Night Hiking

I've been living dangerously for several weeks (or years, you could argue). I don't seem to have a valid driver's license. California stopped sending me notices (thanks for the ticket for my expired registration, DMV!) and I didn't know my license was expired until I walked into a bar for the first time in six months to meet an out of town friend and his friend's philosophers' club (yes this club exists, and it is made up of full-time Los Angeles-based philosophers, and no they don't like bars). I guess it's good I went! Now the wheels of licensing are grinding very, very slowly somewhere in Sacramento, and hopefully one day in the next four months I'll be a licensed driver again. Tomorrow would be nice, seeing as we're about to head into a holiday weekend.

I just got in from a lovely night hike. It's absolutely one of my favorite Los Angeles activities. I was at the peak of my fitness in August (running 30 miles/week) when I got mono and I've been sidelined ever since.

Anyway, it was good to get back to my group hikes filled with insane people who hike just about every day of the week. The last time I hiked was summer, sunny. This time the sun had set hours before our start time and it was about 50 degrees, which made me nervous, but it turns out you can't feel cold when hiking/trail running with this group. It's simply not possible. It rained all weekend, so the air couldn't have been clearer, and I just focused on forgetting about all of the bugs I was eating as I sucked in huge breaths going up to the top. My wonderful friend from Seattle sent me a care package of dark chocolate, which I happily devoured at the summit.




Night hiking is one of the rare opportunities for me to branch out and meet non-creatives and non-hipsters. On the way down today I talked with someone who is a software engineer and programs brakes for the 787, a new airbus model and some other planes. Who knew that a string of code in C could make a plane stop moving? Not me. Most of the group still seems intact from before I was forced to take a break.

Awesome hike. I now have a gigantic endorphin rush after 2-3 months of minimal exercise and life feels great.