epiphany

Muscle Bound

I survived my first day moving tiles and stones. They're expecting to have two more days of work. Overall, things went well. The tiles are large sample pieces, so they normally aren't in boxes, which makes moving them much easier than I was expecting. I broke five early on (several inside a big stack on a hand truck that I lowered too quickly), but Jack, the guy who hired me, didn't seem to mind. He said that those were some of their competitor's old tiles.

Other than that, Drew and I went up to Mount Rainier on Saturday afternoon. It's 227 miles roundtrip to the mountain but takes about two-and-a-half to three hours to drive one-way. The forecast was calling for heavy rain, but we didn't get rained on at all. However, we didn't actually see the mountain's peak (more of a bulge, really) due to the heavy cloud cover. The colors were beautiful. The heather and bushes are turning a dusty red and orange, but there's still enough green to hold a stark contrast. Some alpine flowers are still blooming, and we saw several small herds of deer as we walked around. Due to our late arrival and the onset of both clouds and evening, we didn't actually hike very far--maybe three miles total. Paradise (more here and here) is open until at least October 4. I hope to make it back another time or two.