Escapes

I've finally figured out how to relax. I used to think it was homework, or some incredibly sexy paragraph-long calculus problem--but those aren't relaxing. They only occupy me, and I've been tricked into thinking that that was the same as relaxing. I've discovered otherwise, thanks to all of the people I went camping with, and Jen.

On the camping trip, I discovered what I'm gonna want for a vacation from work--and by vacation, I don't mean lounging around the house, playing games and doing yardwork. Those aren't my true methods of relaxing--they're occupation.

The camping group went down to Beverly Beach, and it was the first ocean beach I had been on to my recollection. I had forgotten completely about my trip to California in '94, and in fact still can't recall anything involving beaches. The only thing I can remember is being really really pissed off that my mom held me over the edge of a cliff for a "Better view of the rocks below." Well, maybe not so much pissed off as mortally terrified that she held hundred-pound, acrophobic ME over the edge of a FREAKING HIGH CLIFF overlooking SOME DAMN SHARP ROCKS.

Ahem.

Luckily, I had a clean-slate approach to the Beverly Beach shoreline. I had no idea of what to do with the beach--so I followed all of the 0 ideas I had available. I walked down to the water, barefoot, where I discovered that the water that day was meant for nobody less than a rainstorm surfer. I couldn't even walk into the water up to my calves, it was so cold. I was due for a cramp of terrible tightness after three seconds in that water, so I hobbled back to shore and ran for a bit, high-stepping.

Until I nearly stomped on an oyster shell. Oy, that would've stung like no other biznitch. I paid quite a bit more attention to the ground after that, when I found a stone that just begged to be skipped. It was about as long as my middle finger, two inches at the thickest point, and smooth as a baby's butt.

I let my poor toes and calf muscles brave the frickin' freezing ocean water once more, and chucked the stone. I don't remember how many skips I got on that first throw, but I was quite encouraged by it--not to the point of glee and fanatic rock-chucking, but encouraged enough to lightly comb the beach for skipping stones.

I have found no activity that is less efficient, yet non-energy (read: electricity)-consuming. I have also found no activity where I so willfully toss away what is sometimes perfection, like that first stone of the day. Walking on the beach, searching for disposable perfection; that is how I truly find relaxation. Now, is it occupation? No, for there is no ultimate goal to accomplish, such as the obvious routes with calculus and homework (note how I keep the two distinct?). There is a goal with the games too, since I play RPGs with usually-defined endpoints. And lounging around the house actually just unnerves me, since I know I could be doing something else. Come to think about it, I don't lounge. As for skipping stones, there is no something else to do: I'm already at the beach, which implies Vacation Mode is ON.

I have six friends to thank for helping me utterly relax at the beach. I have Jen to thank for my more accessible means of relaxation.

I've already given a somewhat spiel on driving to the one 4-H dance class I helped teach. I drove a little under two hundred miles that day, going to and from the 4-H campgrounds twice.

Today, Jen finally took me up on an offer to provide transportation to an Olympia Tuesday Night Swing Dance. This involved driving out to her house to pick her up, and dropping her off by/around midnight. Sounds simple, no?

So, who knows where Montesano, WA is? I'll give you a hint--you know Shelton? Yeah, keep going. For another thirty minutes. Then take a long, wavy road (horizontal wavy, vertical wavy, and in one place, both at the same time) for about eight miles, and one unpaved path later, there's Jen's house. Total trip: 55 miles, 60 minutes.

Today, I drove 220 miles. I acknowledge that driving must be highly mentally occupying to be safe, and I devoted a good deal of mental power to the task. However, thanks to Jen's various exotic and far-off locations, I've discovered the relaxing side of driving: the music. I have a 700MB CD-RW filled with an evolving selection of mp3s. I'm so glad that driving, menial a task as it may be by nature, offers me time to get familiar with those seven hundred megabytes of tunes.

However, I'm sure that with all of my "musical patronage," I'm making some anti-Big-Oil-Corporation hippy, and other assorted "clean the environment" hippies, roll over in their graves. Meh.

