Too Lazy to Bakes, Here's Some Pictures

I don't know if I'm still recovering from The Mysterious Flu Strain (let's call it TMFS) or if TMFS is actually mono but I have been EXHAUSTED the last week. Even if I sleep eight hours, I am exhausted all day and my brain is so nonfunctional that I have the attention span of a drugged flea. All I can seem to be able to focus on is marathon episodes of The Girls Next Door. It's an excellent show to rest your brain cells but not what I need to be doing when I have midterms next week. I've started taking naps during the day but that doesn't seem to recharge me either.


So in the mean time, here are some pictures of a sunrise from the top of Haleakala in Hawaii that I've been meaning to share. I'm not sure how Joe managed to convince me to wake up at 3 am for the drive, especially after the Hike of Horror and Doom. I was probably in the middle of eating some decadent dessert when I would agree to anything as long as nobody tried to take away my spoon.


I'm not going to pretend I took any of these pictures, I was definitely a huddled mass in the observation deck, trying to conserve body heat. It turns out, hey, it's not warm at 10,000 feet at 5 am, even in Hawaii. So because Joe was more properly dressed (and had also consumed an alarming amount of caffeine on the drive and was a perky, bouncy ball of Joe) he took all the pictures.



I was also trying to stand very still because I became nauseous, which I thought was my stomach punishing me for not getting an acceptable 14 hours of sleep. But it turns out I had altitude sickness, which I didn't realize until we were about to leave. We walked back to the car and when I sat down I started and yelled, "OW!!" because it felt like I had just sat in a vat of needles. And then I put my arms back and screamed again because my arms felt the same way. All of my skin felt like it was being simultaneously stabbed by millions of tiny needles. Apparently this pin and needles feeling is uncommon with altitude sickness, I'm was just one of the lucky ones.


It got better gradually as we got further down the mountain so it was over fairly quickly, thankfully. Still, it was worth it. It was really gorgeous, obviously. My favorite view was actually before the sun rose. The stars were out and it was pitch black so it was like being suspended in space. It was breathtaking, though it also freaked me out a lot. One of my top three irrational fears is falling endlessly through space, which was kind of like this felt like. In case you were wondering, my other two irrational fears are probably airplanes and atomic bombs. Disturbing fact? Every single time a camera flash goes off around me, I have a small heart attack because I immediately think ATOMIC BOMB. And yes, I'm aware that therapy is probably a good idea if I want to live past 25 without having a stroke.


While we're on the topic, top rational fears are probably 1) death and 2) having to face the wrath of my mom if I were to get pregnant or elope before I graduate. And of course since I'm mysteriously nauseous all the time, 400 people are always asking me if perhaps I'm pregnant. To which I say, "Shh! Don't suggest something so awful, my mom might hear you!" and they say, "Um, isn't she in Alaska?" to which I reply, "Have you met my mom? IF I GET PREGNANT SHE WILL STOP MY HEART WITH LASER EYES."



Suggest something for me to bake, I'm uninspired at the moment. Decide for me, I need to conserve my energy for walking to and from the kitchen.

A Random Walk to Waterfall

(I go back to Cleveland tonight, leaving sweet, sweet Hawaii behind. Since we haven't been at our apartment for a month, there's no perishables so baked goods will be held off a while. Here's a story instead)

So Joe tricked me into going a horrible hike by telling me that there was a 400-foot waterfall at the end. Alaska has a few post ice melt trickles down mountains but no bona fide waterfalls. Cleveland? Lacking in the waterfall department (and the cleanliness department, among other things). So I'm pretty excited about waterfalls, enough to be badgered into waking up at 5 am to drive three hours on the world's tiniest, twistiest, most nausea-inducing piece of pavement known to man. Oh yes, and since you're driving up a mountain you are also driving on the cliff edge of the tiniest, twistiest road. The bony hand of death beckons you the entire trip, which would be frightening if you weren't busy trying to keep from throwing up all of your internal organs. Screw death, I think I just felt my gallbladder make a break for it.

Banyan tree that wants to eat your soul

I've always had the tendency to get motion sick but because of my demonic acid reflux disease, I'm often nauseous for no apparent reason for days at a time. This actually happened the last two days, where each and every smell made me curl up and die. Joe would lean down to kiss me or bend down to TALK to me with his I-consumed-armagnac-and-wine-hours-prior breath and I would spend the next 15 minutes dry-heaving in a corner. Usually when I eat well and get enough sleep, I can skip the nausea. Which brings us to point two: in order to make it in and out of the hike, we woke at 5:30 am. And my stomach did not like that, no, not at all. I was immediatly nauseaous. Which brings us to point three: an hour and a half into the drive, we reached twisty, windy road time. So besides having woken up nauseaous I now had double duty nausea: useless stomach induced and motion sickness induced.

Joe climbs bamboo

I spent the next three hours slumped over in the passenger seat, trying not to redecorate the interior of the car in front of Joe's brother and cousins who were contained in the back seat. The boys made a few stops to stretch their legs but if you've ever been intensely nauseous, you know the best plan of action is to stay as still as possible because the Stomach Gods do not like movement and you will be severely punished if you change positions. So I stayed slumped against the window and telepathically tried to kill the boys were yelling about how awesome the view outside was. One of Joe's cousins, Josh, came back to the car where we had the following deep conversation:
Josh: So how are you feeling, Sophie?
Me: BLEEEEEEERGH.
Josh: ...that good, huh?
Me: BLEEEEEEERGH.



I managed to sleep for five minutes before we arrived at the park entrance, which appeased the Stomach Gods and my nausea abated a bit. But it was not a piece of cake from this point either. Point four: I asked Joe prior to the hike if my favorite silver gladiator sandals I bought at Payless would be adequate for the hike. "Sure, the whole thing is boarded!" he assured me. What he meant, apparently, was that the last quarter mile is intermittently boarded. The first hour you trudge uphill through a muddy path. It's not super intense or anything but not the cake walk Joe made it out to be and my shoes definitely were not appropriate. But it's not like the other shoe choices I had (snow boots or clogs) were any better. So I spent the better half of two hours ankle deep in mud, willing my shoes to hold together.

Bamboo

The waterfall WAS spectacular but I was also spectacularly muddy, insect bitten and moderately pissed off. I like waterfalls and hiking and all but couldn't decide if it was worth driving on Death Road to Nausea Town followed by Crap Hike in Inappropriate Footwear on Muddy, Definitely-Not-Boarded Trail. Thankfully the hike down, being downhill, went by a lot faster. Until we came to Point five: my sandals finally give out and break. Which isn't that surprising, given that I bought them for $15 which means they were assembled by Chinese orphans out of .5 cents of material. But it still sucked and I did the rest of the hike barefoot and hoped that squishy thing I just stepped on wasn't poisonous.

Me vs Waterfall

To his credit, Joe was horrified and offered to carry me down, which I denied since we both would've died when he inevitably slipped. I did let him carry me from the water fountain back at the trail start back to the car after I spent five minutes with my feet in the sink, washing off caked on mud. And I did accept a phenergan, an anti-nausea drug, to control nausea on the way back down, which I didn't take on the way up because it makes you PASS OUT. Had I taken it on the way up, I probably would've wandered off mid-hike to curl up in some bushes for a quick 14-hour nap.

And it was probably a good thing that I was knocked unconscious immediately afterwards because I was quite cheerful when I awoke, the whole hike seemed just part of a hideous nightmare. Also, Joe promised to buy me new sandals, which he did. I picked out some cute croc flats. I think the moral of this story is that I need to start systematically breaking things on hikes when I want new things.