i was going to write a post about leaving santa cruz, and how sad i was, and how driving through nevada sucked, and how uplifting it was to get to salt lake city. i was going to write about how pretty and well located salt lake city is, in the valley between three mountain ranges. i was going to name the mountain ranges. i was going to talk about meeting up with friends to climb on the granite boulders in little cottonwood canyon, and how the bouldering was either suited to my style of climbing or that i was freed from expectations by our time in hueco tanks, so i sent a bunch of problems there. i was going to talk about sebastien’s eighth birthday that he had while we were there, and that he could have eaten anything he wanted for dinner that night so he ordered grilled cheese and fries and ate cheesecake for dessert. i was going to write about how, on the last day we were there, the last climbing day of our trip, we got the first rain of our whole entire trip–exactly a month to the day we left–and ended up not climbing, not sending the last couple of problems on our tick lists, but sitting in a barnes and noble. i was going to write about leaving the next morning to go to denver to see one of my sisters.

but i didn’t. i started to. i was using brian’s work iPad, and it didn’t save the post i started that talked about all that stuff. and here we are, going on 24 hours being home, and i just didn’t feel like going back and trying to type it out all over again. stupid iPad.

instead i’m going to write about liquid sunshine, that now coined phrase  that people are using instead of the word rain. as if that makes an unusually rainy pittsburgh more acceptable. sunshine in whatever form should NOT grow mold in one’s basement. so i can’t accept the term, liquid sunshine. there comes a point when rain exceeds its usefulness and becomes a problem, and at that point, it just can’t be called liquid sunshine. people in the southwest, where they are experiencing drought might want to call any rain they get liquid sunshine, but we are far from drought here, people.

i’m also going to write about getting home. the end of our trip.

we got home this morning at the wee hour of 1:30. the sky was surprisingly clear. a heavy, low hanging orange moon escorted us from near youngstown, ohio where we caught i-76. we thought that it would be safe to take 28 through town to our house at that hour, even though there were signs that suggested finding an alt route. lo and behold, we got stuck in a bit of traffic. shocking. welcome home. the nice thing about home, though, is how predictable it is. infuriating, yes. but also comforting after 5 weeks of unpredictableness, unpredicticality, unpredictation. none of those are words, but you get my meaning.

and thanks to the RAIN, we had a jungle to clean up today. well, i helped a little bit. brian got some rush of adrenaline at like 7:30 am even though we didn’t go to sleep until 3:00 the same am. i woke up to the sound of the weed whacker being taken to the front… lawn or hill…. yard or whatever you call the mass of weeds and flowers that sits in front of our house. i rushed to the window to see what was the matter. anyway. yard work. welcome home. i have blisters on my thumbs and my knees hurt like i went for a long run. i guess in some ways that’s a good thing. i didn’t have to go running to feel this way. the boys frolicked all over the place, re-introducing themselves to all their long lost toys. there are nerf bullets all over the floors of the house.

so our trip is over, and i will enter a state of post-vacation depression. i will miss california especially and little cottonwood canyon and hueco tanks. but real life will take over in about a week, and i will get back into the routine of it and be happy again.

the end.

Posted on May 21st, 2011