pictures &travel ranjeet on 07 Dec 2007 06:16 pm
Portland and Glacier National Park, 2007
In September, Jesse and I took a trip out to Portland to visit Bruce and Tina. A lot of hiking and pictures ensued. Thanks to Bruce’s sharing nature, I have the pics and have posted them up on Flickr. Click on the flashy badges blow to go to the sets, or hit the “continue reading” button to get more info after the jump.
Bruce has whined on many an occasion about how I don’t visit him. Whine whine whine. Well, finally I realized that the only way that I would be able to stop his whining would be to actually visit him — probably ensuring he never invites me to visit ever again. So Jesse and I stopped by Portland for a week to terrorize Bruce, something that I am fairly good at doing. In fact, I will boldly state that I must be in the top 3 people most skilled at pushing Bruce’s buttons.
Anyway, we arrived, were given the night time tour of Bruce’s hospital, treated to ice cream treats, bombarded with Pro-Portland propaganda, etc. The next morning we went out to watch the season openers of Iowa’s and Illinois’ football seasons. I ended that afternoon envious of the success of Iowa Football, but in retrospect the loss wasn’t that bad and Illinois got the last laugh in the end (though Iowa got the second-to-last laugh). After the game, we went and played some tennis, which Bruce so nicely documented. It’s funny, I sucked that day and Bruce was taking all those pictures. Later on in the week we played again, and I was much better….but there were no pictures of that. It’s pretty obvious that Bruce’s “camera” was obviously some sort of coordination depressant.
The next day, we headed up to Cooper’s Spur on Mount Hood for a long hiking session. My take on the pictures are here; Bruce counters with his travelogue here. I pleased myself by not dying on the mountain, although my legs were quite sore for literally the entire week. Every step down a slope was an exercise in torture. But, I have to say, it was quite a breathtaking view and it was nice to see a healthy glacier. Plus, it gave me something to put as my facebook profile picture (formerly this).
The next day, we set out on our journey to Glacier National Park. My picks for pics are here; I’m ahead of Bruce on this one. The new variable on this trip was Bruce’s friend Sandeep. I was concerned about having another Indian in the group; it would provide leverage for Jesse and Bruce to kick me out, since Sandeep could fulfill Indian-related duties. But in the end, having him was a plus, if nothing else than for his Jeep and the fact that I could cry “racism” whenever him and I were segregated to one side of a restaurant booth. His artistry was also invaluable on three key pictures.
The views at GNP were spectacular. But we did not see any bears. None. Oh, we saw “evidence” of bears, like a pawprint or two. And we saw people milling around at times, talking about how a bear just walked through, but no bears for Jeet. Before the trip, Bruce was concerned that I was actually terrified of bears (well, unreasonably terrified of bears), and actually told people not to bring up bears with me. To be fair, in our e-mail conversations I had been nothing short of obsessed with bears. Part of this can be due to the Colbert Report, and the evidence that bears are bloodthirsty, godless killing machines. My research on bear videos was nothing short of astonishing. But, armed with the proper information, I felt prepared to handle anything that came down. Luckily for any bear, this situation did not come up.
Things I learned on this camping trip:
- It gets remarkably dark at night.
- The only thing that can stop me from snoring is sleeping on my side. Also, Bruce is not afraid to punch me in the middle of the night.
- Wearing multiple socks will not stave off blisters.
- The clearance of a Jeep Liberty will allow it to (barely) go over a wheel stop.
After a couple of days doing what we could do in GNP, we headed back home to Portland, although truth be told my legs did not feel right until sometime the next week. Now that I’ll be moving out West, though, chances are that there will more adventures in the future.