So A Girl With Chronic Dystentery Goes Up a Mountain...

Sure, it sounds like the beginning of a bad scatalogical joke, but unfortunately, it has become my life.

Everyone wants to know how my time in Colorado has been so far. The answer, I'm sorry to say, is "shitty." Literally. Somehow between New York and Denver I must have inadvertently sucked down about a gallon of water pumped directly from the Ganges, because my gut has been doing squirty flip-flops for the past six days and shows little sign of calming, despite heavy doses of Cipro and my staunch refusal to eat or drink anything other than Immodium and Gatorade.

That's not to say I've been having a terrible trip, as is evidenced by the above picture, which I took standing atop Mt. Bierstadt admiring the incredible views.

Excluding the 6.3 collective hours I spend each day in the bathroom, I've been having a grand old outdoorsy hippie-lady time. It was a bit crowded over the 4th of July weekend, what with the entire family crammed into my sister's house, but we got some nice hikes in and had a steak cookout to boot.

On Sunday night my brother and I decided that, given his impending move to Germany, we -- the two fittest and outdoorsiest members of the family -- should really hike one last fourteener together, I guess to say goodbye to the ol' US of A and get him ready for the Alps, or something.

For those not in the know, a fourteener is a 14,000-foot mountain, where the air is about 40% thinner at the top than at the bottom. There are around 50 of them in Colorado.

It was probably not the smartest undertaking given that I was already massively dehydrated and hadn't eaten in three days, since it takes a little bit of energy to climb around 4,000 or so vertical feet and hike more than 8 miles straight up and downhill in a morning. But I was damned if I was going to miss the trip, the camping out, and the time with my brother.

We hopped in his Volkswagen Westie van -- of which I am now the proud temporary-owner -- and headed up to the mountains, me with a two fistfuls of Immodium for dinner and much excitement in the thin air.

We arrived near the base of Mt. Bierstadt around 11 p.m. and camped there that night. The next morning, Nick made us coffee on his little stove. I took a tentative sip, disregarded the need for any further nourishment, and off we went.

Well, folks, it was slow going, but I made it -- and I didn't even poop myself!

I'm still as sick as a schizophrenic pedophile, and now my glutes are killing me on top of it. But the views were worth it, and it's the first of many great Colorado camping and hiking experiences to come. I wanted to post more pictures, but since it takes half a dang hour to upload each one onto blogger, I am throwing in the towel for the night and heading off to the bathroom for the next hour or so. Next time I rap at ya, I hope I'll be able to stop talking about my intestinal issues -- even more than you hope so, I'm sure.