Tahoe, May 12-14

A nice view from our dock

I bring almost nothing when I run in San Francisco on my favorite route from Hayes Valley, up Page st, through the Panhandle and the Park all the way to Ocean Beach.  Shoes, clothes, keys, clipper and credit cards, and maybe a few bucks - no cellphone.  I like feeling disconnected from everything; I find it makes me more perceptive of my surroundings, the people, their conversations as I run by, and the sun shining through the trees.  Nothing is recorded, and it is up to my brain to retain any information I process.

The simplicity is freeing in a world where I am constantly looking at my phone, uploading pictures, surfing the web, blogging infrequently, and generally leaving my permanent(ish) mark on the world through both local to my computer and in the cloud.   I'd love to think I can rely heavily on this principle - that I don't need or want computer devices to retain, process and obtain information on such a regular basis, but I get crap for burying my face in my phone more often than I should.  This came to the forefront of my mind when driving to Tahoe this weekend.  I pulled into a gas station, and noticed my precious iPhone 4s suddenly looked like an old tv with terrible reception.  It barely worked, and repeated attempts to revive it either resulted in more shaky imagery or weird striped lines.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the directions to the cabin written down, nor did I remember the address, but I was able to pry the info out, write it down on some scrap paper at a WalMart, and be on my way.  It is frightening to see how helpless I was without my phone.

I got to the cabin without further incident, and didn't really care about my easily replaced phone, nor do I right now.  What really sucked was when I realized that whatever rampage on the innards of my phone included deleting some photos from a few weeks ago that I hadn't synced to my computer.  If I spend the time to take a picture, I don't want to lose it.  Ever.  And definitely not ones I care about like these.  When this same thing almost happened in Japan, it was devastating (ask Jacob how pissy I was).  Luckily, I recovered those, and all the ones from this disaster.

But I digress, I had a fun weekend with an incredible group of people packed into a huge, lake-side house with a private dock, and enough food to feed a small army.  We lounged a lot, and damn did I get sunburned.  A few of us did a small amount of climbing with an unfortunately proportionate amount of bushwhacking through manzanita, and I had my first fall on gear (a small fall on an orange tcu).  Laughs were had, bikes were ridden off the dock, COLD swims were "enjoyed", and lots of terrific food was eaten.  I'm getting too used to drinking freshly squeezed orange juice from Colin's juicer.  Damn that shit is good!

I drove back Sunday night with a bunch of friends cramped into my car with far more of my gear than was used.  Usually, I am bummed with such a dearth of high-intensity outdoorsy adventure, but this weekend was great the way it was.  Even with my sunburns and broken phone.

Hanging out on the dock