mikeontherun

229

2012-02-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

Knocked off 45 miles with my friend Kris yesterday. That brings the 2012 total mileage up to 229. Small numbers yet. I need to log a few long rides to get those miles up. I'm leading a team ride this Saturday, that'll give me 60 miles. Cold and wet today I may have to go with the trainer once again. If the weather clears this afternoon I'll break out the TT bike and take a lap of Mercer Island. I'll kick-off my racing season March 3rd at the Icebreaker TT; I should get a few miles on the TT bike beforehand.

Thinking about using my race reimbursement check to buy a Garmin Edge 500.

Zoo Hill

2012-02-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

Something to consider

Last year my training method of long moderate rides didn’t seem to be getting me to the finish line any sooner than my competition, so this year I’ve decided to add in some shorter distance high intensity workouts. One of these workouts involves a climb of a particularly nasty hill in these hereabouts known as Zoo Hill. It’s a scenic, yet relentless, climb up Cougar Mountain just east of Seattle.

Yesterday I started out en route to Zoo Hill under marginal skies – I’m so tired of riding on the trainer that I figured a little rain is a fair price to pay for some road miles. When I started uphill the weather was quickly going downhill and as I neared the summit out came the hail. By the time I reached the top it was a full on snow storm. I pulled over into a little bus stop shed, pulled on my rain coat and prepared for the downhill. I almost immediately lost my rear brake to worn out pads and as I whipped through the sleet and hail it felt as though I was riding through a Saharan sandstorm.

I arrived at home with frozen feet and a grimy bike. I can’t believe that racing season starts in two and a half weeks.

Bike Swap

2012-02-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Sophie and I went to the Cascade Bicycle Club Ski Swap down at Seattle Center on Sunday morning. We arrived an hour after the doors opened and boy was it some kind of crowded mosh pit in there. Cyclists certainly are an eclectic crowd. There are so many little factions and cliques in the cycling world: trendy urban hipsters, all business commuters, focused racers, outrageously shod cross racers, mega-thighed tracksters, busted and broken free riders, old school hard tail mountain bikers, BMX bowl riders, wooly randoneurs, just happy to be here STPer’s; it’s a mixed crowd without a lot of overlap.

I’m hoping that Greenlite Heavy Industries (the bike clothing company co-founded by myself and my friend Bianca) will be able to bridge the gap that divides many of these factions. When I joined the Cucina Fresca Cycling Team last year someone asked me what kind of biking I do, I replied that if it has two wheels I’m game. I stand behind that.

The idea behind Greenlite is to get people out on their bikes. I don’t care how fast you ride, how far you ride, just ride, your life will be the better for it.

After swapping at the swap (actually all we bought was a bracelet made of old bike chain - I was tempted by a celeste green Ciocc) Sophie and I hit Pesos at the base of Queen Anne for some huevos rancheros. I'm still looking for the perfect huevos rancheros place, Greenlake Jakes was the best, but they've been out of business for like fifteen years.

2012-02-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

We spent much of the weekend in Tacoma – at a gymnastics meet. I live in Seattle and have passed through Tacoma nigh on one hundred times, but this is only the second time I’ve actually stopped and got out of the car. Downtown Tacoma is actually a very hip, hop happening place – except for the fact that it is completely devoid of people. The folks who make decisions in Tacoma seem to have had a build it and they will come vision.

The downtown has an arts infrastructure like I’ve never seen anywhere else. Art is everywhere. And not I’m not talking about half assed low end stuff, but visionary thoughtful, well-made and well-executed stuff. The University of Washington campus is in the middle of downtown and uses a cool synergy of old and new architecture. Many of the buildings are a blending off old and new construction, and the new stuff wasn’t just cobbled on, but instead was designed with thought and class.

I was there Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday all day and probably saw less than twenty people on the street. There is more life in a morgue. The build it and they will come vision doesn’t seem to be working out as well in Tacoma as it did Northeastern Iowa. The Tacoma folks took a shot, I hope it pays off.

My outdoor bike riding has been foiled by either rain or darkness since last Thursday. Over the past three days I’ve ridden five hours on the trainer. It’s raining again today... Still at 159 miles. I might have to revisit this idea that I’m not counting trainer miles in my yearly total.

Downtown

2012-02-08T20:24:00.000-08:00

Had to take a ride into downtown Seattle today. Normally I'm decked out in my Cucina Fresca racing kit but today, since I'm designing urban bike clothing, I decided to go in Levi 501's and a Key hickory stripe logger shirt. The Levi's are new, I bought the rigid fabric this time with the intent of finding out whether or not the shrink to fit claim actually works. My biker thighs just don't fit into regular jeans, so I figured what the heck let's try something new. I read some shrink to fit instructions on the web and the general consensus seems to be to wear them for a good long time before trying the shrink - well 21 miles on a bike in the rain ought to simulate a good long time.

Actually my clothing choices worked out quite well. I wore my team issue winter knickers under the Levis and I layered a heavyweight baselayer and a vest under the cotton hickory shirt. I liked having the button down chest pockets as they gave me a handy secure place for the cell phone, much better than trying to simultaneously ride a bike while fishing a phone out of your pants pocket. I can see why the loggers like those hickory shirts, yes they are cotton, but dang that fabric is warm, I was actually a bit too hot.

Got in 21 miles today bringing the total up to 159 miles.

Grand Ridge

2012-02-07T20:50:00.000-08:00

A stunning day here in the Pacific Northwest, I made the best of it by getting out on the Yeti for some mountain biking. Several weeks ago two teammates – Matt and Jason – introduced me to the Grand Ridge, an uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill route leading from Tiger Mountain near Issaquah to the Duthie Hill mountain bike park. I decided that this would be a great place to spend a sunny afternoon.

It was nice to be out by myself. When I last rode the route with Matt and Jason it was all I could do to just make them wait a little while at the top of each rise. It’s good to get out and push it with folks who are technically and physically superior, but it’s also good to get out and sharpen your skills without the guilt of knowing that you’re messing up someone else’s training session.
I don’t get out on the trails enough. Being out in the woods, either alone or with like-minded friends, gives me a kind of primeval recharge. We’re deep into the season of bullshit and it seems like I can’t even turn on the radio without hearing some sort of nonsense that’s even lower and filthier than what I heard the day before. Rick and Newt don’t exist in the woods. Out there it’s just you and what you can do: either you pedaled to the top of the hill or you pushed your bike, either way it’s you and what you did.

All told I only knocked off fourteen miles, but they were hard earned. I started my 2013 mileage tally on February 1; I now stand at 138.

Validation

2012-01-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

Reading through my latest issue of COG magazine I was happy to run across this little quote - it accompanied a review of the latest "cycling jeans."

"... this urban cycling "trend" isn't going away anytime soon."

I hope not.

Tomorrow my partner, Bianca, and I are heading back down to Pioneer Square for a second fitting with Matt and Maikoiyo at Georgetown Sewing. Exciting times that' for sure.

I doubt many folks die unhappy because they took too many risks, I speculate that few last words are on the order of "damn I wish I hadn't taken so many chances, I should have taken the safe route, stayed close to home." Bianca and I are taking a shot here, we're not sitting close to home, we're not "doing what we do best," instead we're doing what we don't know anything about. And hey isn't that what it's all about.

5000 Miles

2012-01-03T21:37:00.001-08:00

The goal for 2012 is to log 5000 miles on my bicycle(s). I've decided that these should be actual road/trail miles and that the trainer and rollers don't count. Bummer because I spent two hours on the trainer today.

I signed up for a 30 mile mountain bike race in May. 30 miles on a mountain bike is a significant undertaking. I'll have to start racking up some trail miles.

What Was I Thinking

2011-12-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

With the possible exception of going to college every worthwhile thing I've done in my life has had a "what the hell was I thinking" moment, so when I woke up the other night wondering "what the hell am I thinking trying to start a clothing company," I took it as a welcome omen.

The guys at Tarboo provided Bianca and I with a first run sample of our urban biking pant. I was able to get about 40 miles in them before Donna cut them up in preparation for iteration number two. I'm getting a big kick out of working with Matt, Mikoyo and Donna at Tarboo; it's a nice feeling when you are confident that you've found the right people.

Single Speed

2011-11-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

I showed up at the MFG Raceway CX at Marymore with only fifteen bucks in my thin wallet, so the first order of business was to saddle up and ride to the nearest ATM. Fortunately I’d arrived ninety minutes prior my race and, doubly fortunate, the bank machine was only about two miles away. Unfortunate was the three bucks I had to pay to make a withdrawal, but that’s a different story. A different story entirely.

After paying up, I skirted under the danger tape and hit the soggy course. Kore Kross has gotten me accustomed to the funky off camber hillsides, claylike slime and zero friction when wet blue paint; I felt like I had a bit of a home field advantage, excepting, of course, all the other guys who do Kore Kross. The layout of the course was nice, no crazy tight turns or barriers placed on uphill sections, the short wooden stairway was right up my alley – the more running the better I say.

I took two solid laps and then returned to the car where I screwed my rear skewer into the trainer and worked on getting my heart rate up. I’ve found that I have to push through what I call the “race heart attack” before I can really settle in and start pushing hard. It happens about five or eight minutes into the race, suddenly I can’t seem to get enough air and I swear I’m going into cardiac arrest, it only happens once and if I can push through it I’m set for the remainder of the race. I’ve had my ticker checked out on a stress test – I watched my heart beat in real time, that was cool – and I’m totally fine, it’s just one of those things. Anyway my plan now is to crank up my heart rate pre-race, so then I’ll be good to go by the time the starting gun fires.

I was only on the trainer for fifteen minutes when the announcer said that all ten thirty racers should be at the starting line. Heck it was only ten fifteen. I undid the bike and rolled over to the start line. I entered at the back and started nudging forward – using the tactics I learned in the eighties to get front stage at the big arena rock concerts. So many teammates, I think there were seven or eight of us in the forty five plus race. The rain had stopped but I was cooling down fast, start the race, start the race.

I was in the rear third of the pack at the start, but I got a number of lucky breaks during the lead out drag race and rounded the first turn in the top third. I only use one chain ring in the front and had switched to a thirty four tooth ring, it looked kind of tiny, but combined with a eleven twenty four in the back I had more than enough gears. I was rolling along really well when I slid out while paralleling a slimy slope. I got up fell again, lost my chain, fixed that got up started pedaling only to realize that my left shift/brake lever was broken off. Good thing I don’t have a front derailleur. Midway through the second lap I broke the shift mechanism on the right side. Now I was down to one brake and one gear. Luckily it was a good gear.

As I came around by the parking lot I seriously considered just ducking the tape and going home – mechanical failure – who would blame me. The biggest problem I had wasn’t the lack of brakes or gears it was holding onto the broken shift lever. I normally ride on the hoods and my left lever was held on by rubbery rubber. If that lever came off completely I was going over the handlebars.

Honestly I don’t think I would have placed any higher had I had a full set of twenty gears. Riding with a single gear wasn’t a terrible handicap. Maybe I could have spun up the hills a little better, but really it was no big deal. I never really got used to that SRAM Doubletap stuff anyway; breaking the levers gave me an excuse to switch out to Ultegra. Dang those shift levers are expensive.

Under Pressure

2011-10-20T14:28:00.001-07:00

My Office - my dad gave me that

pencil in 1983 - used it ever since

Still trying to crack the cyclocross nut. Got beat up fairly bad last night at Kore Kross. My main problem is holding a tight line on the grassy corners: I routinely get passed on the tight curves. Yesterday I mounted up a pair of Kenda Kross Supremes; I went to three bike shops and these were the toughest tire I could find. As a side note I’m a bit surprised by how little space Seattle bike shops dedicate to cyclocross. The races here are immense – the turnout dwarfs that of road races. In addition the cyclocross design is far and away the most versatile bicycle style: if I could only own one bike it would be a cross bike. Anyway I got new tires and pumped them up to a risky thirty five psi.
Prior to my first cross race I’d heard that you should run your tires a bit “soft,” so I raced with what a road racer would consider low pressure – eighty psi. I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself. Now I drop it all the way down to the mid-thirties - seriously risking a pinch flat – in order to rail through the corners. I know it’s possible to hold a tight fast line through the grassy curves, but still I’m wobbly, wide and sketchy at best.
The new tires didn’t make much of a difference, so I guess the rider is at fault. Unlike road riding, it’s hard to practice cross racing, especially grassy turns. There are a few trails near my house where I can practice single track riding, but most of the courses that I’ve seen have a lot more grass than dirt.

Be The Aggressor

2011-10-14T10:16:00.001-07:00

Rode cyclocross training last night, the evenings are getting darker, wetter and colder around here. Only the geezers and die-hards remain in attendance. I enjoy these Wednesday night sessions because they allow me an opportunity to work on my aggression.

A young guy showed up last night – I’d never seen him before – with a Motobecane single speed and he tore up the course. Normally when you get tangled up with another rider there are a lot of apologies and oh go ahead’s but this guy bashed on past without so much as a flick of the head. He wasn’t goofy and unpredictable, like most of the juniors, he was solid, he was fast and if you were in his way he was going on by. On the final lap I decided to take his queue and upped my aggression three or four notches.

