I've decided to bring a little more cheer and happiness into the world by sharing stories about Dave Gurley from this weekend. I only wish that I had a huge group of people who could have witnessed these events with me because they were priceless.
Nicole is out of town this week in Houston visiting family and friends (I miss her terribly) so I have been a bachelor this weekend - minus all of the ladies. Since she has been out I have been spending a lot of time with Gurley.
Dave and I went hiking this weekend. It was perfect weather. We went to the Columbia Gorge and stopped at a very popular trail called "Eagle Creek." The Gorge is famous for all of its mountain streams and waterfalls.
We hiked back around 3 or 4 miles to a beautiful area with several waterfalls. It looked like something in Hawaii, but with evergreen trees instead of palm trees. There were all of these reflection pools that were hidden between the rocks. Dave and I peer pressured each other to jump into the freezing cold water - I'm pretty sure that it is snow melt from the mountains. It immediatly steals your breath and feels like thousands of tiny needles poking your body - very enjoyable. We kept saying, "if Chris were here he would do it."
In order to get back to the trail from the reflection pools we had to climb across this wet mossy area of the rocks. The whole area was like a toilet bowl - everything sloped down like a slide into the pool at the bottom. I carefully climbed across the area holding my dry shoes in my left hand. I got back to where we left our stuff and turned around to check on Gurley. He was carefully sizing up the situation and determining his next move. I offered to let him throw his shoes toward me so that he would have both arms to climb across - I was about 20 feet away from him. He tossed his shoe around 10 feet.
His shoe and sock bounced down the hill into the bowl of water below, then it got caught in the current and started circling the pool threatening to tumble down one of the many waterfalls. After 15 minutes or so of chasing the shoe around the pool and unsucessfully attempting to use sticks as tools - Gurley finally had to jump back into the freezing cold water to retrieve his shoe. We did end up losing the sock to the waterfall.
I climbed back across to our stuff and turned back around to see how Gurley was making it across the mossy slope. He now had one dry shoe and one wet shoe. He looked a little soggy from jumping in the water again so I went over and offered my hand to help. He very confidently said "No thanks man, I've got it!" (he is an experienced climber)
Less than a second after Gurley said these words his legs shot out from under him. He then did a completely perfect belly flop onto the rocks - which sounded very much like someone thumping a melon at the supermarket to check for ripeness. His body started to slide backwards down the mossy slope toward the icy water, so I had to quickly grab his hand and pull him back up. He had a green mossy skid mark down the front of his white T-shirt for the rest of the day.
It made me laugh. I only wish that someone else could have enjoyed seeing this with me. | 
