#i even got the shading locked in and goddamn this is better than some published hentai. this is the Good Shit.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

very serious hentai strip debates going on rn like what if we kept gunter pantless after he strips.

pros: gilf thighs. less to draw. less stuff to worry about when he's ready to dick down.

cons: ???

[pendulumprince]

Title: Storge

Characters: Aoi Zaizen, Akira Zaizen

Pairings: N/A

Summery: "I love you.”

“That’s nice”

(Or: a glimpse into why Aoi and Akira are the way they are.)

Notes: As has been said before, 95% of YGO parents are shitty, dead or both so I decided to keep up with the tradition.

I wrote this up a few days after I published Heroine (so around six months ago) and just recently unearthed it again. Finally decided to stop being a baby and publish it. 

TW for emotional neglect, postpartum depression, suicide, implied alcoholism, and transphobia.

"Father, you know I… love you, right?"

They road in the back of his father's limousine, divider up between them and their chauffeur. Saying the words aloud made Akira's throat hum. His feelings had been safe in his mind; to thrust them into reality left him exposed in a way his father was apt to prey upon.

He had spent the night before thinking about the mother he never knew. His father refused to entertain any extended conversations about her, which made conjuring up a personality hard. There were only a few pictures of her left, and she was a radically different woman in each of them.

Akira never would have believed it if he weren't living proof of the relationship, but his father married a police officer. Her official work portrait was the only picture of her that couldn't fit into one of their storage boxes, so his father kept it face down on the floor instead. He hated having to put it back in that position whenever he was done looking at it, because how could such a magnificent portrait be hidden from the world? In it she sat with her shoulders snapped back, staring into the camera lens with the curious and open look of the "good cop" luring her suspects into a false sense of security. She sat with her hands in her lap, left hand over her right, and Akira just knew she did that to show off her wedding ring. Was his mother vain enough to want to flaunt the prominent diamond? Or was she simply proud of the love she and his father shared?

Because he knew that they loved each other. There was an old snapshot of the two of them together on their first date, before she was a cop and he was a king. They had gone to some restaurant downtown and were seated side-by-side, the booth's garish upholstery gleaming plastic in the florescent lights. The food before them was piled high in plastic trays and shined wet with oil. It made Akira nauseous just looking at it, but his parents didn't seem to mind. His mother's face was split open into a grin so wide that her eyes were nearly closed against the apples of her cheeks. She was only nineteen, but her teeth were already stained a dull yellow. Her blush came through as uneven splotches that contrasted harshly against her pale skin. But his father—his inscrutable, impossible-to-please father—had his arm around her shoulders anyway, his cheek resting against the top of her head. He smiled in a way Akira never saw for himself. He was enchanted by that tenement girl.

And then there was the picture of her at the party celebrating LUNA's ten year anniversary. Surrounded by smartly dressed business associates, she wore a green sequin dress that was so endearingly gaudy that it made Akira feel warm inside. He liked to think it was a conscious decision, a refusal to conform to the world her husband was eager to join despite their working-class background. In the picture she had one hand on her hip and clutched a glass of wine in the other. Shimmering in the soft yellow lights, she smiled toothily and winked at the camera. And Akira supposed she still could still smile that way, since he hadn't been born yet.

There was only one picture of the two of them, taken after they brought him home from the hospital as a newborn. They were seated together on one of the antique sofas his father so loved. Akira was clearly visible in the shot, but his mother had her face turned away from the camera. She ate her work gun six weeks later. His birth had been the trigger, and he would have blamed himself for everything if not for the little message she left him. On the back of that photograph were three words, written in her loopy handwriting: love you, sweetie.

He first found the message when he was six years old, and in an instant his heart swelled with love for the mother he never knew. But when that happy feeling died down, he realized with the slow sinking of his heart that while his dead mother loved him, his living father never once told him anything of the kind.