It’s easy to suck wheel in cyclocross. First of all, if you’re a road rider sitting on a wheel becomes kind of ingrained behavior. Secondly it’s easy. The guy in front will always take the best line, so if you want to get around you’re going to have to take the longest, roughest, suckiest route. In other words, passing is really tough. You have to really want it. At the North Bend race two weeks ago my wherewithal was put to the test. On the final two laps I ran up against the tail end of the 35+ racers (I race 45+) and if I wanted to get anywhere I had to push past. It was a good lesson; I kept my pace up, pushed on by and didn’t look back.

Ying and Yang in Ballard

2011-10-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

Had some business in Ballard yesterday and was able to spend a rainy hour walking the main drag. Stopped in at the Dutch Bike Company some coffee then wandered north stopping in at Second Ascent - just to see if they had anything cool - they did.

Gray Twilight

2011-10-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve finally settled on my epitaph – a slogan, a motto, a thought from the other side. Five simple words that sum up a life – my life: at least I fucking tried.

My all time favorite quote comes from good old T.R. – the Rough rider himself:

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Far too many live in the gray twilight, and for good reason: things go easy there. It’s easy to say “I should’ve.” It’s easier to say “I could’ve.” It’s the rare person who can say “I tried.” Rarer still is the one in a million who can look back on life and say “I did.”

The word adventure is overused by advertisers marketing their crap to soft squishy Americans: how does driving a brand new four by four down a gravel road constitute an adventure? That ain’t my idea of adventure. On the other end some purists have hijacked the word claiming that an adventure must include some sort of near-death experience, or, at the very least, a large element of risk. I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion, but in my book an adventure means that the outcome is uncertain.

Parenting is definitely an adventure. For me, my first Ironman was an adventure – I stood on the beach unsure as to whether I could actually pull this thing off. Right now I am starting my own business, and if an uncertain outcome is the criteria, this definitely counts as an adventure.

The death of Steve Jobs should serve as a wake-up call for all of us living in the gray twilight: life is short, make your time count. I’m not ready to deify Mr. Jobs as many would like, but he did make his time count.

Killer Instinct

2011-10-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

An old friend of mine, who I just learned is now President and CEO of K2 Skis, used to say with regard to skiing, “if you ain’t falling you ain’t improving.” I took those words to heart, and even today when I go skiing I hit hard and I hit often. But the philosophy doesn’t simply apply to skiing – it also applies to cyclocross.

I think you could have a very successful career as a road racer and never once taste concrete – at least I hope this is the case – but if you want to be a competitive cyclocross racer you have to ride the thin line between vertical and horizontal.

I raced at Meadowbrook Farm in North Bend on Sunday; it was a flat, grassy, bumpfest, and now, two days later, I feel more like I spent my weekend in an MMA ring than on a bicycle. Actually the course was perfect for me: flat with spacious straights and wide generous turns. I finished 15th despite going down prior to the first barriers and losing my chain. This was by far my best race.

It was on the first lap and I came in hot on the inside of a left hand turn and before I knew it I was on the ground sliding across the grass. Lucky for me the guys behind me were quick on the pedals and I didn’t get run over. I was maybe thirty feet shy of the barriers, so I shouldered the bike and ran for it. When I remounted I realized that I’d lost my chain. Re-chaining was the killer – I probably lost seven maybe ten places, bummer that I went down so early as we were still fairly bunched up.

As I’ve noted in the past my biggest obstacle when it comes to bicycle racing is myself. I just don’t have the killer instinct, that little extra ounce of something – I don’t know what it is – that pushes you past that guy in front of you. I seem to be, however, moving away from that “oh it’s nice here in the back,” mentality.

The race on Sunday had some wide open easy pass areas and I used every opportunity to push past the guy in front of me. Halfway through the third lap I was running into the 35+ racers and had to get out on the rough to pass while they cruised along on the smooth(er) beaten track. I was tempted on a few occasions to yell “get the hell out of the way,” but hey we’re all in it together, and you gotta work if you want to pass.

At the end of the third lap I was pushing hard towards the finish line when I heard the announcer say “last lap.” What? This is a four lap race! I thought it was three. Dang. Actually I was happy for the surprise lap as I was able to move up a few more places.

It was a great race in a great venue – I can’t wait to get out there again.

Gallop and Gasp

2011-10-01T20:45:00.000-07:00

Seems like whenever I put on my bike kit I might as well be painting a big target on my back. Take this morning: I was riding up to my team photo and, as usual, was running late, so I was cruising along East Mercer, maybe twenty twenty one when I pass some dude, give him a wave and move on; well three minutes later here he comes around me at probably twenty six twenty seven and then immediately pulls back. The guy had totally gassed himself. In days gone by I would have just slowed down and let him move on up the road, no need to cause a commotion. But those days are no more. The second that fella slowed down I threw down and buried that asshole.

I get passed all the time; it ain’t no big thing, but if you’re going to pass, do it and move down the road. This gassing oneself just to get around the guy in the team kit and then puttering out is nonsense, but it’s common nonsense.

The Thirty Minute Heart Attack

2011-09-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

Friends ask me what it’s like to race cyclocross. I used to go into a big complicated huffandpuff, but now I’ve simplified matters by describing the experience as a thirty minute heart attack.

In cross there is no “hey let’s all get to know each other” rollout or mid pack get your wind back recovery periods, instead it’s a sprint from the bell, and from then on you just try to hold your position – maybe pick off a few guys in front. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to pass other riders on much of the winding course, so you have to get in position early and then fight to hold it. Unlike road and criterium racing, where the strength is in the pack, cross is an individual effort: it’s you against everyone else all the time.

Last Sunday I raced the first Seattle Cyclocross series at Marymore Park in Redmond. On Saturday afternoon I’d removed my front derailleur and my compact ring set and replaced it all with a single 46 tooth ring and a Rohloff chain guide. The guide cost me $110 and didn’t even fit. I took it back to the bike shop to see if there was another, correctly sized, version: there wasn’t so we cut it down with a hacksaw. Back at home I hit another snag in that the bolts were now too long, so once again out came the hacksaw. I guess this is why bike mechanics are called mechanics and not simply part putter oners. I like the simplicity of having only a single front ring; someday soon I’ll have to rig up a single speed ride and go uber simple.

While the bike was up on the rack I replaced my worn out front brake pads.

I was in the ten fifteen race and managed to get in a good warm-up prior to being called to the starting line. I had left my watch in the car, but it seemed like they were calling us up quite early. After a lot of standing around we moved to the start line, where we stood around for a long time more. Seconds after the race official called one minute till start I looked down and noticed that my left front brake pad was perpendicular to the rim. Crap. I must have forgotten to tighten it down. No front brakes today.

The race began in a slow but quickly building sprint and just as we passed the Cucina Fresca tent a big chunk of green fabric, perhaps it was some kind of fencing, blew onto the course. It took some cool headed riding by about a dozen guys to avert disaster. I hadn’t been able to preview the course so I was seeing everything for the first time. Despite the evening rain the course wasn’t muddy, some of the grass was saturated, but nothing too mucky. The first set of barriers were in a tough spot because you had to dismount while simultaneously descending a hill and making a hard right. It was a fairly technical spot that required some good dismount/mount skills, and consequently I lost some hard won ground each time through.

Luckily I’d been to Kore Kross the Wednesday before and had ridden the touchy downhill hairpin turn portion of the route. This was a tricky spot and with only one brake I struggled to check enough speed and barely missed running through the tape on more than one occasion. My cornering skills really suck, I think that the trick is to burn your speed before the corner, roll through tight and then accelerate out. I’m currently hitting the corners much too fast which then forces me to both swing wide and brake mid turn, thus causing my rear wheel to either skid or bounce. If I keep that up I’m going to go down sooner rather than later.

I was gasping on the final lap and really struggled on the barriers. It’s surprising how much energy it takes to get over those things. The good guys make it look so easy. As I came through the final barriers, which were just shy of the finish line, I could hear a couple of guys coming up on me, no way were they going to pass. I made an overly aggressive – and somewhat crushing – remount and pushed to the finish line. I finished midfield.

Urban Jungle

2011-09-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

Took a trip into the urban jungle - Capitol Hill, Seattle - with my friend Kris today. All this clean living must be paying off as my legs seemed to have no stop in them. I've been reducing my caloric intake while eating mostly, whole, clean-burning, low glycemic index foods. I'm not losing any weight, but I feel good. Well I feel pretty good, my head is bugging me.

I've had a headache ever since I went over the handlebars during the cross race on Sunday morning. It's like a three day hangover. I think I clocked myself pretty good. I hope it gets better over the next few days.

I watched a great movie last night - 180 Degrees South. It was a documentary about a guy who goes to Patagonia by way of Easter Island. The movie documents the adventure of this guy Jeff Johnson, but it showcases two giants of mountaineering (as well as business) Yvon Chouinard (founder Patagonia) and Doug Tompkins (founder The North Face). The movie was beautifully shot and it has something to say - definitely worthwhile.

The Learning Curve

2011-09-13T17:39:00.001-07:00

The dust is going to turn to mud as the season progresses.

I'm learning that training for bike racing is more than simply pushing the pedals round and round. I have plenty of low end endurance - I could ride Seattle to Portland tomorrow - but I'm lacking in the high end, top gear department. Cyclocross, like criterium racing, seems to be more about running it wide open and hoping that the race ends before you do. I'm beginning to realize that in order to race in high gear I've got to train in high gear - at least some of the time.

Today I did a 2X20 on the trainer. I warmed up for 10 minutes then went all out for 20 minutes followed by a 2 minute rest, 20 more hard minutes and then finally a 10 minute cool down. I haven't been on the trainer for a couple of months and honestly the hour passed quickly and easily.

Tomorrow I'm back on the road.

A Few of My Favorite Things

2011-09-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

What I like about cyclocross is that it combines two of my favorite things: cool bikes and cool shoes.

Took a nice easy one hour spin today. Tomorrow I take to the hills.

Crossing the Line

2011-09-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

Well I can’t claim to be a crash virgin anymore – during my first cyclocross race I clipped a tree with my front tire and went over the bars, luckily I broke the fall with my face. Never again will I doubt the efficacy of a good snug helmet.

Man what a scene cyclocross is – more like a medieval fair than a sporting event. I parked in Juanita and cranked up the hill to Big Finn Hill Park, it was a good warm-up and I showed up hot and ready to go. I was happy to see that Chad had come early to set up the Cucina Fresca tent; this was the first time I’d been at a race with an official team tent.

Funny how something that was started as a fun way to get through the shoulder season has taken off and become a sport in and of itself. I suppose it’s not all that funny – by funny I mean odd – I suppose a lot of sports are spawned by weird, wild wonderful happenstance.

The road races I participated in over the past four months were fairly clandestine affairs: you’d drive to some semi-secret location and ride over seldom used roadways – I suppose that’s the whole point – but this cyclocross was a real event – totally on the radar. Thow in a hog on a spit and some good grog and we would have had a real party. During most road races I was lucky to see one or two other teammates, today the Cucina Fresca squad was out in force with over twenty riders flying the colors. Riding with a team is a different sport than going solo and it was good to see some friendly faces, and speaking of friendly faces my friends Joe and Kris came to watch and cheer me on – nothing like a little friendly cowbell.

Crossing Over

2011-09-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

Cucina Fresca had a cyclocross meet the team ride Saturday morning, so I put on my knobbies and drove over to St. Edwards park for my first taste of the fall sport. My takeaway is that cross is going be more challenging than expected. The big problem is going to be figuring out how to get my aching back over the barriers. I know it seems odd, but the one thing that sets off my back pain is jumping - well actually it's the landing. Even a small hop over a one foot high obsticle is a big deal. I've been hitting the gym and even doing a little running in hopes of making my back strong and flexible enough to last the season.

I'm going to buy some PVC tonight so I can build a small practice barrier. It's going to take some practice.

FTS

2011-08-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Came up to Penticton, British Columbia to watch my friends Lori, Joe and Bradley compete in Ironman Canada. Kris and I rode fifty miles up to Yellow Lake in the relentless heat - touching triple digits - I sure didn't envy da foos out there on the course.

Kris went into town this morning to sign up for next year, I had no ambition to go with her.

The Magic Touch

2011-08-27T20:26:00.000-07:00

Flatted out at the Seward Park Crit last Thursday. I had to walk back to the pit where I changed the tire and went home. On the way I thought I'd stop by my LBS - Veloce Velo - to see if mechanic extrodinare Greg could work his magic on my creaky ride. I arrived fifteen minutes after closing time and figured I'd return a few phone calls while I was stopped. I was just dialing the first number when Greg unlocked the door, stepped out and asked what was up.

After a quick test ride and two minutes on the rack my bike was back to perfect - even the odometer was now working. I've been messing about with bikes for over thirty years but I remain a hack; too often I end up making the situation worse than when it started. It's good to have a dedicated man in your corner when you need one.

My Tribe

2011-08-26T06:35:00.001-07:00

In 2007 I did my first Ironman race. It was in Couer d Alene Idaho. I had arrived a few days early and as is the custom prior to an IM race I went for a morning swim in the lake. The water was super rough and I really struggled out there; apparently I was only one as the other two or three hundred competitors seemed to take the choppy cold black water in stride, they stood around under the giant inflatable Gatorade bottle laughing and flexing their muscles. I called my wife and said “I don’t belong here.”

