were rewarded for our bravery in the face of sure destruction from bolts of lightning with some yummy food.