The man relentlessly mocked any "whining" he attempted, so he knew better than to ask for love. Instead, he set out to earn it. He rose to the top of his class. He dressed with class and spoke with perfect diction. There was never a hair out of place. There was hardly ever a strong expression of emotion. He strived to be the sort of child worthy of affection, and to that end he could wait. He could wait. He could wait he could wait he could—

By fourteen he still hadn't received a word of tenderness from his father, and when his yearning became too great he would think about his mother, and her special message to him, and how it made him feel. But one night it dawned on him: his father had to be waiting for him to express his love first! Of course! The unbreakable King of LUNA never showed any vulnerability, and what could be more intimate than expressing your love for someone? Akira knew he had to show his father it was okay. He would open his heart first, and surely that would work, wouldn't it?

"Father, you know I… love you, right?"

The man kept his steely gaze fixed ahead. "Is that so?"

"Yes."

He hummed. "That's nice."

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

Even at five years old, Aoi knew a couple things about her daddy.

He was a musician. The instruments he could play outnumbered the ones he couldn't. He released a couple of CDs, but Aoi never heard him playing on that radio. But that was okay, she wanted daddy's voice all to herself.

She only had one picture of him, hidden at the bottom of her toy box so her mom wouldn't see it and rip it up. He was playing his guitar, right hand wrapped around the neck of the instrument, fingers pressed up against the cords. He wore thin silver rings on each of his fingers, even his thumb. His left hand was captured mid-strum, blurred in motion, and Aoi liked to imagine that he was playing one of the songs she liked best.

Her daddy's hair was the color of the sky, but his eyes were brown like hers. They looked so soft, lovingly gazing at the crowd before him, like he wrote and composed and labored over the song just for them. That was the look of a father, right? Surely he would look at her that way when they finally got the chance to meet. He'd have to, because the only thing her mom ever told her about him was that he loved his music more than anything else. Aoi loved his music too, so he'd love her back, right? Like he loved all his fans. Of course it would be like that.

She met him once before he drank himself into oblivion and tumbled off the edge of the pier. She and her soon-to-be-brother were at her soon-to-be-stepfather's company, in the room off the side of his office. She was coloring, with Akira periodically commenting on her efforts while he did his homework. She'd been absorbed in her work, until she heard the most wonderful, most beautiful, most melodic voice—

"Geez girl, you're really movin' on up in the world!"

Aoi stopped mid crayon stroke.

"Not all of us can live fifteen years in the past." A pause, the shuffling of paper. "Here. My attorney marked off where you need to sign."

"And you're gonna give me what you promised, right?"

"You'll receive your compensation," her soon-to-be-stepfather stepped in.

She got up from her seat. She needed to see him, to look into eyes the same color as hers. Behind her, she could hear Akira set his book aside. "Aoi…"

"Goddamn, you're making this sound like some sorta business transaction."

The King of LUNA scoffed. "Isn't it?"

"Stop." Her mother interceded. "Let's just get this over with."

Aoi made it up to the door. In front of her soon-to-be-stepfather's desk stood a spindly man dressed in black. Even at a distance she could catch the scent of stale cigarettes, and she instantly loved the smell just as much as she loved him.

Her daddy was bent over the documents, and she could see the bumps his spine poke out from beneath his too-tight shirt. He signed off with his left hand, and Aoi thought that was so special. When he set the pen down she could see the trembling in his hands.

She wandered out the front door, and made it two steps before Akira caught her by the upper arm. "Come Aoi, let's go back inside—"

Without looking back she pulled away, walking over to the crowd of adults. "Daddy?"

The man turned around. He looked much older than he did in the picture. He had crows-feet at the corners of his brown eyes, lines etched around his mouth, and grey hair threaded through his blue locks. His face twisted into a grimace. "Why's our boy wearing a dress?"

Oh. Oh.

"Goodness, you mistook your daughter for a son. How does one do that, exactly?" her soon-to-be-stepfather drawled. He sounded like he was bored. "But I suppose you wouldn't know her that well, this is the second time you've ever seen her.

Her daddy was still looking at her mom. "I know this isn't our kid."

Her mom had been staring at the ground, but her head shot up at that remark. Her blue-grey eyes were glistening, "How could you say that? She has your eyes!"

"He."

"She!" Her brother shot back from behind her.

The King of LUNA stared at the other man with soulless eyes. "I fail to see why this matters to you. You've relinquished your parental rights." He slid a smaller piece of paper across his desk. "It was a pleasure doing business. You can see yourself out."

She swore her daddy’s eyes grew a shade darker when he saw that piece of paper. He slowly picked it up and held it at eye level. "Goddamn," he smirked. "I never thought I'd see this many zeros on a check."

"Get out!" her mother roared.

As soon as they got home her mom hid herself away in her bedroom, and the man she was going to marry followed in soon after. Aoi couldn't hear what they were saying, so she went to her room and laid down on her side, trying to visually trace the pattern of her floral wallpaper through her blurred vision. And when she started started to cry for real, she buried her face in her pillow. She didn't want them to know.

How could daddy—not daddy, that guy—do that to her in front of her new family? Didn't she look pretty? Did some men just not want daughters? Why didn't he want her? She wanted him for so long, staring at that stupid picture and dreaming of the day he'd sing a song just for her. But he wouldn't. He didn't love her and made it so that no one else would, either. If the person she got her eyes from didn't love her, how could anyone else?

Her thoughts fell further and further down this path—nobody loves me, nobody loves me, nobody loves me—when she felt someone place their hand on her back. She jumped, instinctively turning to face the source of contact.

It was Akira, who recoiled at her sudden movement. "Sorry, I was just calling for you. You didn't answer so I decided to check…" his brows furrowed. "Are you okay?"

Aoi wiped the tears and snot away with her sleeve. She tried to nod, but only wound up crying even harder.

Her soon-to-be-brother shifted his eyes away, worming his hands into his pockets. "Do you want a tissue?"

She shook her head.

"Some juice? Something to eat?"

She shook her head again, turning back away from him to face the wall.

"Okay." She expected him to leave, but he didn't. "You know Aoi, I'm really glad my dad is marrying your mom. Do you know why?"

Aoi chewed on her nail. Was it possible he still didn't know?

He continued. "Because all my life my dad has been my only family, and all he had was me. We were very lonely with each other." He paused, like he just then realized he was talking to someone with a mouth full of milk teeth. "Being lonely together… I guess that doesn't make much sense, does it?"

It didn't, but Aoi still turned back around to face him. He kneeled down so that they were at eye-level. "I guess I'm trying to say that I'm glad I get to be your brother. We can be there for each other in a way our parents aren't, or can't be. You... can't imagine how much that means to me." He smiled, but even Aoi could see the drop of pain in his expression. "I promise you'll always be my sister, no matter what anyone says."

Mom always said not to hug strangers, but Akira wasn't a stranger. They met three times already, and they were going to be brother and sister, and he knew and he still saw her the way she wanted to be seen—as she was. So she threw her arms around his shoulders, wiping her tears and snot onto his blazer. He didn't hug her back, but her soon-to-be stepfather never hugged anyone back either.

What was important was that he didn't push her away.

[olivereliott]

The Loop Routes That Don’t Show Up On The Map

Last Friday afternoon, I locked my bike to a sign next to the trail and tried to convince myself it wasn’t that hot—it was 82 degrees in Missoula, with a forecasted high of 91. A hundred feet behind me, most sane people with the afternoon off were spending it floating down the river in inner tubes, drinking cold beverages, their butts in the cool water, occasionally paddling a little with their hands but for the most part as relaxed as they’d be sitting in a La-Z-Boy. I could hear a handful of whoops and yells as I clipped my running vest and clicked through the menu on my watch.

The trail above me was in the shade, at least, but that was about all the encouragement I could give myself. I had never tried to run all the way to the top of Mt. Sentinel, 1800 feet of climbing in 2.9 miles. I was tired after a long work week, had run yesterday, and could think of at least 10 other reasons to not do it. But Hilary had run the whole thing a couple days earlier and she didn’t die or vomit at the top, so maybe I could, too. It was going to go one of two ways, so I might as well get it over with. I clicked the start button on my watch and started shuffling, reminding myself to take it as slowly as possible so I didn’t blow up.

I only saw three other people the whole way, and thankfully, they all stepped off to the side of the trail to let me pass, maybe thanks to the early warning of my wheezing as I chugged up the trail. I would like to think when I pass hikers on the trail, I look fit and graceful, but I’m sure when I’m out of earshot, they’re probably saying things to each other like “That guy looked like he was about to DIE,” “Trail running looks like it’s really awful,” and “Do you think we should call for a rescue?”

