First Day of the Season and the Worst Idea I Ever Came up With

First of all, let me start a post out with this picture:

You see that sweet somber "everything is gonna be a'right" look my husband is giving me? That is the exact opposite of how I feel right now. I signed up for a class where it's just me and my teacher. Independent study is what they call it. After much thought, I decide documenting back country snowboarding would be a grand idea. Except it's not. Sure, in the winter, where I would have some snomoshredding days to back me up, it would be good. Now though, with five weeks to shoot and my first day accomplished, not so good. You see, taking photos is hard. Taking photos while hiking up a snowy mountain with four other guys and then having to ride down that mountain with all your photo gear all while trying to get the perfect shot that is reliant on people you kind of sort of know? Really hard. I'm sure there are more posts to come on this throughout time, though, so lets focus on the first day of shred season.

Minus a cold it was about as good as any board day. I'm still not this great rider who can tell the board where to go and such, so maneuvering around the rocky parts was a bit difficult. And there's the part where Charly dropped in first, then yelled "Go to the RIGHT," and I got my right and left mixed up and ended up butt sliding down some steep rocky face. In the end, we arrived home before eleven with a feeling that we had conquered the day and could now lay lazily on the couch for the next eight hours. Although we didn't because I think this day inspired Chuck and he installed air bags onto his truck instead. It is an odd feeling to pull into your driveway and see people waking up and just starting their day and knowing you've already accomplished something incredibly hard and adventurous. And if you think hiking up a snowy mountain isn't hard don't talk to me, I don't wanna hear it.

Oh, plus there the time in the night where I woke up at 3am and my brain immediately went "AVALANCHES!" You can tell I'm just a little bit nervous about those things.

Now it is 7:30 at night and I just woke up from a short nap. Keeping my eyes open is nearly impossible but I know i can't go to bed yet. It takes it outta ya, waking up at 5 am to do these things. 9'o clock, please come sooner so I can slumber.

     
Shadows of the Tetons.

Peach Plums

Picture this. We (Charly and I) arrive late to a wedding reception. After saying our hellos to the bride and groom we "slowly" and "casually" make our way over to the food. Chuck picks up a yellow slice of something that is red in the middle. He takes one bite of it and then hands it over to me.
"You have have to try this" he says with this look and voice. Like it is simply the most delicious thing he has ever tasted and must be shared immediately, and Charles is not a food sharer so that means something.
"What is it?"
"Just try it."
What it is is a very hard, unripe, piece of nectarine. First of all, props to anyone that tries to serve nectarines at a wedding. I have found them to be the single most hard piece of fruit to ripen or tell when they are ripe. Second, I chock chuck's response up to the fact that he probably hasn't had one since we've been married.

So I'm casually strolling the fruit aisle a few weeks later when I see the nectarines and think, hey I should get bunch of these. When I get home, I pile them on the counter so I won't forget to check everyday for them to ripen and do homework till Charles gets home. When he does, and he sees the nectarines, this is how our conversation goes.

"Ooh, Did you get peach plums?"
"What?"
"Peach Plums?"
At this point I know he's talking about the nectarines, but I just have to say it out loud.
"Peach Plums?" I ask. "You mean the nectarines?" Now I'm incredulous. "Have you never had a nectarine? Whose thirty and doesn't know what a nectarine is?!"
We both agree that he must of had them before but just doesn't remember then and he tells me that peach plums are a real thing. Then he cuts one up and sits down (picture above). When I see them on his lap I say "you know they're not ripe," to which he replies over enthusiastically:
"They're still good."
I am laughing so hard at this and it still makes me smile. Chock it up to marriage thangs, because I don't think anyone else is amused with this story as much as I am. Let me tell ya, though, I've definitely had my fair share of peach plum moments.

Enjoying the Down Time

Every winter I get so stir crazy. It's not the cold I mind so much, and I think I a lot of people will agree, that it is the darkness. It's dark when you drive to work, and dark when you drive back, and it's such a big part of Rexburg that I don't bat an eye when the man behind the counter at the hardware store sparks a conversation about it without pretense (last year). Needless to say, I live for our Saturdays, whatever it is that we end up doing. Even if it's just a ride on the snowmobile around Mesa Falls and some tries at boon docking it all by myself, they are good Saturdays.

In the summer, it's the opposite. Charly gets off work at five and we immediately pack our things- if I haven't done it already- and head out to a crag, hit the trails, or dawn our clip in shoes and spandex and go for a ride on the road bikes. There's maybe time to sneak in an episode of whatever Netflix series we're on to wind down at the end of the day, but we're always out doing something.

But in the fall, it's different. We've become expended. I know I'm ready for more adventures, but as it starts getting dark sooner and a bit brisker, there isn't time to go out. So we work at the shop for a bit longer after Chuck gets off work, make dinner, and retire to the couch to watch what the world would deem an absurd amount of tv every night until the snow sticks and we can truly look forward to going snowboarding. Charly draws up bike park plans to build next summer while I research complete nonsense. The truth is, I don't care that that's what our nights look like these days. I'm loving the off time, the time to give my body and mind a rest while the weather transitions us from one sport to another. We won't have periods of time that are so relaxed and at ease throughout our whole lives, and so I soak up where we are in life.


Anyways, I took those photos on my Holga a little while ago. The second one is a double exposure.

Is Your Autumn...

as beautiful as mine? For my independent study class this semester I am focusing on backcountry snowboarding. Since we can't go for another few weeks, Charly and I went to scope out some spots while the roads were still drivable. Unfortunately my car couldn't make it to the spots we were hoping for, but here's our attempt at Green Canyon in the fall.