Over time I became more and more confident in the triathlon world, but I never really felt like it was my scene. I could talk the talk, and to a certain extent walk the walk, but I always felt like an outsider. Bicycle racers seem more like members of my tribe.

Cyclists are a mixed bag to be sure, there is no “typical” cyclist, but what we all share is a love of the most efficient, elegant form of transportation yet devised by man. It’s like we’re all co-conspirators, like we’re all in on the same secret.

Cheap Tires

2011-08-24T08:37:00.001-07:00

Five or six years ago I used to join my buddy Joe for Saturday morning road rides. It seemed like Joe flatted on nearly every outing, and I like to berate him over his habit of buying cheap tires. In reality I was just flipping Joe crap, but little did I know how accurate I actually was.

Last Sunday I raced in a half road half dirt ride called the Ronde Ohop. In preparation for the off road portion I went to Performance and bought a pair of fifteen dollar 25mm tires. I put forty miles on those tires and got two flats.

I've always spent top dollar on Michelins and Continentals, but was never one hundred percent sure that I was making a sound investment. Now I know. My good tires flat so infrequently that I almost forget how to efficiently change a tire. From now on I'm going to happily drop top dollar on good tires.

Ronde Ohop

2011-08-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

I like to say that something isn’t worth doing if, at least once, you don’t ask yourself, “what the hell was I thinking.” With that as a worthiness criterion I can honestly report that the Ronde Ohop certainly was worth doing.

I was a little late getting to the starting line due to the long line of pickups at Spanaway’s Baristas Gone Wild, but the latte was worth the wait. Matt pulled up as I was getting ready; he had just ridden the dirt portion and reported that this was going to be more of a cross race than a road race. There was a fairly even mixture of road and cross bikes in the crowd, and I was starting to worry about taking my road bike onto dirt trails. I’d mounted up two cheap 25 mil tires inflated to 90 psi, but how much of a difference was that going to make. A gal rode by and said “wow I can’t believe you are going to ride that bike.” Hmmm. I was getting nervous.

I lined up without a clue as to what I had gotten myself into.

The course was unusual to be sure: two paved laps totaling approximately sixteen miles and then ten laps around a mini loop that contained a little over a mile of rough dirt track.

The road portion of the race was, for the most part, straightforward and uneventful except for a fifty foot section of gravel road in Eatonville. Just as the pack accelerated out of a right hand turn we hit this dicey section of loose rock. The race director had instructed us to go neutral through that portion, but I guess the lead guys didn’t get the message. I hit the golf ball-sized rocks at full acceleration and then had to bunny hop up a three inch rise to get back on pavement. No way would that have been acceptable on a traditional road race, but this was no traditional race.

The one good hill on the road course split the field; it was a goofy hill as the descent leading into it came through a pair of decreasing radius turns. I had to hit the brakes in order to avoid going over the guardrail which then forced me to work doubly hard in order to keep up with the lead group. The first time up the hill really knocked the wind out of me; luckily the second time up was a bit slower.
At the top of the hill on the second road lap the pack took off towards the mini loops. Looking back on it I think this acceleration was an effort by the road guys to put some distance between themselves and the cross guys. Actually I shouldn’t use the term “guys” as we in the Masters 30+ group were racing with the women. There was a large contingent of strong gals and they matched the guys pedal stroke for pedal stroke.

Matt and I hit the dirt with maybe a dozen other riders, the riding now was single file and consequently the crowd spread out. I was going through George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words routine as I followed Matt through an insanely rough, rocky, mountain bike course – on a road bike. This was a mistake. When we finally got back to pavement I thought, no way am I going to make another nine laps.

I was really worrying about my bike, man I should have brought that cross bike. A couple of times I hit so hard that my rear wheel popped off the ground - nearly sending me over the handlebars. It’s one thing to gingerly ease your slick road bike over an unexpected section of rough road; it’s a whole other thing to be riding it full out over single track. I couldn’t believe I was riding this course on my racing wheels.

The race unfolded into a battle of attrition. People were flatting out left and right, and I think quite a few riders simply called it quits. By the seventh lap my thighs were starting to cramp; I hadn’t been riding much these past two weeks and it was starting to show. I had gone too far to DNF, so I kept pushing the pedals counting down the laps. The odd thing about this race was that I rode the final sixteen miles solo, and consequently had no idea where I stood, was I in the middle, was I dead last, I had no clue.

As I hit the pavement on the final lap both quads totally seized up, but no way was I going to let someone pass me now so I pushed hard to the finish line – luckily it was all downhill. I didn’t wait around for the results and now I’m kicking myself as I have no idea how I ended up.

We Ski

2011-07-26T06:59:00.000-07:00

While most of the country bakes, we ski.

The Nisqually Chutes on Mt. Rainier were fully formed and held some nice 'n easy corn snow. Sam and I were skinning from the Paradise parking lot.

Why Not Ride

2011-07-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Sam had a big swim meet here on Mercer Island, and the parking lot, as well as all the surrounding streets, were bumper to bumper. Sam, Sophia and I simply bypassed the headache and rode our bikes. I wonder why nobody else had the same idea. I'd say thirty or forty percent of the folks at the meet live within five miles.

A Little Voodoo

2011-07-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

The day after the STP I was wide awake at 6:00 AM, so I slipped quietly out of bed and walked across the street to find Joe, drinking Joe and the neighborhood Starbucks - he'd been awake since 5:00. Bradley's wife, Leigh, was jonesing for a maple bacon bar, so we did a phone search on Voodoo Doughnuts and began the mile or so walk.

It was a pleasant morning and the streets were empty. We smelled the pink cinder block building before we arrived. I like oddity, and Voodoo certainly was odd. I ordered us up a mixed half dozen and we headed back to the hotel for a big bacon and egg breakfast. We all chuckled about the pretzel stake piercing the heart of the vampire maple bar.

204

2011-07-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

I had to take a photo of my bike computer before resetting it. Two hundred and four miles, dang that's a long way to ride a bike.

STP 2011

2011-07-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

I rode my bicycle down to Portland on Saturday – 204 miles leaving from my back door. I wanted to cut out the car entirely by riding from home, returning by train and then riding from King Street Station in Seattle to my house on Mercer Island, but the less than helpful folks at Amtrak couldn’t give me any assurance that I’d be able to get my bike from Portland to Seattle. In the end Joe and I had my friend Ron take our bikes back, we rode the train and Melony picked us up at the station.
I rode to Portland with four friends as part of the Seattle to Portland (STP) bicycle ride. We were five of the twelve thousand riders making the trip. Most ride it in two days, but there were a shocking number of single day riders as well. I can’t believe that they can convince that many people to ride that far.

The weather was perfect – clear skies, mid seventies and a significant tail wind. We sailed right along and with the exception of two flats – one resulting in a ruined tire - we had no problems. Just south of Seattle Bradley ruined his rear tire going over some railroad tracks, from now on I think I’ll bring a spare tire on these long rides, it’s the difference between a small hassle and having to call for a ride home. Luckily the guys at REI donated a nice Continental Ultra to our cause.

The wind blew out of the north the entire day and we were nearly pushed all the way into Portland. The final fifty miles down Interstate 30 can be fairly miserable, but on Saturday we rolled along at twenty miles per hour without hardly breaking a sweat. We climbed a long hill at over twenty mph and I kept wondering if I was experiencing some kind of optical illusion, but no we were being pushed uphill.

We rolled into Portland, each took a shower and then went out for hamburgers at the Kennedy School. I got the burger with the fried egg on top.

Flat, Fast and Furious

2011-07-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Back in 1989 I rolled my Schwinn up to the starting line at what was then known as the Seattle International Raceway (SIR). I’d come down to Kent with a bike racer co-worker who’d encouraged me to enter the one hour “citizen” race (there were no Cat 5’s back in them thar days). I raced twice at SIR, and up until 2011 those two starts were my only experience with bicycle racing.

Fast forward twenty one years and I’m back, only now everyone is riding carbon instead of steel, and the track has been redubbed Pacific Raceways (PR).

Ten Cucina Fresca (my team) riders rolled out for the Cat 4/5 start. I have to say that I’m a bit bummed that my first two starts as a Cat 4 have been in 4/5 races but I guess as the season progresses and Cat 5’s get more experience it makes sense to combine the two. We had some real powerhouses out there and it was nice riding with a strong team presence. Unfortunately we weren’t the only strong team.

Cycle U had definitely come to race. This was the first time I’d ridden against an organized team that was out to win, and I have to admit it was eye-opening. Honestly I was spending the majority of my time trying not to wipe anybody out, but I did notice that the Cycle U guys were continually pushing forward.

The race is an hour long, which kind of puts it somewhere between a road race and a criterium. The route varies from week to week and this time it was on what they call the flat course. The nice weather must have swelled the turnout as I think we had over sixty starters. Man that flat course is fast and furious. Without the hills you don’t have to worry about that sucking air oxygen debt thing and oftentimes I’d look down at my computer to see that we were going over thirty miles per hour. It was a screaming wild ride.

I’d eaten a diced up and boiled potato on the drive down and those carbs were fueling me just fine. In other words I was feeling great. At the two laps to go bell I decided to start moving up. Position is everything, and in my other races I’ve always just ended up stuck somewhere in the middle, unable to move up, and so this time I figured I’d get up in fifth or sixth place. As we approached the final lap I was moving up on the outside left when I noticed my teammate Chad up front. For no good reason I threw down and whipped in front.

I’m not sure what I was thinking, maybe I thought I could bring up a few teammates and then we could control the race from the front. I suppose I should have communicated those thoughts. In reality I was feeling good and just took the shot – what the heck.

I led for awhile and then pulled off, Chad was still in behind me, I was fairly well gassed but pulled in as soon as I had a chance. After the second turn things got a bit dicey as riders started to push forward on the slippery burn out strip (where dragsters heat up their tires), but we all made it through. I took a tight inside line on turns three and four but as I came out of the final turn the top ten guys were already out of their saddles heading for the finish line. The finish was a bit crazy as we ran smack into the back end of the Cat 1/2/3 group, combine that with poor visibility due to the setting sun and we had a real kerfungle.

All in all it was a great race, I can honestly say that it was the most fun I’ve ever had on two wheels.

Not the Only One

2011-07-05T21:54:00.000-07:00

Went down to Burien to race in the Joe Matava Memorial Crit yesterday. I wanted to try my hand in the 9:00 Masters race but when Melony got wind of the 7:40 Cat 4/5 start she “encouraged” me to get up early. The course was perfect: big wide turns with a little hill work thrown in. I have to figure out those corners because my typical lap was hold my own on the downhill, lose a little time on two corners, move up on the uphill and then get passed on the next two corners; in the end it was a zero sum gain. I was happy to be racing with four other Cucina Fresca riders, we didn’t make any big moves but it was good to be out there with the bruddas.

At first I thought it was just me who drove like a maniac after completing a bike race, but now I know different. After every race I get in my car and start tearing around like I’m at LeMans: I zoom up on the unsuspecting Hyundai or Prius and then stomp on the accelerator swing around and tuck back in. Following yesterday’s race I was following the Thumbprint Cycling team van as it went from Highway 518 to I-5 and was, I guess, happy to see that big old Econoline E350 rolling at 60mph just three feet off of the bumper of this little blue Honda. Once on I-5 the driver gunned it and slingshoted around. I wanted to catch up and give him a thumbs up, but my four cylinder Subaru couldn't close the gap.

Crapping out at Poo Poo Point

2011-07-02T16:13:00.001-07:00

Under spotless skies Sam and I took off from the Tiger Mountain parking lot in search of some seriously good downhill singletrack. I'd ridden Tiger back in the nineties - back when my bike were merely obsolete, instead of its current designation of "vintage" - and I remember a long fire road grind up to some stellar downhill single track. Today, looking at the map, I see that we were on the wrong track from our very first pedal turn.

Instead of cranking up East Tiger, as was planned, we rode all the way around the Tiger Mountain Massif ending up, after a steep grind, at Poo Poo Point. We took a break at the top to watch a few paragliders take off, I knew this place was popular but this was crazy - well over three dozen folks were either in the air or preparing for take-off. Maybe there had been a Groupon deal or something.

We just had to turn around and ride back the way we came. After the initial descent all we had was miles and miles of uphill fire road. Sam got plenty and finally just said, "I'm tired of complaining." That was a new first. We'll have to go back to Tiger, but this time we'll take a map.

Back in the Gym

2011-06-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

I'm fortunate to have a descent free weight room near my house and the time to use it. My chronic back has returned, and if I'm going to be jumping on and off the bike during cross season I'm going to have to improve my core strength.

This Brian MacKenzie guy is getting a lot of attention lately. He's applied the crossfit approach of short high intensity efforts to endurance sports. I tried this approach when training for the 2009 Cour d Alene Ironman. I went this way because of my propensity for stress fractures and I wanted to minimize the mileage yet show up at the starting line fit and ready for a PR. Inevitably the stress fractures came and I didn’t race, but I don’t think I was as fit as I could have been. Yes I would have finished the race but I don’t think I was capable of a personal best.