I constantly had to remind myself to keep looking at the ten feet of trail in front of me, not 100 feet ahead. There are few truly flat sections of the Smokejumper Trail, many steep spots, some less-steep sections, and overall, plenty of opportunities for someone of my speed to consider taking up golf instead of trail running. My quads burned with every uphill step, my heart rate stayed around 160 the entire time, and I talked myself out of this idea and back into it approximately 100 times.

I made it to the saddle without walking, leaving about a half mile and 300 feet of climbing to the summit, so I tried to take a big gulp of air in and keep a respectable stride going as I moved up the trail.

—

I knew almost nothing about mountains when I moved to Missoula from my home state of Iowa in 2002 to go to grad school for journalism. I just knew I wanted to learn how to write, in a way that could lead to a job, or at least making a living. Part way through my two years at the university, I figured out that I also liked standing on top of mountains. By the fall of my second year of school, I had become a little obsessed, picking through hiking guidebooks to find the hikes that led to summits. I managed to get up a few peaks, some with my friend Tim, including Idaho’s Borah Peak, Lolo Peak near Missoula, and Mt. Sentinel via the Smokejumper Trail—which, in 2004, was a pretty big hike for me, even if the mountain was literally the backyard of the campus of the University of Montana, its southern slopes dropping down a couple hundred feet from the journalism building where I attended classes.

In my second year of grad school, I had to do a thesis project, and I mentioned it to Tim one day. He joked, “What’s it on, peak bagging?” I laughed and said that might be a good idea. My best idea to that point had been something like “newspapers and the internet.” I talked to the department chair and switched my thesis project to three magazine feature-style articles on peak bagging. I found three stories that I hoped might someday be published in magazines: a group of folks called the Highpointers Club, who tried to summit as many of the state high points as possible, from Denali to Florida’s 320-foot Britton Hill; the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, who worked to protect and preserve Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks; and the County Highpointers, a group whose common interest was finding and summiting the high points of counties of the United States (of which there are 3,143). Summits made sense to me: a clear goal, a distinct turnaround point, you either made it to the top or you didn’t. When I looked through guidebooks, I skipped the loop hikes and looked for the ones that ended on peaks.

If you count the three members of my thesis committee and myself, I believe a total of five people have read my master’s thesis from 2004—one other grad student read it sometime around 2009, I think. I never got the articles published anywhere, but at that point, I was realizing I didn’t want to someday write for Rolling Stone anymore—I wanted to write for Outside and Backpacker.

My adventure writing career got a slow start: I got day jobs at small newspapers and tried to pitch and write magazine stories on the side. I got rejected by all the outdoor magazines you’ve heard of, but started to write for smaller ones, and eventually, seven years after getting my first rejection letters, I finally wrote a couple stories for some of the bigger national magazines.

An editor from a publishing company emailed me one day in 2014, asking if I’d like to write a brief how-to book about peak bagging. I’d get a small advance payment, and if it sold well, maybe make a few bucks over the next couple years. I thought hell, why not. Since Tim had suggested the idea of a peak bagging thesis 11 years earlier, I had gotten up a few more mountains, and enjoyed all of them.

I wrote the book, got the check, and it was published in 2015. By the end of the year, I received my first earnings statement from the publisher and it was pretty evident that the book had not made the New York Times Bestseller List. Not that I expected it to. I shrugged and figured I had at least paid off a little of my student loan from the University of Montana with some of the book money, and that was pretty OK. Since then, I’d started trail running a lot more, getting into ultramarathon distances, and in trying to plan long training runs, I ended up doing lots of loops—big ones that took all day, and small ones I’d repeat as necessary to hit a mileage goal. I had different motivations, and they didn’t always take me over the top of peaks anymore.

—

Above the saddle on Sentinel last week, I kept my legs moving, hating myself and my idea of “winding down after a long week at the office.” A slight haze hung over the valley, blown in from wildfires somewhere. Another reason you might think twice about running uphill at about your VO2 max for the better part of an hour.

With maybe 40 vertical feet to go, my legs were screaming and I was in more physical distress than I’d been in years, thinking, really, what’s the point of running to the summit? This much discomfort, for what? It’s not like someone was waiting for me at the top with a $25 gift card to Taco John’s. If I stopped and walked, there would be no difference, besides it being about 90 seconds later when I stood on the summit.

But you can’t quit 40 feet from the top. I kept my feet moving, considering the very real possibility of vomiting on the summit for a few seconds, before the ground beneath my feet flattened out and I was on top. I stopped, took a quick phone photo, turned around and decided to let myself walk down the next few hundred feet of trail, in lieu of rolling up into the fetal position and having a good cry. My shirt was soaked in sweat all the way down to the hem, my shorts were about half-soaked, and I thought, you know, is 52 ounces of water enough for the rest of this run? At the beginning of the day, I’d decided I wanted to do more than an out-and-back; I planned a route down the back side of the mountain, and around the north side, back to my bike, a big loop. I figured it would be somewhere between eight and 12 more miles, and I had about 40 ounces of water left (it’s hard to drink when you’re wheezing and running uphill).

Reader, it was not enough water, not even fucking close to enough water. I conserved it while getting blasted by the sun in the now-90-degree heat, then ran out about two miles from my bike. When I finally got to my bike, I would have paid $50 for a single ice cube to be dropped in my dusty mouth.

Instead, I got on and began to pedal, considering my options. The most direct route would take me by a grocery store, only about 100 feet off my ride home. I hit every goddamn son of a bitching red light on the way there and stood straddling my bike, watching the walk/don’t walk signal tick down the seconds as I baked in the sun. How am I still sweating?

The grocery store I picked was way busier than I had envisioned it would be when I was fantasizing about cold drinks for the past hour. I found a sports drink and walked to what I thought would be a fast-moving line, my face sweat sticking to the mask I’d put on before coming into the store. I held the bottle by the cap, hoping to avoid having my warm hand heat up the icy drink even a few degrees before I could drink it. I hoped no one in line could smell me.

The guy at the register was wearing a University of Montana hooded sweatshirt, with the hood up, a visual that blew my mind as I stood in the freezer aisle, the hottest and thirstiest I’d felt in at least a year. The line was not moving. I glanced around. A shelf with a small selection of books sat next to the Hot Pockets, almost all titles I’d never heard of. The sign above it read “Montana Grown.” Ah, local authors? No, local huckleberry jam and candy. And some books, not necessarily written by local authors. At the far right of the shelf, through my dried-out contact lenses, I saw an image that looked very familiar to something in my memory, my friend Nick hiking up a trail as we made our way up South Arapaho Peak in Colorado in 2009 or 2010. Oh wait, that is Nick. I took that photo. That’s the cover of that book I wrote. About peak bagging. Next to the Hot Pockets.

I paid for my sports drink, then drained the entire thing standing outside in the heat, next to the bike rack. I thought the idea of “peak bagging,” about how much time I’ve spent picking out summit routes to attempt, and how as I get older, maybe it’s not always the summits that are so interesting, but the ways things loop back on themselves.

Thanks for reading. These posts are able to continue thanks to the handful of wonderful people who back Semi-Rad on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. If you’d like to join them, click here for more info—you’ll also get access to the Patreon-only posts I write, as well as discounts to my shop and other free stuff.

—Brendan

The post The Loop Routes That Don’t Show Up On The Map appeared first on semi-rad.com.

[thejustinmarshall]

The Loop Routes That Don’t Show Up On The Map

Last Friday afternoon, I locked my bike to a sign next to the trail and tried to convince myself it wasn’t that hot—it was 82 degrees in Missoula, with a forecasted high of 91. A hundred feet behind me, most sane people with the afternoon off were spending it floating down the river in inner tubes, drinking cold beverages, their butts in the cool water, occasionally paddling a little with their hands but for the most part as relaxed as they’d be sitting in a La-Z-Boy. I could hear a handful of whoops and yells as I clipped my running vest and clicked through the menu on my watch.

