The Manscapade

I smell like football practice.

At times, I sure miss that fragrance. As disgusting as that sounds. I aromatically describe to you the fierceness of my body's natural cologne to help paint the picture of this morning's events. A morning, which shall be known from here on out as a "Manscapade". And yes, I did just make that word up. It will go along with blogalias in the Book of Brock's awesomeness.

For full effect, download "Sunshine Superman" by Donovan from iTunes and play at full volume.

Before the butt-crack of dawn, (which in college student's time is a little after 9:17 a.m.) myself and two great friends, Offspring the 13th and The Technicolor Beaver, decided to head out to Zion National Park to enjoy Mother Nature's natural wonder, more specifically we were headed out to hike the deathtrap known as Angel's Landing.

To describe this precipice that we would be scaling is something difficult for a blinking cursor to do, but if I were going to give you somewhat of an explanation, I would say that it is... Strenuous? Demanding? HOLY-CURSE-WORD-WHAT-POSSESSED-ME-TO-CLIMB-UP-THIS-MAMMOTH-UNPICKED-BOOGER-OF-SANDSTONE?! Yeah, that last one fits best. On a side note, only 6 people have died while climbing this Halo of Rock since 2004. So the odds really weren't against us.

Cut to the inside of a dusty Zion National Park shuttle bus carrying us to the base, meanwhile an 87-year old California Raisin in 1950's overalls harassed us for sitting in vacant seats.

Overall California Raisin: "HEY! Did you know those seats are reserved for the elderly? Are you boys older than 65?"

The Technicolor Beaver: "No, but we'll move to the other 27 empty seats on this bus just so there's enough room for your unconcealed farts to plop down in as well. I'm sure they're at least 65."

Cut to the switchback trails about 600 feet up. All three of us were already dressed in sweat, meanwhile a group of boy scouts whose energy level would rival the PowerPuff girls freight-trained their skipping contest down the mountain. And to think I was once a lad who had that much energy stockpiled myself.

Cut to a group of French idiots, or how do they say it, bastardos? No, that's sounds Italian. Oh well, some foreign, peach-fuzzed muttonheads seated in the middle of the trail having a smoke break. A smoke break? Yes that's right kids, see in Europe, you have higher lung capacity but also denser skulls. It makes no sense why these Wee-Wee's were planted in the trail catching five with Joe Camel, but hey, they can do it. Plus, the girls they were with had longer armpit hair than I did. Cue a thirty-second coughing fit and breath holding expedition while we stumbled through them.

At the top it was spectacular. Cue picture:

Honestly one of the most beautifully divine views a human eye can behold. Something on my bucket list that I have now accomplished twice. As the three of us strolled around the top in brotherly love, and talked about where we were at in life, and in reality, another foreign diplomat interjected our conversation.

Offspring the 13th: "Wait, so how high are we up here. Wait, how many feet are in a mile?"

The Technicolor Beaver: "Umm, I think it's something around 5,200 feet, or wait..."

The French Fruitcake: Verbatim from his own mouth. "It doesn't matter. We like a mile up already." (Actually, we were only 1,488 feet up) "And either way, if you fall, you're dead. You could be this high up, or like billion a miles up, and you still die. It either life, or die. Life, or die. Think about it. It's just one big abyss."

Now that I think about it, that last word he threw in there could be replaced with the curse word for what a female dog is. Either way, we just sat in agreement while his maiden braided her pits.

Cut to the very edge of Angel's Landing where the three of us were enjoying the view, the mid-section of our water supply, and all of the carved graffiti around us. People have scribbled their names all over the rocks in hopes that their posterity will one day see that they made this ascent. "L.D.+ A.G", "Felicia was here." "Philgrttx." Wait, WTF did that last one say? Is that German or Swedish? How many foreign people show up to this joint a year? And what gives them the right to engrave their one-voweled surname into this Earth?

Cut to the awkward descent in between chains and string-bikini bare-footed foreigners in BYU t-shirts.

The Technicolor Beaver: "Ouch, that last drop was a little harsh. I may have pulled my groin on that one."

Offspring the 13th: "You alright man?"

The Technicolor Beaver: "Yeah, I just kinda feel like a dog that got hit in the face with a porcupine."

As confusing as it sounded, that last comment made more sense than the consonant-laden smoker's union still camped out on the switchbacks.

Cut to elevation 428 feet, where the sun and sweat had begun to mutilate our epidermis.

Offspring the 13th: "Dude, I can't believe those people we just passed were doing this hike bare-footed. If it was me, I'd take my shirt off."

Me: silent thought (Yeah, I'd do this hike naked if I could, but then again I don't know if everyone else out here is as comfortable being nude as I am.)

Cut to the bottom of the trail where three indestructible, insurmountable, inasphyxiatable, testosterone chaps climb aboard the shuttle to begin the journey home. Yes kids, this was one of the most accomplished feats that I have done in the past few months. A feat that was witnessed by friends, and a GoPro. A feat that was so amazing it deserved a blog post. Yes, those five miles that we scrambled up were a success. Well, five miles, or a billion miles, depending on which continent you're looking at it from.