You would think that camping would be a relaxing exercise, but after getting home, unpacking everything, rolling up the tent, and cleaning things up, I’m beat.
But hey, I still had a great time in the desert, even if both my car and my brother-in-law’s car batteries died. Luckily, a desert rat named Laura kindly drove us to the nearest town where we could get cell phone service and call AAA.
If you’re reading this, Laura, thanks again for saving our bacon. We can’t thank you enough for your kindness!
This weekend I learned a very valuable lesson: I am not immune to cactus.
I was mountain biking in Anza Borrego when I felt something hard slap into the the flesh of my right shin. The pain was so sudden and shocking that it took a couple of seconds for my brain to catch up with what had just happened, and when it did a second even more intense wave of pain came rushing over me.
Grinding to a halt I looked down and saw a large piece of Buckhorn Cholla cactus had embedded itself into my flesh.
And here’s a curious fact that I was previously unaware of. It appears that the needles of this evil plant curl a bit when they puncture flesh, making it just that more painful and difficult to remove. After ten minutes of hunting and pulling I managed to remove the majority of the infiltrating spikes, but continued to find broken remnants buried in my shin as the evening progressed.
Luckily no other misfortune befell me for the rest of the trip. And admittedly we weren’t quite “roughing it” in the great outdoors where we were able to drive our vehicles right up to our campsite:
And after an evening of steaks and beer I find myself back amongst the rigors of the working week. I’m sunburnt, sleep deprived and ill-prepared for returning back to work, but what can you do? At least with Easter right around the corner this week will be truncated a bit and I’ll have three days to catch up on my sleep…
Oh, and if you ever find yourself in San Diego, please give me a heads up. I’d be more than happy to take you camping to this spot! We’ll share a few beers and filet mignon. Nothing but the best for my blogging friends…
I’m headed off to the desert for a couple of days to do some primitive camping, star gazing and reading up at Anza Borrego. I feel that it’s about time that I recharged the batteries a bit and contemplate my future, hopefully with the assistance of a beer of two 
And so, if the world should end between now and next week please consider me uninformed and fill me in on the details when I get back on Monday. I’d hate to come back to a zombie apocalypse and nobody told me.
Until then, see you next week!
The process for obtaining a permit to hike Mt. Whitney is a bit convoluted, and relies on punctual form submission, proper request format, pre-payment, and pure dumb luck to come out a winner. The US Forest Service limits the amount of people allowed on the mountain each day, and because the demand for permits is extremely high a lottery system was introduced to be as fair as possible to all applicants. The lottery drawing begins on February 17th, with the winners and losers notified via mail in April.
As luck would have it, this past Friday I received an envelope in the mail containing one of these:
Awww Yeah! I actually won a spot on the mountain. Looks like my training won’t be in vain. I’ll see you up at 14,500ft in September! The plan is to run up and down Mt. Whitney Trail (22 miles) in under 8 hours. As you can see I have an extra spot open on my reservation. Want to come along?
UPDATE 9/9/09: I’ve successfully completed my Mt. Whitney run. See this post for details and photos!
There’s a semi-secret primitive camping site that isn’t well known in Anza Borrego and those that use it are typically well behaved seasoned campers out to enjoy a relaxing time under a pristine evening sky. Last night we caught a break and had the entire campgrounds to ourselves. Luckily for us not everybody had MLK day off. With no fear of bothering anyone (we’re very considerate towards our fellow campers) we turned up the music, set up our tents, and fired up the grill. Once we were settled in I took some time to venture away from camp to grab myself a refreshing bottled water shower on a large flat rock overlooking the encroaching sunset. If you ever go camping I highly suggest you follow suit. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.
Cleaned and refreshed, I wandered back into camp and found a few empty beer bottles already littering the camp site, and Ron sprawled out on the ground peering through the telescope of his powerful spring powered air rifle loaded with pellets taking aim at our sole plastic bottle of ketchup, which I thought we were going to use for dinner. I swear I heard him softly mutter something about “death before dishonor” while slowly squeezing the trigger and fatally gutting the tasty condiment.
Stocked up with a cache of Monster I was ready to hit the road
It was when our driver began to throw back a few road beers that I knew this trip might at any moment go completely sideways. There was no turning back now...
My first order of business was to set up my tent...
Well armed, Ron takes aim at our only roll of toilet paper
The sun slowly sets behind our camp
When it was time to start the fire, it quickly became obvious that Paul was never a Boy Scout.
Camp fire and wine bottles
Two of the wine bottles Ron managed to knock back. After downing them he claimed to still be thirsty. Animal!
