DAY 325
02.23.08
TREE 162
Oh man! Last night was crazy. Four, five, maybe six beers, three shots of bourbon, four shots of Jagermeister, and three shots of tequila. Mr. Roboto, Friends In Low Places, and Hey Ya on karaoke. And losing Norman at Ramsi’s… what a Friday night. It was incredibly fun to hang out with Norman, Dave and Melissa and I think they had a great time too. Needless to say I didn’t drive home. I called Drew and crashed at his place. I slept on the couch while he stayed up through the night to work on a website. That’s why when I woke up and he was still in the chair, same clothes, same lights on, I asked, "what time is it?..is it tomorrow?" And, luckily thanks to the late night snack at Ramsi’s and water I felt pretty good this morning.
I left Drew’s at about noon so he could finally get some sleep and I headed home. I stopped at the rest stop off I-71 on the way there to climb my tree. Will called me as I drove to the rest stop to ask why I had called him at 1:55am and as I was telling him the story of the night I pulled off onto the wrong exit where the trucks and cars with trailers go. So I just drove on and didn’t stop.
That evening I called Norman as he had invited me over earlier to watch a movie. He also asked if I could stop by the bar and pick up his backpack he left there last night. It was dark when I left my parents’ house. I drove to the Summit and parked in the far corner of the lot buy Office Max. I walked over to the sidewalk and to my vine ensnarled tree. Many limbs had snapped and fallen under the weight of the ice. Some hung from limbs still holding on while others touched ground but still leaned against the tree or dangled from within. I grabbed hold of the lowest branch and felt the sharp cold of the ice on the top.
I ignored it and pulled myself up. The first time I climbed this tree I had to contend with the nasty vine offshoots that seemed to poke from all directions, and the many dying limbs those vines were killing. Tonight, in the dark I had all that plus ice. I thank my shoes for much of my success. The Stealth Rubber on the soles are so sticky that in cold enough weather I swear I stick to ice. Or perhaps I have myself to thank for so carefully distributing my weight among many holds so when placing my toe on ice it has little force to make it slip. But even if it did slip my body would barely move. Either way, I made it up this tree to my waiting ribbon with no major difficulty.
I had the added pleasure of hearing the ice creak as I swayed in the small high branches. I took pictures of the commercial lights of strip malls and passing cars.
Then, lingering only a second, I began my climb down. I was more efficient knowing where the worst ice patches were in reversing my steps. I was on the ground quickly, hands warming up almost instantaneously upon letting go of the last limb. Another ice tree conquered.
3-5-09: Strangely I have no idea where the ribbon is from this climb. I keep all of the leaves and ribbons I collect with each entry in the journal. It is a possibility that at some point the ribbon fell out from it’s proper place in the journal and I didn’t know where it came from. That is a loss and too bad. Oh well.
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Scott and I got up early on Sunday, February 22nd 2009, to get ready and get a car to Newark Airport. Scott had to go to DC for meetings on Monday and he got a ticket for me and we went a day early to catch some museums and see some of his friends. We took an 11am flight, got into Reagan and took a cab to our hotel. Once we settled in we walked from the hotel to the National Mall which was just 3 blocks away. We spent hours looking at art in the National Gallery of Art, both the East and West Wings. We saw Renaissance, Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art along with a bunch of other stuff as we rushed through lost in the maze of rooms. We left the museum and went back onto the Mall so I could find a tree to climb. I had unfortunately left my camera in my bag back at the hotel but I wasn’t about to make the trip back. It was cold and windy and we had plans to meet up with one his friends soon.
Many of the trees along each side of the Mall are very large and have no limbs within reach and massive trunks. I finally found a smaller tree near the Museum of the American Indian.
I scurried up the trunk into the branches and took my perch to take pictures with my phone.
I could kind of see the Capitol building,
some building tops over the trees across the lawn
and really couldn’t see the Washington Monument way down the other end.
I couldn’t see the buidlings for all the trees.
My brother seemed to be getting pretty cold just standing and waiting so I finished snapping shots with my phone and scurried back down.
We ended up going to an Indian restaurant with some old friends of Scott’s. One of his friends who just started working for the Treasury Department was supposed to meet us but couldn’t get away. Apparently he’s been working to midnight everyday, including weekends, since he started. I think they were working on something big… like trying to prevent the ship we call America from sinking.