Monday, July 13, 2009

The Pedernales

I woke up on the late side Saturday morning, around 8:30, after somewhat of a late night on Jimmy's deck Friday. Mainly because I didn't have any bread in the house to make PBJs for lunch, I decided to swap my original plan of hiking Saturday and biking Sunday. I had some trouble motivating myself, and barely made it out of the house by 10 for a noon showing of Bruno at the Alamo Ritz. It turns out I didn't have to be in quite as big of a rush as I was, the theater wasn't open yet when I got there at 11, and there wasn't as big of a crowd as I thought there might be. There were about 20 people waiting when the doors opened at 11:20, and more filtered in until the theater was about half full at showtime. I enjoyed the movie, I liked that it had a little bit more of a plot than Borat, but some of the magic is gone, in that I was thinking about how much of it was pre-arranged versus being spontaneous. I thought about doing something after the movie, but just headed home after a spin along the hike-and-bike trail. My legs were already kind of tired at the beginning of the day from riding to work on Friday, so the ride home was pretty rough. I stopped in to 7-11 for a free mini slurpee to try to beat the heat, then stopped again a little further down the road to get some groceries. I didn't really want to be carrying more weight, but I really needed milk and bread and wasn't sure I would go to the store once I got home. When I got home I took a shower and vegetated for a while. I called Jimmy to see if he was going to our mutual friends' last-minute party and wound up going to hang out over there for a little while. He didn't go, but I went to the party around 8. It was a good party, lots of old friends I don't see that often any more. It wasn't nearly as crazy as some of their other parties have been, despite having a beer pong setup, which I performed disappointingly terribly at. I stayed until way past my bedtime and didn't get home until 3.

I woke up at 9:30 Sunday and set about getting ready for a hike. I didn't get to Pedernales Falls State Park until just past noon, and of course it was blazing hot. I set off on a 4-mile hike, which other than getting down to, crossing, and then climbing the far bank of the river was fairly level. There were a few places with some enough elevation change to get my hard moving a little faster. Not surprisingly, the trail was deserted and the only person I saw was a guy on a bicycle. When I got back to the river I was plenty ready to jump in and cool off. I found a spot to set my stuff down, and then tried to find a decent place to swim. However, the river was down so low I didn't find any place that was more than waist deep. Plus the water was kind of cloudy to begin with, and then so full of algae that moving around stirred up big brown plumes. It wasn't great, but it was refreshing despite the water being fairly warm. I had some lunch under a tree, then headed back up to my car and drove home. I chilled out for a while, then ate some wings at Pluckers and watched TV for the rest of the evening.

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