Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain
Last night, my coworker John and I raced up and down Poway's Iron Mountain after work. It had to have been the most invigorating and entertaining run/shuffle up a mountain ever. This guy cannot be quiet, but that's a good thing when you have lots of stories about alone-in-the-wilderness close calls and mishaps to tell.

The Iron Mountain trail has a beautiful, rocky, sometimes steep ascent that twists around the back side of the mountain, winding through sagebrush and something that looks an awful lot like holly. Almost to the summit, the trail hooks back around again to the west-facing side, and thus into the sun. It was such a beautiful moment to creep back into the warm golden light of the setting sun. Also, at this point we had stopped playing John's step-only-on-rocks game which involves a great deal of hopping, so we had slowed/calmed down a bit and paused to look out at some gorgeous country and the distant San Diego skyline through the hazy late afternoon light.

The peaceful moment was soon punctured by John whisking past and yelling that we were racing to the top. It was a photo finish at the summit, when we both grabbed onto different sides of a viewer thing. However, it turns out that the viewer thing rotates, and was well-oiled at the time. I almost lost several digits and/or my head when he pounced on the scope from the other side, twisting it around towards me. Luckily, my reflexes were in tip top condition, so all body parts remain intact. This is also proof that I TOTALLY GOT TO THE TOP FIRST, since I was already touching the viewer before John pushed it towards me.

There was no time to dilly dally at the top and enjoy the sunset, but after making fun of some people's pathetic love poems to each other in the summit log book (and briefly contemplating writing another to My Dearest Cathleen), we then ran back down, chasing the daylight. Ridiculously rocky terrain, fading light, exercise-induced tunnel vision, hunger-induced weakness, and trying to outpace each other made this quite difficult. Also, my coworker was literally prancing around and making gymnastics-esque leaps and kickouts, which was really distracting among other things. But we did six or so miles, up and down a mountain, in an hour and a half with only negligible injuries. Not bad.

On my way home, after almost breaking my car in half trying to get back onto the main road, I was struck by a sudden craving. After a quick (cough, forty-five minutes, cough) stop in Whole Foods, I was ready to spend some very quality alone time, curled up with a Soy Delicious faux-ice cream root beer float, the internet, and the Hamm twins.