In 2010 I combined short high intensity workouts with longer, what I call “deliberate” workouts. A deliberate workout means that you are making a focused effort, maintaining proper body position and working at a high turnover. Once again I didn’t race Cour d Alene due to a stress fracture, but I do believe that I was as fit as I’d ever been.

In 2011 I switched to bicycle racing and now have twelve race starts under my belt. I have yet to do a Masters start and consequently have been lining up with guys half my age. I think youth gives you a lot of leeway, especially when it comes to core strength and flexibility. I believe that my poor flexibility and deteriorating core strength are limiting me to mid pack finishes, and so it’s back to the gym.

Many experts say that you don’t want to push weights during the season, we’ll see if they are right.

Big Island Ride

2011-06-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

Went over to town of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii last weekend to visit a friend. I was looking for a break from our dismal Pacific Northwest "what happened to our spring" weather, and despite copious amounts of rain the clouds parted for a sunny Saturday bike ride.

I went with my buddy's friend who had just gotten himself a Cannondale Super Six and so he lent me his previous ride: a Litespeed Tuscany. It was a nice comfortable ride that fit me perfectly, all I had to do was screw on my pedals. I was thankful for not having to go through the pains of renting a bike from far off Kona.

Wow is sure is nice to ride sans arm warmers. The sun just seems to give me energy, it's as though my skin is a sponge sucking up all those calories. We went seventy miles on rolling smooth roads, much of which was along the coast. A couple of times I had to stop in order to simply enjoy the view of the Pacific crashing against the black igneous coastline.

Pedal Power

2011-06-14T19:52:00.001-07:00

Sophia using human power to blend a smoothie at the Mercer Island Farmers Market.

Fuel for Thought

2011-06-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

Back when I was doing endurance events I quickly learned that nutrition is everything. Just like a Ferrari goes nowhere without gas, an athlete will bonk and come to a near standstill without food. Cat 4/5 bicycle racing isn’t so much of an endurance activity and I’ve become somewhat lax in my pre, during, and post workout nutrition.

Yesterday I did fifty miles with my friend Lori up in my old stomping grounds: the Snoqualmie Valley, Sultan and Monroe, and I paid much closer attention to my fueling. Ten minutes before the ride I ate an almond butter and honey sandwich on whole wheat bread, during the ride I ate my usual mix of energy bars, Nuun and Hammer Sustained Energy and immediately afterwards I munched a PB&J and washed it down with sweetened green tea. Lori is training for Ironman Canada, which is all about consistency, and consequently we rode a cool, even 20 mph pace, and I felt great both during and after the ride.

Last Saturday I went out for two hours of hard hammering and come about ninety minutes in I began falling apart. I attempted to refuel on the bike, but it was too late, I’d already gone over the cliff. From now on I’m going to focus on taking in low GI foods before the ride, and will be sure to recover with some protein and high GI foods immediately after the ride.

What's Wrong With Al?

2011-06-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

I’m counting down the days till the Tour, but I have to wonder: can anyone even come close to Contador? Funny how some athletes are loved for winning – Armstrong – while others are loathed for it – Contador. I’ll admit Alberto isn’t the most personable of fellas, but damn he rides with passion. I mean it’s like some mafia type is holding his mother hostage and saying “win or the old bag catches one between the eyes.” Alberto shows up every morning, rides each stage like he’s had a month of rest, neither gives quarter nor asks for mercy and he seems to be universally hated, whereas Armstrong showed up with an entourage and acted like a pompous rock star ass and he was the golden boy.

I’ll be cheering for Andy Schleck, but other than that one day last year when his “stomach was full of anger” he doesn’t seem to have that “either I win or I die trying” attitude that Contador – like Armstrong and Pantani before him – has. I remember watching an interview with Dick Butkus years ago and the interviewer asked him why he hit so hard. He said something to the effect that he just convinced himself that the guy with the ball had called his mother a whore and that he was going to kill that bastard, he said that he was going to make sure that guy never got up again. Contador hits the Alps with that same psychopathic attitude.

When it comes to personalities I doubt Armstrong, Contador or Schleck would be all that much fun to hang out with. If I could spend a day with a Tour rider I’d choose either Renshaw or Cancellera. Too bad Fabian can’t ride the hills; he would be a great face for cycling.

Why Not

2011-06-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

I was riding up Rainier Ave last Sunday when I spotted the colorful Why Grocery well-lit by the morning sun. I like riding by myself because I can stop and shoot a photo whenever I feel the urge. For now I'm using the camera on my Windows phone, but I'm looking at some super compact digitals - I like the Panasonic Lumix with the Leica lens.

Rode 32 miles yesterday with two 3 mile time trial efforts.

Caffine Jones

2011-06-06T20:53:00.001-07:00

Left the house early yesterday for a blue sky bike ride around the south end of Lake Washington. I'd run out of coffee at the house, and so I set out on my forty mile ride fueled with green tea. Come mile twenty I was jonesing big time, and fortunatly found a nice coffee shop near Seward Park. One good thing about living in Seattle is that you're never more than three miles from good coffee.

Strategery

2011-06-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

It’s better to blow up than suck up – Mark Twight

Here in Seattle we have Thursday night criterium races at Seward Park – a green peninsula jutting out into Lake Washington. I’ve been racing the 5:30-6:00 slot; the field is primarily beginners and Cat 5’s, but, intermixed in the wobbly group are usually nine or ten solid competitive riders. As the weather improves more and more inexperienced riders are coming out and it’s beginning to get scary. Last Thursday there were two accidents – both caused by the same team – and numerous near accidents. I had to yell at a guy – once again from the same inexperienced crew – to ride straight. I’m not much of a yeller, but Jesus Christ enough was enough.

I’ve been fairly wimpy on these Thursday night rides, hanging in the back not wanting to take any chances and consequently I’ve finished mid pack. Last week I went out harder and found myself up front doing a lot of pulling. Funny thing about bike racing is that you only know what’s going on in front of you; you have no idea what is behind.

We run fifteen laps and come about lap thirteen all of these guys I haven’t seen in the past twenty five minutes start moving to the front, I’m thinking where the hell you all been. I guess this is strategy, or strategery in the post Bush lexicon. I don’t know, sucking wheel for thirteen laps and then blowing past the workhorses seems a bit lame to me. On the other hand, I haven’t registered a single point in the standings this year so I guess straterery puts you on the podium.

60 and Fine

2011-06-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

To say that we’ve had a wet, cold, windy spring here in the Pacific Northwest is to put it mildly. Yesterday the cycle of pain finally broke – I actually removed the toe warmers from my bike shoes. Funny how damn good sixty degrees can feel.

I’m on my bike six days a week and consequently have become very downtrodden by the merciless, dare I say cruel, weather of 2011. Wind is fine. Rain is fine. Cold is fine. But wind, rain and cold all at the same time, only flagellation can compare.

To roll 21 down smooth country tarmac, sun on your back, a cool breeze in your face – nothing better.

Mov'n on Up

2011-06-03T21:33:00.001-07:00

I received the notice that my application to upgrade from Category 5 to Category 4. This was my goal for my first season of road racing, but now that it’s official I’m a bit apprehensive thinking “gee I’m just getting competitive at Cat 5 now I’m back to being in the back of the pack.” Cat 4 races are longer and more crowded, but I anticipate a much safer ride as I’ll be out there with better more experienced riders. Onwards and upwards.

On Winning

2011-06-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

My son has a friend who wins. I mean he wins every event, every time. He’s won the baseball league championship, the soccer club championship, the regional football championship, the local basketball championship and he holds the middle school record in four track and field events.

Baring a victory in the Pinewood derby (using a car that my dad had built), I’ve won nothing.

I’d estimate that I’ve entered nearly one hundred competitions over the past twenty seven years: 5K’s 10K’s, 20K’s, half marathons, marathons, trail runs, ultra races, sprint triathlons, Olympic distance triathlons, half Ironman races, two full Ironman races, bicycle centuries, even a double century. I’ve never come close to winning even one of these races. I’ve always been a participant, never a competitor.

I entered my first two cycling road races with the same participant attitude and I quickly realized that just being there for the scenery wasn’t going to work. Unlike marathons and Ironman competitions where so-called victory is in finishing a cycling road race is a true race, either you are a racer or you’re an obstacle; there isn’t any place for “participants.”

I’m finding that this is not an easy adjustment.

Manaslu Part 27

2011-04-01T11:53:00.001-07:00

Dr. Peacock and Gregg Mortimer of the Australian team came up behind us making a total of six climbers at Camp 1. We were at nearly nineteen thousand feet and I was really feeling the lack of oxygen. When just sitting still in the tent I would get an almost panicked feeling of not having enough oxygen, the only way to make it go away was to do something physical: like digging. Over the course of that first afternoon at Camp 1 I dug out tent platforms and stacked snow walls. Good thing I did because we were about to get hit, and hit hard. The Patagonian Icecap can be brutal, so can Mt. Rainier in the wintertime, but I’d never experienced anything as ferocious as the storm that hit Camp 1 that night.

Luckily we hadn’t skimped on the quality of our tents and thankfully Brain and I had meticulously staked out and guyed out our little nylon home as I don’t think many shelters would have survived the 80-100 knot winds and the drifting snow. The wind would come in gust sounding like a train rushing headlong into a tunnel. It was like the wind was running you over, it would hit so hard that the tent would completely implode. Brian and I didn’t know if it was better to try to hold the tent up or to just let it flex. We tried both and neither seemed any better than the other.

We were fully dressed in our sleeping bags holding our knives ready to cut ourselves out if the tent finally gave way. It really did seem as though the wind had a personal vendetta against us and was trying to erase our presence on the mountain. It did seem personal. This was the most frightened I’ve ever been.

We all like to associate ourselves with the brave protagonists of literature and film. We identify with the quiet selfless hero while abhorring the cowardly braggart. But how many of us really know which archetype we would emulate when the going gets dicey. I believe that many people quit climbing because they don’t like what see in themselves; the mountains have taught them that they are not what they had believed themselves to be. On the other hand, the fortunate few have learned that they are stronger, more courageous and more loyal than they could have ever dreamed. Realizing that you have the mettle can develop into a sort of addiction: how far can I take this you ask yourself, what are my limits. Some people simply have to find out what they are made of, while others either don’t care or don’t want to risk it.

Morning finally came and with the rising sun came calm. We went out to survey the damage and found the entire camp nearly buried. Only the domes of a few brightly colored tents rose above the white landscape. Once again I was having trouble breathing so I took to the shovel and excavated not only our camp but half of the German camp as well. Andrew stopped by, his eyes were bloodshot and wild, he said that that was the worst night he’s ever had in the mountains – Manaslu would be his fourth eight thousand meter summit. He told the story of how he was in near panic while Gregg was “stripped down to his jocks” saying “ahh don’t worry mate this tent is good for 120 knots it ain’t over 100 out there.”

Manaslu Part 26

2011-03-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

We gradually stocked Camp 1 – carrying loads of food and fuel and then retreating back to basecamp. This allowed us a gradual transition from being trekkers to becoming mountaineers; each of us finding our own rhythm and pace. Finally came the night to sleep at our new high point. Brian, Tom, Dan, Jerome and myself all made the trip to Camp 1. My stomach had been rumbling and grumbling for about a week and just after rolling out my sleeping bag at Camp 1 the eruption occurred. This was far and away the worst GI distress I’d ever experienced. No question, I had to get down to basecamp, and fortunately Brian agreed to accompany me. When you’re deep into something as intense as a Himalayan m mountaineering expedition it’s easy to over dramatize singular events. As Brian and I were descending the lower glacier I could only think that my chances of a summit were now next to none. I figured that retreating back to basecamp would put me behind the acclimatization schedule and that I’d still be adjusting to the altitude when everyone else on the team would be pushing to for the top. I thought my ship had sunk. Back at basecamp Brian and I walked over to the Australian camp and asked Dr. Andrew Peacock for his advice. He said that I had most likely contracted Guardia on the trek in and recommended a course of the antibiotic Flagyl. The results were almost immediate and the next morning I was weak, but at least I wasn’t living in our makeshift latrine. Brian took off early bound for Camp 1 while I stayed in basecamp. One the second day in basecamp I was able to hold down some food and so I spent as much time as possible in the cook tent eating and hydrating. I knew that I had to get back on the acclimatization track and decided to depart to Camp 1 the next morning; Khan Cha, was also in basecamp, agreed to go with me. The next morning Khan Cha and I departed basecamp while Jerome, Dan, and Tom began their descent from Camp 1. There had been significant snow over night and so I decided to try out my snowshoes. I’ve always said that the only thing worse than bringing snowshoes and not using them is bringing snowshoes and using them. I have to admit to eating some of my words there as I made quick time up the glacier while Khan Cha postholed slowly behind me. In all fairness I had offered him Brian’s snowshoes, which he had refused. I took off the snowshoes at the base of the steep climb leading to Camp 1 and starting kicking steps up the new snow. Soon Khan Cha was passing me, I think he wanted to prove his value: he didn’t follow steps he made steps. We were about halfway up the steep section, I was following Khan Cha, when here comes the Pakistani climber who was on the payroll of the German group. He sailed past the both of us and pushed on over the lip and into Camp 1. Brian was outside the tent brewing up hot tea and handed mugs to each of us as we entered camp. You see this is what makes Brian so special: his concern for the welfare of others endeared him to not only our hired guns, but also to the hired guns of other teams. That Pakistani guy was far and away the strongest man on the mountain and I can say for certain that he would have risked his neck to save Brian. It’s good to have friends in high places.

