Last Friday I woke up about nine (this will be important later), went up on campus and studied for a few hours, then took a mid term for my theatre class. That went until about 2:30, immediately after which I went to work because we had to clean up the massive sale we had. This included a lot of pushing and pulling very heavy carts, and climbing up and down ladders to put overstock books away.
I worked until 8, so a total of a little over five hours, then went home and went grocery shopping, talked with my roommates for a while, and got ready for the ward hike. Around midnight I went to bed, but I kept thinking about other things I wanted to take with me on the hike, so I think I dozed off a little after 1. At 1:15, I got up, grabbed my stuff and left for the hike. :) You can see how this is going to be interesting, right? We were hiking Mount Timpanogos (no idea how to spell that), so we wanted to start from the base at 2 am. When we got there bishop asked for a volunteer to police the back of the group and make sure no one got left. I volunteered, and we started off. After about 45 minutes, I ran into Brittany, who was really struggling with the hike and didn't know how much further she could go, then we ran into Steffanie, who had a massive ear infection and was getting a massive pressure headache from the elevation. So that was our group:
With Brittany on the left, Brother Petersen from the bishopbric who hung back to help us out, and Ray who was Steffanie's "buddy" and stayed back to help her, and Steffanie closest to the camera. Brittany and Steffanie both just got slower and slower as we went, and Steffanie just got in more and more pain, though she refused to turn back, so we never made it to the summit, but we got to see a great sunrise:
Which was followed by great scenery:
And just a side note, you see that snow? We had to cross those a couple times, and they kinda freaked me out, 'cause they were so slippery and some of them ended in steep drop-offs...
I dunno, they just freaked me out. Anyway, Brittany finally gave up about here:
Where we could see the summit, but didn't actually make it there. The rest of our group did, though, and they said it was pretty cool. Brittany and I turned around and headed back, but Steffanie refused, she said she HAD to make it to the top, so she went on about another mile before she just l
aid down next to the path and Brother Petersen left her there while he went on to the summit. :) Then when she had found a suitably male person to help her back down the mountain, she went down. Ray had gone on before a few hours before Brittany and I turned back. On the way back we got to actually see more of what
we'd walked through, and it was gorgeous!
It took us a couple of hours to get down, maybe two and a half hours to get down, and we'd spent about five getting to where we were, so we got back to base around 10. There were actually a few really hard-core hikers in our group who ran down the mountain, so they were there before us. We all stretched out on any available surface
and tried to go to sleep. Mostly rocks, or cars if we knew whose they were.
Maybe an hour and a half or two hours before we hit base my period started, so to say that I was distinctly uncomfortable would be to rather understate the case. A group of us finally left for Provo and got back around noon, at which point I....went to sleep? Nope! I showered, got dressed, talked with Cassie for a while, and went back to work!I worked from 2 to 6, and was in a good bit of pain from cramps for most of the time, but my boss took pity on me and didn't
make me spend the whole time on a ladder. I spent the last few hours sitting and entering stuff on a computer, for which I will love her to the day I die. I did pull a Belle pose for the camera, though. :)After that did I go to sleep? No again, after work I went to dinner with Karma Sue and Lindsey, two of my mission buddies, and my best friends here in Provo. We try to do something every week, because w
e're all too busy to have a normal social life and it's nice to talk with humans for a while. Usually we go to a movie, but I told them there was no way I was going to stay awake in a dark theatre, so we went to dinner instead. Aren't they cute? Lindsay never smiles normally for a picture, which she has come to regret as she has seen the mission scrapbooks of some of her companions...:)So I got home around 8:30, and made it to bed around nine, making for a full 36 hours with no significant amount of sleep. It's an odd feeling, isn't it? But it was certainly a very valid reason to miss sleep!
P.S. I will be hiking Timp again this summer, and I will not be volunteering to stay at the back next time. :)
