Month: June 2014

Orange Car Ruined Everything

Not my photo. Found it on the Google.

Today, I went to visit a friend in Yakima, which is 2ish hours away from me by freeway.

I like taking the freeway, because if the sign says ’70’ you can go 79, there aren’t really any trees or rocks for cops to hide behind, and there’s some fun scenery in the distance.

But my absolute favorite part of any freeway ever is this: if someone decides that you are not, in fact, supposed to add 9mph to the posted speed limit, you can flip on your little handy dandy blinker and mosey right past them in the passing lane.

So I moseyed. I flew. I did whatever I wanted. I passed trucks, trailers, and old people so gracefully that I don’t recall needing to tap my brakes even once. The trip was going absolutely wonderfully, until….

F&%$#@ Orange Car.

Orange Car was about six cars ahead of me, and he found himself stuck behind a Slow-Moving Vehicle. Orange Car pulled out into the passing lane.

AND THEN ORANGE CAR DIDN’T PASS.

Slowly, every single one of us moved into the passing lane in the hopes that Orange Car would eventually speed up. He never did. He just sailed riiiiiight alongside the Slow-Moving Vehicle, making it compleeeetely impossible for aaaaaanyone else to get by.

To subdue my rage, I tried to think of any possible reasons for Orange Car’s apparent inanity. Maybe the Slow-Moving Vehicle was actually being driven by a friend he hadn’t seen in 5 years, and now they were catching up!…on the freeway, 70mph, screaming through their open windows. That could happen. Maybe Slow-Moving Vehicle was a total babe, and Orange Car was having a hard time keeping his foot on the pedal while smearing his phone number all over the passenger’s side window with a tube of lipstick that his current girlfriend had accidentally left behind (because you know Orange Car is a total skeeze). Or maybe the Slow-Moving Vehicle had pissed him off somehow, and it was up to Orange Car to exact revenge by making obscene gestures and bringing shame upon Slow-Moving Vehicle’s family. I don’t know. I’ve never been an Orange Car, so I’m not sure exactly how the ‘family honor’ thing works there.

Finally, after I’d had time to complete an entire list of reasons why Orange Car might be moving so slowly in the passing lane (Orange Car is being driven by a 10-yr-old. Orange Car is a robot. Orange Car is powered by Internet Explorer), the pass was complete. Slow-Moving Vehicle was left behind, and soon, the caterpillar of cars that Orange Car had created behind him would be able to disperse along the freeway. There was a large semi-truck about a half of a mile ahead of all of us, and freeway etiquette called for Orange Car to merge back into the right lane and allow us all to pass.

BUT HE DIDN’T. Orange Car stomped on his gas pedal (did the babe reject him? Had he sufficiently shamed SMV’s family and was now free to prance along?) and bombed down the freeway towards the semi. Suddenly, the string of cars (of which I brought up the tail end, so any sort of accident or pile-up caused by Orange Car’s idiocy would have been completely blamed on me) was going 80mph. We were all so determined not to let Orange Car piss us all off and then get away without any consequences that we all tailed each other, hoping to somehow collectively force Orange Car back into the right lane.

(Driver solidarity; rarely effective, but not to be messed with.)

Well, I thought, in another effort to quell my anger, look on the bright side. At least he’s going 80 and not 70.

And then, as if on cue, Orange Car pulled up alongside the semi and thought, Hmm, I’ve been going 80 for about a minute flat now. You know what would be fun? SIXTY-FIVE WOULD BE FUN!

Back in the caterpillar formation we went. Orange Car led the pack slowly, possibly because he was examining the mechanics underneath the truck next to him or possibly because he was working up the courage to zoom under it a lá Fast and the Furious, and our Driver Solidarity flared up again. We were all raging. We didn’t just want him to pull over anymore. We wanted blood.

(Ok, I did; I guess I can’t technically speak for everyone else. I’m just assuming that they all did too.)

This went on for MILES. Every time he slowly passed a car, he’d zoom up to the next one.

Suddenly, it hit me that Orange Car was the root of all society’s problems. Orange Car was selfish, rude, and in a position to drive (literally) everyone else nuts by forcing us all to accommodate his ignorance. This one stupid car literally made me want to go punch a puppy right in it’s cute little face. I hated him. I hated Orange Car.

If Orange Car had the ability to make me rage the way I did, I can only imagine what he’d done to other people in the past. Orange Car had probably been the reason behind many a stress-induced heart attack. He’d probably caused hundreds of 30-car pileups. I’ll bet every President ever only declared war because their government vehicle had just been stuck in traffic behind Orange Car. Why did Henry VIII kill 2 of his wives? PROBABLY ORANGE CAR.

 

This is both a rant and a public service announcement.

 

People.

 

Don’t be that guy.

 

Don’t be Orange Car.

 

 

YAAASSS EXERCISE

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I really, really hate exercise.

I mean, I like the long-term benefits of it. Who doesn’t love having tons of energy and fitting into their hot pants without small children stopping to ask if you live on Drury Lane? I like being fit, but I hate becoming fit.

The one upside is that workout clothes are really cute. But you can’t wear workout clothes without working out; that would be ridiculous.

But fear not, ladies; I’ve come up with a theorem that encourages you to exercise and also justifies that moment of weakness you just had at Lulu Lemon.

Dollars spent on adorable workout clothing   x   numerical value of cuteness on the cute scale  =  calories burned

The cuter you look, the more calories you’ll burn. Boom. Done. Justified.

