Wednesday, August 29, 2012

4 to 1

     They say you learn something new everyday.
     Here's what I learned yesterday: "UWC is located about 7,000 ft. above sea level. For every breath taken at sea level, four are necessary here to acquire the same amount of oxygen."
     Here's what I learned today: THIS IS SO TRUE. 
     I bet I can guess what you were doing at 5:30am this morning. Like most sane people, you were probably asleep. But I bet you can't guess what I was doing this morning.
     "Were you asleep?"  No.
     "Were you getting ready for school?"  No.
     "Were you lying awake staring at the ceiling and discovering the meaning of life?"  No.
     "Were you hiking up a hill to look across the valley at the sunrise?"  No.
     "Were you riding a bike to Wal-Mart?"  Yes.
     That's right, ladies and gentlemen. This morning, at 5:20am, Z and I were awake and ready to brave the 11 miles to Wal-Mart and back.
     Now, usually, here at UWC, students don't have to embark on such a strenuous (I'll explain in a minute) journey for supplies. Usually we have a lovely bus, four times a week, that takes us straight to Wal-Mart. However, if you are a first year student lucky enough to be "exploring the wilderness" this weekend, then you didn't get to take the bus to Wal-Mart today because you had to go pack your enormous hiking pack and are out of luck.
     Unless you have a B-Code Free-Code (yes, it rhymes, I know!) on Wednesday mornings and are motivated enough to wake up and face treacherous deserts, fire-breathing dragons, and Mt. Everest.
     Ok, so it wasn't thaaaat bad. We are kind of in a desert, but it's actually really pretty, especially at sunrise. And the dogs chasing us weren't fire-breathing so I guess that's a plus. And we didn't bike Mt. Everest, but with our full backpacks of Wal-Mart provisions and being 7,000 feet up (remember that whole 4:1 oxygen ration? Yeah, it takes your breath away (ahaha, see what I did there?)) we had quite the work-out. But we actually made really great time. Google maps estimated that, by bike, the ~5.4 miles would take us 26 min. We made it in 20. WHOOOOOO! We felt very accomplished :)
     All day long we've been receiving congratulations on our feat. I'm not kidding. Both of our room-mates fully expected us to either a) get eaten by dogs b) get lost c) miss class d) get abducted or e) a combination of these. And no one thought we could make it so fast; 20 min is the fastest anyone's ever made it. Yay for self-motivated, independent, responsible first-years!! YAY!
     So that's what I've learned and accomplished in the past couple of days. We've also started classes, more on that later, it's time for this biker to catch up on her sleep. Good night :)

2 comments:

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  2. Good to see that all the swimming finally paid off for something useful. You know you are in the middle of nowhere when Wally World is civilization. I just went to the fanciest Walmart ever, and the people were still People of Walmart.

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