i have to start exercising

i'm going to alaska in april! with a good friend who has to go home, and because she's a resident of alaska, gets a $60 companion fare. and i get to be the companion. i told her i want to go hiking in the tundra, so it's time to start getting in shape. i'm also glad she has all that mountaineering-special-north-face jacket kind of stuff, because i don't, and it would be embarrassing to try and go hiking in the alaskan bush with my winter jacket, which looks like a burgundy sleeping bag.

whenever i try to go out into nature it's funny. i love the woods, don't get me wrong, and if i am choosing to vacation, i'd rather it be out in the middle of nowhere (since i'm in cities all the time) but i'm pretty clueless. narrative example:

at my college, we had to do some sort of outdoor orientation, and when i was looking at all our options i thought to myself "hey, i can do a thru-hike!" at the same time thinking "what exactly is a thru hike?"

i had to buy all my supplies, including a monstrosity of a frame pack that was leftover from when Eastern Mountain Sports used to rent frame packs. it was external, so it made me look like a hippie, especially when i filled it and walked through my neighborhood.

ok, i didn't really do that, but i did fill it and go to the closest place to hike near my house (a "hill" that takes 20 minutes to summit).

and not that there's anything wrong with being a hippie. or a hill.

but anyway! then i bought a stuff sack for my parents' old school sleeping bag (cloth, olive green on the outside and a duck pattern on the inside). it didn't matter that this wasn't the type of sleeping bag to be stuffed, because i didn't really know how a stuff sack worked. i rolled my sleeping bag up and tried to fit it in the sack. not surprisingly, it didn't fit. so much for stuff sacks i said to myself.

when we actually started the trip, there i was, cut off jean shorts ("make sure you don't wear jeans!" our leaders said to us the night before -- but those were all the shorts i had -- city people don't wear shorts!), gargantuan frame pack, rolled sleeping bag hanging from the bottom. next to all these other first years who obviously had done this before, as evidenced by their sleek internal LL Bean fram packs (sleeping bags inside, apparently, in their stuff sacks), their swishy Umbro shorts, and their Nalgene bottles (dudes, i had never HEARD of Nalgene! or North Face! or Umbro! or stuff sacks, fergoshsakes!)

as it turns out, i wasn't the slowest hiker, but all that meant is that while one leader was at the front of the pack with everyone who knew what they were doing, the other leader was at the back of the pack with the SLOWEST person, and i was by myself in the middle, red faced, hair frizzed out from sweat and rain (cuz it rained the first few days) (i looked like a lion).

but i did it. and i made it.

and in just about a month i'll be doing the same thing (only slightly better) in the alaskan tundra!
wahoo!