But besides the clothing, there is nothing about exercise that I enjoy. It hurts. It’s hot. It’s hard to breathe. I don’t like exercise because exercise is not the internet, or a couch, or food.

Hiking, however, is kind of the middle man between exercising and hanging out. You can walk. You can talk to your friends. You can pretend you’re an avid hiker by posting 357 photos to your Instagram along the way and tagging them all #NatureAddict.

My best friend is trying to get me more into hiking. We weren’t feeling too adventurous last time we decided to hit the trails, so we decided to walk part of the Loop trail in Wenatchee. It’s flat for the most part, and made of concrete. Neither of us were prepared for anything more than a quiet little stroll.

That ‘quiet little stroll’ turned out to be the worst decision either of us have ever made. The trail loops over the river, and about a mile into it, we stood on the bridge contemplating whether to continue on or turn back.

“I don’t know, we’ll cross over that black bridge down there–that can’t be more than a mile or two away, can it? Let’s just do it.”

A mile? A MILE? Turns out it was FIVE MILES and I apparently need to update my contact lens prescription. Around mile six, we were contemplating swimming across the Columbia River to get back to the car. By mile eight, we were bargaining with God. I threw myself against a fence in protest to the universe (didn’t realize some guy was walking directly behind us) and tried to invent a new, less painful walk by squatting down and kicking my legs out with each step (again, didn’t realize there was some guy behind us) before just accepting that my feet were going to fall off. They were going to fall right off and there was not a thing I could do to prevent it.

Ten miles, four hours, and all five stages of grief later, we reached the car. Never have you heard such whining in your entire life.

 

A few weeks later (after I’d recovered from the 10-mile trek on hard pavement), Seester and I went up to Wallace Falls near Seattle. She dragged me out of bed at 5:30am and we made the 2.5 hour journey over to the coast. I brought my big camera; she brought snacks. There were waterfalls and ferns everywhere. Life was good.

Until we hit the midway point. Something about the smoothie and iced coffee I’d had for breakfast was unsettling; I was sweating profusely due to the unfamiliar levels of humidity, and my backpack felt more and more like a dwarf hanging off my back, trying to pull me back down to a more reasonable elevation. I should have hydrated a little more the night before, but there was a Blue Moon sitting right next to the bottle of water I was reaching for and my hand accidentally grabbed that instead (my hand. What a stinker).

So we’re headed up this path so narrow and steep that they have put in stairs and a guardrail, and suddenly I’m like 97% sure that I’m going to throw up. This is a problem for two reasons: Firstly, because I’M TWO MILES INTO THIS HIKE. HOW PATHETIC AM I and secondly, because every time I throw up, I cry. And it’s not like I puke and tears silently run down my face. I wretch, and in that very same breath the sound morphs into a loud, pathetic sob.

My brother calls this “crarfing”. He coined the term as he listened to me throwing up in a bush the morning after his wedding as he, his new wife (or as I call her, “Seester”), and the entire wedding party + their spouses sat just on the other side of said bush, discussing how they’d all seen it coming, given my state at the wedding the night before. I laid on the ground beneath the bush, crarfing, listening to them all try to hold back their hysterical laughter and thinking any one of you jerks could have maybe TAKEN THE DRINKS OUT OF MY HAND but you DIDN’T and so I HATE you. 

So I stopped halfway up this steep and narrow staircase and I saw the night of the wedding flash across my mind. There was a bush at the top of the staircase; I liked bushes. I could puke in a bush again. I hung myself over the rickety guardrail, and I spotted a few burly men just about to come up the stairs. If I pass out now, I bet one of those guys would carry me back down, I thought.

 

But I didn’t pass out, and I didn’t throw up. I leaned up against a tree until the burly men (and many others) passed me on the staircase. I finally made it to the top of the stairs, where there was a bench (probably a gift from God himself just for me). I passed the bush and thought next time, bush before hobbling toward the bench. Seester turned around. “Do you need to stop again?” She asked.

My mouth had just barely started to form the word “yes” when I caught sight of a man coming up behind us. He was power walking like his life depended on it, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. It took him two seconds to catch up to us. HIS ARM WAS IN A SLING. A SLING, PEOPLE.

My “yes I need to stop” turned into a “yeee…aahhh right! I want to keep going. YAAASSS EXERCISE!” I didn’t mean it, but I couldn’t be shown up by someone who was BROKEN. Pete’s sake.

As soon as he passed me, I hobbled backward and sat down on the bench.

Eventually, we made it to the top. The trek back down was easier, but I had a hard time getting back out of the car when we got home.

 

 

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IMG_0095 waterfall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight, Seester and I went on a run, and when I say ‘run’ I mean that we ran half and we walked half.

(Ok we ran a little bit and walked most of it.)

I put on my cutest workout gear (remember…the cuter the gear, the more calories you’ll burn). We went on a 3-mile trek, and afterwards, I walked straight onto the set of America’s Next Top Model and I won.

I’m just kidding.

But I was taken out by a german shepherd, who apparently didn’t find my outfit respectable enough not to ruin.

He dove straight into my knees. I didn’t stand a chance.

doge

 

Keep in mind, people, that exercise is dangerous and not to be taken lightly. Think really hard before taking up running. It is a SAFETY HAZARD. Think about YOUR HEALTH.