a river ran through it

so it's raining. still. it's been pouring all day and i wish i was exaggerating. lesson learned number 2: if there are patches of gravel on your campsite, these are not pads for tents, they are to fill the washout from the last torrential downpour and to provide drainage for the next torrential downpour. i found that out today as i found a small creek forming very close to my tent. thankfully i have a good quality four season MEC tent and the base of it is still waterproof.

after spending as much time in the washroom (restroom) as possible to charge my laptop battery, i ventured back to pouring rain tent land. i cozyed into my tent and was instantly bored. this is my first camping in a storm on my own sort of thing, and i remembered that when it's rained and there have been other people around (damian) that they (he) have always (obsessively) been checking on the tent... repegging the fly and so on.

adventure! this is what i wanted from this trip, right? (besides climbing, but hey i'm still bitter about it raining on my Ubah-Cranking Day, so enough about that.) where was i? oh right, adventure! i sprang back out of the tent to "check on things". i found my trusty tent-peg-hitting rock and got to work. it was at this point that i discovered that there was a small creek forming behind and under the tent. this would explain the puddles i could see inside.

i got to digging trenches around the tent, and this was the most fun i've had in a while. depending on how well you know me, you may have heard me stress about spending too much on a patagonia waterproof rain jacket before going away on this trip. it's certainly come in handy and i don't regret the purchase at all. i had fun old school style, first digging trenches by kicking at the dirt with my feet... then gouging them out with my tent-peg-hitting rock... and then to the point of digging with my hands. FUN! this is the sort of adventure i guess i was looking for.



i don't have a picture of the rain, so here's a pretty waterfall close to looking glass in NC.

not quite rain and totally the wrong state, but a lot of people just visit to look at pictures and don't read what i write, so this is for you.

perhaps my last few blog entries have sounded a bit down. i always have these great and creative ideas for my blog entries, but it's so annoying to try to steal, er, find free wireless, that i'm totally uninspired by the time i end up completing the entry, what with sitting in a parking lot and trying to answer emails at the same time (speaking of which, please feel free to email, i do appreciate them.)

you see, in my best efforts to be a dirtbag, i had cut alcohol out of my expenses. bad idea! no wonder so many homeless people are alcoholics. the stuff is/can be cheap, and really makes the time fly when you're on your own. i went back to wal-mart to pick out a bottle of wine. damian is showing up tomorrow night so i figured i should get a nice bottle for us to drink when he gets here, and nice bottle for me to drink tonight. better idea! a Really Big Bottle of Cheap Wine. I found three litres for 8.97. bonus! i think i'm hooked. this stuff will probably stain my teeth, and my liver. good stuff!

here is the wine i'm drinking next to the puddle under the tent: