Barrymore

This weekend, the Yogger, the American Hero and I will all make our annual pilgrimage to mecca.  It is a religious experience.

While most of the country is busy at the pool, manning the bbq, or hitting the beach, we will be sweating and swearing our way towards Auburn.  While normal people don their string bikinis, rub in the sunscreen, drink margaritas, and eat fresh grilled fish tacos, while they laugh, and enjoy the blessings of leisure, we will climb and descend, inhale and exhale, an intentional monotonous journey westward.  While others flock to special homes and destinations with beautiful views and luxurious accommodations, we'll be staying at a Days Inn or Motel 6 or some other nonsense of a hotel room, 4 stinky boys, all holed up into one stinky room.

One might think that we suffer for the glow we experience afterwards, at the California Club in old town Auburn, being served $2 Bud Lights by the Barrymore-lookalike bartender, Sarah.  But that is actually not the case.  Last year's festivities were definitely enriched by the presence of Maria (who could barely see straight let alone attempt to stand up by the time we bumped into her) and Nicole (who demonstrated various techniques of bedroom golf on top of the pool table while the toothless drunken barflies gazed on in amusement) and the 3rd girl of the bunch who simply passed out in the coat rack and never even told us her name.  But we don't make the trip to drive home drunken women and eat breakfast at Jack in the Box at 2am.

The reason we arrive is to yog.

This year, Dr. Evil will be joining us.  This year it will be epic.  This year the California Club might actually have to kick us out.  This year someone will run 2 hours to the river.  This year I will see Robinson Flat for the first time since 2007 when I paced Rod.  We will have some heat.  We will jump into the river at swinging bridge and maybe Mike will slip in at the bottom of El Dorado.  We will eat Subway and text Rod about how we hit the 2 hours to the river mark and he will say that is nice but not really relevant.  We will visit Starbucks and eye the jailbait talent.  We will go to breakfast and listen to the crusty waitress tell us about how her hubby goes off into the woods for 2 weeks every year to live like a man.

But most of all, we will suffer.  In the canyons.  And this is what it is all about.  If every penny were taken from me, every last friend, if I had nothing and nobody and not a shred of joy, I would still have the canyons and my precious suffering.