Rematch with Rendezvous Peak

 Years and years ago, I read about a nice little hike in Arctic Valley that goes up to this little hill called Rendezvous Peak. So then years ago, I decided to go out and do this hike. According to the website I read about it on, the trailhead is near the parking lot pay station, so I set out from the trail there. And I never found the proper trail. Instead I found myself near the Nike missile site on the nearby mountain and I had to backtrack down to the parking lot. I decided to check out a different trail I saw everyone else using near the cafe/lodge up there and that turned out to be a much easier trail to navigate. Unfortunately, after I got to the saddle between two peaks (Rendezvous and Mt. Gordon Lyons), I was too tired to continue on (i.e. I wanted to get home and drink) and decided I would try another day.  

Today would end up being that day. Even though my original thought when waking up was to do as little as possible today. But after a little looking back upon the first time I tried this hike and remembering how easy the first half (to the saddle) was, I decided Hamlet could probably do this one and it would be good for me to at least do a little hike.

Immediately I almost made the same mistake as last time of taking the wrong trail. In my defense, I double checked the trail map before leaving the house and it said to use the same trail I did last time, but that there was a t-section and to turn off there. I did not find the t-section again, but this time turned around much earlier and went for the trailhead by the cafe again. I would discover on the way back that the reason I overlooked the t-section is that it's overgrown. So where I thought the trail ended, you really just have to push through. C'est la vie.

 So anyways, Hamlet and I got to it and what I remembered as a very gentle slope towards the saddle was actually a little more steep than I thought. Still, it remained consistent and even though it was taking me longer to move up that I thought it would and wearing me out much quicker that I was prepared for (also, I was very unprepared for this hike), we eventually got to the saddle.

 In my mind, at least on the drive there, I was toying with the idea of hitting up both Mt Gordon Lyons and Rendezvous Peak. Lots of people do it and it honestly doesn't seem like it adds any real challenge, just a little extra time. However, I forgot my knee braces for this hike and they were already beginning to hurt. I also didn't pack much for snacks (again, I was very unprepared). And when I looked up at Rendezvous, I knew it was gonna take what energy I had left just to get up that one.

I've read from multiple accounts that this mountain is a relatively easy hike. I can only assume all those accounts were from people in much better shape than me. I struggled. A lot. I took a lot of breaks and damn near cried when I passed a family with a kid going up in crocs. The good thing though is that while it's as steep as it looks, it wasn't as far as it looked. Before long I was up on the peak feeling the sweet breeze that seems to wash over all peaks in the Chugach.  

Going back down I decided to take a different trail towards the parking lot and that's when I discovered the "proper" trail from the parking lot trailhead. I probably won't use it next time either - it was much muddier than the trailhead by the cafe most everyone else was using. And of course there has to be a next time so I can hit up Mt Gordon Lyons as well. Also, there was a trail along the ridgeline that looked like it might make for a good loop hike to take up more of a day. 

Song of the Day

Juxtapositionally, I rarely even miss being drunk

 Sometimes (more than I care to admit as of late) I sit around and wonder what's the point of everything. I get that I'm just a cog in the machine that lives to serve the rich and famous, I came to terms with that long ago. But I also kind of thought that there was still more to it, like even as an easily replaceable cog, there could still be a sense of accomplishment and reason. But the hope for that has been fading.

I don't know, maybe I fucked up by not settling down with whoever would take me and having kids. A lot of people (though definitely not all) I know with kids seem to have a great sense of purpose in life. Like they understand life being about more than themselves on a level I never can.  

So anyways, I think about this absurd pointlessness of it all and I wonder why I'm even trying. If my greatest hope is to be just another person that goes to work and pays their taxes and keeps the system moving just as it always has, than what the hell does it matter if I "make the most of it" or not? What's the difference between dying at a 100 years of age in a hang gliding accident vs. dying at 60 years of age of liver failure? I mean, I know there's a huge physical difference, but in the metaphysical sense, it doesn't seem like any. 

What's the point of staying sober? I'm not saying I have any plans to start drinking any time soon. Just that I often wonder why the hell not. What am I staying sober for? Right now it's really just work. Well, that and jogging. I actually enjoy jogging and I know if I started drinking again I'd be done jogging immediately. (Probably always telling myself, as I once did, I'll get back to jogging in a couple days, just need to have a few tonight). But as to the work thing, I just hated who/how I was at work when I was constantly hungover. Like I was honestly embarrassed by it. Which I usually coped with by drinking more. But for how long can not wanting to be seen as the drunk idiot at work be my sober motivation?

Again, I have no plans of drinking again any time soon. But it's hard to picture myself spending the rest of my life sober as well. (Won't that sentence be quite ironic if I die in some sort of accident any time soon?) 

Song of the Day 

The older I get, the more sleep matters. And I hate that.

 Too tired to write anything proper tonight. Not that I'm saying anything I've written on here is proper. I'm not even sure what the definition of "proper" is for a middle-aged man's blog full of diatribes and daydreams. 