Homage to Lewis Black

If I only had a potato, I would've made it to my viola lesson.

Last night, I got home about 0130, from a fun night of dancing and a dinner at Sherry's with Nick and Mirali. I knew that I had a viola lesson scheduled for 1000 the next morning, but I wasn't worried about it at all. I wrote a note that I believed would guarantee an early wake-up call:

"Eggs & Hash? --Alex & Damian"

And I left it on the table for my dad to read. Normally, that would mean he would wake me up at about 0630, I would make the hash browns, and he would do the cooking. Breakfast, shower, he goes, and I'm left wide awake (Damian usually trots back to bed after a half-hour).

So, at 1015, the phone in my house rings. My mom picks it up, and converses for a while. She walks into my room, and shakes me awake. Of course, I have an "Oh, shit" manner about me, and I walk into the family room, wondering what went wrong with good ol' family breakfast. On the note, below my request, my dad left a few bulleted items:

*Slept in
*No potato
*Not even toast

A few minutes later, I'm on the phone. "Hello?" "Hi, Anne?" "Yes?" "Oops." I'm quite grateful that she let me have my lesson an hour later. I was so grateful, I gave her a quick recital:

"If I only had a potato, I would've made it to my viola lesson."

Silence and an emptying-eyed look from Anne.

"I'll repeat that. Because that's the sort of thing that when you hear it, your brain comes to a screeching halt. Your left hemisphere goes to your right hemisphere, and says, 'It's dark in here...'

"'...And we may die.'"

Yarr, where's me patch?

Methinks there's something wrong with my eyes. I'm not talking about anything that a pair of bifocals (or infinifocals) can fix, either; this may be something in my brain.

During The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, in the Battle of Helm's Deep, my eyes didn't see the right colors on the screen. The scene is mostly blue, thanks to nocturnal lighting, and there's plenty of steel flashing about. I started to see the steel as purple--that sorta purple that stays in your field of vision after someone with a camera captures your wide-eyed expression.

The first time I went to see Pirates of the Carribean (two Wednesdays ago), I got the same purple flashing, during some moonlit fight scenes. I was sitting far enough forward in the theatre that I had to move my head slightly to capture both extreme sides of the screen, and I suspect that is what is causing my violet-shifting color vision.

My suspicion comes from the last time I saw Pirates, yesterday (the 21st). I sat in probably the third row from the back, and didn't see any out-of-place violet during the film.

I wonder if this relates to one sitting too close to the TV/comp. moniter.

Left on One

Since Winter Quarter at SPSCC, I've been a member of two musical demographs: The viola has been my main instrument since the fourth grade, and that Winter I added my voice in a choral group. So, up until two weeks ago, I was a violist and a low-bass singer.

At the end of the school year, Mr. Pierson (OHS band director) passed out Lakefair All-City Marching Band signup forms. Aaron told me that I should sign up; however, I was a bit befuddled to think about how I would march with my viola. The only solution I could come up with was a pickup on the bridge, an amp for my belt buckle, and two speakers either on my hips or as shoulder pads.

Aaron came up with a much easier solution that he gave me once for a pep band game. See, one Friday night in Winter, the pep band had Cardboard Armor Night, and well, I just couldn't pass over an opportunity to play with cardboard and duct tape. So, Aaron suggested I play the bass drum for a night. Clad in cardboard, I went to that game with mallet in hand, and straight 4/4 beat in rhythm.

Two weeks ago, I got a bass drum again, only this time I didn't have the luxury of sitting down while playing it.

I was the only bass drummer the band had for a good while. Apparently, on Wednesday nights, one of the other percussionists (or a mystery drummer) would appear and take my place as I was off in Tacoma at a Fast Lindy Hop class. 'Twas a good thing, too--my deltoids needed a break in the middle of the week to continue functioning.

For my first week in the percussion section, my body was developing pain resistance. My index finger had to resist blisters from holding the sticks incorrectly, and my lower back had to adjust to the new weight addition that, theoretically, simulated pregnancy at breast-level. The worst part was the aluminum harness that I wore, though.

