Chapter 3: Summit
Remember, these things actually happened. Well, most of them anyway. There was no third person and there were no s'mores. I just needed a substitute for a chocolate bunny. Plus, how do you use your hands to separate a solid chocolate bunny into three equal pieces? It simply can't be done.
Disclaimer: I don't own Psychonauts, Juniper camp, DDR, Super Smash Bros., or anything else.
Wow… she had woken up, like, five times last night.
Raz had given her a choice of which mat she wanted. Air mats were important because the ground is cold. If there's a layer of air between you and the ground, you're warmer. She'd taken the thicker mat, which was also the shortest mat. Her feet were touching the ground the whole night.
Her dad got up first, put on a couple extra layers, put on his shoes, and went to put some water on to boil for the instant oatmeal they'd bought.
"Hey, Raz. If we can find a deck of cards, d'you wanna play speed?"
"It's too early for this."
"Come on. It's just luck and reflexes. I know you aren't awake yet. I just need something to do."
"Whatever."
She searched through her dad's duffel until she found a deck of cards. His side of the family was really good at cards. All kinds, too: Speed, Spit, Poker, Gin Rummy, Wist, and all the other obscure card games. They wouldn't be separated from their cards, by golly!
As she shuffled and bent the cards back (she couldn't do a bridge yet) she started wishing she could use her psychic powers. She was seriously cold.
After two rounds of Speed and one round of Spit, her dad called for them to come out because the water was boiling.
They both poured a packet of instant oatmeal into the little plastic bowls, then some water, stirred it, poured orange juice for themselves (but didn't drink it – they were cold enough already) and finally, ate the oatmeal. Then they drank the (cold) juice, ate bananas, and cleaned up.
"After this, let's go back to get gloves." Truman was so smart. He could point out the obvious better than anyone else she knew…
"Okay! I'm done now. Let's go!"
When they got down to the car, they saw that ice had formed on all the class. Raz kind of shuddered, Lili started admiring the pretty, feathery patterns, and Truman already knew about the ice because he'd been down to the car earlier to get the food.
As they drove back to Lili's house, (the main rule of driving is that you listen to the driver's music. Lili was used to it, Raz didn't like it, and Truman enjoyed it, which is kind of obvious because it's his music) they watched the mountain slopes from the (now warm) car. Lili's feet were cold, especially her toes, and she was pretty sure the toes of her shoes were wet. Her hands were also cold, but they were warmer than her feet. Raz, as always, knew how to dress. He had a patched, but nevertheless working, down jacket that had obviously been used by many generations of Aquatos, two layers of pants, who-knew-how-many layers of socks, and good snow boots lined with goat wool. And thick gloves and a thick, hand-knit hat.
Well, wasn't he special.
They were back home. She was now absolutely sure her shoes were wet because she could feel it distinctly.
Her sister Jane (I guess this also goes with Pride and Psychicness) was out getting the morning paper when they got back.
"Oh, my gosh! That's so weird! I was just going out to get the paper and I didn't know you guys were… that's a really weird coincidence."
"Yeah, we came back to get some supplies. Like, gloves and stuff."
All three made their way up to the house (Raz had left his down jacket in the car) and Jane called out, "Mom! Everyone! Dad, Lili, and Raz are back!"
They were greeted within a few moments by Mrs. Zanotto, who asked them how camping had been, what it was like on the mountain, and things like that.
Raz told the story.
"Well, the first night, we went up to the summit and it snowed."
"It snowed!"
"Yeah. And it was really windy, too. So we ate our pizza in the observation room, but we couldn't see anything because we were inside a cloud. Then we went down to our campsite, and it had stopped raining so we pitched our tent. Then we set up everything. This morning there were feather patterns on the glass on the car, and everyone else was cold because they didn't think ahead, so we came back down."
"Yeah, way to make us feel dumb, Raz."
"Lili, you won't talk that way to our guest!"
"I'll talk however I want to my boyfriend!"
"Try that one more time and you're going to your room."
"Then I only get one round of fun. Oh, well."
She went to the room where a couple of her sisters were playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) against each other. She followed along on the carpet. Raz couldn't figure out how they could respond that fast. It as only Standard mode on Speed Over Beethoven.(That's the third-hardest level and a really fast song)
So he watched them. Then he got bored. He went outside to run around.
After a long time, after Lili and her sisters had played a round of Super Smash Bros., Melee with each other and Lili had done some fighting as Roy, the hottest (literally and in today's modern conception of "hot") character in the game, they headed back to Mt. Diablo where it was considerably warmer now that the sunlight was on that part of the mountain. The site was on the side of the mountain that the sun didn't rise on. Of course, that made for one heckuva sunset.
Now, armed with decent gloves and hats that they didn't need too much anymore, the trio dropped their stuff at the tent and drove to the parking lot in front of Juniper camp, where there was a beautiful view of the valley, Mt. Tamalpias (The Sleeping Maiden) and, of course, San Francisco Bay. And the delta of the combine San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. Really good view of the bay, though.
They were going to hike up to the summit. Both guys knew they could keep up with whatever Lili wanted to do, so she got to lead on the narrow trail.
They hadn't even been going for a minute when they came upon their first distraction, which Lili was the first to actually point out.
It was a tree literally covered in some kind of moss that grew in a bunch of little parts that went straight out from the tree trunk.
"Whoa, pretty moss."
"It looks kind of like a fern."
"I would've said it was more like feathers."
