Jeans - Feb 25, '04

Hi everyone,

 As some of you know, I spent the 3 day weekend of Presidents’ day on the Utah/Arizona border;  www.westerntreks.com/pariahikes.htm has been updated to include pictures from the four hikes I took through this wonderful and exotic country.  It was cold, getting down to 13 deg. F. each night but my efforts to revive the elderly and nearly comatose heater in my tent trailer seem to have worked miracles as I remained quite comfortable. 

 Driving home, I reflected on the fact that this weekend may have been the best weekend of my life - that is, until I remembered that I had been married on a Saturday.  Needless to say, even though I was on crutches the day I married,  I’m neither brave enough nor daft enough to compare the former to the latter.  Anyway, I am eagerly looking forward to returning next June with a group from work along with several members of our family.

 Most of you may be surprised to learn that I made these hikes in jeans.  It has been over 30 years since I have purchased a pair of jeans – I gave up buying them because if I expected them to shrink, they didn’t - and if I didn’t expect them to shrink, they did.  I finally tired of looking like some hayseed from Nebraska in hand-me-down jeans.  Besides, in those days everyone wore jeans and I have spent my life, with limited success, studiously trying to avoid what everyone else was doing.

 But after the success I enjoyed in my efforts to lose nearly a fifth of myself, I found I needed a new wardrobe – some shirts and pants were in order.  I was shocked to find out that I could fit into a size 32 waist  – a nostalgic number that brought back memories of jeans.   I bought two pair - each of which I wore for a week or more before declaring them adequately “broke in” and surrendering both pairs to the laundry hamper. 

A few days later I returned home to be greeted at the door by a pale, quivering wife – who blurted out, “I’ve ruined your jeans.  They shrank.  They’re tiny, I don’t think Daryl could wear ’em!”.  She kept mumbling things about “hot water” and “stone washed” as we walked down the hall to the bedroom where I retrieved a pair of the suspect jeans from the closet.  I must admit holding them up made me apprehensive – they did look tiny.  But pulling them on I found they buttoned quite easily.  Whereupon Sharon exclaimed, “Oh, good! You got them buttoned, now squat down like this and stretch ’em out!”  I have neither the inclination nor the literary talent to describe the position that she assumed - suffice to say that no self-respecting male I know would ever be caught dead in that position, with his knees all splayed out and such.

Enjoy the photos and take care!

Love from Phoenix,
Stretch and Skinny