Song of the Day 

Maybe I should install a lightbar on the Bronco

 I think one of the number one signs I'm getting old (if not the number one sign) is how much I'm really beginning to hate driving at night. I feel like the lights on all the other cars around me are just too damn bright and the clothes pedestrians are wearing are too damn dark. (In my defense, the area of town near the base isn't known for being an upscale section of town and most the people out at 11 pm are dressed like they don't want to be seen).

There was someone on a bike tonight right near the edge of the road and I only noticed them when I was passing them. Had they been in the road, I wouldn't have seen them. And while I contemplated if I'd have felt bad had I hit them, I was blinded by three cars driving in the opposite direction of me. And then all I could think about is how I already miss the days of June and July when I would get off work at 11 pm and there'd still be a decent amount of daylight left.  

 Then I started thinking about the days when I lived in England and how it had a similar amount of sunlight during the summer. Which led to me remembering working swing shift there and getting off late and driving those narrow winding roads home without so much as a streetlight for any illumination beyond what your own car headlights gave. And I missed it. I constantly think of England and how much I miss it. Though I have to wonder now how much more I'd hate nighttime driving on such narrow roads with LED car headlights being the norm everywhere. I bet I'd still enjoy it more than here.

Song of the Day 

Five things I hate about living in Alaska

I'll elaborate more on each of these (maybe) at some other point down in the future. After getting a sharp reminder of number two today, I just wanted to get there while I was once again thinking of them.

5) Politics. I know these days politics suck everywhere. My problem up here is we have a lot of big fish in a relatively small pond. It's like when we finally became an actual state, our politicians of the time saw all the corruption going on in other state governments and decided to jump right to that level as opposed to easing into it. Granted, I know the oil boom 20 years later is probably more to blame than our earliest politicians, but I get the feeling a lot of them still share much of the blame.

4) The Dating Scene. Also something that I'm sure sucks everywhere, especially for my age group. I don't know what it is (probably the isolation and glacier water), but there seems to be a sense of entitlement from men and women alike up here to thinking they deserve better partners than they actually do. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm no better in that department. I know you can't believe everything you read on the internet, but it often looks like people in the lower 48 have more success in finding dates and having dates go well, even if they're not an actual love connection.

3) The Isolation. This is a double edged sword. Sometimes it feels nice to be relatively detached from the real world. But when a weekend getaway out of state costs $1000+, it gets old quick. Not to mention, since there's flying involved, you have to do a lot of planning for everything. If I lived in the lower 48, I could drive a few hours to be in a different city with a different culture. And since I drove there, I'd have my own means of getting around instead of relying on taxis or some form of public transportation depicted on a map I can't understand (I'm looking at you, Seattle!).

2) Almost Impossible to get Good Produce. This past weekend, I bought a bag of bell peppers for putting in my lunches for the week. They seemed good at the time. I went to cut them up this morning and only two of the six hadn't already turned soft and wrinkly. One of them was even very visibly rotting even though I didn't see any sort of rot or mold when I grabbed them from the store. This kind of occurrence happens more often than not and it's getting incredibly frustrating, especially as I'm trying to eat healthier these days. 

1) GCI. That's the main ISP up here. They're a horrible company that knows they have a captive market for true high speed internet and they take full advantage of the fact. And really, it's not just them. It's nearly every "Alaskan" company. In my experience, no one likes to screw Alaskans over more than Alaskan owned companies. They all know there's limited (and sometimes none at all) competition up here and they're willing to profit off of it to the maximum extent possible, even when that comes at the expense of their fellow Alaskans. It's absolutely disgusting and rage inducing and just casually thinking about it probably puts my blood pressure at an unsafe level.

Anyways, this is a brief synopsis of the consistent reasons I sometimes daydream starting life anew outside of Alaska.

Song of the Day 

This doesn't mean I'm maturing

Surprised myself today. By not ordering a Magic product I'd been planning on ordering. It's a deck that will be sold for today and only and if you miss out, you're SOL. Well, technically I can buy it later on the secondary market, but it will undoubtedly cost at least twice as much (likely even more) than it would've had I just bought it direct from WotC today. 

The thing was though, when I woke up today, I admitted to myself it was a deck I'll likely never play that has art based upon some fictional Japanese pop star (Hatsune Miku) that I have no interest in. Like I realized me buying it was just giving in to FOMO for no other reason than the FOMO. Sure, I could tell myself I was going it as an investment - this deck will undoubtedly be worth twice it's cost in a year's time and is only likely to keep going up from there. But the truth is I likely wouldn't sell it. Partly because I'd want to keep holding on to it to see just how valuable it could get. But mostly because a product like this will have a smaller group of potential buyers than most Magic products and I'm too lazy to try and seek any of those buyers out. 

I know not buying something isn't really a big thing. But for me, it kinda feels like it is. Not life changing big of course. More like a small step in the right direction kind of big. This doesn't mean I won't make future dumb purchases (I probably will), just that I'm getting better at recognizing them and maybe now being able to opt out on occasion. (Which hopefully leads to more opting out and then more opting out and so on). 