For the first week, I wore a harness that didn't have padding on one of the sides. The groin piece and right shoulder were fully padded, but on the left I had a solid piece of metal resting on my deltoid. It's not like having the padding was much better; I still had to support the weight of a size-2 bass drum pretty much with my deltoids.

Thus came my first bodily objection to drumming: After the second rehearsal, I couldn't raise my arms straight out to the sides, and my deltoids ached on anyway. I didn't go dancing that Tuesday. The next morning, my shoulders were fine.

I didn't learn how to bang the drum heads properly until the second week of rehearsal, when I could chat with the percussion coach again. He showed me a few pointers on marching and drum beating, but I didn't take those to heart until Thursday.

That Tuesday, I taught a dance class with Jen out at her 4-H camp, so I used my left hand for a good hour. I went to the band rehearsal that night, using my left hand again. And I went dancing after rehearsal, where my left hand does a lot of work pulling in partners for the Lindy Hop.

Wednesday morning, my body objected once again: My left wrist wouldn't rotate my pinky towards my stomach. And I had a Fast Lindy class that night. I was quite lucky to recover by the time the class started.

All parts of my body recovered by Friday's and Saturday's marches, though. Friday's semi-traditional "Lakefair Mini-Parade of Traffic Disruption," aka "Let's March Through Some Banks Day," introduced me to the wonderful world of marching in formation. I got yelled at plenty of times by fellow percussionists, as we were the very last row and I had a hard time remembering to stay in a straight line. I suspect the yelling wasn't out of peevishness, but just because our instruments are so damned loud--I had to yell a few times Saturday to get the attention of someone on the end of the line, and I was in the middle of five.

Oh, man, was Saturday's march hot. I mean, it wasn't boiling or anything, but it was hot enough to make my painter's pants fairly uncomfortable--or even more unpleasant than that. I'm glad the Lakefair Parade uniform was all white--however, that did have its downfalls, as Cassie should blog about. (Reminder note: Lunch.)

The parade was painless, though, both times through. The hardest part was remembering that my left foot goes down on 1 & 3; experienced marchers have the muscle memory for that. I should have the muscle memory for that too, since most lead parts for dances start with the left foot; but I still fumbled my way into different half-steps to get my feet back on track. Of course, could anybody notice? No, the 40-60 people in all-blazing white probably had a good deal of the crowd averting their eyes somewhat.

The non-musical high point of the parade: I got to see Jen, and three of her siblings, as we finished the first parade run-through. While chatting with her at the bus, The Weiist One appeared out of thin air...on a fat bike tire. I think. Well, he was biking, anyway; I got to chat with friends with my head stickin' out of a bus window. I was quite relieved, since I had no clue where my band friends were, or even the rest of my section, for that matter.

I finished the Lakefair Parade event with a fifteen minute "Celebratory" walk over to the Farmer's Market from close to Plum Street. Normally, I would've found the walk relaxing, but considering I had a who-knew-how-big blister on my foot from marching in brand spankin' new $12 shoes, and I had marched twice in a cloudless day...

Ah well. The walk didn't hurt, and I ended up dancing at the Farmer's Market anyway. On concrete. In $12 un-sueded shoes.

Last bodily complaints from Lakefair-related activites:
*One butt-ugly blister on my right foot. The blister came form marching, but I'd be willing to bet that the butt-ugly came from dancing.
*My first sunburn. Ever. Thankfully, this won't leave a lasting impression, as it's fairly localized.

Camping: Beans

In the Harry Potter universe, there is an equivalent to Jelly Bellies. The Potter beans, named for Ertie Blatt or somesuch, are shaped eerily like the real-word Jelly Bellies. How do I know what they're shaped like? I bought a pack in a Safeway down in Newport.

