2006.06.30

Doing our part to become "one" with nature, Sherylen and I spent the Friday-before-the-4th-of-July-long-weekend on a hike in Big Sur, in search of anything and everything nature-oriented. It was a light-hearted attempt at shaking my "computer-geek sits in front of a computer all day long" image, and for me personally, it sure beat sitting in a meeting at work, trying to navigate my way over the corporate network to video-conference with out-of-state collegaues.

I decided to disobey Rule #1 from elementary-school field trips: don't climb the railings on a bridge. Amazingly, it held my weight.

A number of the gigantic trees out there seemed to have these natural cave-like things embedded inside them. Sometimes it felt like something out of "Forensic Files" as one of the places where a sinister piece of trace evidence would be found....that, and there was some sort of "found porn" feel to this particular cave that Sherylen's standing in.

And here you have it: a waterfall. And a family splashing around in the water at the bottom. One girl in that family remarked that the water "was ice." On a hot day, that didn't seem like such a bad proposition to me.

After climbing over some railings on a deck overlooking the waterfall (why do I get the feeling we weren't supposed to do that?), we were able to get right down to where the water fell. Here's a shot of a Sherylen on the rocks.

After scampering back up to a more "legal" location, we convinced a number of other visitors to take our picture. Here's one.

Sensing a break in the action of other hikers/visitors to the area, I somehow managed to propose to Sherylen with water falling in the backdrop; after a few moments of hysteria and another few to settle down, here she is, posing with her new piece of jewelry (no, not the gold bracelets...look closer.)

Is Sherylen (a) shocked, (b) surprised, (c) scared, or (d) sleepy?

Stay tuned for more photo ops as this whole "wedding planning" thing starts to unfold...needless to say, I was a nervous wreck and a bundle of nerves for most the day, but in the end, it all worked out, as it always does, eh?