Weekend Checklist

No, NOT your weekend.....my weekend. My weekend consists of Monday and Tuesday this week, so when I go to work on Sunday (dressed in my fancy Santonio Holmes football jersey), it'll be my Friday. Got that?

It should be a fun couple of days. I was able to get an 11am-7pm shift at work on Sunday so that I can punch out and quickly hurry over to the Hard Rock Casino to see The Australian Pink Floyd Show perform again. If you remember, I saw them for the first time last November when they were on their Wall tour and I'm really looking forward to seeing them again! I think they'll be rehashing some of the hits off the Wall again, but the rest of the setlist consists of Floyd favorites such as Money, Wish You Were Here, etc. I believe they also will be playing a couple songs off the Animals album, which should be a treat!

Since Danielle started her new job, her normal weekend days are Monday and Tuesday, so this will be an extremely rare instance where our weekend matches up. Because of this, she'll be joining me for the Aussies and we've planned a little one-night getaway up at Mount Charleston. The Resort on Mt. Charleston still has its $19.99 midweek special going, so we'll be checking into the hotel up there Monday night for a grand total of $21.89!! It's a pretty decent hotel, especially for that price, although they must be hitting up the ditz factory whenever they hire front desk personnel. Every time I go up there, the nice ladies behind the desk usually can't figure out my booking, can't figure out the damn wakeup call machine, and have once given me keys to an already occupied room!

Our plan is to wake up extremely early on Tuesday, check out of the hotel, and drive over to the South Loop Trailhead where I'll be making my second attempt at Griffith Peak. I successfully climbed to the top of the third highest mountain in southern Nevada a few weeks ago, and now Danielle won't be left out!

Building on my experience from last time, there will be a couple challenges associated with this hike. First off, I'm not in any better shape than I was last month, so Danielle will have to expect to see a pathetic blob of a boyfriend going up....especially that final 400 ft. push to the peak! I have no solution to the soreness I'm sure I'll encounter on the descent. I try to use my hiking pole, but by the end of the hike last time, my knees and ankles were hurtin' big time! The other challenge though will be the weather. I hope to get on the trail by dawn, but the temperatures up there get into the mid-40's at night, so it'll be quite cool starting off and it'll also probably be pretty chilly on the peak as well. However, the highs will be in the upper 70's on Tuesday and I remember sweatin' up a storm on my ascent last month. Taking this stuff into account on an 8 hour hike means that a BUNCH of stuff will be going in the backpack, making it all that much harder! Wish us luck.