Mid-Atlantic Climate is Stupid

Still cold here, sadly. I have to admit one of the reasons I'm looking forward to getting out of Virginia is that I really, really don't like its climate in the winter. And yes, anyone from the Northeast will remind me that winters are in fact very mild here. I'm aware. Despite this fact, I cannot stand the fickleness of the weather during the months of February and March. Temperatures like to ricochet between 15 and 70 degrees, usually with only a day between those two extremes. And that's all well and good, but I am frail. I get sick a lot, and alternating temperature extremes do nothing to help me in that fact. Plus, it's just such a tease. If winter could kindly stay winter and spring could stay springy, I'd be really happy. Besides that, I think I'm just over seasons in general. I'll take the eternal summer/springtime of California, please!

That rant aside, a fair amount of developments since January's post. I've gone and gotten myself employed after graduation. Well, the word employed should have quotation marks around it; I wouldn't go so far as to call it a career. I've been hired to lead an adventure trip in the pacific northwest with a few other outdoor enthusiasts. We're hitting British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon over the course of five weeks. We'll be doing a number of different activities, kayaaking and mountain biking and lots of backpacking among them, and I'll be getting two thousand dollars. I also think the experience will serve me well for a future in the outdoor adventure industry. More importantly, the job begins fairly late in the summer and allows me time to complete my Canada to Mexico tour with Katharine. In my opinion, it's the best of both worlds.

Besides that five week stint, I'm looking into an apprenticeship with a company based in Virginia that would greatly increase my job marketability in the outdoor rec industry. It's a pretty sweet gig, and would occupy me from the end of my August job until mid November. The major failing is that it would place me back in Virginia, the very state I am doing my best to escape. It's not that I have a serious hatred for VA, but I feel as though I need to stretch my legs in some new scenery. The fact remains, there are better places to break into the outdoor industry. I'm fairly certain that those will be the jobs I'm pursuing for at least a few years after graduation. But who knows?

That said, with the excitement of the future, the present has somewhat been reduced to a holding station until graduation. Wintertime as usual has curtailed my cycling, and training in general, considerably. Those few freakishly warm days were spent on the back of a bicycle, and there have of course been plenty of hours logged in on the yellow stationaries in UREC. I've been intermittently devoting myself to running, as I have a half marathon coming up later in March. It's been hard, however; constant running is taxing on the body and the mind, and I really enjoy running! We won't even talk about swimming...let's just say I probably won't drown. Probably.

By 8:30 tonight, I will have completed my outdoor ed course. We culminated the whole experience last weekend with a three day, two night backpacking and backcountry camping trip. I found the experience much like I find every little forray into the wilderness: cathartic, relaxing, educational. I loved every second of it, even while I was huddled in my zero degree sleeping bag in the snow. I'm convinced that every person alive, no matter how sheltered or cosmopolitan, should spend a few days out in the woods. Nothing will help you better to make sense of the chaos of your everyday life, or help you realize how trivial the majority of your problems are. Nothing makes the creaure comforts sweeter, either. I learned so much about myself and others, and I am a little sad to see the experience over with. But the end is the beginning is the end, you know?

I'll be finishing up the second half of the semester in Road Cycling. A number of friends I made during Mountain Biking last semester will be taking the road course, many of them rank novices in the sport. I'm really looking forward to the inevitable falls from clipless pedal failure, and of course fine tuning my routes in the valley. I'm also curious to see if there's anything in regards to repair and technique that I can pick up during those eight weeks. In either case, it will be an extremely good time, and exactly the way that I'd like to leave my college experience behind.

Thanks everyone, for reading! I'm not sure when the next big moment in my life will come around. For certain, you can expect some poorly shot photos of the northwest coastline to get up here sometime, either when I start my job or during the Canada to Mexico trip. Summer 2009 will be one to remember, of that I'm quite certain!

Cheers, and Peace Out Hombres,

Mark