Austin and San Antonio, Texas

I hate to fly. But I like traveling - the actual act of traveling, the main carriage, I enjoy that. The people in their business suits, the luggage, the rush-rush-rush of everybody around me, the feeling that all normalcy is suspended, so I can run into one of the little airport shops and buy a candy bar and five magazines, and who cares? I love the men and women who still get all dolled up in their best, as though we are all living in some fabulous 1950s movie musical. Airports are also a prime place for excellent people-watching, and I am a passionate people-watcher.

So powerful is this rush of anticipatory adrenaline, I usually forget about the fear-of-flying thing until I’m actually sitting in the plane and hearing the engines roar to life. It’s the take-off and landing I can’t stand; during the stable part of the flight, I can actually bear to open the window and admire the view, the quilt of the land below, the soft curls of the clouds, city lights like jewels on black silk. But during the bumpy parts, hopefully I’m in a window seat, so I can pull down the blind to spare myself the traumatizing sight of the plane plummeting uncontrollably toward the earth. As Patton Oswalt so eloquently put it, flying is spitting in god’s face. It just shouldn’t be happening, this metal object filled with people should not be floating above the ground. I can’t get over it.

Anyway, where all this was leading before I jumped the rails was that I went to Texas this weekend. Glenn was out there for some training, and he flew me out to see Austin and San Antonio with him over the weekend. His brother, who is a chef at a gay restaurant (seriously), lives out there with his wife and two kids, so I met part of the family, too. On Friday night, we spent the early evening standing on the Congress Avenue Bridge, waiting for the 1.5 million bats that nest underneath it, the largest urban bat colony in North America, to fly out for the night. That was pretty spectacular - there were boat tours sailing back and forth beneath the bridge shining red lights up at them so you could see them better, and sometimes when the light hit just right, it was like watching thousands of autumn leaves falling at once. It was very cool to see them zip around after insects and hear them clicking away with their echolocation.

After it got too dark to really see any more bats, we were planning to visit Glenn’s brother Mark’s restaurant, M2, but Glenn made a very Glenn suggestion that we go to another restaurant first for a sort of pre-meal meal. I readily agreed, given that all I’d eaten in the last few hours was a candy bar, and we got jalapeno cheddar sausage kolaches and drinks at the Shiner Saloon. I really regretted our visit to the Saloon later on, though, when we got to M2 and Glenn’s brother began sending out bowl after bowl of absolutely delicious free food and I could hardly touch it. The antelope skewers over the grilled watermelon were my favorite - it is a testament to Mark’s skill and talent that I ate the watermelon and liked it. No eel bacon, though – it wasn’t a very popular item and they pulled it from the menu. In fact, the whole restaurant isn’t doing too well, and Mark’s expecting it to go under very soon; we were actually worried that it would close before I even flew into Austin. I was concerned about what Mark was going to do, but he’s already got another job lined up, and he really seems to loathe the place anyway.

Saturday morning we checked out of our hotel and went to meet Mark’s family; I played Lego Harry Potter with his little boy while Glenn and Mark caught up, and then Glenn and I drove the 90 minutes to San Antonio and the Alamo. The best thing I learned at the Alamo was that Phil Collins is a huge Alamo freak; he owns the largest collection of Alamo artifacts in the world, which he keeps in the basement of his house in Switzerland. His collection includes the world’s largest Alamo diorama, which is housed in a little antiques shop across the street from the Alamo itself. The shop owner says that he comes to visit it occasionally, and that he was just there the previous Friday. The story is that he used to love watching Davey Crockett on TV as a kid and now he’s incredibly passionate about it. My favorite thing about historical sites is seeing all the little domestic items they used, the sugar pots and the bits of china and the silverware; I like the idea of something created entirely by hand, before mass-produced became the norm, totally unique and one-of-a-kind.

"If this siege continues, I may have to surrender sober." - Davey Crockett

Mark had recommended the Tower of the Americas as another cool thing to see in San Antonio, so after the Alamo, Glenn and I Riverwalked over to it. We saw a wedding and a quinceanera on the way! I think the view from the top of the Tower would’ve been more spectacular at night than during the afternoon, but the Riverwalk was pretty fun. It’s so hot in Texas, it was nice to be able to splash the water on my chest, no matter how gross it was. That night we tried to find the Bracken Bat Cave, home to more than twenty million bats, but we drove in circles forever and never saw a hair of any bat swarm, so we just went home. Neither of us was feeling too well by that point anyway; I’d had a headache all day and I was getting hungry, and Glenn said he felt “funny.”

