Thursday, December 10, 2009

Scaling Mission Peak

I am not an athlete; not even close to it. My heart beats at 150 after just 2 minutes on an elliptical machine at 5 miles an hour. When I moved to Fremont, I was told that I should climb mission peak. I was sure that it would be a lot more than a causal trip and I was right. My husband and I tried 3 times before we succeeded.
Our first attempt was on a beautiful summer afternoon. During those days, staying at home had inspired me to hit the gym quite often and I was starting to build my strength. In spite of all the morning hours at the gym, we dragged ourselves to 3 turns and gave up because of failing light and hurting lungs. On the way back, I was pretty sure that I would never climb to the top- not with my stamina.
Our second try was out of pure guilt. Both of us had been very careless of our diet and exercise. So one late evening, we set out again with our dog. We climbed till our vision was compromised and the fear of mountain lions and hyenas got us to turn around. But even then we did not cross the height we climbed on our first attempt.
Summer rushed by and fall started. I put mission peak out of my head thinking I won’t have to think about it for the rest of the year. Temperatures dropped, leaves changed color and the days got shorter. And one beautiful afternoon, Arvind came home in a wonderful mood. He’s just had a beautiful drive around Fremont on the way back. “Let’s go for a drive and walk” he said. We drove around the neighborhood and end up underneath mission peak.


[Picture : Almost there!]

It’s 3 in the afternoon and we have plenty of light. So the 3 of us began our climb. We paced ourselves and in 2 hours, we are at the top – freezing! It didn’t matter! We made it to the top and both of us were proud. It was beautiful I bet looks even more beautiful during the day!!





[Picture - View from the top - The bay]

Now came the dangerous part. Sun had begun to set and we had a long way down the hill. It took us an hour to get all the way down. Slipping, falling, stumbling, we managed to get down the hill unhurt.
We simply had to reward ourselves. A long dinner at Outback! The food was delicious but neither of us had any energy left in us to care. We gobbled up our food, packed up the leftovers and hurried home to fall asleep- satisfied.

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