Manaslu Part 25

2011-03-18T15:10:00.001-07:00

Getting Up the Thing

Manaslu is neither easy nor safe - one out of four climbers die in pursuit of its summit. The summit was first reached in 1956, and would remain undisturbed for another fifteen years. Few have ventured from the “standard” 1956 route where a mixture of ice fall and avalanche hazard continually threatens the hopeful climber. Above high camp the route broadens into a featureless plateau; one particularly gruesome aerial photograph shows this icy expanse littered with the bodies of climbers who became disorientated during a tragic storm.

We made the climb in three camps: the first, at 18,700 feet, was dug into the saddle between North and Naike Peaks, the second was located on the lip of a crevasse at 21,700, and high camp was anchored onto the burnished ice at 24,500. Using only three camps to climb an eight thousand meter peak left us a bit spread out and the temptation to place an intermediary camp between one and two certainly presented itself. Between one and two you were either picking you way through an icefall or hurrying across avalanche slopes. Camping in the icefall was clearly out of the question, but so long as it didn’t snow a camp on one of the avalanche slopes might be fine, but you would be naïve to think that you could go to the Himalaya and not worry about snow. I’m terrified of the prospect of being buried alive, waiting for your oxygen to run out, and consequently voted for longer days and safer camps. Unfortunately there was no safe place for high camp. The summit plateau is a featureless wasteland of callous blue ice, and if the wind is going to blow there is no place to hide. At Camp three we anchored our tents with ice screws and boulders and hoped for mercy.

Manaslu challenged my ideas on how to climb a mountain. My experience has been to steadily move yourself and your gear up the hill and when you finally reach summit position you go fast and light, touch the top and drop back down: you climb the mountain only once. Here, due to acclimatization forays and load carries we each accumulated nearly sixty thousand feet of vertical gain. The up and down nature of the climb meant that we would routinely return to base camp where we could rest, eat and drink. Above base camp I continually suffered from sleep apnea, meaning that you stop breathing when asleep. I had experienced this on Denali where my silence followed by a series of gasped breaths only bothered my tent mate – in other words I was completely unaware of the fact that I had to wake up to breath. In Alaska I always rose in the morning unaware and refreshed. In the Himalaya I wasn’t so fortunate. Every night I struggled to fall asleep and whenever I did I would be quickly awakened to discover myself choking for air feeling as though someone was pushing a pillow into my face. This would occur throughout the night, and often I would lie awake for hours waiting for the sun, which would give the green light to start the stove. Returning to base meant that I could sleep, but just as important it meant food and drink.

Though we ate quite well on the mountain our dehydrated meals were paltry and putrid in comparison to the nightly feasts staged by chef Krishna. Krishna regularly sent Preem, Mayla or Potem, his three kitchen boys, down to the Nubri Valley with orders to bring back a leg of a goat or a chunk of yak - yak and water buffalo have the taste and consistency of boiled leather, but goat is surprisingly tasty – and we ate our way through a mountain of high calorie food every night. The exertion combined with the high altitude conspired to erode our bodies and only through gorging ourselves into a nightly stupor could any of us prevent a sunken stomach and exposed ribs.

Manaslu Part 24

2011-03-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Himalaya

I’ve been on a number of Alaskan and Patagonian expeditions, and I figured that I knew, logistically speaking, how to get to the top of a big mountain; little did I know how much I had to learn.

In the spring of 2002 Petemba Sherpa worked as sirdar for a Japanese businessman who hoped to reach the summit of Manaslu. Petemba, the cousin of our trekking agent Tashi Sherpa, is extremely experienced, and he proved invaluable when it came to actually working out the logistics of our expedition. We Americans had arrived at Manaslu base camp with the stated understanding that the sherpas and the “members” as we were known to our staff, were all members of a single team – the sherpas simply being unusually strong members. It was with this mindset that we set out on our first carry to Camp 1: everyone carrying a load, with the sherpas carrying slightly heavier loads.

On our first rest day Brian and I noticed Petemba holding up a sheet of notebook paper and talking with our sirdar Nawang. With nothing better to do Brian and I butted in. Nawang pointed to the sheet of paper saying that Petemba had drawn up a logistics plan for our team and that he wanted to discuss it with us. Eager to see what the guru thought Brian and I snapped at the piece of paper. What we first noticed was that Petemba had made two schedules: one for the sherpas and one for the members. Brian immediately set to putting Petemba right. “We’re used to climbing in Alaska and the Cascades,” he said “we carry our own weight. We’re all one team here; there are no sherpas and members, just teammates.” Petemba flashed a knowing smile and replied, “welcome to the Himalaya.”

Petemba correctly pointed out that given the amount of time we had and our desire to climb with fixed camps that it would be impossible to both acclimatize and stock the three camps. “You acclimatize” he said, and then he pointed to Kusang, Ki Kami and Khan Cha and said, “they carry.” Brian furrowed his brow, visibly uncomfortable with the us and them approach. “You have to put your boys to work,” Petemba continued, “the trip to Camp 1 is nothing for them, but you, you must first make your body used to this altitude.” He was right of course, the sherpas could make it to Camp 1, at 19,000’, in two hours; on our first carry it took me nearly six. Acclimatization is the foundation stone of an 8000m expedition. If you go too high too fast your brain swells, your lungs fill with fluid, you become disoriented, you begin to drown in your own fluids, you then die.

Our original logistics plan, based on experience climbing at much lower altitudes, had grossly overestimated the amount of weight we could carry while underestimating the amount of rest we would require. It quickly and painfully became obvious that if we wanted to climb this peak we would have to put our boys to work. However, if I was going to climb this mountain with any sense of accomplishment I had to set some ground rules, and I came up with two: never would allow a sherpa to carry my personal gear, and would fill my pack with as much group gear as I could carry.

We shared the mountain with four strong Australians who proved that it is possible to climb Manaslu using fixed camps without the use sherpa climbers, for us, however, Kusang, Ki Kami and Kha Cha made the difference between success and failure. We climbed the mountain on the backs of these three kind, loyal and incredibly strong mountaineers

Manaslu Part 23

2011-03-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

Samagaon

On the afternoon of our eighth day we passed through the village of Lo where we began the descent into the Upper Nubri Valley. I scrambled for a good camera angle as a procession of six women, each carrying a doko filled with firewood, came silently past. I could see how their namlos pressed against their scalps limiting their gaze to the dust of the trail and the heels of their companions. I felt fit enough to climb one of the world’s highest mountains, but would have struggled to heft the burden easily carried by these women.

The Upper Nubri Valley is a broad expanse of weedy brown pastureland and small garden plots, each maybe an acre in size. We had left Seattle in the spring, flew to the warm summer sun of Kathmandu, were now in the gray skied brown earthed season of autumn, and would soon find winter on the white omnipresent slopes of Manaslu. With nothing to divert its progress the trail led straight across the valley floor before finally disappearing through a mile-distant kani. We were now at eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea and crisp air and lightened loads hurried our Garung porters towards home. They had dropped their loads in Samagaon, collected their pay and would now backtrack in three days what had taken us a week to ascend. Spread across the flat valley the distant porters resembled a retreating army only until they came near, whereupon we saw the content smiles of people who had more than earned the pay in their pockets. Brian stopped a young permanently grinning man, the strongest in this group of strongmen, and slid a thick fold of rupees into his pocket saying, “I know you don’t understand what I’m saying, but I felt you were my friend, good luck.” As we passed, each porter stopped and with clasped hands wished us namaste – good luck, God be with you. Through the lens of my intrusive camera I had come to know the face of each porter, no man or woman passing us on that trail was a stranger to me, and the intensity of their concern for six frivolous foreigners rested on me like a leaden cloak.

It is a strange thing for a Western person to feel, and to feel quite viscerally, the concern of a stranger. We hadn’t done these people any favors, instead we’d bought a hard day’s labor for the price of a cup of coffee, and their gratitude could have easily slid me into the role of benevolent prince: yes yes my children think nothing of my generosity. I didn’t want to be just another great white hunter.

The final mile of the day passed slowly, Jerome, weakened by a gastro-intestinal infection, was reduced to nearly dragging his feet while Brian, Khan Cha and I hovered around him like three bothersome grandmothers. Whatever was churning Jerome’s stomach seemed to be eroding his body also, he was no longer able to carry his daypack and was truly wasting away before our eyes. Though he leaned heavily on his trekking poles Jerome kept his back straight and vertical, he was a proud man and though he wanted to do was to collapse into his tent he walked tall.

As we made our way across the broad weedy floor of the Nubri Valley, I saw, on a distant tree-lined hill, the Samagaon Monastery. In the low afternoon light, the gold dome of the central temple created a small sun rising above the gray stone village. At the entrance to the village a triangular mani wall split the trail like a wedge; I naturally took the left fork.

Our eighth day of trekking ended at the village of Samagaon. Here Nawang had paid and dismissed our Garung porters, and set to finding local men and women willing to carry our gear four thousand vertical feet to base camp. Samagaon is eleven thousand feet above sea level, and is situated in a broad scrubby valley between Manaslu to the south and the white glacier covered boundary peaks to the north.

Though the citizens of Samagaon pay taxes to Kathmandu they are ethnically Tibetan, and look, speak and dress differently than the Garung people who farm the lower valley. It was while walking through the town of Deng, one day’s walk from Samagaon, that I noticed the change. Mani walls, chortens, Kanis and prayer wheels began to line the trail, and the teardrop-shaped domes of hill top gombas began to appear, shining gold beneath the midday sun. The mani walls, some well over one hundred feet long, and containing anywhere from a few dozen to well over a thousand intricately carved stone panels, regularly divided the trial and they, like all other sacred structures, are passed on the left. The kanis, rough stone structures that form an arch over the trail, were my favorite as their rugged exterior belied a bright interior decorated with delicate thonka paintings. As we passed through the fantastic kani on the outskirts of Samagaon Brian commented, “well the secret of life is written right here, now all we have to do is learn how to read.” What distinguishes Samagaon from the other villages of the Nubri Valley is the large gomba – a Buddhist monastery - located on a hill overlooking the town. Manaslu, in turn, overlooks the gomba.

We camped in the courtyard of the nearly completed Mt. Manaslu Hotel, and after eight days on the trail this was the first teahouse, or trekkers hotel, we had encountered. The proprietor of the hotel, Fergu, immediately befriended the team and would come to form an especially close relationship with my teammate Scott Boettcher. As it turned out Fergu was an up and coming entrepreneur who had started with a small store – the hand painted sign over the door of this closet-sized establishment advertising “Cold and Hard Drinks” remained nailed to a building on the other side of town – got a loan to build his hotel, and as it neared completion was actively constructing a school where he plans to teach. Fergu spoke excellent English and said that he wanted to improve life in his native village without eroding the culture. He also confessed that the village leaders resented the fact that though he didn’t have a traditional leadership role he controlled most of the economic wealth of the village and therefore his voice sounded more loudly than it traditionally should have. Fergu’s brother is a monk at the gomba, and it was he who invited us to a ceremony to be given in our honor.

Fergu said that he would meet us at three o-clock in front of his hotel, and since I had little to do and did not want to miss the ceremony I took up residence on a rough wooden bench next to the loom which Fergu’s sister, Tashi Lama, had set up in the courtyard. At three I was joined by Brian and another climber, Dan Percival, and at four thirty Fergu arrived stating that the monks were ready. Fergu led us up a tree-lined path leading to Pema Choling, or the main temple, where we ducked through a brightly painted doorway and entered the dimly-lit sanctuary. The monks, shoeless and clad in burgundy robes, sat placidly on the periphery of the room, while a dozen closely cropped boys, who I guessed to be students, sat in two parallel rows down the center. One of the young monks winked as I passed by. We were seated on a low bench and after a brief silence the monks began a low methodic chant, the deep baritone voices sounded as one and the sound waves washed over me and encircled my head like fine juniper incense.

I know little about Buddhist theology other than Buddhists recognize no omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being, in other words no God, and therefore the chants that drifted out of the monastery windows and rode the afternoon breeze towards the summit of Manaslu were not what we Westerners call prayers. One doesn’t need to speak Italian to understand the plot of an opera and nor did I need to speak Tibetan to understand the meaning of these chants. The monks were wishing us luck and safety; they were generating positive energy and directing it towards us. They gave us what that they had.

The ceremony lasted for nearly two hours, long enough for me to give some thought to who I am, where I was and what I was doing there. I realized that though I am far from perfect I had arrived at Manaslu a descent person, and that if I had to justify my life I could. After the ceremony I walked alone into the juniper forest beneath Manaslu, looked up at its needle-sharp East Pinnacle and told whoever was listening that I had come to this mountain as a fit, prepared and basically descent person, that I would give up possession of what I couldn’t control and would closely guard that which I could. If Manaslu wanted to kill me I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it, but on the other hand I wasn’t going to make it an easy job. I knew that in order to summit I had to first make peace with myself and with the mountain, if I planned to go mano a mano with Manaslu I was going to lose.