Sunday morning saw us both feeling refreshed and healthy, so we went to the Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio.

The natural bridge of Natural Bridge Caverns

I think Glenn may have preferred the Alamo, history buff that he is, but this was definitely my favorite part. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries as soon as we entered the coolest parts of the cavern. I was being injudicious with my photographs, though. I don’t take a lot of pictures on my hikes, since a tree’s a tree, a rock’s a rock, and mountains are actually really ugly up close, but I’ve never seen anything like these caves! I was taking pictures like, well, like Glenn. However, I continue to be the world’s worst photographer; below is what I could scavenge from my memory card full of blurry photos with bits of my fingers and hair in them. These sculptures were really unbelievable, and the pictures don’t do them any justice.

All of the formations had this low waxy sheen to them. I was dying to touch them, but you’re not allowed. They did pass around some chunks at the end, but they were dirty and rough from being handled.

We did a couple tours of two different caverns; the Natural Bridge Caverns are what’s known as commercial caves, meaning they’ve been thoroughly explored and set up with staircases and hallways so us normals can go through them. Going up and down the stairs made me really feel like I was in shape, since everybody else was huffing and puffing around me – yay for being used to thin air! Then it was back to Austin for another brief visit with Mark and on to the airport to face the flight back home. It was so nice to breathe in Colorado again; breathing in Texas made me feel like a fish.

It was such a fun weekend that I’m really looking forward to Utah in a week.

Colorado Gators Reptile Park

I wrestled alligators this weekend; what’d you do?

No, seriously: the Colorado Gators Reptile Park in Mosca offers an alligator wrestling class for anyone who’s stupid enough to do it – obviously G and I had to sign up. The price is 100 bucks a head, and it’s well worth it. We were taken under the wing of Jay, a man with a ponytail and a cowboy hat who kept making these dry morbid asides that I’m still not entirely sure were jokes; he started us off with the babies, which were swimming around in a big metal tub with red-eared sliders. After he showed us the technique and while everyone was standing around looking unsure, I hopped right in and caught one; according to Jay, the number one rule in gator wrasslin’ is don’t hesitate.

Alligators are surprisingly squishy; I thought that lovely texture of their skin would be bony and hard, but it’s not. After the babies, as a bonus, we got in the tank with the farm’s 100-pound alligator snapping turtle. Kong is truly a dinosaur. I couldn’t lift him by myself, so I got a pic with his smaller cousin.

The insides of turtles are very sandy and wet. We moved onto teenage alligators next. This required a more elaborate technique than just snatching them up by the back of the neck. We had to drag them in from the water by the tail, swinging and dancing around them while they tried to snap at our legs and hands, yank their tails backward towards us and then jump on their backs and push all of our weight down on their necks. Usually at this point, they’d go nuts and somebody else would have to hold the tail or it would drag you back into the water on its back.

Before you feel too bad for the poor little guys, there was a purpose to this that wasn’t purely sadistic. Alligators are nasty creatures, particularly to each other, so what we were doing was catching the gators and holding them down so Jay could put Neosporin on their cuts or give them shots of antibiotics. It’s something that has to be done around the farm, and the gators just swam back out to their sunning areas when you let them go.

Lastly we got to do a photo shoot of sorts with the biggest gator on the farm, a gigantic nine-foot female. This was actually probably the safest of all of our encounters, as Jay put her on a rope leash while we got to sit on her.

I got to kiss her nose, too, but I couldn't hold her head up long enough for a picture.

For completing the class, we each got a certificate of insanity, er, I mean completion.

Very cool weekend trip, and an excellent workout. I have an alligator head souvenir on my desk at work now; I’m telling everyone that I twisted it off with my bare hands.

Mount Evans, Colorado

Mt. Evans and I have unfinished business; it defeated me last time when dizziness, exhaustion, cold, and nausea sent me up thirteener Mt. Spalding instead, but I’m remedying that this weekend. Alone. My usual hiking partner has company visiting this weekend, and none of my other friends are quite so “hardcore.” Anyway, I could use the Alana-time - it’s such a rare occurrence.

Sans Glenn, I get to plan my very own trip. He says that it’s going to be a transformational experience. I’ll be leaving the house Sunday morning at 4:30-5 to get to Summit Lake trailhead around seven, where I’ll make my way up Mt. Spalding and around and further up to Evans. I was debating shooting straight up the nasty gravel slope on the side of Mt. Evans, summitting, and sliding back down, but heading up via Spalding seems more substantial, and more respectful, in a way. 3.7 miles, 1,829 vertical feet - cake, right?

