So lately I've had two very different adventures/experiences I would like to document. While traveling home from South Dakota we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Park. Such a cool place if you've never been! You need to register to go into any of the caves, but it's free and easy as long as you haven't visited any other caves in the past few years! The day we were there was a hot day, walking around on the surface of the park I was sweating. But going down just 3 feet into a cave and suddenly the air was like 15 degrees cooler! Craters of the Moon has some really awesome caves for all levels of caving. Some of them you could just scramble around jumping on the rocks, a few we were on our bellies army crawling and wishing we had knee pads.
Here I am down in Buffalo Cave. At one point I found a kind of nest and eventually saw the creature living in it, it was an ROUS (that's a Princess Bride reference if anyone wanted to know; Rodents Of Unusual Size)! But I really had no idea what it was, I only saw it's bum and tail, it looked like a giant rat.
One of the craziest things about the caves was the temperature difference! One of the caves, Boy Scout Cave, was actually filled with ice! I could be very comfortable in my swimsuit on top of the cave, but as soon as I got down into the cave I would be more comfortable in a sweatshirt and gloves!
Caving really is such a cool.... what do I call it? Sport? Hobby? Past time? I'll call it a sport I guess. It's a really cool sport! It's so fun finding tiny cracks in the lava on the surface, squeezing yourself down into it and finding a whole cavern that you could have a picnic in! It's just not for the claustrophobic. At all.
So the next adventure I had is less an adventure, more an experience. I tried Hot Yoga for the first time!
And let me tell you, it kicked my sorry butt and had me down in Child's Pose for at least half an hour. I was one HOT mess, and I don't mean in a good way. As I was signing up for the class the teacher told me that since it was my first time my main goal was to stay in the room the whole time. I naively thought "ya, ok, EASY, I can sit in a room for an hour" Nope. Not easy. I almost wasn't able to stay in the room for the hour and 15 minutes. In case you don't know, in Hot Yoga you are basically folding yourself into a pretzel multiple times in a room that is heated to between 105 and 108 degrees F and usually with elevated humidity. Now I've done regular yoga plenty of times before, I'm not good at it, but I know what to expect if I go to a class. That barely prepared me for Hot Yoga. Same moves, but your whole body is slippy slidey with sweat and sometimes you can't see because sweat is in your eyes or your hair (my ponytail is pretty long) is sticking to your face. I have literally never sweat that much in an hour in my life. Doing regular yoga, I can mostly do the moves (just not well), but in Hot Yoga I got so heated and nauseous that every 5 minutes I was collapsing down onto my mat and sitting in Child's Pose (also known as the This Is Way Too Hard For Me And I'm In Over My Head Pose) for embarrassingly long times. Every time this happened the teacher would say in her soft flowy yoga-teacher voice "remember there is no pressure to perform all the postures, listen to your body, take as many breaks as you need" just so everyone in the class would know that somebody (me) had to rest because she couldn't even complete a full sun salutation. Embarrassing.
And yet, I kind of enjoyed it! Since it was my first time I got a new-student package, two weeks unlimited yoga for 20 bucks, a good deal as long as I actually go! So, I'll be going back a few times a week to see if I can actually get to the point where I'm doing Hot Yoga, not just Hot.
Thanks for reading and tolerating my ranting about the random things I do. Come back soon for more!
No comments:
Post a Comment