Manaslu Part 22

2011-03-10T09:49:00.001-08:00

As evening fell on the hamlet of Dobhan I watched Ngawang disappear down the trail. He returned a half hour later carrying two greasy antifreeze containers. “What do you have there?” I asked.

Ngawang spoke very good English, “local beer” he said, “like chhang.” Chhang is a locally brewed hooch made from available grains, typically rice, corn and millet. I never did try chhang, but towards the end of the trip I did enjoy more than a few glasses of rakshi – a locally made distilled spirit.

I continued to question Ngawang, asking, “Is all this for you?”

“No it is for the porters. All have worked very hard.”

Later that evening several of us climbers took up positions in the shadows in order to listen to the a cappella voices of our eighty seven porters. First the men would sing a refrain and then the women would answer back. The singing and occasional dancing went on deep into the night, but by six o-clock the next morning every porter was on the trail.

The following day as we approached the town of Philim, Brian asked Shiva what a hand painted sign over the trail said. Shiva looked up casually as he passed beneath the banner and said “it says ‘you are now entering Maoist territory.’” We spent our fifth night in Philim, a relative metropolis of houses and barns anchored into a steep hillside. While enjoying the cool of the dusk Brian and I stopped and squatted next to our two farmer sherpas – Kusang and Ki Kami – who were watching a local blacksmith fashion adze heads. As the smith pounded the red steel ring a boy of not more than ten tended the fire with a bellows made from a hollowed out goat.

We set our sixth camp in a walled pasture on the outskirts of Bihi, a crumbling village high above the Buri Ghandaki. Bihi marked a dividing line of sorts we were leaving the fertile lowlands of the Garung people and were entering the sparse Nubri Valley: the high altitude land of the Tibetans. The Garung people practice a mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism, but during the first five days of our trek I’d not seen a single religious symbol or building. Though the days remained mercilessly hot the cool evenings signaled our arrival in the Nepal Himalaya – the realm of the Tibetans. An accountant would describe Nepal as a Hindu country, as this is the religion of the majority, and a government official would consider the people of the Nubri Valley Nepalese though ethnically they are Tibetan. Unlike the Tibetans of China, four miles to the north, the inhabitants of the Nubri Valley have been left to live their lives in relative peace, thereby preserving a fairly pure form of Tibetan culture. Bihi was where we began to see the omnipresent symbols of Tibetan Buddhism.

A half mile above Bihi, a six foot high water powered prayer wheel creaked on a dry axle as it released its prayers into the clear mountain sky. The trail split around stone walls manufactured of intricately carved mani stones and passed through kanis – arch-like buildings containing brightly colored and carefully detailed Thanka paintings. As we passed through the first kani of our trip Brian pointed to the ornate box-shaped ceiling and said, “well right there’s the secret of life, too bad we can’t read it.”

The Tibetans were darker, more weathered and more thickly clothed than were our Garung porters. I suspect much of the Tibetan copper complexion was due more to a buildup of soot and dirt than it was due to genetics. The Garungs, especially the women, paid meticulous attention to their appearance, while the Tibetans appeared to place no importance whatsoever on cleanliness. The hands of men, women and children looked like those of a returning to the surface coal miner. In one village, I met a two-year-old girl standing alone in a yak trail chewing on a piece of charcoal. With the exception of two green-yellow lines extending from her nostrils her face was the color of graphite, and my sustained effort to coax the burned stick out of her clutched hands proved unsuccessful. A friend had told me that you could tell which Tibetan children suck their thumbs by looking for a clean digit.

We spent the final evening of our trek in Lihi where I sat on a dry mortar stone wall watching a grandmother produce coarse gray cloth from a soot-stained loom. Simply to exist in this never summer region required a level of toil and a tolerance for suffering that is unimaginable to those who share my easy life history. How can a person who considers hot and cold running water a simple taken for granted reality relate to someone who at the age of five began a daily lifelong routine of carrying on their backs every drop of water consumed in the house. There is simply no common denominator, yet still I was greeted with a hearty “namaste bai.”

While passing through the village of Lo I first saw Manaslu. The grand cathedrals and palaces of the world are generally much smaller than what you had imagined, however the great mountains and chasms of the planet are typically twice what you could have dreamed. Manaslu was no exception. From our initial aspect the true, more rounded, summit was obscured by the black, spear-shaped East Pinnacle, and had I not studied this mountain and known that our objective was more modest I might have turned around. We did not have the luxury of distant views where the mountain appears as slightly larger bump on a white horizon, instead we turned a corner and there was our white pyramid, less than seven horizontal miles and more than three vertical miles away.

After the village of Lo, Manaslu became a constant looming presence, but instead of worrying about how we were going to reach such a distant and useless pinnacle I refused any thought that didn’t concern the next twenty-four hours. We’d thrown our fate into the wind, for it is was the wind - how hard it blew, where it pushed the clouds and on what aspect it drifted the snow - that would dictate success or failure on the mountain. I chose to live in the present because the future is in the future.

Manaslu Part 21

2011-03-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

Krishna took our gastrointestinal health as a matter of pride and though I felt, as Brian described it, “a little drippy,” I was keeping my food down and feeling fit. Krishna wasn’t some hack who one day decided to become a base camp cook, instead he was highly trained, extremely sanitary and as finicky as a French chef. Krishna was a trekking sirdar and an expedition chef and he had been in the business long enough to know the value of return customers and word of mouth advertising. He also worked as hard as an Iowa hog farmer; here is how his day went:

4:30 AM: Wake up, light the kerosene stoves and begin heating water.
5:00 AM: Breakfast and tea for Ngawang and sherpas.
5:30 AM: Set the breakfast table.
6:00 AM: Send Preem out to each tent with hot tea.
6:00-7:00 AM: Cook full breakfast of porridge, Spam, eggs, fried potatoes, flatbread
7:00-7:30 AM: Try to please Americans, boil water for water bottles and washing.
7:30-8:30 AM: Clean dishes and cooking utensils, disassemble and pack kitchen.
8:30-11:00 AM: Run on the trail in order to pass Americans and to set up and begin lunch.
11:00-12:00: Cook two hot lunches: one for staff (dhal bhat) and one for Americans. Carry water from stream to kitchen.
12:00-12:30 PM: Serve lunch, boil water for water bottles and clean up.
12:30-1:00 PM: Clean dishes and pack up.
1:00-4:00 PM: Run on the trail in order to pass Americans, arrive at destination and set up kitchen.
4:00-5:00 PM: Set up dining tent, prepare teatime for Americans and procure some local food.
5:00-7:30 PM: Cook two dinners: one for staff (dhal bhat) and one for Americans.
7:30-8:00 PM: Boil water for clean up and put finishing touches on some sort of spectacular desert.
8:00-9:30 PM: Clean up, ferry water from the village tap or local stream, and get ready to do it all over again.

One thing I should clarify regarding the aforementioned schedule, when I write that Krishna and his staff “ran” up the trail I use the word “ran” literally. Because they had to clean up after breakfast and lunch the kitchen crew began their morning and afternoon hikes more than an hour behind, but they always managed to pass us and have Tang ready when we arrived for lunch or at our stopover village. One of my favorite memories of the trek is hearing Myla’s clear singing accompanied by the clang and rattle of the mobile kitchen as Krishna and his staff jogged on by.

Myla was a nineteen-year-old Tamung on his second mountaineering expedition. Myla didn’t want to spend his life as a kitchen boy and was attending a sherpa training school organized by Nepalese Mountaineering Association. It was no coincidence that Myla had taken employment in a company owned by Tashi Sherpa, the director of the NMA. Myla was the son of a farmer and came from a village near Mt. Everest and before his arrival in Kathmandu he had never seen an electric light nor enjoyed indoor plumbing. Back in Kathmandu Brain and I met Myla waiting on the curb outside of the Kathmandu Guest House. He had left base camp early in order to accompany and cook for Shiva who decided to evacuate due to an increased Maoist threat, so when Myla learned that we had returned he went to our hotel, sat on the curb and waited. We took him out to dinner that night and when the waiter handed him a menu he whispered to Brian “what is for Brian sir?”

When Brian asked Kusang, our strongest sherpa, if any of his four sons were going to become sherpas, he said emphatically, “No! My children go to school.” The income he made as a high altitude mountaineering sherpa financed the education of his children. Myla was one generation behind. Every member of our staff bent their back so their sons and daughters wouldn’t have to.

You will not find a fat man or woman in rural Nepal. As I’ve written earlier I believe that both our staff and our porters saw us as very soft and in need of pampering. The best way to reinforce the presumption of laziness is to sleep late, so I made it my goal to be out of the tent before Preem could shove that hot cup of six o-clock tea through the zippered doorway. Being surrounded by such strong and loyal people made it easy to adopt a “great white hunter” attitude – “say boy fetch me my boots,” but I think that would have only diminished us in the eyes of our sherpa co-climbers. Summits are expensive, not simply financially, but also in terms of time, pain and risk, but one price I was unwilling to pay was the respect of my fellow climbers. I was determined to win the respect of our staff though a continual demonstration of strength, commitment, loyalty and competence. At one point during the climb I confided in Brian that I didn’t care as much about the summit as I did about earning the respect of Kusang, Ki Kami and Kha Cha.

Being out of the tent by five thirty allowed me to witness and photograph the packing and departure of our porters. Low in the valley the afternoon temperature often exceeded one hundred degrees – on one occasion my thermometer read one hundred and eleven Fahrenheit - so the porters, wanting to make as much distance in the cool air as possible, were on the trail by six, and didn’t eat their first meal until nine.

We wouldn’t get on the trail till seven thirty, our stomachs bulging after a breakfast of porridge, fresh eggs, flatbread and Spam. Two hours later we’d catch up with the porters as they gathered in groups of three or four around twig-fed cooking fires. Men and women shared equally in the preparation of dhal bhat. Dhal is a thin spicy stew made primarily of lentils while bhat is steamed white rice; the combination is standard fare in rural Nepal. Krishna prepared dhal bhat twice a day for the staff, but was convinced that no American would tolerate the stuff. It was delicious, especially with a little goat, yak or water buffalo meat, but it took considerable begging to get a little for ourselves.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides: and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Tennyson, Ulysses

Manaslu Part 20

2011-03-03T18:16:00.001-08:00

The rugged individual is a myth reserved for Chuck Norris and Mel Gibson movies. Adventurers know that the individual can only thrive in a benign environment, and the go it alone guy is revered only by those who live in a guardrail society. Unfortunately our everyday world has become so tame that true, “my life is in your hands,” friendships are no longer needed. Most of us drift through life establishing no real connections because we simply don’t have to. Only by getting out of the benign Disneyland in which most of us live can we realize the full asset or liability of those with whom we chose to share our lives. When your continued existence truly and immediately depends on the competency and courage of your cohort(s) there exists the potential for sublime friendships and fire in your heart contempt. I spent seven weeks within fifty feet of Brian Sato and have no complaints.

“Feeling good, taking it slow. Trying to find a rhythm out here. I think it’s important to find some kind of peace in order to reach the summit. If you come here to fight count on losing.”
- Diary entry April 11, 2002

All who have been to Nepal know the greeting namaste. Literally translated as “I salute the God in you,” Namaste serves as both hello and goodbye, it is often said with both hands clasped together in what a Westerner would consider a prayer posture, and if you are lucky it will come in the form namaste bai or namaste di di – hello brother, hello sister. As I walked the trail in Nepal absorbed in my own feelings of doubt and homesickness I would often meet a young girl or an old man and invariably we would exchange this sincere greeting. As a matter of fact you say namaste so often that it comes as natural as blinking and if you’re not careful you will shorten the hand gesture to a single-handed kind of vertical salute, or worse yet a karate chop.

The trail is an equalizer. It gives two people, no matter how diverse their backgrounds, common footing. Aside from basic physiology, I had nothing in common with the locals I met on the trail: we didn’t speak the same language, we didn’t know the same songs, we had no shared experiences, yet many would stop stand clasp their hands together look me in the eye and say “hello brother.” It was a greeting from a fellow traveler, someone else trying to live life as best he can.

The third night of the trek was spent in the village of Dobhan, a three building settlement next to a cold mountain stream where we Americans washed off three days of dust and salty sweat. Our Garung porters were extremely modest and in an effort to be mindful and courteous we were very careful to find a secluded spot in which to strip down and wash up. Unlike the Tibetan people we were soon to meet higher in the Nubri Valley the Garungs were extraordinarily clean and every night the women would wash their feet and hair at the village tap. Every village that we saw had an identical water supply: someone had obtained a fifty foot section of plastic tubing, one end of which was run uphill and inserted into a stream while the other end was attached to a spigot embedded in a concrete block. Occasionally a friendly male versus female water fight would break out as the two genders competed for the faucet.

The Garung men wore what appeared to be discarded Western clothes – old sweat pants and out of fashion tee shirts – while the women wore colorful ankle-length patterned skirts cotton blouses and wool cardigan sweaters. Despite the heat, the dust and the fact that their skirts nearly brushed the ground the clothing of the Garung women remained spotless for the entire eight days of our trek. Several of our female porters also wore a sort of head wrap made from a single piece of brightly colored cotton cloth. The men wore no jewelry, while the women wore large golden hoops in their ears and at least one, possibly two ruby-studded rosettes in their noses. Some women had pierced the section of skin between their nostrils and through this hole they would place an ornate golden ring.