"I looks like feathery ferns with fuzzy leaves." That last was hers. Of course.
Then she set off again.
They saw a bunch more trees coated in the same kind of moss, and Truman said that it was probably because of all the rain this year (It's extra rainy this year. Weird weather this winter, too.) and they went on hiking.
A long ways up the trail, they saw a little brown cotton-tailed rabbit. They all paused for awhile, until Raz got bored and said, "Boo!" just to care it. Lili smacked him. Truman didn't see.
They stopped to rest three or four times during their hike. Sometimes Lili would say how fast her heart was going.
"Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump…."
Then she'd get bored and start walking again.
"You know, this would be good for your mile times, because you have to lift your feet more than usual."
"Yeah, and we're at, like, 3,000 feet. This reminds me of sledding at Sugar Pine."
Don't ask me why Lili would be in Girl Scouts. I don't even want to know.
"Why?"
"Well, for sledding, you have to walk up a hill a bunch of times. The only difference is, we don't have sleds, we're only going up and down once, and we're only at that was at six thousand feet."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Then Truman said they'd be getting to a microwave tower soon.
Of course, Lili asked what the heck a microwave tower is.
"It'll probably be easier once we've gotten there."
"It'll pass the time."
"Well, they're big metal towers with big round sensors on it that pick up microwaves from other places. The waves have to be on a direct line of sight, so they put the towers up high."
Don't make the Psychonauts reference. Please. Plus, those are censors, not sensors. Sensors sense things. Censors weed out things that don't belong, or in other words, censor. When my dad said "microwave towers" I was thinking of microwave ovens and I was all, "what the heck!" but then when he said, "they pick up microwaves" I got it. Microwaves are tiny little waves of… well, if we're talking microwave ovens, little waves of radiation or electricity or something. I don't know what the microwave towers pick up.
"Oh, I get it now. Okay."
"And here's the microwave tower. See the sensors?"
They were hard to miss. They looked like metal versions of bass drums.
And little half-spheres. Whatever. Same difference. There were different kinds of sensors on the tower. The actual tower part was kind of like a bunch of metal rods in kind of the same pattern as those weird telephone poles, except it was square and way shorter.
That was where they started seeing snow on the ground.
The second time they saw snow, Raz threw a snowball right by Lili. A tiny little snowball, about ¾ of an inch around. Or, it would've been if it were round.
"Darn it, I missed!"
"So you've chosen to live dangerously. What was your target?"
"Well, my first target would've been anything that isn't you."
"So then how did you miss?"
"Well, my other target that I could've done would've been was you."
"Well, thank you for missing."
"You're welcome."
She smiled and started back up the mountain. They were almost to the summit…
After awhile, they got to a parking lot with some comfy-looking picnic tables, but they kept going until they were at the top of the big cement building at the summit.
They didn't go in the observation room again, but they did take the time to enjoy the view.
Then they went back down to that parking lot. There was snow on most of the tables, but on one of them, the snow was only on one side. They sat there and ate while they watched the ground steam.
Lili made a couple jokes about having a steamed peanut butter and honey sandwich.
Then they had some pita chips and looked for other stuff to do.
Truman found a little guide thingy for a walk around Mt. Diablo. They decided to do that.
Lili got to read it.
"Stop 1. These trees you see are oaks…"
They learned about two kinds of oaks, greenstone, (which is actually reddish brown) churt, yerba santa, and a bunch of other stuff. Raz learned about poison oak, (fortunately, not the itchy way) and they tried climbing a big churt rock, but they ended up not wanting to take that risk. Then Raz, show-off acrobat that he was, climbed it in only a couple seconds.
The end of the walk saw them back at the parking lot. They walked back down.
Truman liked annoying his daughters, so he said, "I saw the car first. I lost the game."
"I lost the game. You suck, dad."
"What game?"
"If I tell you the rules, you have to play it forever, okay?"
"Uh, I don't think I want to know anymore."
"Whatever."
"Hey, do you kids think you're up to a little more walking?"
"Sure."
Actually, her feet hurt a little. But she could stand a couple more minutes.
"There's a really good place for California poppies over on the trail near Juniper camp."
"Okay. Let's go."
Raz chose to be quiet. Weird.
After about five minutes or so, Lili's feet were really hurting. Then they found out that there actually weren't any poppies, except for three or four on the hillside. Oh, well. Too bad she wasn't using levitation. Her feet could really use it.
Eventually, they were back in the car. They went back to the tent, where they lazed for a couple hours, read, all that good stuff. Then they made dinner.
The risotto was no longer frozen, but they cooked it anyway and it was delicious. Then they made s'mores with the kindling and newspapers for firewood, boiled some water for coco, and went to sleep.
Lili woke up once during the night because of the wind thrashing at the tent. It kept her up for awhile, but she eventually got back to sleep.
In the morning, she and Raz switched off being weights to hold down the tent while stuff was being carried to and from the tent. Then they stuffed their sleeping bags into the little bags, rolled up their air mats, took down the tent, and drove home. They had breakfast at the Zanotto house. The oatmeal was good, but it was cold on the mountain. They needed to be warm.
They drove home, had a good time, and Raz and Lili spent the rest of break together. The next day, after homework, they went biking. They both had an absolutely wonderful break.
Yeah, it's a sucky ending. But I really did go biking with my boyfriend yesterday. The whole camping trip was hilarious. I have a lot more respect for the Eskimos now. This wasn't even below zero…