I spent my first weekend out of The Boot in Downieville, sans vélo, but still rapid-cycling—between Muir-grade rapture at being back in the mountains and frustration at being hobbled. Per usual, I’ll choose to blame the attitude on altitude: eight months at sea level has erased either my tolerance for the thin air or my memory of the fact that I never had any to start with. Woe!
Lucky for me, I had two very patient hiking buddies …
There’s also plenty to see in Downieville outside the usual program of shuttle-ride-river-repeat. Saturday I limped up to the excellent Sierra Buttes fire lookout, and it felt like the top of the world. Sunday Marisa drove some silly sort of mileage on Forest Service roads in search of the “other” Devil’s Postpile, which bore an interesting resemblance to the iron throne. Altogether, it was a good reminder that what I miss isn’t mountain biking, or climbing, or backpacking, or any of the other big-ticket items still several months out: it’s exploring—and if I were to quit whining for five minutes, I could probably come up with some other ways to do that.
I would also like to state for the record that on this trip a fish fell from the sky and exploded on Jack’s car. At least, that was theory we’d settled on by Sunday afternoon; on the freeway Saturday morning speculation as to the source of the impressive thud ranged from “BIKES!!” to “bird?”—with a brief, optimistic interlude of “somebody’s smoothie” before the scientist on staff confirmed the presence of, uh, tissue matter in the slime spattered across the roof. Unsurprisingly, my contribution to the cleanup effort was to take pictures and put them on the Internet to gross you out. You’re welcome!
e.alia.salim 