All of our porters either went barefoot or wore flimsy rubber shower sandals. A completely worn through sandal lying beside the trail was a common sight and once while following a group of porters I saw a man simply kick off a ruined sandal in mid-stride and continue barefoot. When I returned home I told a friend this story, she replied at how sad it was that our porters didn’t even have shoes. I think, however, it was the porters who saw us as the pitiful ones. If someone had stolen our boots we would have been hobbled, they, however, had no such weakness – weakness is the appropriate term.

Despite our need for sturdy and expensive boots the trail was gradually hardening our soft civilized bodies. We’d all arrived in Kathmandu in excellent shape, but unless you work as a farmer or a longshoreman it’s practically impossible to hold down a job and completely prepare yourself for the day in day out rigors of an extended mountaineering expedition. Fortunately our bodies are master adapters and my favorite time of any expedition is the beginning because that’s when you can physically feel yourself getting calloused and hard. After the first day you forget about the comb, after the second you stop dreaming of a hot shower and after the third you no longer care that you haven’t changed your underwear in three days. It’s actually quite liberating to take off your shoes, crawl into your bag fully clothed, sleep the night and then wakeup and only have to pull on your shoes in order to start the day. Four days on the trail will tear up your soft muscles and replace them with taut wire and will peel away your smooth skin and cover the wounds with impenetrable calluses – it’s a wonderful feeling.

Manaslu Part 19

2011-03-02T11:36:00.000-08:00

The Manaslu region had only been open to trekkers for five years and electricity, tea houses and even the wheel remained conspicuously absent. On the trail my stash of Nepali Rupees was nearly worthless as the only thing for sale was the occasional soda from the old ladies who squatted beside trail. The women could fit three or four of the rusty-capped bottles into a metal washbasin filled with river water. I purchased all of the soda pop I could get my hands on.

Mountaineering expeditions have placed me in front of some spectacular scenery, however the enjoyment of my surroundings is usually tempered by the overarching dread of climbing some big mountain. On the mountain you are usually too busy or too tired to question your motives and your courage, but during the approach you have plenty of time to battle self-doubt. The question of how you will behave under fire is even more troubling when you know that your companion will behave with resolve and unwavering courage. I had no doubt in the veracity of Brian Sato, he is as good as they come, but as for myself, I wasn’t so sure. So as I passed through this traveler’s wonderland, a world where nothing is as I have known it, I missed many of the subtleties: the scent of the rhododendrons, the feel of the trail, the smile of a child, the sway of a cable bridge. Still there were some things you could not miss.

After our second day of trekking we were sitting on our packs in the village of Lapbesi watching our sherpas pitch camp when a tearful mother approached and held out her injured child. The boy was probably two years old and had opened up a sizable gash above his left eye. The wound looked horrible and everyone on our team except Brian chose to ignore the pleading mother - as many of us have become accustomed to ignoring a bum on the street. Brian looked closely at the wound and then turned to me, “come here and look at this, I think someone has already patched this little guy up.”

I got off of my butt and examined the boy; it did in fact appear that he had had medical attention. What at a distance had appeared to be a grotesque wound was a gash about an inch long onto which someone had packed gauze and then doused the works with iodine. The staining iodine and the ragged gauze had accentuated the cut. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said, “but maybe you should clean it up a little bit and put a dressing on it.”

“It’s not infected,” Brian replied. “I think someone who knew what they were doing treated this kid.”

“Well the mom seems pretty upset. I mean it looks pretty bad.”

Brian turned around looking. “Shiva!” He yelled, “could you come and help us.”

Shiva came over, winced at the wound, and spoke at length to the distraught mother. He then turned to us, “She says her son is hurt.”

Brain said, “yeah I can see that. But I think the boy has been treated. I think it is okay.”

Shiva turned to the mother and quickly spoke a short sentence. The mother replied in a long pleading oration. Shiva listened carefully before turning to us to say, “it is okay.”

As Shiva turned away the mother pushed the boy in front of Brian pleading in a language that neither of us understood. “I think we should clean it up and put a bandage on it,” I said. “Anything has to be better than what’s there now.”

Brian motioned for the mother to stay put and then went back to his pack and pulled out his large first aid kit. He cleaned off the iodine, and the boy didn’t so much as wince as Brian picked bits of gauze out of the encrusted wound. Brian carefully applied some beta dyne and then covered it all with a large square dressing. The child now looked like a kid with a big Band-Aid on his forehead and the mother smiled, thanked Brian and then disappeared into the village.

“I don’t think I did the right thing there,” Brian said closing up the first aid kit, “the kid’s just going to go play in the shit and that cut’s just going to fester underneath the bandage.”

“Well you have to deal with the mother as well as the kid,” I replied, “and I think you did good for both.”

Brian’s actions garnered him considerable attention and soon Dr. Brian’s Mountain Medical Clinic was open for business. I acted as Brian’s triage nurse and witnessed in my friend a bedside manner that was both patient and compassionate. Beta-dyne and Band-aids fixed up most of Brian’s customers, but a few of the cases were well beyond our capabilities.

An extended mountaineering expedition will expose the inner soul. The outer façade, the city face, quickly erodes and there is a very real chance of discovering that either you or your friends are not what either they or you once believed. Before leaving for Nepal I considered Brian Sato a cherished friend and an expert mountaineer, but I came to realize that he was better than I had imagined. I discovered in Brian a level of caring and compassion that I had overlooked during the twelve years we’d spent climbing and skiing together.

When Brian and I finished up the clean and patch operation we joined our companions at the cloth-covered steel camp table on which tea and cookies had been set. Shortly after I sat down Kusang tapped me on the shoulder, “Mike sir look please,” he said motioning for me to follow him. Together we walked to a crumbling stone building where in the doorway sat a woman nursing a child. Kusang motioned for me to look at the child, which I had a difficult time doing as the woman had dropped her shirt to her waist. The woman’s bare chest had no affect on Kusang, but it made me very uncomfortable. Once I was able to look at the child, who was less than two years old, I noticed that he was nearly covered on one side with a scabby rash which looked as though it had nearly eaten away the child’s left ear.

I had brought a small book to Nepal containing photographs of Melony and Sam, it was a big ice-breaker when meeting local people, and I believe Kusang, who has four children, figured that I shared a parent’s compassion for small children. He was correct. Following the birth of my son I cannot even tolerate talk of the suffering of children much less this much visual aid. My heart was breaking for this limp and resigned child. The only thing I could think to say was “fuck.”

“Kusang this child has to go to a doctor,” I said.

“Yes Mike sir, doctor sir, four times.”

“Where?”

Kusang spoke to the mother, “three days walking.”

“What did the doctor do?”

Kusang again spoke with the mother who pantomimed rubbing on a lotion.

I shook my head I didn’t know what to do. Kusang touched my shoulder and said, “okay, it is okay, go eat.” I walked back to the table thinking of Sam, I sat down but I didn’t eat.

Manaslu Part 18

2011-02-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

Our permit to climb Manaslu cost us ten thousand dollars, money, which according to the rural Nepalese, went directly into the pocket of the monarch. The story of a leader who lines his own pockets while ignoring the plight of his people is as old as it is familiar, and in Nepal it has led to a Maoist insurgency. Like their namesake, the Maoists claim to believe in an agrarian utopia and find support among the rural poor. Fortunately for us the Maoists don’t have a beef with anyone other than their king, and equally fortunate is the fact that the local farmers, despite being poor and largely uneducated, are far from stupid.

The inhabitants of the Manaslu region are subsistence farmers, and consequently earn very little cash money. One of the only cash jobs available is carrying loads for foreign tourists, and so if the Maoists drive away the tourists they will simultaneously lose local support. The upshot is that the Maoist’s go to great pains to state that their beef is with the government and not with the Western tourists/climbers. I didn’t worry about the insurgents, but I was concerned about simple bandits posing as Maoists. Shiva, on the other hand, had a lot to worry about.

Shiva was our government appointed liaison officer. The Nepali government requires that all major mountaineering expeditions outfit and bring along a government agent, but the precise duties of this agent are unclear at best. Liaison officers are typically viewed, especially by the Nepali staff, as excess baggage, and those that actually leave Kathmandu are generally treated as outsiders. Shiva was small, thin and delicate and was treated early on as a non-person by our trail hardened staff.

Shiva, Brian, Jerome, Dan and I were walking together on the first day of the trek when we came to a fork in the trail. Shiva approached a group of giggling boys and asked them the way to Arughat Bazzar – the next major village. After a rather lengthy discussion Shiva pointed towards a sizable road saying, “they say that is the shortest way, but there are many Maoists,” he then pointed to small path, “they say this way is long but safe.”

“Which way do you want to go Shiva,” I asked.

“This is not my choice,” he said, and then he made what would become a familiar statement, “I am here to help you.”

“Oh but it is your choice,” I countered, “the Maoists are going to kill you and kiss me.”

Shiva stood quietly for a moment and then began walking down the well-trodden road.

“Shiva!” Brian called out as he began down the safe path, “we’ll go this way.”

Shiva was loyal, tough and courageous and he did what no other liaison officer assigned to a Manaslu expedition that year did: he went to base camp. Most liaison officers, we came to find out, didn’t even leave Kathmandu. Even Ngawang, who set the bar very high, had to admit that yes “Shiva was very fine.”

Manaslu Part 17

2011-02-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

By Foot

When I read about the early years of high altitude Himalayan mountaineering I always marvel at the number of human porters required to carry the expedition’s gear to the foot of the mountain. In our modern age of half mile long cargo ships and sky crane helicopters I couldn’t imagine ever witnessing a train of human porters winding their way up a Himalayan valley laden with boxes and duffels. On this I was wrong. While mistakenly washing my face in the giardia infested Buri Ghandaki River I caught a glimpse of a bright object moving quickly through the forest above the far shore. I squinted into the rising sun and saw another flash, then another. After a moment I realized I was watching local men and women sprinting down a network of hillside trails in order to arrive at our camp early enough to get a four dollar a day job carrying a seventy pound load.

Three days earlier while drinking beer in the garden of the Kathmandu Guest House Tashi had estimated that we would need approximately one hundred porters for the trek. We laughed. In the end Tashi was indeed conservative - we only needed eighty-seven. Counting our full-time staff we six Americans required nearly one hundred people to support our vacation.

Ethnically our porters were Garung, and most worked the terraced farms that have, over generations, been dug into the hillsides above the lower Buri Ghandaki Valley. All loads were carried using a namlo, or a tumpline, which is a loop of coarsely braided rope that extends around the load and over the porter’s forehead. Later when we were on the mountain I noticed that when a sherpa climber had an unusually heavy load he would produce a namlo, and carry his backpack in this fashion. The porters quickly and easily fashioned ingenious schemes for attaching our barrels, boxes and even an aluminum extension ladder to their namlos. Many porters chose to place awkward loads such as kerosene drums and cooking pots into large, loosely woven wicker baskets.

The world of the Garung is one in which food and shelter comes from sweat and muscle, and therefore the men, women and even the children are extremely hard. I respect a strong back and felt very much at ease with these tough and durable people.

I admired the strong, weather-beaten Garung men, but it was to the women that I was truly drawn. Despite their diminutive size and fine feminine features the female porters carried loads that grossly overburden the vast majority of American men. Unlike the Western concept of extraverted and artificial female beauty, the Garung women possessed poise, serenity and inner strength that simply made you happy to be in their presence, in other words: true beauty.

Manaslu Part 16

2011-02-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

After making a full lap of the Gompa – all Buddhist sacred sites are passed on the right, so often the shortest path is not the correct path – Tashi turned down an alley and led us to nondescript cinderblock building. The stairs, tacked to the exterior like a fire escape, led to a rooftop landing where Tashi handed us each a maze-colored silk scarf. This would be the first of many kata scarves I would receive during the course of this expedition. To give a kata is to give the recipient one’s best wishes and to transfer to them positive good luck energy.

We removed our shoes, entered the concrete building through a small door. Once inside we were ushered into an unadorned room we met His Holiness Tengboche Rimpoche, a high ranking spiritual leader, and the abbot of the well-known Tengboche monastery near Mount Everest.

The aged though fit Lama sat cross-legged on a cushion in the corner of the room. A thin arm extended from his simple burgundy-colored robe motioning us to sit down. We were served tea and Tom, who sat nearest the holy man, began polite small talk. His Holiness only responded with calm smile. Some people are set on edge by silence, fortunately I’m not such person. Often it is enough to simply be in the presence of my friends and family; pointless talk can get in the way. I was very moved and very comfortable simply enjoying a little tea and a little time with this calm and reassuring presence. In hindsight I believe that this was the purpose of our visit: simply to spend some peace and quiet with a holy man, and to put us into his thoughts and he in ours.

His Holiness Tengboche Rimpoche didn’t question us, or try to convert us, he simply took us as fellow creatures trying desperately to find our way though our individual lives; he wished us safe passage. Though I didn’t know it at the start, the trip to Manaslu would become a spiritual journey for me, and the acceptance, tolerance and genuine caring spirit I found in Tibetan Buddhism felt as fresh as a snowmelt stream and as clean and free as the thin mountain air.

