going on a hog. yes, that’s what I said.

This morning my niece Lyric and I went on what we like to call a hog.

Right, not the pig, though.

It’s the perfect blend of a hike and a jog. It’s what happens when you run on a beach with craggy cliffs that jut into the water, effectively making you stop your run and start to climb rocks up up up until you’re on level ground and can once again resume your run.

But that was at the beach and this hog was in Topanga. And my brother would have come with us, but after the beach hog he is sort of out of commission for any more for the time being. I don’t really want to say too much cause it’s his story to tell, but let’s just say that he earned himself the nickname Mr. Chafe.

And for the record, I earned the nickname Ninj. This is because I was wearing mostly black this week. Not really on purpose. See the weather is kind of unpredictable, so in addition to whatever it was I was wearing already, I’d bring some black leggings and a black sweatshirt for just-in-case-it-gets-real-cold-all-up-in-here, and so at some point in the day you’d see me in my ninja gear. Thus, Ninj.

Oh, and I’m really pretty stealthy too.

But back to the hog.

It was pretty eventful. Along the way, we ran across:

• many lizards. though, Latshaw-WEST is now pretty much acclimated to CA and hardly even mentions a lizard crossing anymore. still, they’re pretty darn cool and pretty darn plentiful. the lizards, I mean. though, the same can be said for Latshaw-WEST too.
• a huge deer. seriously. we were on the jogging portion of the hog when, seemingly out of nowhere, a deer leaped majestically out in front of us. we got a really nice close up. if we had been in a car, we might have even hit him.
• two creepers. as Lyric put it, one with his shirt on and one with his shirt off. when we first ran by them they yelled, Hey girls! Wait up! after us, causing us to actually pick up our pace more than anything close to waiting for them. eventually they gained on us, though, and I decided that we should wait and let them pass so that they weren’t such a big part of our hog. when we did, and as they passed us, the creeper with his shirt off asked us if the deer really freaked us out. Um, no. Not in the least. I was annoyed that he even asked and further annoyed that it seemed he assumed that was the reason for us pausing our hog. So I said as much. Or rather, I told him that we thought the deer was really very cool and left it at that. Freaked out, indeed.

We also threw in the plank and a couple of side planks for the mid-hog doldrums. Which is right around the time we discussed how freaky it would be to meet a spider whose face looks exactly like your own, though miniature cause it’s spider-sized (obviously). We decided it’d be less freaky if the spider had our sibling’s face instead, though don’t get me wrong, still very freaky.

And that about wraps up our hog.

I highly recommend them, for the record.