How he lost Tuesday

Shortly after it was published, we were given a copy of "WONDERS: writings and drawings for the child in us all [1982]" eds Jonathan Cott and Mary Gimbel [prev]. It was a fat [600+pp] book with short works from a few dozen authors some, better known than others. Quality and appropriateness was patchy also, but the bits we liked we read and re-read until the poor book burst asunder. It's captured in the Internet Archive, if you can make that work for you. One of these favorite stories was How I Lost Tuesday by Evan S Connell. Connell died, in the fullness of his years, shortly after the Birth of the Blob but his words live on. 

The premise of HILT is that the narrator, as a grown up, decides to climb Longs Peak in Colorado; having summitted the mountain as a 12 y.o. kid. On the way up he encounters a teenager and they get into a race to the top without either saying "race you". They get to the top, the view is The Whole World, they have lunch, they hang out - more or less ignoring each other, then they yomp back downhill. Longs Peak is a 14er at 14, 256ft [although nobody starts from sea-level! - the car-park is at 9,400ft] and the hike from the car-park and back is ~30km. So it's a hard days hike. The narrator gets back to his hotel shagged out at 21:00hrs and falls into bed. When he wakes, he sees that it's lunchtime . . . but on ther wrong day. He's been asleep fro 39 hours. The End

Well imagine my feelings when my pal Tom from Colorado sent me a New Year card with this picture:

That's Tom [L] and his son Tommy [R] with a "helpful" 24px x 6px sign. Game On! Trained researcher me went full metal Sherlock with a magnifying glass and Wikipedia and deduced Quagmire . . . Quandary Peak 14,272' . Quandary is a few feet higher than Longs Peak but the topology is a bit easier but close enough [~100mi = 160km close]. Whatevs, I sent them my 3x jpgs version of How I lost Tuesday and Tom replied:

What a great story. This truly hits home because Long's Peak is the 14er I was originally going to hike with Tommy. We decided to start with one less difficult but it is still on our list to do, hopefully this summer. The main reason is that I feel it is taunting me. We look out our picture window to the beautiful mountain view of Long's Peak every day.:

The view from Ft Collins CO: Mt Meeker [L] Longs Peak [R]