Song of the Day 

A good change on my every other Sunday routine

 Thanks to outdated and asinine military male grooming standards, I have to get my haircut about once every two weeks. Which I usually do every other Sunday. And today was one of those Sundays. 

As I drove to my haircut today, my brain seemed to pull out this random reminder of how these Sundays would go back when I was drinking.

I would wake up hungover (naturally), initially telling myself I just needed to pull myself together long enough to pretend I'm a responsible adult and take care of getting my haircut. Once that was done, I could come home and do what needed to be done to take care of the hangover (i.e. start drinking again). Sometimes I'd fall back asleep after this self pep-talk and sometimes I wouldn't, but either way once I was up and moving, I was just thinking of drinking again already. 

I'd tell myself I could just get my haircut tomorrow, either before work when I was working swing shift or after work when I was on day shift. And many times, that was the plan I went with. But sometimes I was able to convince myself to just get it done. (Usually, those were the times I was low on alcohol in the house and would need to go to the liquor store anyway). 

So I'd shower and all that other good morning stuff and be on my way. It should be noted, the haircut place I went to was like five minutes away and that's with hitting every red light on the way there. But almost without fail every time, I'd have to turn around and head back home halfway there because my stomach would start feeling weird and I'd need to get to a bathroom quick. Then I'd take care of what needed to be taken care of and head back out. Usually my stomach was still feeling a bit off and I'd just be praying the whole time to not having one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. 

Thankfully I never had one of those embarrassing moments, but the whole experience was miserable. I remember so often getting home telling myself that was the last time I'd go through that; that from then on out I wouldn't drink so much on Saturdays when I'd have to get a haircut the next day. Funny enough, I usually made that promise to myself while opening my first drink for the day. 

Anyways, looking back on those memories today, I'm definitely glad to not being going through that anymore. Pretty sure by this point I'd always be pushing the haircut to Monday. Or I'd have just started buzzing my hair on my own - both to keep from having to leave the house on Sundays and to save money on haircuts so I could buy more booze. 

 Song of the Day

Back to Peak 3

 As I figured I'd do, I decided against playing more Magic today. Instead, I went hiking. And went back to Flattop Peak 3. Not the most exciting hike to choose, especially considering the weather, but it's one I was sure Hamlet could handle no problem and I wanted to be able to take him along with me today.

 While it was seemingly just partly cloudy in Anchorage itself, once I got to the base of the Chugach that changed it was all cloudy. Which made me feel kind of foolish having put on a bunch of sunscreen before heading out. The sunscreen became even more annoying when, despite the clouds and what I thought was cooler weather, I began sweating like this was my first workout in months and the sunscreen mixed sweat from my forehead began stinging my eyes. Literally, I could not wipe sweat away fast enough and I contemplated just calling it a day and ending the hike not even a half-mile in. Fortunately, I kept going.

We got to the ridgeline and started towards peak 3, having a view much like the picture above most the way. Which in some ways made for a cool view, but in other ways was annoying as I had no idea how much further I needed to go for my destination. 

Finally, after taking much longer than I remember it taking last time, we made it to peak 3. Where the view didn't change much. We also didn't stop at peak 3. All because I read my app wrong and thought where we were at was like half a mile short of peak 3, so we kept going. It only took me about 1000 ft to realize my mistake and we turned back as I could tell Hamlet was getting tired. Not to mention I didn't pack enough snacks for myself to make a whole half day trip out of the hike. 

The clouds did finally start clearing and we got some of the views that always fill my heart with joy.  

Lately after hiking I've been going to Wild Scoops to get a scoop of ice cream. This time I tried the Off-Trail Chocolate and holy crap was it delicious! I hope it sticks around for awhile - I've been doing this thing where every time I go to Wild Scoops I try a new flavor, but I'd really like this one to be around when all that is done to have again. I also went to Moose's Tooth (of course), but as good as the pizza was, it wasn't pretty enough for a picture.

Anyways, a few take aways from the hike:

1 - I used low ankle shoes for this one. Never again for hikes that have some technical parts to them. Don't know what I was thinking when I grabbed these ones for this hike; I usually know better. Mid level ankle or higher on anything but the flat and easy trails, damn near rolled my ankle a few times. Also had to stop multiple times to get pebbles out of my shoes - very annoying.

2 - I need to make a packing list for all my different possible hikes (less than half-day, half-day, full day, etc.). I'm always forgetting something and this time it was the bear spray, which kept me from doing a little exploring I'd originally been planning to do. Instead I stuck to the populated trailed where I was sure I could outrun at least one other person in case a bear showed up.

3 - Did about five miles with this hike and by the end Hamlet was struggling a little more than I would've expected for such a hike. Now that might possibly be because I walked him yesterday and he needs a full rest day between any real outings, but it also may just be his age getting to him even more than the last hike (definitely hoping for the former). Something I definitely need to be keeping an eye on though. 

 Song of the Day