Day Three

August 20, 2008, around 9 a.m. "Waking up with my head in the clouds" (this is the typed up journal entry)

Holy crap- I woke up at 9 and want to my listen to my iPod. I also want to go outside, both I am doing. But see, outside it's like...freaky. When I was opening the door, I could see white through the crack. I thought, it can't be that bleak. But it is. Everything is white. White. I can see a little bit of the cabin in front of us, but otherwise it is just a white void. Kind of awesome. I still hear cowbells and someone like cutting grass. It's almost...painful, I dunno...to look out-it's like you can't see anything and my brain doesn't like that. I've never experienced this. Mountain fog. There was a big rainstorm last night. It's also kinda cold. There's wisps of...of white air? The cloud blowing around and it reminds me of like...Harry Potter and the pensive. This is kind of cool. White is one of my favorite colors. I like this because it's like...just a void. You can see anything, or not see. It's almost like I'm not in the mountains right now. I couldn't tell. Ah, yes- I inhaled and smelled that fresh, crisp mountain air. Towards the ground is a more grayish color. I can see the grass well near our house. It's so weird. But insanely AWESOME. You guys, if you haven't already, should try to see a glacier in real life and experience this white void. I love that word-void. Nothingness. Non-existing? Ha ha! Life is goosd. Zach isn't up yet. Neither are my parents. I'm wearing my Slauson shirt. We're going home today. Probably leave at like 4. I can't wait to put this all in my blog and facebook! This is/was a really cool trip. I'm glad we did it. I'm going to take pictures of the whiteness now. You know, this would be a cool time and place to draw on the air like I saw in that one old Disney commercial thing. Anyway. I'm getting cold. I miss my friends- of course. But I'm going to stay out here because "touching the void" is like experiencing a complicated, not necessarily bliss. (Good movie.)

Later:

Well ok, now the void is receding. i can see more mountain houses and like another cloud or something. It's 9:25. I have goosebumps. The sky is still white, ground is gray. But the void will probably be all gone in a few minutes. I should like get my parents. (Later) Eh. My dad just woke up.

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That day I had yogurt for breakfast and the same stuff I had yesterday. Zach said his knee was too sore to walk and my mom was tired. So they stayed home, while me and my dad went on a small hike to the Bettmerhorn. My socks got wet from walking in the boot-room but I survived. It was a cool hike. The white void did not in fact disappear, and we went in and out it all along the hike. It was so frickin' awesome! You couldn't see a few feet in front of you, but then you'd walk a little farther and break out. It was fun. My dad read the signs along the trail about marmots, which were like mountain ground hogs. They seemed cool. The trail wasn't too hard, sort of steep at times, but fun. We talked about hockey, getting fit, marmots and other stuff. I took a few pictures. There were a few other people on the trail too.

At one point we weren't really on the trail. We could see the gondola but not the trail. So we just sort of walked straight up. But then we did get on the right trail and went up. There were lots of people at the top. I was tired. We rested a little bit and went up the Bettmerhorn, which was a slightly harder peak. More rock and climbing and it was steep. At some points we had to use a wire to climb up. It was somewhat freaky. Reminded me of Howell. Man, Howell was SO FUN. That was just great. I had to climb on these wooden bridge things and on one side would be a sheer drop. Eek. I wasn't like, "Omigod-omigod I'm going to die I'm going to die!!!!1" but I was still a little...you know. I just kept moving up, not letting myself get scared. It wasn't even that bad. For some reason I seemed to clear my throat whenever I went on one of those freaky wooden platforms. Whatever. So we had a great view of the glacier...again. And could see lots of clouds. I said to my dad one time, "It sort of makes you feel like you could just jump and it'd be pillowed," he didn't seem to agree with me though. I did feel like that sort of.

All we could see at some points were just white clouds surrounding us. And then we made it to the top, or at least the top I wanted to be at. There was still another peak to climb but for some reason I just didn't feel like doing it. Besides, we were already at around 2,858 meters or something. We had a great view of everything. It was at times like this that you wish you were Maximum Ride. Seriously. I would love to just snapping out my wings and jump off the mountain, flying through the clouds. She did say flying in a cloud wasn't that fun, though. But whatever. There were clouds everywhere. Covering most of the mountains. It smelled nice, was sort of cold. I had some white chocolate. Looked through the binocs, took pictures. Then we went down. It was sort of freaky, but I got used to it. A lot like Howell. So then we took one last look at the glacier and took the cable car down.

We just sort of jumped on one, seeing as there wasn't anyone there to like sell a ticket. They were small-ish, could hold about 8 people. I took a short video, which will be put on facebook. And some pictures. It was a fun ride. Like 10 minutes. It was freaky sometimes (but cool) because sometimes we wouldn't see the rest of the cable in front of us through the fog. So it was like that movie "The Mist". But it was awesome. Then we met up with my mom and Zach and had lunch. We watched some Olympics, which was really fun. Then we rode the cable cars down and took the trains.

On the second train to Geneva, I mostly sat by myself but some people did share the seats. This lady rode a few stops and then got off. And then these two French/Swiss guys came and asked me something like, "can we sit here?" and I just nodded my head. One of them sat across from me and the other next. I caught the distinct whiff of cigarettes. Ugh. And then the guy across from me grabbed out two Heineken beers from this bag and gave one to his friend. They started talking and drinking. My music was pretty loud so I couldn't really tell what they were talking about, but they laughed a lot. And again, I had to sort of hide my lip-synching or not do it at all. Then the guy finished one beer and grabbed out another. He managed to drink two beers (they were big, too, mind you) in one sitting. Gross. Luckily they got off before Geneva and I didn't have to listen them anymore. They were ok, I mean, just sort of...drunk. Luckily I had Melvin with me. I was tired.

When we got the Geneva Cornavin, I put on Tally Hall. We waited for the bus and rode it home. I sat with my dad on those fold-able seats. No one had to give up our seats this time. I was tired. There were lots of people on the bus. Ugh. But eventually we got home. I had to walk over to a post box to drop off a postcard though, which was annoying because of my tiredness. But then I got in the apartment and jumped on the computer.

It was a great trip. I'm really glad we did it. Especially since school is really soon. Somehow, I don't really know how it happened, I have like a week till school. Ugh. But actually I'm looking forward to it because I'll meet friends and learn stuff. And it's something to do. Because I got like nothing done this summer. Ugh. Almost a complete waste. Sigh. But two months have gone by! So only 10 months left . Awesome! I'll add the pictures in the next post. I know they're long posts, and sorry, but they were long days. Hope you enjoy(ed). Oh and, my mom found her wallet. It was in some hidden pocket. So yay! And the Levins come back today. So we'll see them one FINAL time today. For like an hour. Yay. I guess.

Thanks for reading. Comments are appreciated, even bowed upon. Pictures in the next post.