DAY 178

DAY 178
09.29.07
TREE 95

After spending all morning and afternoon at a cross country invitational at Tom Sawyer Park, I headed over to Cherokee Park to climb my tree.  Another sycamore near Dog Hill.  But I couldn’t park near there since some strange medieval war with padded weapons was taking place.  I parked at Hogan’s Fountain and walked back.  When I got to my tree there was a guy sitting against the trunk reading.  I didn’t want to disturb him so I walked past to watch the battle.  But it was lame and I eventually had to get back to the Mount for my coffee service job.  So I walked abck to the tree and said to the reading man, “I hope you don’t mind but I am going to climb this tree.”  He said, “all right,” and didn’t seem to care much.  I walked out to where I could grab the drooping first limb and went hand over hand backwards into the trunk. 

Then quickly I went up limb to limb almost racing. 

Every once on a while I would hit some flaking bark and knock it off.  I think I might have knocked some off on the reading man because before I got to the top he got up and walked away.  Oops!  But I just continued upwards trying to be careful with my cut hand. 

Except on this one branch I grabbed with my left hand and hung for a second.  The weight re-opened the cut slightly.  It was a little painful but not bad.  I wasn’t leaving blood on the tree this time.  Then at a fork in the branches I went up and then paused to look for my ribbon.  I couldn’t see it so I climbed higher.  I found it but I had taken the wrong side of the fork so I climbed back down a few limbs to where I could transfer.  Then up to my ribbon. 

Standing there, looking around, it hit me again how nice and sunny and warm it was for almost being October.  I am definitely not complaining and actually think I got a little too much sun today, but I look forward to the fall. 

As I began to climb down, these two women on blankets near the tree spotted me.  I heard some muffled comments and tried to give them a show with nice smooth climbing down the tree.  I don’t know why I feel the need to do anything different when I know someone’s watching but… I do.  A good climb and I’m a little sad this project is almost over. 

9-29-08:  Haha… “sad this project is almost over…”  I had no idea I was going to keep doing this project at that point.  Right now I am thinking 2 years then stop.  But who knows, maybe I’ll get to the end of the second year and not be able to stop.  I’ll look back 10 years from now, still climbing everyday and laugh even more. 

Also, sorry I didn’t get any pictures of the medieval battle or the reading man.  I feel as if my narrative would have been greatly improved with those visuals. 

Yesterday I hung out in front of the TV with Drew just relaxing and blogging.  We were both pretty tired from the day before and weren’t looking to do much.  Then we both got a text from Julio about going to watch the Skins game at B Dubs in the afternoon.  We drove over there and ended up having a good amount of beers and shit ton of wings.  Drew ate so many he felt awful, went to bed before 8pm and woke up in the middle of the night with heartburn.  I went to bed early too, but not before I went out to climb a tree.  It was just getting to be dark and I biked over to George Rogers Clark Park (again) and found a nice maple tree by the bathroom building.  I went up quick and easy to the top and had a great view of the fading colors of evening.

I tried my best to get shots without flash looking down but it was pretty dark and I couldn’t stop swaying on the branch.

I then tried some with flash and they turned out really beautiful.

I put my camera in my pocket and grabbed some whirligigs and started to throw them to the ground.  It was so dark I couldn’t see them.  Not at all.  I would let go and they would immediately be invisible.  I could hear them hit some of the leaves and branches on the way down but couldn’t see them.  So weird.  Then I climbed down and took one more shot of the whole tree.

It was a nice quick and easy climb.