I'm somewhere down on Highway 22 east of Salem, where I'm going to be embarking on a hike or climb the next day. I'm at someone's house, having a gathering with some people. We are preparing to bike back up the road to Portland.

The host offers me a large slab of meat, like a leg of an animal, but it seems too heavy to carry on this journey.

We start biking and I am full of self-doubt. It's a long way to go - maybe we don't even have time to get there and back before tomorrow. Can I really ride that far? I'm estimating that it'll take three times as long to ride it as to drive it, but doing the math, it should be longer than that, since I can't ride 20 miles an hour. I thought it would be three or four hours, but maybe it'll be six or eight.

Then I have these springy things attached to my feet, which allow me to run really fast, once I get the rhythm and motion down. I start making really good time, breathing efficiently, and feeling quite good about my progress.

We stop at a store or something, and after that I lead us down this steep hill, really completely vertical for a hundred feet or so, covered with trees. I start to climb down it, using the trees for hand- and foot-holds, but they all just break off and fall crashing down the hill, and it's hard to keep myself from doing the same thing. It is difficult and scary and by the time I get to the bottom I am muddy and battered.

Then I'm back with my friends, and I recommend to them that they not try to negotiate the vertical forest - see, if you just go through that hole right there, you end up in the same place anyway.