Adventures: A photo essay
Posted: September 12, 2009, 6:08 pm
Hello all,
So I had quite the past month and a half, and it involves (in minor part) beating Phoenix in a national sports competition, so I figured I'd share the whole thing.
First, I took the bar exam. It's not nearly as hard as advertised, don't let lawyers fool you, lawyers complain too much (and I'll probably fail as karmic retribution for saying this). Then, the next day, I drove 200 miles to my apartment, moved all my stuff out, and drove 200 miles back, hung out for two hours, hitched a ride to the airport (thanks Aardor) and got on an airplane. Next stop: San Diego! San Diego activities: Straight chilling.
San Diego lasted four days. Then it was time for a 15 hour train ride to San Francisco. San Fran activities: Running around like a headless chicken. Unfortunately, San Fran pictures are mediocre. But here's one:
San Fran lasted four days. Then it was time to take a train/bus combo ride to Yosemite Valley in order to start the John Muir trail, which runs 200 miles and change from the valley to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48.
The first day is the toughest (at least the way we did it). It's only about 13 miles, but you climb from 4,035 feet to 9,700 or so. When you're acclimated to the zero feet of San Diego and San Fran, that's rough. I ended up puking on the trail, stumbling into camp delirious, and then puking again. But at least the campsite was gorgeous:
I felt better the next day. You proceed to hike through some gorgeous country, with huge mountains and lakes and alpine meadows and whatnot.
Somewhere around day 9, the elevation gets higher, the forest disappears, and the mountains get much bigger.
Sometimes it rains.
We started getting close to Mount Whitney.
It's off to the left.
We climbed Whitney at sunset, and camped on top of it so we could watch the sunrise in the morning.
After Whitney, it was time to fly to Boston to compete in Gaelic Football Nationals. Gaelic Football is an Irish sport which is kind of somewhere between soccer and rugby, but flows sort of like lacrosse.
Our first game, quarterfinals, was against Buffalo. We jumped out to a big first half lead, they came back to grab the lead in the second half, but we ground out a win.
Our second game, semifinals, was against... drumroll... PHOENIX, ARIZONA. My big chance to personally hand Arizona another sporting defeat. Their club was full of legit Irish dudes (our club is all-American). We again took a big first half lead, and again our opponent came back. Phoenix grabbed a one point lead with less than two minutes to play, and they were dominating the end of the game. Things looked bad. Phoenix had the ball in the offensive zone, looking to score, when I tracked down the ball and took it away, passed it to a midfielder teammate, who got decked as he passed the ball to a forward, who ran on the goal and put it past the goalie for a goal (three points). Victory. Even in Gaelic football, Arizona can't close it out (seriously, though, the Phoenix team played well and was full of classy guys and deserve a lot of credit).
Our third game, finals, was against our rival Baltimore, who I believe had beat us five times in a row. Not this time. We took a huge 12-1 first half lead, and then calmly weathered their storm in the second half as we cruised to a 17-13 victory. National champs!
In the interests of full disclosure, we won the title in the Junior D division, the weakest of the 6 divisions that compete.
So I had quite the past month and a half, and it involves (in minor part) beating Phoenix in a national sports competition, so I figured I'd share the whole thing.
First, I took the bar exam. It's not nearly as hard as advertised, don't let lawyers fool you, lawyers complain too much (and I'll probably fail as karmic retribution for saying this). Then, the next day, I drove 200 miles to my apartment, moved all my stuff out, and drove 200 miles back, hung out for two hours, hitched a ride to the airport (thanks Aardor) and got on an airplane. Next stop: San Diego! San Diego activities: Straight chilling.
San Diego lasted four days. Then it was time for a 15 hour train ride to San Francisco. San Fran activities: Running around like a headless chicken. Unfortunately, San Fran pictures are mediocre. But here's one:
San Fran lasted four days. Then it was time to take a train/bus combo ride to Yosemite Valley in order to start the John Muir trail, which runs 200 miles and change from the valley to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48.
The first day is the toughest (at least the way we did it). It's only about 13 miles, but you climb from 4,035 feet to 9,700 or so. When you're acclimated to the zero feet of San Diego and San Fran, that's rough. I ended up puking on the trail, stumbling into camp delirious, and then puking again. But at least the campsite was gorgeous:
I felt better the next day. You proceed to hike through some gorgeous country, with huge mountains and lakes and alpine meadows and whatnot.
Somewhere around day 9, the elevation gets higher, the forest disappears, and the mountains get much bigger.
Sometimes it rains.
We started getting close to Mount Whitney.
It's off to the left.
We climbed Whitney at sunset, and camped on top of it so we could watch the sunrise in the morning.
After Whitney, it was time to fly to Boston to compete in Gaelic Football Nationals. Gaelic Football is an Irish sport which is kind of somewhere between soccer and rugby, but flows sort of like lacrosse.
Our first game, quarterfinals, was against Buffalo. We jumped out to a big first half lead, they came back to grab the lead in the second half, but we ground out a win.
Our second game, semifinals, was against... drumroll... PHOENIX, ARIZONA. My big chance to personally hand Arizona another sporting defeat. Their club was full of legit Irish dudes (our club is all-American). We again took a big first half lead, and again our opponent came back. Phoenix grabbed a one point lead with less than two minutes to play, and they were dominating the end of the game. Things looked bad. Phoenix had the ball in the offensive zone, looking to score, when I tracked down the ball and took it away, passed it to a midfielder teammate, who got decked as he passed the ball to a forward, who ran on the goal and put it past the goalie for a goal (three points). Victory. Even in Gaelic football, Arizona can't close it out (seriously, though, the Phoenix team played well and was full of classy guys and deserve a lot of credit).
Our third game, finals, was against our rival Baltimore, who I believe had beat us five times in a row. Not this time. We took a huge 12-1 first half lead, and then calmly weathered their storm in the second half as we cruised to a 17-13 victory. National champs!
In the interests of full disclosure, we won the title in the Junior D division, the weakest of the 6 divisions that compete.