The trail above me was in the shade, at least, but that was about all the encouragement I could give myself. I had never tried to run all the way to the top of Mt. Sentinel, 1800 feet of climbing in 2.9 miles. I was tired after a long work week, had run yesterday, and could think of at least 10 other reasons to not do it. But Hilary had run the whole thing a couple days earlier and she didn’t die or vomit at the top, so maybe I could, too. It was going to go one of two ways, so I might as well get it over with. I clicked the start button on my watch and started shuffling, reminding myself to take it as slowly as possible so I didn’t blow up.

I only saw three other people the whole way, and thankfully, they all stepped off to the side of the trail to let me pass, maybe thanks to the early warning of my wheezing as I chugged up the trail. I would like to think when I pass hikers on the trail, I look fit and graceful, but I’m sure when I’m out of earshot, they’re probably saying things to each other like “That guy looked like he was about to DIE,” “Trail running looks like it’s really awful,” and “Do you think we should call for a rescue?”

I constantly had to remind myself to keep looking at the ten feet of trail in front of me, not 100 feet ahead. There are few truly flat sections of the Smokejumper Trail, many steep spots, some less-steep sections, and overall, plenty of opportunities for someone of my speed to consider taking up golf instead of trail running. My quads burned with every uphill step, my heart rate stayed around 160 the entire time, and I talked myself out of this idea and back into it approximately 100 times.

I made it to the saddle without walking, leaving about a half mile and 300 feet of climbing to the summit, so I tried to take a big gulp of air in and keep a respectable stride going as I moved up the trail.

—

I knew almost nothing about mountains when I moved to Missoula from my home state of Iowa in 2002 to go to grad school for journalism. I just knew I wanted to learn how to write, in a way that could lead to a job, or at least making a living. Part way through my two years at the university, I figured out that I also liked standing on top of mountains. By the fall of my second year of school, I had become a little obsessed, picking through hiking guidebooks to find the hikes that led to summits. I managed to get up a few peaks, some with my friend Tim, including Idaho’s Borah Peak, Lolo Peak near Missoula, and Mt. Sentinel via the Smokejumper Trail—which, in 2004, was a pretty big hike for me, even if the mountain was literally the backyard of the campus of the University of Montana, its southern slopes dropping down a couple hundred feet from the journalism building where I attended classes.

In my second year of grad school, I had to do a thesis project, and I mentioned it to Tim one day. He joked, “What’s it on, peak bagging?” I laughed and said that might be a good idea. My best idea to that point had been something like “newspapers and the internet.” I talked to the department chair and switched my thesis project to three magazine feature-style articles on peak bagging. I found three stories that I hoped might someday be published in magazines: a group of folks called the Highpointers Club, who tried to summit as many of the state high points as possible, from Denali to Florida’s 320-foot Britton Hill; the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, who worked to protect and preserve Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks; and the County Highpointers, a group whose common interest was finding and summiting the high points of counties of the United States (of which there are 3,143). Summits made sense to me: a clear goal, a distinct turnaround point, you either made it to the top or you didn’t. When I looked through guidebooks, I skipped the loop hikes and looked for the ones that ended on peaks.

If you count the three members of my thesis committee and myself, I believe a total of five people have read my master’s thesis from 2004—one other grad student read it sometime around 2009, I think. I never got the articles published anywhere, but at that point, I was realizing I didn’t want to someday write for Rolling Stone anymore—I wanted to write for Outside and Backpacker.

My adventure writing career got a slow start: I got day jobs at small newspapers and tried to pitch and write magazine stories on the side. I got rejected by all the outdoor magazines you’ve heard of, but started to write for smaller ones, and eventually, seven years after getting my first rejection letters, I finally wrote a couple stories for some of the bigger national magazines.

An editor from a publishing company emailed me one day in 2014, asking if I’d like to write a brief how-to book about peak bagging. I’d get a small advance payment, and if it sold well, maybe make a few bucks over the next couple years. I thought hell, why not. Since Tim had suggested the idea of a peak bagging thesis 11 years earlier, I had gotten up a few more mountains, and enjoyed all of them.

