This is just a little ways up the Echo Canyon Summit Trail on Camelback Mountain, in Phoenix, Arizona. I took this picture after working an 8-hour shift at the airport, getting on the  Sky Train, getting on the #44 Valley Metro bus, getting off on the stop before Macdonald, and walking amd walking–and reaching the trailhead, and Hiking.

I was hoping to see my friend Natalie Lobherr on the trail. She’d Facebooked that she would be there at 2:00 PM.

Unfortunately, I didn’t clock out till 2:30, despite asking for an early out; didn’t get rolling on the bus till 2:55; didn’t reach the trailhead till 3:25 or thereabouts. Natalie is capable of doing the hike in one hour. I feared I’d missed her.

Fortunately, after I pianissimoed up to marker 6 and my legs said “enough!” and I waited a while at the “rehydration” landing, here she came, clearly weary, but chugging away for all she was worth (priceless). She saw me and put her hands palm up sideways in that “what the hell and here I am” gesture. And I hugely grinned.

I love the word Hike because its first definition is, noun or verb, one of my favorite activities. I also love its other meanings, which unclude launching a football and adjusting a skirt upward.