So… will I make it up the mountain without Glenn pointing out the trailmarkers I missed, telling me when to drink water, and feeding me crackers when I get crabby?

LATER: I spent the weekend breezing through Colorado 14er Disasters by Mark Scott-Nash and working myself into a tizzy about hiking Mt. Evans today. Actually, it was cherry pie. I arrived at Summit Lake (12,850) around 7a, despite forgetting my driving instructions and having to get there by memory. I realized I’d forgotten my compass after I’d headed off on the trail so I had to dart back to my car after only a few minutes, but then I was on my way. Glenn and I had used Summit Lake as the trailhead to climb the Sunrise Couloir in June, but in August, all the snow has melted out of the ravine, and now it’s just an ugly red scar in the rocks.

Today was foggy. The mountains’ summits were both veiled by this low-hanging haze and as I climbed further up, it started dropping. I’ve been researching mountaineering safety, and while I’m well-aware of what to do in the event of, say, a thunderstorm, but I hadn’t considered fog. It wasn’t too bad at the altitude I was at, though, so I kept going and hoped that the sun would burn it off, since I really really really didn’t want to have to turn around on my first planned attempt at a fourteener.

I unfortunately fell into the company of two couples also making their way to Evans. As we made small talk, I really missed Glenn, who is the strong, silent type. And also, this is silly, but I had gotten attached to the idea of going it alone: I was supposed to be traversing unknown territory with only myself to rely on, like a pioneer! But instead I was hanging out with these four people and their jumpy yappy dog.

The fog got worse as we gained altitude, and I got more uncomfortable; I even started hiking back down at one point, but something got the better of me, whether it was the nonchalance of the other members of my hiking club or my own intractability. As the fog closed in, I didn’t like the idea of turning back alone, either; visibility was just as bad behind me as it was in front of me, and at least going forward, I was part of a group. It’s easy to get attached to people when they seem like your only lifeline.

I began to doubt the wisdom of placing so much faith in them, though, when they started heading west from Mt. Spalding, when Evans was very definitely south. Initially I followed them - the male half of the couple seemed very confident in his choice of direction - but I’ve been on the saddle between Evans and Spalding, and I didn’t recognize anything. I told them I didn’t think we were in the right place, but they continued on while I was plunging around the ridge looking for something I could remember. Long after they’d dashed into the fog, I remembered I had a map and compass (thank god I went back for it!), and using the two, I was able to correct the wrong turn and head southeast. Oh, my heart when I recognized the ridge by Sunrise!

From there, it was easy. The sun came out and the fog fell away, so I was able to move off the trail and do some scrambles nearby. I ran into more hikers (no sign of my former group, though), and I must have looked impressive on the rocks or something, because the rest of them started following me - talk about the blind leading the blind. Before I noticed this curious behavior, I accidentally “led” them across some unpleasant outcropping, which is when they started hollering, “I can’t get over that, is this the trail? I think the trail is down there!” I had to explain to them that I was specifically trying to climb around the rocks and that they should follow the cairns if they want to take the trail. So we went our separate ways, and I managed to maintain a perfect distance that kept them within line of sight but outside of earshot. I stuck to the ridge of the saddle, where I could look out pretty easily; it’s so weird to see birds flying far below you!

The summit of Evans was covered in remote control cars, children, dogs, and photographers. Happily, I encountered the couple who had ignored my warning on Mt. Spalding - they had made a bit of distance west before realizing their error, but they, too, were able to right themselves. I didn’t stay on the summit long; I’d had my way with Mt. Evans, and I didn’t care to sit around admiring the scenery or allow tiny plastic cars to run into my ankles. I debated hitching a ride down, but my energy level was high and I was feeling very cheerful - I’d made it up my first fourteener and I was very relieved that couple hadn’t gotten lost in the wilderness - so I decided to finish the loop on foot and face my nemesis, the loose gravel slope. I was making steady progress until I fell and twisted my knee, and then the unpleasantness of stumbling down loose gravel was multiplied by pain. I hate loose gravel slopes.

I made slow progress back to my car and finally reached Summit Lake at noon. I was on the trail for five hours - a glacial pace, I realize, to walk four miles, but in my defense, I spent most of it taking long unnecessary detours whenever I saw a rock with good handholds. My energy level was excellent the entire time, I kept myself hydrated and sated, felt no ill effects of the altitude, found my way back after being lost, got a lot of scrambling and exposure practice, set a new altitude record (14,264), and, most importantly, I finished.

Spending the evening with my knee elevated and iced.