A Stomp in the Woods

Adventures.

I have been with my husband for six years. Our adventures, well misadventures rather, keep us happy. That can be said about them. I find the fact that Bobaloo is willing to go along and/or initiate these expeditions shows what a great guy he is.  Perhaps our fateful excursions are due to our ability to jump into new interests wholeheartedly and undaunted.

Okay, maybe a little daunted. All right, a lot daunted.

We tend make up for our ill-advised adventures with an ample amount of enthusiasm. Yep, a ton of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm up the wazoo. 

This Christmas made for another expedition which was brought on by a thoughtful gift of snowshoes from my parents.
 

To celebrate the holiday we thought it would be fun to take Friday off of work and go up to Eldora Ski Area's snowshoe trails. We gathered all of our scattered snow gear and left in the morning. I am pretty sure we were supposed to stretch first. In fact, really sure we should have stretched first. Instead, we stopped at the 7-11 and bought donuts. I heard that you burn 400 calories an hour while stomping around in the snow and figured, what the hell? Go nuts with a sour cream donut washed down with a cappuccino. Mistake number one. We should have stretched. We also should have quit smoking like, a hundred years ago. 

When I wasn't sleeping in the passenger seat, the way to the mountains was pretty. Alas! We arrived and found our way to the Nordic Center. Okay. We don't learn to snowshoe 
at a park or something, we go to a freakin' ski hill to stomp around. We paid $14 a piece to be in exquisite pain. We hooked the pain passes to our jackets, went to the car and strapped on our gear. We had a map and followed little orange triangles for an hour and a half. The hour and half was like a wintry hinterland. Beautiful pine trees, perfect tiny snow flakes, frozen ponds, virgin snow, the whole works. Snowshoeing was like walking, but more fun. After the blissful hour and a half we headed back to the car to regroup. This is where we made the fateful mistake of not knowing when we've had enough. Our proverbial "overdoing it."

We decided we would do another short loop to get our full money's worth. To grasp the entire experience. Oops. The loop was gigantic. Really, really gigantic. 

There are times when I partake in activities where
I know I will be sore the next day. The second loop was the part of the day when my limbs began throbbing
in pain while stomping around. Ow. Seriously. Ow.   The worst part is knowing that this misery is only going to get worse in the next 24 hours.
 

After an awkward, yet entertaining face-plant by me and some confusion about where the heck we were we eventually made it out. It was not pretty. Bobaloo was a trooper. I was pathetic and my pace was dragging due to conflicting feelings of numbness and pain from the waist down. The only thing that kept me going was the bar at the end of the parking lot. Way at the other end of the parking lot. The other end of the parking lot and up 2 flights of stairs. Ow. There was not enough spiced rum to alleviate the agony and it was snowy so we decided to go home after a couple of cocktails. Here are the lessons learned:

1. Have the cocktails before and during the trek.
2. Stretch.
3. Stick to one trail loop.  Not two.  Never two.
4. You have to take the stopper-things off of your Nordic poles for them to work.
5. Like wallpapering and setting up a tent, a snowshoeing trek can test a relationship.
6. Don't forget the map in your car during a break.
7. Just because you have Scandinavian genes, doesn't mean you'll take to "Nordic" sports.
8. Always. Follow. The. Orange. Triangles.