Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurres to me What a long, strange trip it's been.

off again. climbing festival in lander, wyoming. not much in lander. or wyoming, for that matter. but there is great climbing. what more do you need?

roadtrippin' it this time...17 hours or so. oh joy. when i was a kid, we drove across the country every year. never really thought twice about it - that was just how we traveled. the four of us in mr. van, with a 'keep on truckin'' logo painted on the back, red and black shag carpet - and a vcr, tv and smufs videos! mind you, this was in 1982 or so. my dad owned an early vcr (you know, those things we had before dvds ;) ), and hooked it up in the back for jaime and i to watch. now, every other soccer mom in her suv has one. we started a trend! ha. well, maybe not.

funny, though, because now i think they're ridiculous. maybe because all we had was one smurf tape and 'darby o'gill and the little people' (that movie freaked me out), so it got old fast. we much preferred the license plate game, find letters on road signs game (thank god for exits - you were guaranteed to find your 'x' easily!), listen to billy joel 8 tracks and watch the barren countryside go by. THAT's what roadtripping was about. not 15 disney videos to keep your kids quiet so you can ignore them the whole drive. those drives are some of my fondest memories growing up. hey, am i old enough to even HAVE fondest memories? geez. that must mean i'm a grown up....nahhhh...

now i have a 92 cd case (could you imagine 92 8-tracks?? you'd need a bigger van to store them!), dramamine (grr. roadsickness.), books...and i am going someplace i have never been before. for all the hours i spent driving across the country, i never have been to the 'far north' - wyoming, idaho, montana, wisconsin...new places. i love new places.

maybe i'll just hop in my car when we get back from this trip and see where it takes me. how fun would that be?