Chicago: Hiking Argonne (owie)
Today I popped my Meetup.com cherry and went out with the Windy City Hikers.
Hike The Geek wins. So totally wins so much it is not even funny how much it wins.
Some of this may be due to geography and some to circumstance but much is due to the quality of Fearless Leader.
HtG's Fearless Leader is a smart Fearless Leader. He is smart and he goes out (or sends out a minion) to walk the hike before he takes people out on it. There is an accurate assessment of the hike, and it is a reasonable hike. It may be hilly. It may be hot. It may have homicidal cacti in the middle of shaley steep slopes that attempt to reach out and grab you.
But at least it is not ten miles long.
This hike? Ten miles long. And worse, in a loop, so there's no real way to turn back early. Unless you realize early on just how long ten miles is. And, frankly, kind of dull--same terrain, flat, no great views, mosquitoes...etc.
Ten miles is a really really really long way. We were out there for some four hours.
I am in kind of excruciating pain right now. Ten miles on very flat feet with bad hips and knees. This is a bad idea.
The people were mostly okay. A mix of grad students, new singles (that's me!)/divorcees, mostly in the 30-40 range. I'm guessing that I was the youngest person there (with the obvious exception of a toddler being backpacked through the fields). They were generally pleasant, with the exception of one person that I took an instant disliking to. He was a 40-year-old lawyer, one of the constantly-braying types who spent the entire hike expounding on his personal philosophies, interests, photography, etc. etc. Fortunately I managed to mostly avoid him. I didn't particularly care for the fearless leader either (no caps for this one); he reminded me of Parsons in 1984. All gusto, no brains.
I'm not presently signed up for any other hikes with them; I think my limit in the future is about 6 miles. I suspect that if I go to any other meetups I'll run into some of the same folks; I talked to several and there's a not-insignificant overlap in the groups we joined. I hope the sushi meetup is less strenuous.