The rainbow connection

  There’s a reason I dropped out of Girl Scouts in sixth grade. Sure, when it came to free amusement park passes, I could sell cookies till my sash dragged in the dirt. But when it came to the whole “preparedness” schtick, I was a miserable failure. I could barely remember to pack a lunch, let alone band-aids, map, compass, matches, space blanket and the all-important emergency t.p.

Needless to say, not much has changed since then, and many a sock (usually courtesy my chivalrous spouse, who seems to have an infinite supply of black tube socks always on hand) has been sacrificed in the backcountry over the years. See, although I’ve been known to fly several large suitcases halfway across the country on a weeklong vacation, when it comes to outdoor excursions, I prefer to travel light. It’s not that I don’t have the rain poncho, topo map or disposable wet wipes, it’s just that, when I’m operating under my own power, there’s no sense in adding to the burden. Isn’t backcountry skiing or mountain biking strenuous enough without being weighed down all that extra stuff that you probably won’t use anyway?

Case in point: I once did a ridiculous overnight ski race that required all teams of two to carry bivvy sacks, stove, gas, spare binding, extra pole basket, spare climbing skin and 4 liters of water – this in addition to the usual requisite gear of avi probes, beacons, Gold Bond (for my partner, not for me) and headlamps. I mean, I could have fit a small sherpa in my pack that weighed less. However, for once in my life, I actually played by the rules and shlepped this stuff across an entire mountain range … in the dark, uphill, both ways.

Imagine my distress when I finished a mere 16 hours later to find other racers, freshly showered, dressed and looking well rested, smugly smiling at the finish line. “We didn’t bring all that,” they disclosed with an incredulous guffaw. “You did?”

Needless to say, I would have clobbered them over the head with my 35-pound pack, had I not been too exhausted to lift my arms, let alone the pack.

Of course the flip side to all this foolish overpreparation is the untold suffering that comes with post-holing 12 miles with a broken pole basket or climbing skin. Think of all that gear as insurance – that roll of duct tape and clunky Leatherman is a guarantee you’ll never have to use it. Same goes for that extra tube and patch kit (unless you are foolhardy enough to mention midway into a 30-mile ride how you “never get flats.”)

Anyway, I like to consider myself squarely planted in the middle of Slacker Central and the Prof. Gadget camp. Mainly, this consists of a quick glance at the sky, an educated guesstimate of if and how much it might rain (scientific equation based on how brown the grass is subtracted by the last time I watered it), and a mental assessment of how

Soon enough, however, the black clouds overhead had something different to say. Thunder rumbled as we foolishly rode on and I grew increasingly nervous. As we wound our way up the singletrack, lightning flashed across the valley and I called out to my cohort. “Did you see that?”

He seemed unphased, mostly because we had hired a sitter and thus, were officially on the clock. There was no time for weather observations or chit chat. So, with darkness closing in, and the mother of all storms brewing, we plodded on.

Finally, I put my foot down. “I’m going back,” I yelled, hoping to avoid a re-enactment of the priest scene from “Caddyshack.”

Unfortunately, my partner saw through my bluff. “I’m going to keep going, it might not even rain over here,” he said, knowing full well the only thing I hated worse than soggy shorts was being called a party pooper.

I begrudgingly digressed. He was right, technically, it wasn’t raining yet. Blowing, thundering, lightninging and blustering – but not raining.

And that’s when the heavy stuff came down. In sheets. Suddenly, our casual little spin had turnd into an epic adventure. It was every man, woman and dog for him and herself as we beat a hasty retreat to lower ground and the nearest shelter. Needless to say, Sky Ridge never looked so good as we sought refuge in a park bathroom (the womens, by a margin of 2 to 1.)

As the rain blasted down and the thunder boomed, we barricaded ourselves in our private throne room. As I fended off mild hypothermia in the cold, gray cell, I cursed myself for being so stupid, even after 20 years of mountain living. Soon, however, in typical summer thunderstorm fashion, the storm blew over, and we decided to make a run for home. As we opened the door to clearing skies, we looked up to see not one, but two monstrous rainbows directly overhead. And these were no garden variety rainbows, mind you. We’re talking Technicolor, Wizard of Oz, What-was-in-that-Cytomax rainbows.

As we followed the Yellow Brick, or in this case, rain slicked, road home, I couldn’t help but revel in the serendipity of the moment, blue lips and all. If being unprepared had its price, then I just hit the jackpot.

– Missy Votel