Name Changed To Protect The Jerkstores

Hooray for impromptu mountain climbing!  

Nono...you mean the other one.

Oh yeah...BOOOOOOOO!!!

So, today's Sametime Status is brought to you courtesy of my mildly overstated pain and suffering.  As you're probably aware, I'm an engineer by trade, not a professional mountain climber.  That said, there are some large hills in the Greater Jeremy Area which are somewhat generously called mountains.  On occasion, some of my friends and I will get together to climb (read: mostly walk uphill, with some small measure of scrambling involved) one of them.  On a nice day in the summer, with appropriate attire and footwear, with water and snacks, it's a rather pleasant experience, if tiring.  On an unseasonably warm December day while wearing jeans and a long sleeved shirt and sneakers, with wet leaves covering the path, it's not great.  One might go so far as to say it sucks.  

I would be one of those Ones.  

So, what prompted my impromptu journey up a mountain which, for strictly Blag purposes, we'll call "Mount Jerkstore"?  A slight miscommunication and a lack of attentiveness.  I participated in a puzzle-based land race over the weekend.  It was fun and mentally stimulating, to be sure.  One of the clues made mention of climbing Mount Jerkstore, at the base of which is a staircase to get you the first 10 stories or so up.  The puzzle, which I can't be bothered to look up, involved finding your team's ribbon "at the top."  One of the race organizers also made mention over the phone (to another team, so I was only involved peripherally) that in one of the race's events, "you'll be climbing Mount Jerkstore."  My teammate and I had resolved ourselves to the fact that we'd be climbing to the top of the mountain to find our ribbon.  Up we went.  

At the top of Mount Jerkstore, there is a lovely scenic overlook of towns and a river and pretty much everything else, since you're at the top of a freakin' mountain.  What there was not was a collection of team ribbons.  We looked.  After a while of scratching our heads, we placed a call to the race organizers to ask about the rough location of the ribbons.  We'd achieved the difficult part of scaling Mount Jerkstore, so giving away the ribbon location seemed to be within the spirit of the competition.  

As it turns out, the ribbons were located at the top of the staircase, some 90 or so stories down.  

We did not win the race.