Criss-crossing the Country

The weekend of 7/11 I went up to Maine for some hiking and possibly some white water rafting. We wanted to do the Knife's Edge hike on Mt. Katahdin which is the highest point in Maine and a very popular 10ish hour hike. So popular in fact that the parking for the trail head for Knife's Edge was full at 6:30 am.

As it turned out, we didn't make it by 6:30. We rolled into Baxter State Park at about 8am, signed in for the Abol/Hunt's trail hike, parked our car, and headed up the trail. This was supposed to be a 8-10 hour hike with the Abol hike being a very steep hike to the top of Katahdin and then the Hunt trail (the last leg of the AT) being easier in terms of navigating back down the mountain. We started up the Abol and they weren't kidding about steepness.

After what was a fairly ridiculous uphill and loose rock hike we hit a flat part.

And then kept climbing up to the top of Katahdin.

It was an awesome hike, and an amazing view. And holy crap was it tiring. We made it in about 4 hours, ate lunch and then headed back down the Hunt trail. It was very windy which made it kind of exciting on the way down. The views, however, were absolutely worth it.

We continued the rest of the way down the mountain and finished up in just under 8 hours. It was one hell of a workout and an awful lot of fun. I really, really like hiking.

Sunday we woke up and headed back to Bangor Maine and then did a little exploring along the coast. Our exploring led us to Camden Maine on the coast where we decided to go Sea Kayaking. This was also a great workout. Lots of fun for two hours, great core and shoulder workout. I'm pretty much ready to buy a Sea Kayak.


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Catch-up

Man...life got massively in the way of me updating this blog. Since the last post the following things have taken place:

1) Practice on a very rainy weekend prior to the Boston Invite.
2) The Boston Invite - Pike did alright...left too many opportunities on the field with our chance to make the elite bracket. We made roster decisions after this tournament. It was an incredibly difficult process but we're just about set at this point.
3) Numerous mini workouts with the Finks and on my own.
4) Played at Potlatch with Shelixim/Elixerbac (connected with the team through Huck Finn players from Paganello. Team included Germans, New Zealanders, and West Coasters). Very fun tournament overall. Maybe would have like to play a little more competitively but playing 3 days of ultimate is still 3 days of ultimate even if you're doing a lot of drinking in the process.
5) Spent an UNGODLY amount of time working as work basically decided to hit me square in the face over the past three weeks. I had to miss my first SL game due to work and was basically sleeping 5-6 hours a night and working the other 18-19 hours in the day when I wasn't eating. Thankfully this mess should be over with.
6) Oh yeah...summer league. My team has motivation issues. We don't try hard enough and get in close games that shouldn't be close. And then we lose. It makes no sense to me. We're either going to be the most dangerous 5/6 seed ever or we're headed for the D pool. It's anyone's guess.

That being said all this running around and the excessive ultimate has got my weight down in the 208 range. With two tournaments left this month (Sandblast and Wildwood) I'm expecting another 2-3 lbs if not more plus continuing to feel more and more comfortable playing elite level ultimate. My Sandblast team looks really good. Good women, two of the Titcombs (5 ultimate guys) and other strong players. I'm pretty excited.

Another post will follow later tonight with info on my awesome weekend in Maine hopefully complete with pictures. Hopefully I won't have any more prolonged hiatuses from this point forward.

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