August 10, 2025
The Galbraith Mountain hike
The Morning Report
In my new early morning routine, I'm awakened by leg cramps at roughly 2 AM. This has happened for five mornings straight now, ever since my prednisone dosage dropped to 20 mg/day. The timing is strange, and precise - it's always within fifteen minutes of 2:00, close enough that I'm not surprised any more when I crack open the iPad and see the time.
I sit up on the edge of the bed for about ten minutes suffering in silence while waiting for the cramping to subside enough that I'm safe to walk to the bathroom. While I wait I read Heather Cox Williamson's summary of yesterday's news as she continues her account of the ruination of our nation.
And then I head to the bathroom on the opposite side of the bed. We've been here just over a week now, long enough for me to have mastered the layout of this corner of the house. I know where the edge of the bed is, how far it is from there to the opposite wall, which way the doors open, where the light switches are. I don't need the light of the iPad to find my way now like I did for the first few days, when I once was puzzled and disoriented to find myself in the kitchen instead. I'm pretty sure I could find my way there blindfolded now, close the door behind me and then turn on the bathroom light, but I don't. There's no reason not to keep the eyes open and let them gradually adjust to the dim light.
And the timing is odd in another way. I wake up because of the cramps, not because I need to urinate. I don't need to at all, really and consider just going back to sleep. But by the time I reach the toilet it's invariably just in time. A very strange routine.
I'm up for about a half hour reading and then turn off the light, reverse the trip, and go back to sleep for another three hours. Then, I'm awakened for the second and last time by my wake-up routine - leg cramps again, but this time I'm also awakening from a bicycle traveling dream. In this morning's little adventure I'm sitting around the campfire somewhere on the GDMBR with Megan and Erin, discussing bike travel and comparing notes on Fernie, the mountain town just inside Canada they are smitten by. I tell them it's probably much changed since Rachael and I biked through here 35 years ago on our 2nd Anniversary Tour: a loop through Waterton and Glacier National Parks that took us over Going to The Sun on the first weekend it was open, with snow drifts piled at least thirty feet high on one side of the road at the summit. We started biking that morning before 5 while it was still dark so we could get off the mountain before it was closed to bikes at 9, our guts still busted from a fry bread and huckleberry cobbler blowout at the Saint Mary's campground the night before. I don't think we were passed by even a single any car on the way up, arriving there before 7. Remarkably though there was a lone photographer at the summit taking photos for a calendar who took a photo of us to remember the day by - as though we'd be likely to forget it otherwise.
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Megan asks about the blog and comments about how religiously I've kept it up for the last seven years. I give my reasons, but she suggests that I might diversify, maybe take up guitar. But I won't at this stage in life, and gradually I awaken from it and make my way again to the bathroom to take my morning meds and then enter the other half of the house to turn up the heat, microwave a cup of coffee, and settle in until Rachael wakes up and we can talk through the plan for the day.
Today's plan: I'll drive down to Cafe Velo for breakfast when they open at eight and drop my bike off for servicing, and Rachael will take another hike into the Chuckanut Mountains. It doesn't go exactly like that though, because I incorrectly remembered the opening hours of Cafe Velo - something my phone helpfully tips me off to when I navigate to it and I'm told it may not be open when I arrive, and in fact won't be open for another 48 hours because they're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
So instead I go back to the Blue Cafe for another Strada and hang out there for a few hours until it's time to feed the meter. I consider biking out to the Lummi reservation next to circle the peninsula for more birding, but then remember we're still in the middle of a heat wave so I just head home and spend the afternoon keeping cool in the shade on the porch, my camera at my side and my ear cocked for that tantalizing Steller's jay that refuses to come closer than a few blocks away.
Eventually Rachael returns from her hike, we compare notes on our day, and wait for our dinner reservation to roll around.
The Galbraith Mountain Hike
After doing several hikes in the same area, I found some different trails in the Galbraith Mountain area. I still hike on the Hemlock trail that I’ve hiked on before but I take the low route. Finally, I get to the Galbraith mountain trails. What I didn’t realize until I got there was that it is a mountain biking area with narrow up and down trails. As a result I had to be very vigilant! But it was worth it.
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Here's a song I think you'll recognize. After yesterday's post I decided to look up the writer and was surprised when two names came up: Jon Hendricks and Cannonball Atterley. The vocal version with Hendricks' lyrics came out in 1958, but the song itself was composed by Atterly two years earlier. Might as give credit where credit is due.
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