There's just one more thing, too... This Place has a bit of snow on it, and that's the happiest signs of them all.

The AMA Challenge

Charly and his brother Joe set off to do the AMA Challenge today- a century ride for diabetes. They did the ride in about six hours- not bad for a person so new to the sport. We celebrated afterwards with bananas, hot chocolate, and the hot tub. Plus some good burgers at a weirdly uncrowded Sammy's. Now "we" are currently watching "Mud." I say "we" like that because I mean Chuck is on the couch by himself while I cure my boredom upstairs because that movie is sloooow, and I do not do slow. So don't ask me to watch Life of Pi either, because I hear that whole movie is about a tiger and a kid on a raft sized boat.

Photo 3

For one of my classes last semester it was treated as a grad class type of thing. We picked out own projects and worked on them individually. I chose 4x5 climbing and biking portraits. Here's a bit of what I came up with:

The first and last ones are my favorite, but obviously there are some things in these photos that drive me crazy and I think: "If I just tweaked this one little thing when I took the photo it would look so much greater." I printed them 11x13 sized on matte paper and they printed so well. I even printed one 24x28, the portrait of Charly. I'm not quite sure how to convince him to let me hang it in the house, though.

What I Learned on Our Trip to Florida

  Charly and I just got back from Florida. Yesterday, after an unusually long traveling day, then collapsed onto our bed after buying ingredients to make tacos for today. We learned our lesson after we got back the Hill camping trip. A foodless Sunday is never worth the laziness that follows after an adventure. So we got ourselves to Broulims and we strolled around without purpose because neither of us could even form the thought of what we wanted to eat- it was a long trip. We had to go through LA, two and half layover, then Salt Lake, another two and a half layover, and then finally, Idaho, instead of just direct to Salt Lake and then to Idaho. This added another five hours and extra flight to our day.

Anyways, back to the post title. What I learned on this trip.

1. The art just across the causeway that is scattered in about a million little "art shops" is terribly overpriced and maybe just terrible at that.

2. It is worth it to wake up early, but only if the surf is good or if you are going on a sunrise kayak ride when dolphins are usually most active. If this is not the case, sleep in. BUT never past eight thirty. If you sleep in past eight thirty, that is just a waste. I know, I know. Eight thirty isn't sleeping in. Well, Chuck would beg to differ and your sun lit hours are limited.

3. The month of September is by far the most perfect time to go. It is hot, making for perfect water activities, and everyone else is in school, making for perfect theme park days. We hit all of the rides at Wet 'n Wild in just a couple of hours. Plus, swimsuits will be on sale everywhere you look.

4. These big trips, the ones that make you nervous about spending all that on tickets when you could just stay in and play in Idaho on your time off, they're worth it. We may have just as much fun biking the Teton Pass, or climbing at Pointless. Those days tend to meld together though. You do the same trail, the same climb, and you stop differentiating the days. You forget how many times you go, what exactly happened. It's still an adventure, but when you look back on your life the things that pop out are the unique experiences that happened for a small block of time. Surfing every day in Florida for a week. Hiking with a pack on your back for days. It's the once in a chance views you don't forget. You only see them for a day, but you remember them more than the ones at Pointless, or Green Canyon. I don't know how many times I'll see the Sawtooths, or Upper Palisades Lake, or Second Light Beach and the Banana River. Those views are rare these days, and so I've separated out a space for each of them in my mind. Plus, these trips sort of meld our past relationships in our mind because I remember them so well. There's the time in Florida where we hung out right before we got married and how are personalities were at that time. Then there's the time we spent Christmas there, and how utterly bored we were because the water was so cold, and so on. Each time I can remember our relationship having changed, and how different and the same we still were. I'm happy that we did/do these things before we have kids. Life feels full, satisfying. No matter what comes, we know we made the best of it.

And on photos of Florida. It's weird how I can take too many photos to post on a back country camping trip with my nice camera, but not pull it out once on a relaxing trip to Florida. There just wasn't down time. No short moments of space to say "let me grab my camera and take a photo". Plus it was just my parents and us, and we were always water bound. No matter what part of the day it was, and Chuck doesn't like his photo taken too much and I'm not a selfie person really, so it it just sat there. Sadly. I'm only slightly disappointed with myself. But then again, a soaking wet girl tromping through the freezing cold house to grab her camera to take a picture of us swimming for ten seconds and then put it back inside just wasn't appealing. Therefore, I behold, the Charly and Krisitn phone photo dump.

   
We stopped at this little big house that had freshly picked mangos and other varieties of fruit for sale. These mangos, my gosh. They will be the best mangos you ever put in you mouth. Not stringy at all, but not mushy either. All you have to do is slip a slice into you mouth and press it between your tongue and mouth. It will slowly and juicily dissolve. Like candy.

This is how the skies welcomed us on our first day, and oh how I missed you Publix.  

We promptly gave Charly a haircut after this walk on the beach. I was against it, he was for it.

When it rains in Florida, it pours. I'm always surprised when its sprinkling in Idaho and people are all "Wow, it's coming down pretty hard." So different. 

A little bit of the Florida wildlife.  

  
Cafe Margeou easily has the most delicious food/presentation, and its located in the quaintest part of town. We went with my parents and Grandmother Hoppe.   

One last surf session, and then it was time to head home early the next morning. Charly: "Can we just kick ourselves for every time we came here and didn't surf?" Something definitely clicked this trip.

P.s. Chuck and I have been watching every surf documentary on Netflix now. We are soaking in our new love for the sport and I am in a hard withdrawal stage. I know everyone around the world is getting excited be fall is coming, but here the windows are open to let in the cool air and I'm already wearing a sweater.