In which I sleep with two women to whom I'm not married

I spent the weekend at the Trail Dames Summit.  Many of the women there were people I already know, well or less so.  And many more were total strangers to me, although much less so by the end of the event.  The Trail Dames are a group of women hikers with chapters in several states. Link http://www.traildames.com/  if you care to read for yourself.  The individual chapters (or at least the members that attended) seemed to be pretty close and supportive of each other.  Which is nice.

The Summit was not just for Trail Dames.  I'm not a Trail Dame.  I hadn't actually heard of them until I heard from Mud Butt, (I know.  That is not the weirdest trail name I could tell you.) the genius behind both the Trail Dames and the Summit.    I met her years ago, and had heard peripherally of her adventures.  I was pretty surprised to get an email from her in April.  But the Summit, after I read about it a little, sounded like fun.  A bunch of hiking women?  Getting together to talk about hiking and share tips and laugh a lot? I'm so there.

DeLee and I drove down Friday and met our friend, the Missing Kink (I TOLD you they got weirder) on the edge of town.  While I was happy to attend the Summit, which was being held at Eastern Mennonite University, I had absolutely no desire to stay on campus.  In dorm rooms.  I already did my time in dorm rooms.  Three years in a soulless, concrete block, cold tile floor, uninsulated, un-airconditioned, low privacy dorm room on the fifth floor of an eight floor building.  No thanks, I'll stay at the Holiday Inn.  (As far as I can tell, both nights people were exhausted and went back to their rooms and slept.  But I could be mistaken.  Maybe they had hijinks but kept them on the down low because of fear of angry Mennonites with pitchforks.  Or, seeing as how the Mennonites are non-violent, angry Mennonites with accusingly shaken forefingers.  )

We were already late for the start, as we had known we would be.  Harrisonburg is not particularly close to home for us.  So we grabbed a quick dinner at Wendy's and then drove on over to EMU, where we walked in on the speaker.  Yay for complete lack of social graces!  We were quickly seated and then a concert started.

The thing about the concert is that it was held in an un-airconditioned classroom.  There was SUPPOSED to be air conditioning, but something had gone terribly wrong in a pipe or vent somewhere.  So 60 women were crammed into the back two thirds of the room, perspiring, while a man sang at the front of the room, also perspiring.  It was only an hour, but by the time he was done, I was nauseated by the heat and DeLee had a migraine.  We went outside.   And despite Mud Butt's dismay, we STAYED outside while the rest of the evening happened.  I found us a very nice spot on some grass where we could gaze at the pretty campus and watch the fireflies.  And I was much happier than I had been in the room.

It is totally like me, unfortunately, to pay money and travel a long way to attend an event and then sit just outside of it.  I could probably fund a therapist's kid's college education to find out why I am like that, but I am unmotivated to do so.

Anyway, after things broke up for the evening we went back to the motel, where I had totally screwed up every aspect of our reservation.  But we made it work.  (To be fair, the loud wedding reception on the second night was not my fault.)  MK got one double bed, DeLee and I fit into the other, just, and we all passed out.  DeLee and I have spent many nights in our considerably smaller two man tent, so the bed may even have felt roomy by comparison.

I surely don't know any other women with whom I could have crawled into a double bed and felt totally comfortable.  There really isn't any way to avoid touching between two adults trying to sleep in a double bed.  But with DeLee, my closest friend, I have a seriously high comfort level.  Possibly too high.  The next morning, another long time acquaintance told me that when she first met us, a decade or so ago, she thought DeLee and I were lovers.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

This not the first time somebody had thought I was a lesbian in a committed relationship.  MK says I give off a Lesbian Vibe.  On the one hand, so what?  JD and I are happy together, and that's the important thing.  Plus, I probably get hit on less by strangers than I would if I weren't a Lesbian Viber.  Getting hit on when you are uninterested is so annoying.  But on the other hand, it makes me wonder why I don't have a Heterosexual Vibe?

I guess I don't have to wonder very hard.  I stopped wearing makeup as a teenager when I discovered I could sleep in until ten minutes before the bus arrived if I didn't do makeup.  I dress for comfort, not style.  I am extremely practical.  Until my back started going out, I didn't wait around for somebody with a penis to do a task I could do perfectly well by myself (...with my ovaries, I guess.)  I don't particularly defer to men. I don't giggle (except at fart jokes). I don't cook.  (I can.. I just don't.)

Well,  hell.  Maybe I AM a lesbian.  Sorry, JD.  I had no idea.

Anyway, that was surprising.  But the rest of the event was much as expected.  Tips on lightweight gear, a "Peeing, Pooping, and Periods" panel (god, I love alliteration, although I was not responsible for the panel's) which was wildly popular and funny.   Discussion of what is involved in planning a multi-day hike.  You might think I would have skipped that one, but I figure you can always learn something new.  I also picked up some good tips on balance exercises from Leapfrog.

The college dining room, where we ate all of our meals, was significantly better than the one at my old school.  I'll give it that.  Also, the campus?  Quite pretty, other than the grain silo obstructing the view of the mountains.

Saturday night there was an awards ceremony for the Trail Dames.  Had I realized it was an awards ceremony for a bunch of women I had barely met, I'm pretty sure I would have bailed in favor of Wendy's.  Or Taco Bell.  A stale tostada would have been an excellent trade for sitting in a crowded room, clapping as a bunch of weeping women accepted plaques.  I do not excel at the social graces, as you definitely realize by now, but I didn't walk out.  I texted JD instead. Because the light of a cellphone text conversation reflecting on your face is far classier than the sight of your butt going out the door.

During the brief break before the evening's speaker took over, I escaped.  DeLee stayed behind.  I wandered the campus for a while, then decided to walk to a restaurant which I had noticed down the highway to see if it would be open for lunch the next day.  (No.)  Then I noticed a RiteAid a little farther down so I texted DeLee to see if she wanted more Benadryl (Yes.  Terrible allergies at EMU for some reason.)  So off I went down the highway to RiteAid, with my Lesbian Vibe and my wallet, to do some shopping.

Yen, the cashier, was both bored and apparently not put off by my vibe.  We chatted for a while.  Chatting with cashiers is a skill I developed while attempting to thruhike the Appalachian Trail.  If you are a solo hiker, as I frequently was (and by solo I mean I didn't even see freaking SQUIRRELS, let alone other hikers) then it behooves you to talk to anyone who will listen.  She asked who the Trail Dames were and what they did, and when I said they were women who hiked, she perked up.  Yen likes to walk.  Given that the Shenandoah National Park was within sight just outside of the store, I asked if she had gone there.  She had, but she was too apprehensive to hike on the Appalachian Trail itself.  She had instead hiked to the top of some mountain and back.  Well, gosh.. that's what the Trail is all about!  I encouraged her to do more hiking in the park, and I told her about the Circuit Hikes guidebook I use.  I really do hope she pursues it, because Yen with her college degree and her obvious foreign birth and excellent grasp of English seems wasted on RiteAid.  Not that there's anything wrong with RiteAid.  But I like hikers, and I like it when awesome people become hikers.  Because then I might run into them on the trail.

So, that was my weekend.  I attended parts of a conference of Dames, I had a Vibe, and I went to RiteAid.  Also, I observed the Irony (and excessive use of Capital Letters) of a bunch of hikers spending the weekend indoors.  On uncomfortable chairs.  My back, BTW, hates me now.  That "Baby got Back" song?  Going to be only a fond memory after my back divorces me due to irreconcilable differences.