I knew a little about the beans from the Potter books and movies (1 & 2). I remembered a few of their exotic flavors, like earwax and dirt. I didn't find an earwax in my box, but I did sample a dirt. Here's how authentic that particular bean was:

When I was in the third grade, I rode my Schwinn stunt-like bike onto the top of the big hill in LBA park. On one side of this hill, there is a dirt path for hiking and such. The incline is about forty degrees in places, keeping a steady thirty otherwise. I rode my bike down this hill, because I frankly had nothing better to do at 10 mph than I would at 30. Well, as fate would have it, I lost control of the bike once the ground levelled out--or, I should say, I could keep the bike going straight, but not turn it. 'Twas ill-fated for me, since I had about a whole fifteen feet between the beginning of level ground and a row of five-foot tall baby Douglas Firs. I ended up knocking one of the trees right over; it was me, not my bike. I sneezed brown even after two showers.

I bit into that Dirt bean, and I tasted those Douglas Firs. Or rather, I tasted the dirt and beauty bark that surrounded the Firs. The memory was vivid, and the crunchy palette of flavor in that Dirt bean brought back the memory of earthen boogers.

The authenticity astounded me! I had to have some fun with the beans. My goal was to have a late-night campfire game, where I would pass out a random jelly bean (after inspecting it's color patern for flavor first), and snap a picture of the person who ate it. Well, Jim and Mirali were there, and they didn't take a shining to my idea too quickly.

But I wouldn't leave without a picture of faces as they chomped down on the beans. Three pictures were taken in total, though there were four beans (My camera failed somehow on my Dirt bean). Ali ate the last bean, but on her own terms; she ate the Spinach-flavored bean, since she actually liked (or didn't mind) spinach. However, the authenticity was not as good as Dirt. (The picture's fuzzy because she also ate the bean in her tent, leaving the window open so Jim and I could see her face.) (For those who don't know, Ali is on the left. Mir[anda] is on the right, laughing at her taste buds' pain, just as all of our other halves should.)

I was the proud volunteer for the two other unattempted flavors. I looked forward to the pepper; Katie had told me that pepper was a spicy li'l bean. I chomped down, and became a Believer in a few seconds. You know those pepper balls that go into grinders to make powdered pepper? The beans have a similar spice-density as one of those balls-with the added kick of about six times the volume. 'Twas enough to give me shivers.

Of course, the piece de beaucoup de resistance was the infamous Vomit bean. Well, let me say this: The bean assumes you had a pepperoni pizza before getting "sick." The hurl placebo that is the Vomit Bean doesn't taste bad at all--in fact, kinda fruity--for the first few seconds. But then, the real flavor hits ya: I had to run to the bushes to spit the sucker out. And why did I make a point of pepperoni pizza? That's what you taste afterwards.

We had not a single mint on the campground; but, post-pseudo-Vomitus, the toothpaste started to look awfully tasty...

Camping: Friday Night's Fire

I just got home from a weekend of camping at Beverly Beach. I've decided to write about as much of it as possible, hopefully without boring people; however, I'm staggering the entries, since I know I'll have an entry surpassing my 4th of July in length otherwise.

Friday night, our first night of camping, we had started a fire before dark settled. We burned a bit of the wood that I brought along, though some of it had molded in my backyard mysteriously after seven years or so of sitting there uncovered. The fire still lasted long after dark, but it had pretty much died out about midnight. It wasn't at glowing red embers yet, but the last log had almost lost all of its non-moldy parts to fire production.

Someone threw some perspective into the scene. "You know, I'll bet some guy's gonna walk by and see us teenagers huddled around this fire, and think 'Heh, stupid teenagers and their pathetic fire.'"

After a few minutes, the fire had died down even more, and none of the seven of us around the campfire could see each other. We lifted a Citronella candle that we had lit a few feet away from the firepit onto a grill on the pit that was safely away from the campfire's remains. The candle had enough light to illuminate all of our faces, and was seated in a fairly well-reflecting pail.

On with the context: "Heh, now some guy's gonna walk by us and think 'Heh, those dumb teenagers can't even light a fire right. Look! They're huddled around a candle in a bucket."

