So Very Dark

I believe there is a line somewhere in The Hobbit…or perhaps somewhere else, about adventures, and how when you are having them, you are most often wet, cold, hungry and/or miserable, and they don’t seem at all as glorious when you are in the middle of them as when you are hearing about them beside a warm fire.

That sounds about right.

Yesterday, Briggs and I had big plans to go out to the Laurel Highlands state park and hike.  Laurel is lovely…it is foresty and lush and very typical wilderness for this general area, only with lovingly kept-up trails (which we did not partake of) and a lake and a creek or two, and so on.  It is where they keep Falling Water and Kentuckknob, the two well-known Frank Lloyd Wright houses.  It’s where Briggs’ family reunion was held.  It’s gorgeous and we always want to go visit it, but life and finances and so on usually get in the way.  Well, Briggs is on vacation, and yesterday was his payday, so it was the day we were going to drive the hour or two to Donegal and experience nature.  Which we…um…never get to do at home?

As you may recall from my last post, the other adventures we attempted on Briggs’ break (my attempts to find the Allegheny river) were mildly, well…not catastrophic, per say, but…unfortunate.  And wet.  Mostly wet.  Why I thought this adventure would be greatly MORE successful, I’m not sure, but apparently, I did.  Despite the universe sending me very clear signals to the contrary.

After going to bed around 2:30a, and not falling asleep until, probably, at lest 3a, I woke at 5a not feeling well.  I couldn’t get back to sleep, so, around 5:30, I went into the living room and curled up on the couch watching anime until Briggs woke up, at which point I informed him that before we went hiking, we needed to go to Pittsburgh so I could go see my doctor.  That took…about three hours, counting the drive and the the hour-and-a-half wait to see anyone.  So, our start was a little later than we had planned.  *shrug*  We could have lunch, pick up supplies and still get there with plenty of time for an awesome hike.

We did and it was, aside from me acquiring yet ANOTHER injury, tripping on the way up a hill and smacking my shin something wicked, and aside from (or maybe even because of?) going down the less established* trail before finally turning back and fording the creek at a point where it was only about ankle deep.  Seriously, overall, it was pretty awesome, and the weather was PERFECT.

On the way back, we decided that we had been so awesome at hiking that we deserved a prize of pie.  So we stopped at a pie store.  When we returned to the car with our new pie, we noticed that there was a lot of greenish liquid on the ground, apparently starting sort of…where our car was.  Which ended up meaning, of course, that we had lost all our coolant and would need to fix whatever was causing it to not be in the radiator where it belonged before we could drive the car.  Fortunately, the damage was just a little hole in the top, most accessible radiator hose.  …UNfortunately, we were in a tiny, boondock town, to which the closest town of any size was…a slightly larger tiny, boondock town.  And it was after 5pm.  In other words, we couldn’t just jog around the block and grab the part we needed.

We did get a tow-truck driver kind enough to drive us all the way back to Monroeville, which was nice, but once we were there, we were stuck.  Briggs’ sister wasn’t able to get the part before the store closed, the dealership, which was open until 9pm Monday through Thursday, closed much earlier on Friday, and there weren’t even any car rental places still open.  The result was, we were staying the night at Burgandy’s house, far from my computer (which was safely at home) and our cats (who were likely to eat our legs when we eventually walked through the door).  I also missed my sofa, my clothes and my bed.

Add to this the facts that I was pretty darn low on sleep and that the leg I had banged on the hike had a tiny cut that for some reason would NOT STOP leaking this red, blood-like substance**, despite the fact that I had first gotten the minuscule injury HOURS before, I was in an emotional state that I must admit is best described as ‘fragile’.  Yeah…I cried a couple times.  It was pathetic.

Anyway, Burgandy picked us up and took us home and fed us, and loaned me pjs, and we (Briggs) figured out what was up with my leg (the cut was right below the giant bruise/swelling I had from trying to fracture my kneecap the week before, and it seems that the dead blood/plasma/knee fluid were draining. ) and we went to bed and I slept almost instantly…and when i woke up, , the dealership was already pulling the car into the shop, andBurgandy fed us pancakes and loaned me clothes and took me to a farmer’s market…and now there is ANOTHER new episode of Futurama to watch and we have a pie that is probably still okay to eat in the fridge, so we are likely to bounce back…but I am definitely re-thinking the wisdom of ever leaving the house.

*turns into deer trail.  Then gopher trail.  Is easy to find by squinting at the waist-high undergrowth (ferns, bushes, and nasty thorny vines) and determining which area might be slightly thinner than the rest.  Easy to stay on by clinging nearby branches and roots as it traverses the very edge of the stream-bank.

**what was leaking from my leg was red, but disturbingly thin and watery–not the bright, viscous stuff that’s supposed to live inside skin.