It’s funny, the things we human beings do in the name of “weekend fun.” Take this past Saturday and Sunday, for example, two perfect, blue-sky, 70-some degree summer days in the Pacific Northwest:
--Ten thousand cyclists pedaled bikes here, a colorful, sweaty stream of lycra-clad weekend warriors who rode in the 34th annual Seattle-to-Portland Bicycle Classic. The macho types covered the 202-mile distance in one day, while your average Joe or Josephine did the ride in two. Event sponsors report that seventy-five percent of the riders were male, 25 percent female, and that the oldest registered rider was 90. Thirty-five thousand sandwiches were consumed, 17,000 cookies, 17,200 servings of bananas, and 35,000 snack bars. Thirty-one of the 202 miles were uphill.
I’ve done the Seattle-to-Portland several times (it was a number of years ago,) and today, Monday, I wonder what the statistics would be for riders complaining of sore butts.
--Forty-some-thousand folks put on their favorite tie-dye t-shirts or sun dresses, packed their bodies into 1960’s-vintage Volkswagen micro-busses (with peace signs spray-painted on the sides) and made their way toward Eugene, Oregon for the 44th annual Oregon Country Fair. From Friday through Sunday (a two-day weekend is not long enough for a gonzo spectacle like Country Fair) Fair-goers grooved to live music, danced, and, well, had some-far-out times.
I too have attended Country Fair the past several years. I’ve taken in the wild scene and made a lot of photographs (my blog post from last year’s Fair can be found here.)
This year, however (I can’t quite say why) I decided to take a bit of a break from big crowds...and so yesterday three friends and I headed to Mt. Rainier where we did a hike from Paradise Lodge (elevation 5,000 feet) up to Camp Muir (10,000 feet.) Though there were in fact other hikers and climbers also on the mountain, the distances on the slopes of Rainier are so vast that, much of the day, my friends and I felt pretty much alone. We trekked steadily up-up-up in the snow, gaining the 5,000 feet of elevation in four hours. We had a leisurely lunch at Camp Muir, then descended, sliding on our butts down long snow slopes (it’s called “glissading,”) arriving back at the wildflower-filled meadows of Paradise in no time.
A day of relative solitude felt just right.