The candle outlasted the fire in the pit, but alas, the wax all melted and the fuse just went out like a light. (Ho! I'm so punny.) Luckily, Jim had brought along an electric lamp. We planted that in the place of the Citronella candle, and continued our not-so-campfire-lit, late-night talking.

I looked at our faces, no longer lit with the orange glow that I had grown to adore over the past few hours. With an incandescent, white-yellow glow for every person's face, the cynic in me came out to conclude the context:

"Gah. Now someone's gonna walk by and see a bunch of teenagers huddled around a lantern. 'Hee hee, they can't even keep a fire goin' in a bucket.'

"All we need now is for the D-Cells to go out."

Gunpowder

(Offhand, as of my last entry I have 301 comments. Huzzah!) (And now, for something completely different.)

My shirt smelled like smoke, and it was almost a turn-on. Now, I don't like a -lot- of smells. I have yet to find a perfume that doesn't bother my nose, and I've been turned off to lotions by silly sophomore girls back in the high school days (yes, I can say "In the high school days" now). On the flipside, foods can attract me from across a house, but gunpowder smoke is almost enthralling.

This probably isn't healthy, as most of my friends who were at the cardboard bonfire can tell you.

I celebrated the 4th by going out with a group of late-teen-agers and other young adults (with one middle-aged guy) and doing what I had never done before in my life with low-to-mid-powered explosives: We didn't get as free-spirited as just blowing up random schtuff, but Neshki did show the group what fun one could have with waterproof fireworks.

Well, to start the night off, Neshki had about 10-15 people at his house, way the heck out of town and with plenty of space. He had invited everyone over for a bonfire--however, there is currently a burn ban in place, so he had to get a special waver from the tribal police to have the burn he did have. Forty cardboard boxes later and fifteen minutes later, everyone had seen a spectacular fifteen-foot flame, and it was sundown.

The first fireworks were OK: Some bottle rockets and a box or two of the thirty-tube firework pieces. Meh. The mortar tubes had quite a bit of punch to them in the volume area--particularly the four-in-one rounds. But the real fun came in the form of plastic-wrapped mortar rounds.

Neshki and his brother have had essentially the same fireworks for the past ten years--Mortar shells, large-ish bottle rockets, and cartons. They got a little bored with shooting the mortars just straight up--so they searched for other directions. Tilting mortar tubes wasn't the most entertaining, though...once they figured out how to keep the tubes from flipping onto the wrong side. The mortar rounds would fire off over the black river and look pretty on the water...

...But not as pretty as just throwing the mortars into the river. The plastic wrapping on some mortar shells makes them completely waterproof--in other words, hydro-hand grenades. They made -quite- the satisfying splashes, and there's nothing like the double-exposure of fireworks in the air and their reflections in the water--particularly four feet above the water.

But just chucking waterproof mortar shells into a river isn't ten years worth of ideas. I haven't seen the whole decade's worth, but Neshki showed everyone the fun to be had with a car bridge that went over the river. The fun in the mortar rounds changed through a simple scenery change; throwing the shells into the river from a bank was OK, but dropping the shells almost straight down from an overhanging bridge was gorgeous. The explosion came right back up to the bridge where all twenty of us were standing--which meant, unfortunately, that we couldn't look directly at the pretty lights. The fireworks in the shells would come back up and over the railing, leaving streaks of neon green and bright orange as they passed by the ducking people (or landed on them).

Firing the mortars into the water--upstream--at least gave us the security of a good football field's distance. Still spectacular explosions when they didn't go into the brush. Ahem.

The mortar rounds and mortar tubes weren't just aimed at the water; while the splash effect was nice, we wanted to see the rounds bounce too. Amazingly enough, mortar rounds don't explode when hitting concrete at a 60° angle going at exit-velocity of the launch tube. They just bounce in to the air and reverse their horizontal direction--except for our first round, which skipped the concrete side of the bridge entirely and went for the river again. I think the first aimed mortar hit the bridge side and went underneath the railing to get into the water.