I wrote the book, got the check, and it was published in 2015. By the end of the year, I received my first earnings statement from the publisher and it was pretty evident that the book had not made the New York Times Bestseller List. Not that I expected it to. I shrugged and figured I had at least paid off a little of my student loan from the University of Montana with some of the book money, and that was pretty OK. Since then, I’d started trail running a lot more, getting into ultramarathon distances, and in trying to plan long training runs, I ended up doing lots of loops—big ones that took all day, and small ones I’d repeat as necessary to hit a mileage goal. I had different motivations, and they didn’t always take me over the top of peaks anymore.

—

Above the saddle on Sentinel last week, I kept my legs moving, hating myself and my idea of “winding down after a long week at the office.” A slight haze hung over the valley, blown in from wildfires somewhere. Another reason you might think twice about running uphill at about your VO2 max for the better part of an hour.

With maybe 40 vertical feet to go, my legs were screaming and I was in more physical distress than I’d been in years, thinking, really, what’s the point of running to the summit? This much discomfort, for what? It’s not like someone was waiting for me at the top with a $25 gift card to Taco John’s. If I stopped and walked, there would be no difference, besides it being about 90 seconds later when I stood on the summit.

But you can’t quit 40 feet from the top. I kept my feet moving, considering the very real possibility of vomiting on the summit for a few seconds, before the ground beneath my feet flattened out and I was on top. I stopped, took a quick phone photo, turned around and decided to let myself walk down the next few hundred feet of trail, in lieu of rolling up into the fetal position and having a good cry. My shirt was soaked in sweat all the way down to the hem, my shorts were about half-soaked, and I thought, you know, is 52 ounces of water enough for the rest of this run? At the beginning of the day, I’d decided I wanted to do more than an out-and-back; I planned a route down the back side of the mountain, and around the north side, back to my bike, a big loop. I figured it would be somewhere between eight and 12 more miles, and I had about 40 ounces of water left (it’s hard to drink when you’re wheezing and running uphill).

Reader, it was not enough water, not even fucking close to enough water. I conserved it while getting blasted by the sun in the now-90-degree heat, then ran out about two miles from my bike. When I finally got to my bike, I would have paid $50 for a single ice cube to be dropped in my dusty mouth.

Instead, I got on and began to pedal, considering my options. The most direct route would take me by a grocery store, only about 100 feet off my ride home. I hit every goddamn son of a bitching red light on the way there and stood straddling my bike, watching the walk/don’t walk signal tick down the seconds as I baked in the sun. How am I still sweating?

The grocery store I picked was way busier than I had envisioned it would be when I was fantasizing about cold drinks for the past hour. I found a sports drink and walked to what I thought would be a fast-moving line, my face sweat sticking to the mask I’d put on before coming into the store. I held the bottle by the cap, hoping to avoid having my warm hand heat up the icy drink even a few degrees before I could drink it. I hoped no one in line could smell me.

The guy at the register was wearing a University of Montana hooded sweatshirt, with the hood up, a visual that blew my mind as I stood in the freezer aisle, the hottest and thirstiest I’d felt in at least a year. The line was not moving. I glanced around. A shelf with a small selection of books sat next to the Hot Pockets, almost all titles I’d never heard of. The sign above it read “Montana Grown.” Ah, local authors? No, local huckleberry jam and candy. And some books, not necessarily written by local authors. At the far right of the shelf, through my dried-out contact lenses, I saw an image that looked very familiar to something in my memory, my friend Nick hiking up a trail as we made our way up South Arapaho Peak in Colorado in 2009 or 2010. Oh wait, that is Nick. I took that photo. That’s the cover of that book I wrote. About peak bagging. Next to the Hot Pockets.

I paid for my sports drink, then drained the entire thing standing outside in the heat, next to the bike rack. I thought the idea of “peak bagging,” about how much time I’ve spent picking out summit routes to attempt, and how as I get older, maybe it’s not always the summits that are so interesting, but the ways things loop back on themselves.

Thanks for reading. These posts are able to continue thanks to the handful of wonderful people who back Semi-Rad on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. If you’d like to join them, click here for more info—you’ll also get access to the Patreon-only posts I write, as well as discounts to my shop and other free stuff.

—Brendan

The post The Loop Routes That Don’t Show Up On The Map appeared first on semi-rad.com.

from Explore https://semi-rad.com/2020/08/the-loop-routes-that-dont-show-up-on-the-map/ via http://www.rssmix.com/