Double-Oh Sunburn

What a day. After staying up a bit later than I intended, I crawled out of bed at six-something to pack for a day on the mountain. This is a FULL TERM for me. Forty-five straight minutes of soccer in the sun for four days a week, a six-credit community oriented "capstone" class, an online anthropology class on American culture, an evening class in Euro Prehistory (which I was superduper excited about until he assigned a fifteen-page research paper. in an 8-wk course!), and then a course on the geography of Mt. Hood. Today was the first field trip for that class, consisting of eight hours on and around the mountain.

At our first stop at a town nearby, I talked with a man who has visited from New Jersey 14 times. Holy crap, MOVE HERE ALREADY! He was appalled that most of us hadn't spent much time in the area, despite only living an hour away. He asked if we at least skied. "Yeah, I've been snowboarding. Once. In Korea." He wasn't impressed. But he was certainly nicer than the metermaid I tried to interview who looked at me like I was trying to sell her bibles or something. Although, I have to admit, receiving a scathing look from a character who is so deplored herself did make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Next we listened to a man who works a family owned peach orchard and I learned more about fruit than in my previous 25 years of existence combined.

Remember my little backpacking adventure last year when I thought I was going to get crushed by large boulders, only to realize that my biggest worry was the blizzard that had moved in suddenly? Well, a bit of dammed up glacial water burst through the top of that valley this winter and a long way below where I camped the debris - sand and gigantic boulders - took out a highway and is now stacked fifty feet high in places around a nearby parking area. I really can't describe just how astonishing it was to see how much mass moved through that valley - a valley that I had slept in, on the ground, amidst these very same rocks and dirt. So, lesson: camping in the White River Valley is Bad Idea.

Also a bad idea, although not bad enough to warrant capitalization, is not putting on sunscreen until 3pm. I had some witty thought that I had delayed total glacier meltage by global warming by at least five minutes from all the heat I absorbed, but realized that, actually, absorbing shortwave energy causes it to be re-emitted as longwave energy, which is exactly what causes the greenhouse effect. That moment of nerd hurt almost as much as this burn.

So, after spending a day heating the earth I then came home just in time to finish half an assignment and then dash off to an indoor game. There's no AC in this building, and people play soccer there from 9am to 1am. By halftime my entire body was shaking; I've since nearly drank a gallon of water and it's only just subsided.

BUT! The most interesting thing that happened in all of this was before the soccer game. As I got off the light rail on my way home from campus, someone slapped my arm from behind. I turned, expecting to see a friend. Instead, it was a trim man in decent clothes and shades; he didn't look crazy or like he was asking for money.

"What's your name?"

"Sara," I blurted. I don't mind giving strangers my first name. It seems like the only women my age that aren't named Sara are the ones who have a sister named Sara, so it's not anything uniquely identifiable.

"You should think about the CIA, Sara."

"Heh," I said, which is my typical response when I have no idea what to say to someone.

And then he was off, weaving his way through the crowd. Was he joking? Was he serious? Either way, WHY would he ask me that? Why why WHY?????