Tell Me a Story

FRIEND: Tell me a story.

andrito bandito: Okay, but its a long one.

FRIEND: I'm ready.

andrito bandito: Are you serious?

FRIEND: Yeah.

andrito bandito: Why?

andrito bandito: Nevermind

FRIEND: ...?

andrito bandito: Okay, one of my many "camping" stories.

andrito bandito: You see, my parents were and still are big outdoor enthusiasts. I'm talking Sierra Club, tree hugging, backpacking with a single set of underwear outdoor enthusiasts.

andrito bandito: And we lived in California, convenient.

andrito bandito: One of my goals for life is to take you out to Yellowstone and Tahoe and Yosemite and all those places, because I think you would really like it. They're beautiful, these places, not like out here. New England has a lot of great forests and mountains, but the air out in the West is different. It's a little hard to desrcibe, I guess it has to do with the humidity and all that sort of stuff, but trust me when I say you haven't really breathed until you've breathed out in the west.

andrito bandito: Anyhow, my parents were never rich, far from it, not destitute, but they didn't have a lot of money. That didn't stop them from traveling everywhere together. They met at the Sierra club, so their marriage was based really on a similiar love of the outdoors.

andrito bandito: the financial situation didn't stop my parents from going everywhere in an old yellow rusting Subaru that routinely fell apart and was so rusted from years of being used out here on the East coast with the salted roads in the winter time, that the whole under carraige was rusted through in some places.

andrito bandito: Anyway, the big landmass that seperates California from everything else are the Sierra Mountains. They seperate California from Nevada. beyond that is the Great Basin, the national park haven of America. It stretches through Nevada and includes Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon, and Idaho.

andrito bandito: This place was carved out big time by the glaciers of years gone by, and is carpeted with pine trees.

andrito bandito: The Sierra Mountains slope away from California, and fall jaggedly into Nevada. From my school, on the swing, I could see the tips of the Two Sisters, a pair of foothills for the Sierra Mountains. It was quite a drive from Sacramento (about 30 minutes from where I lived) to the base of the Sierras, and from there another couple hours through the mountains. They have roads, but that place is downright treahcerous in the winter. The Donner Monument and Museum is located up there by Donner Lake. You can see the trees that are cut off half way up, because that was how high the snow was packed when the Donner party came through and had to cut down the trees for fire wood.

andrito bandito: Past Donner Lake is Lake Tahoe, one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. Hiking paths galore, the water is ice cold, there are trees everywhere, and the mountains surrounding everything on all sides. I've hiked pretty far up with my cousin (a fantastic guy, you'd love him). He lives not far from there with his wife and children.

andrito bandito: Anyways, I'm kinda getting off on a tangent there.

andrito bandito: The story is based around Yellowstone National Park.andrito bandito: This is the famous park where the have tons of bears and moose and buffalo that roam free and commit more acts of terrorism towards Americans than all of Al Queda combines.

andrito bandito: combined*

andrito bandito: Anyhow, it's a really nice park, lots of camping sites and trails.andrito bandito: So were setting up one night, and this park ranger comes by in a pick up truckandrito bandito: He says there is a grizzly bear loose in the camp site, and everyone should get in their cars until they say it's safe. After awhile he comes around saying we could get out (we've gotten rid of the crappy car by this time, and got a brand new Subaru, my mom has a thing for Subarus).

andrito bandito: So anyway, we roast marshmellows, tell stories, get crazy drunk on hot chocalate and go off to bed.

andrito bandito: In the middle of the night I hear rustling outside. I ignore it and go back to sleep (by the way sleeping in a flannel sleeping back in the middle of a tent in the middle of a forest is a great experience, unless you need to go to the bathroom, in which case camping doesn't seem too great).

andrito bandito: when we wake up in the morning, we find that our supply tent, a slightly smaller tent next to our main sleeping tent had been totaled.

andrito bandito: Apparently our friend the grizzly had come back in the middle of the night, torn through the camp site searching for food (which we obviously hid out of his reach in a tree), ripped the 1 foot tent stakes right out of the ground, and sent the tent flying. We found a footprint, and this guy was big. He must have been at least a couple hundred pounds, and left a footprint the size of Rhode Island.

andrito bandito: And he had been right NEXt to us when were sleeping.andrito bandito: It was awesome, to know that you had been that close to such a powerful animal in the wild.

andrito bandito: I've got tons of those stories, actually, because instead of watching TV (when we did it was PBS), my parents substituted camping as the one large experience in my youth.

andrito bandito: Story told, more or less.

andrito bandito: As good as AIM will let me, it usually involves a lot of gesturing.

FRIEND: Ahhh, that's amazin'.