An interesting point on the railing: It was hollow. The railing was just a pair of hollow rectangles with plenty of room for fireworks, and the ends were left wide open. A block of wood left about eight inches of open space, fit for jamming whatever form of gunpowder one wanted into the pipe. Neshki told me about bottle rocket races down the pipes, but I could never get the hang of that one; I think the railing pipe I used was jammed with debris from old Fourths'. My rockets would fire off, but just stay in place before exploding. I didn't have much look with mortars, either; the mortar launcher tube had to be jammed into the pipe at about a 30° angle downward.

My bad luck was just with getting fireballs/works down the tubes; the explosions remained spectacular. Sparks flew across the bridge to the crowd by way of the ground, and everyone had just as much a (figurative) blast as the fireworks had.

Now, what could be so unhealthy about all of these spectacular explosions? What is so unfit about a pyrotechnically-loaded Fourth in less-than-traditional settings such as bridges and rivers? Perhaps the answer is in how one enjoys it. I happened to enjoy this Fourth' with much...zeal.

I cheered along happily at the standard boxed fireworks back at the "Bonfire" (term is used loosely here; it was a pile of smoldering ashes and had been for quite a while). I started to get excited when we chucked the hydrogrenades into the Black River (I think that's the name of the river). But at the bridge, when sparks flew up and over (and onto) our heads from the sub-bridge detonations, I developed a maniacal laugh. This cackle painted the image of a big, red, destructo button of DOOM that an imaginative me had available for pushing--'twas a bit nutty.

A few of my friends noticed me chortling along to the fantastic explosions, and told me that I seemed to be having a heckuva time. A few of Neshki's friends thought that Neshki had passed the torch, or found a pyroprotogé. They were probably right; I don't know if I'll do Neshki's thing next year, but hot damn! am I attracted to that bridge. Neshki inspired me to start plugging the railing pipe with mortar rounds and bottle rockets, so it looked to my friends like I had started getting many a pyre-based idea.

Of course, some of my friends worry enough when I get ideas. (I've been told that) I stop talking, my eyes brighten up, and my pace quickens. I don't want to lose any of the ideas that pop into my head at the time, for they can become quite silly; Aaron planted this seed in my head, and I wrote that down in my Short-Term Memory (pocketbook) for safekeeping:
"Ali in cooler. Investigate."
Aaron fed me that line while we were still at the bonfire, and my demeanor changed to "Plotting" mode. See, little Ali was there, and there was a bench that was just about as wide as Cassie's ginormous cooler, so I knew the two had to go together...

(More on that experiment after next weekend. Methinks we'll have Ali in a cooler by then.)

I don't know how, but some people saw this near-fanatic look in my eye when we were at the bridge, cramming explosives into the bridge railing. I probably gave Katie and Cassie a little pyromaniac-like fright, but everyone knew the bridge events were all in good fun.

Well, they were in good fun until someone plugged a Roman Candle into the bridge rail. That same someone didn't know that Candles can backfire, or that they can propel themselves right out of their propped locations. After firing one round into the bridge, the candle fell onto the ground. Most of the rounds fell onto an empty ground on the bridge away from the crowd, but one round hit someone in the arm. There were no injuries--the arm had a thick jackets' protection.

I don't know who lit the candle off, but Cassie had one primary suspect in mind. She probably would've given my ass a good kickin'--a "love-beating," maybe, but luckily I run faster than her. I shouted at her "I didn't light it!" while hauling as much booty as possible up the bridge, but she didn't get that message until we were driving home. I admit, she had good reason to be ticked--that candle round that hit a guy in the sleeve came pretty close to hitting Cassie.

For the record, I had nothing to do with Roman Candles this Fourth.'

Also for the record, the sole casualty of the night was a Zippo. The guy who owned the Zippo was lighting a hydro grenade, but the fuse burned his fingers. He dropped the Zippo, which wouldn't have been bad if his hands weren't over the side of the bridge at the moment. After the mortar round went off, the bridge had a brief moment of silence, for we had lost a good source of Fire.

I've gotta say: I much preferred this moment of silence for a true loss to the moment of me fleeing from and yelling at one unhappy Cassie that I didn't light that 'Candle.