Kissing Mannequins and Climbing Mountains

It's been quite the interesting weekend so far. On Friday, a few first-year audiology grads and a few second years headed to Denver's Museum of Nature and Science to host a booth called "How Loud is Your Music?" That green-haired hottie I'm kissing in the picture below is named Gunter and he's an old mannequin re-purposed with a sound level meter. You stick your earbud in his ear to measure how loud your music is and then we give you crap about turning it down to prevent hearing loss. I'd go into the spiel right here and now, but honestly, I am too pooped to even think about decibel levels. Ask me later. You're probably doing it wrong. I have a mannequin to prove it.

This little device (pictures below) is called "weird ears" and is absolutely hilarious. You have someone speak into the red trumpet thing and you hear it in the ear on the other side. Très confusè.

This is Brenna, she's a weird-ears bad-ass.

Then, yesterday afternoon, I got a call from UNC's Outdoor Pursuits, a campus club that goes on adventure outings. I had gone to sign up for a bunch of them on the first day of classes, but they were already all full and I was heartbroken. I had been sort of banking on them to find hiking buddies and to gtfo of Greeley for a day or two. So anyway, I got a call saying that someone had dropped out and I was next on the waiting list, so I GOT TO GOOOO!

I met up with the group at 5:30am, looking and feeling like shitola. I had my tiny little daypack backpack and the other dozen students all had these hefty, campy-looking backpacks three times the size of mine, PLUS trekking poles, PLUS matching Outdoor Pursuits nalgene waterbottles. I obviously didn't get whatever memo there was and to make things worse, when I went up and introduced myself to one of the girls, she just looked at me and said "I think you need a tissue." And then I wiped my snotty nose on my sleeve in front of her, went and had a little anxiety attack in the bathroom, and almost didn't get on the van. Rough start, man. ROUGH start. But, as it turns out, the Outdoor Pursuit club rents equipment for free to students, so all those fancy-looking packs and poles didn't mean everyone was more experienced and prepared than I was, just that they didn't have their own gear. Made me feel a little better, but the snot-comment girl really threw me off. Whatever, I forced myself into the van and off we went!

We hiked the Ypsilon Lake Trail, which was 9 miles round trip and gorgeous the whole way. It was an interesting group. A couple people had never been on a hike before and others had been mountaineering since they were young'uns. Therefore, the going was slow. Sort of frustrating, but if I were in the newbie position, I woulda felt horrible to be constantly left behind at the back. The two trip leaders did a phenomenal job of keeping us all together and monitoring for altitude sickness, blisters, dehydration, etc. 

Ypsilon Lake!

What's a hiking trip without a selfie?!

 On the way up, we walked over some logs to get over the river. On the way back, the weather turned iffy right as we got to the crossing. We may or may not have walked over a raging river while being hit with hail. That's Colorado for ya.

My favorite part about hiking is dreaming about what amazing non-campy food you're going to mow down on when the day's over.  The group spent a lot of time fantasizing about Chinese food, ice cream, and the elk burgers in Estes Park (which are apparently spectacular?). I ended up at Chipotle and you bet I paid the extra $1.95 for guacamole. It's been a good day.