Contrasts

I am very nearly melted.  Let us escape (visually, at least) to a simpler, colder time and pretend that there aren't any heat records being broken in my immediate vicinity.

Crossing the Cho La glacier on a bluebird day in the Himalaya.

Boots on the Ground

About 5am in KTM, the Nepalese army out for a jog.

That's one hell of a Gruber Assist!

Bonus familiar face in the pro men's field.  Boyfriend as moto marshall- ain't he cute?

(For those not abreast of the heady world of pearl-grasping Cycling Drama, a primer on GruberAssistgate 2010.)

CAWES That's How They Roll (Or so they keep telling me!)

Yayay Philly Pro Race was last weekend!  Yayay a particularly large bunch of local gals in the field.  Yayay most of them fucking finished!  Badass.

Women's world champion in the field...natch, she took it all home.

These last three are ladies from a local women's team by the name of CAWES (Or Capitol Area Women's Elite Squad), which I believe was started last year more or less explicitly for this race.  And they did really well- I think all but one finished (that one being injured, so, yeah) which is pretty amazing for a bunch of local Cat 2s in a professional women's race.

Dolly Sods, West Virginia- Day Three (Sorta)

Joke's on you, neither of these are from day three!  Ha!

Day three was back in the forest and ended with a retread of part of the first trail. Also a snake!  Not the first snake of the weekend, but the most quiescent and observable.  Loki discovered it for us, although its debatable whether he ever actually saw it.  He was running down the trail ahead of us, and all of a sudden he yelped and did the doggie fear-leap.  Our first thought was- fuck, he's been bitten by a snake.  Visions of carrying his poisoned ass down the trail and struggling to find a vet in rural WV and a leg dissolved in a gooey mess of pre-digestive snake venom...  So we run over there and he seems fine, tail wagging, no more scaredies.  I start looking around for a snake, and lo and behold I see one coiled up under a bush.  But here's the thing- its really, really sluggish.  Like poke-ably, in need of solar-recharge sluggish.  Clearly, it didn't go biting anything.  In fact, Darco thinks the snake was just coincidentally there and Loki somehow scared himself.  I don't buy it- that dog rarely yelps and that's a pretty big coincidence!  Pretty sure Lokes caught his first snake sighting in his peripheral and jumped a mile.  Anyway, here's the reptile in question:

Dolly Sods, West Virginia- Day Dos

This was a long, hot day.  The temp made a dramatic upswing and we were exposed to the sun pretty much the whole time.  There are so many frigging trees!  Why does the trail never go under them?  We did around 13-14miles, thanks to a junction missed by yours truly that resulted in us being spat back onto the (even more sunbaked, shadeless) road. Although I maintain that if you are a park that goes to the trouble of making large, obvious signs for 90% of your trails, then you should probably just finish it up and do all of them.  If one expects signs, one looks for signs! 

Still, despite the long day and curs'd sun, we still found opportunity for rest and shade.

Dolly Sods, West Virginia- Day One

Drove the (gag) seven+ hours from Philly to the Dolly Sods wilderness in WV (aalmost hea-e-ven...) and found terrain that was only slightly different from the PA mounds we know and love, albeit about 3,000' higher.  Still, there was plenty of hiking and backpacking and snakes and mud for all.  Not too shabby a memorial day weekend, I say.

We did a 24ish mile loop (with additions due to missed turns and campsite searching).  Didn't manage to get on the trail until almost 2pm, but still managed to get in 8 or so miles before camping. 

 

 First day was very pleasant- climbed a gentle grade the whole way, in the shady forest until around 4 or 5 when the sun was actually welcome.  Prettiness abounded, dog bounced, bugs were minimal.  Only sad thing was we never managed to score much of a view, despite going an extra mile or so chasing an un-treed hilltop.  In the end, we managed an overlook of a shallow valley and that was certainly good enough.