Tom spent the remainder of the day wandering through a bureaucratic labyrinth while the rest of us wandered the streets, drank beer and ate. Brian and I spent much of the afternoon at a rooftop restaurant eating naan bread, drinking Tuborg beer and watching unusual scenes on the streets below. Kathmandu so thoroughly held my gaze that I nearly forgot why I had come here. The next day when we boarded the multicolored bus which would take us and our gear to the end of the road somewhere near Arughat Bazar I continued to exist in a kind of blissful daydream, an ephemeral world in which I marveled at the fantastically alien scenery while ignoring the big mountain on the horizon.

The Kathmandu bus took us as far as the first washout where half a dozen porters transferred our mountain of gear, to an equally colorful bus waiting on the opposite side. The driver ground the gears up a narrow, switch backing dusty road cutting across the steep green rice terraces. Occasionally we would pass a thin-legged man working knee deep in the mud. The road bed was hard-packed clay that had cracked in the heat and occasionally the bus would sway dangerously in the deep ruts. Krishna had packed a lunch of cold chicken and yak cheese, which we ate at a small mud and thatch village. We ate at tables owned by an old woman who squatted over a chimney-less open fire and sold us lemon-lime soft drinks.

At the second washout there was no bus waiting on the other side, so we shouldered our daypacks and began walking – the rest of our gear, packed into a Chinese four-wheel drive, followed behind. We set our first camp on a boulder-strewn sandbar in the middle of the wide stinking Buri Ghandaki river. This would be the only uncomfortable camp of the trip; it was like sleeping on bowling balls. The driver of the blue truck delivered our gear and then buried his rig up to the axle in the soft sand fifty yards from our camp. I pantomimed pushing a car to Kusang who shook his head and said, “no problem sir.” When I went to bed the truck was still there, its rear end buried and its headlights pointing like searchlights into the night sky. In the morning it was gone.

Manaslu Part 15

2011-02-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

I’ve lived in four countries, and my passport holds the stamps of over two-dozen sovereign nations, but never before had I seen anything like Kathmandu. Scott who, on the other hand, had never before traveled outside of North America seemed to take the chaos dust and grime of Nepal’s capitol city in stride, as though this is what you should expect when leaving the home shores.

Brian had honeymooned in Nepal, and had warned me about the Kathmandu street hawkers, but I must say they were second rate compared to the wizards who worked the streets of Istanbul. When my wife and I visited Turkey we weren’t five hours into the country when we found ourselves in a dingy upstairs warehouse haggling over the price of a hand-knotted rug. The boys cruising the streets of Kathmandu were just that – boys – and you could buy whatever they were selling for less than the price of an American hamburger. I came home with a modest pile of trinkets. Dan, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well, I think he had to purchase an extra bag just to carry home all of his curbside purchases. Dan’s big heart and natural kindness towards children made him a standout target. Jerome, on the other hand, has no kids and didn’t lose his good sense when confronted with big brown eyes; he is also a politician. Often one of us would return to the hotel proud of a deal we had struck with a particularly tenacious vendor only to find Jerome sitting behind a Diet Coke holding a similar or better item for which he had paid half.

On the morning of our second day in Kathmandu Tashi, Khan Cha, Ki Kami and Kusang arrived at the hotel as we were having breakfast. In Kathmandu morning is the best time. You can eat breakfast outside, dressed in shorts and a light shirt, but the air is cool enough to appreciate a warm mug of coffee between your palms. Tashi sat down and accepted our offer of coffee while the three sherpas stood off to the side like bodyguards. “I will take you to the Bodnath,” he said, before adding, “we should go quickly.”

The Bodnath is one of Kathmandu’s great Buddhist temples, or Gampas. The structure is a white hemisphere roughly one hundred feet in diameter with what at first appears to be a chimney jutting up from its center, painted onto this chimney, which isn’t a chimney, are the ever watchful eyes of Buddha. The morning sun shinning through the loosely woven prayer flags and the burgundy-robed monks threw me into a frenzy of cameras, lenses, filters and film – many of my most sacred travel experiences have been seen through the lens of my Nikon. I looked up after slipping in a new roll of film to discover that I had become separated from Tashi and my teammates, I spun around and there fifteen yards away stood Kusang, hands behind his back a patient grin on his face. He motioned me in the correct direction and together we caught up with the group.

Mere university economics could not explain the dedication shown to us by our staff. You can’t buy a man’s heart, but that’s what they gave. Time and hardship expose us for what we are, and what I learned about every man we hired - Ki Kami, Kusang, Khan Cha, Ngawang, Krishna and our three kitchen boys: Preem, Potem and Myla - was that not only were they dedicated, loyal, and hardworking, but more importantly by the end of the trip I counted each one as my friend. You can fake a lot in life, but you can’t fake a friend during a mountaineering expedition.

Though their actions didn’t betray this, I felt as though our three sherpas viewed us naïve and somewhat silly. Together these three men had worked on over forty expeditions and to them we couldn’t have been more than another troop of spoiled Americans with no better way to spend our time and money. I am saying nothing disparaging when I say that I think our sherpas simply wanted to safely high mark us at around Camp 1 and then get back to their lives. Big talk and money might buy you respect in the United States, but it is muscle, resolve and action that earn you a place on the short list of these men. Later, during the trek, I told Brian that my greatest desire from this trip would be to come away with the respect of our sherpas.

Manaslu Part 14

2011-02-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

Kusang and Ki Kami were farmers from the Makalu region of Nepal; both were thickly built handsome men in their mid-forties, and both were in possession of what turned out to be nearly unfathomable strength. This is where their similarities ended. Ki Kami was stoic and devout while Kusang always wore a carefree smile and owned a somewhat dirty sense of humor. Our third Sherpa, Khan Cha, was the odd man out. In contrast to Kusang and Ki Kami, Khan Cha was a full-time professional mountaineer and unmarried, and unlike his husky partners he couldn’t have weighed over one hundred and fifteen pounds. When I first met him Khan Cha was draped in an oversized tee shirt, sweat pants and Vietnam era combat boots; he certainly didn’t look like the unstoppable force we later discovered him to be.

For generations the Sherpa and Tamung people have lived at altitudes above ten thousand feet; constant exposure to the thin air of this harsh environment has modified their physiology. No matter how hard I train I will never be able to adapt to high altitude as well as our trio of sherpas; my inner workings were simply not as efficient. Kusang, Ki Kami and Khan Cha would provide the loin’s share of the muscle needed to get up Manaslu.

Later that day we met Ngawang Sherpa, our sirdar, and Krishna Rai, our chef, in the blue tarp covered courtyard of Everest Trekking. Ngawang was thin and alternated between a phlegmy cough and hard pulls on a cigarette, while Krishna was short, well built and only spoke when spoken to. I liked Krishna immediately. Tashi had agreed to supply us with trekking and base camp tents, emergency oxygen and a Gamow Bag. A Gamow Bag is a seven foot long by two foot in diameter fabric cylinder into which air can be pumped in order to treat serious symptoms of altitude sickness. Placing a sick climber inside of the inflated tube tricks the ailing body into believing that it is at a lower altitude. It is a simple, effective piece of equipment that I hoped we would never use.

Bottled oxygen is typically only used on the highest of the high mountains: Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga and Lhostes. Oxygen is used on the other eight thousand meter peaks, but rarely. We decided to bring four bottles of oxygen for emergency purposes and would not climb on bottled air. We weren’t moralists or unusually strong, it was a simple decision that Manaslu did not warrant the extra burden and expense of climbing on oxygen. The bottles that Tashi supplied were American-made filament wound tubes roughly the diameter and half the length of a standard SCUBA tank. The regulators and masks were designed and built by Prosk, a Russian company, and were built for posterity and not weight savings. The contraption was a heavy bulky mess and one look reinforced the validity of our decision not to carry these things to the summit. The oxygen system seemed ridiculous and after one look I tried to walk away, but Brian held me back and made me pay attention as Tashi demonstrated how to attach the regulators and masks. Brian and I make a good team, he is careful and deliberate, while I am casual and refuse to think too hard. Without me Brian would never get anything done and without him I’d never get anything done right. Brian checked every oxygen tank and refused those that were low on pressure, he checked every regulator against every tank and every mask and discovered that not everything worked with everything else. It was only through Brian’s diligence that we ended up with four tanks, four regulators and four masks that all worked interchangeably.

While at Tashi’s compound Dan tapped my shoulder and asked if I’d seen the bloody spit someone had expelled onto the concrete floor. I hadn’t. One of the first things a Western visitor will notice in Nepal is the constant coughing. When Tom asked Ngawang about his constant cough saying “is your cough anything I should know about or be concerned with,” Ngawang simply replied, “no sir only Nepali cough.” Fact of the matter is that tuberculosis is a major concern in Nepal, but we never did find out who was spitting blood.

"If you walk the trial of Nepal, you will know what Buddhist dharma is all about
Tengboche Rimpoche.

Manaslu Part 13

2011-01-30T08:37:00.000-08:00

Tashi’s Boys

The Kathmandu Guest House has a manicured courtyard where tan coated waiters serve you Tuborg Beer in thirty two ounce bottles. It’s an international arena where tan Greeks flagrantly inhale cigarettes and blond Norwegians scribble furious notes into hardbound travel journals. I often wish that I’d been born into the era of the great modern explorers – the Tilmans, Shiptons, Hillarys and Thesingers – into a time when a man could, in all seriousness, wear knee high riding boots. Sitting at a small teak table on the lawn of the Kathmandu Guest House inhaling the tropical scents and feeling the sun on my face I dreamed myself into a sepia-toned world where I could be sure that each of my fellow guests had packed both a tuxedo and a high caliber rifle. You could easily pass a month here watching the scene through the bottom of a glass, but you shouldn’t, because this isn’t Kathmandu.

Travel is about empathy. I’m not referring to sympathy, sympathy is cheap while empathy comes at full price. Empathy comes from a day in the other man’s shoes, and this is the purpose of worthy travel. Worthy travel should wrench you out of your tightly controlled world and thrust you into the world of the unknown, the world of experience. Ignorant, narrow-minded opinions spring from those who haven’t strayed far from home, and Kathmandu is pretty damn far from home.

Outside of the guarded gate and whitewashed walls of the Kathmandu Guest House trishaw drivers peddle crudely welded three-wheeled taxis over red brick streets lined with children holding out softball-sized elephants that they claim to be carved from yak bone – nice if it were true.

We had met several of our Nepali crew at the airport; we met the remainder at the warehouse office of our trekking agent Tashi Sherpa. In addition to our three sherpas our entourage included a cook, three kitchen boys and a sirdar – a kind of foreman - all of whom were hired and outfitted by Tashi. An experienced Himalayan climber and an influential government official, Tashi cost us a grand sum, but it was a price that, in the end, was well worth paying.

“My boys will take care of you,” Tashi said in perfect English during our first meeting. The boys he was referring to were the three climbing sherpas he had hired to assist our expedition: Kusang Sherpa, Ki Kami Sherpa and Dhanjeet (AKA Khan Cha) Tamung. To many people sherpa is a generic term meaning a professional high altitude mountaineer, which is not entirely accurate. Sherpa is an ethnicity, not a job distinction, but because most Nepali climbers are Sherpa the term sherpa (with a small s) has become synonymous with professional high-altitude mountaineer. In point of fact, however, not all Sherpas are professional mountaineers and not all professional Himalayan mountaineers are Sherpa. For example, Kusang and Ki Kami are Sherpa while Khan Cha is Tamung, but all three are climbing sherpas. Nepal has a very interesting system where your surname denotes your ethnicity.

Manaslu Part 12

2011-01-27T21:22:00.001-08:00

Now we had a team of nine – six American and three Nepali – and intended to climb Manaslu using four, possibly three, camps. Providing accommodations for every climber at every camp would require twenty tents and an equal number of stoves. This was out of the question. The first lesson in backcountry survival is to have adequate shelter; everything else is secondary. In the high mountains shelter means a tough, sturdy, yet lightweight, tent that can withstand one hundred knot winds and complete snow burial. Only a handful of tents meet these criteria and all are extremely expensive. We were a self funded expedition, and the cost of purchasing and transporting twenty tents would have placed us in bankruptcy. In the end we decided to purchase eight new tents and to bring two well-used tents as spares.

Our lack of funds, and sincere desire to climb the mountain under our own steam, coupled with a dose of common sense placed us in the middle ground between the expedition and alpine styles. I saw this as a very good place to be. We would bring enough rope to fix portions of the route, but not all of it, we would bring enough tents to establish three, possibly four, small camps and we would hire three local climbers who would be treated as equal members of the team, and not as a pack mules.

Unless you are planning a trip to the Himalayas any discussion regarding the organization of an eight thousand meter climbing expedition would prove quite boring. Suffice it to say that during the month prior to our departure planning, acquisition and packing became for me a full-time job.

We left for Kathmandu on April 7th, 2002.

Manaslu Part 11

2011-01-24T21:40:00.001-08:00

My newfound habit of meeting Melony at the door, putting our four-year old son Sam in her care and then commencing my exercise routine tested the tolerance of an already tolerant wife. I had thrust Melony into another no win situation: the more I trained the better my chances of survival while the more I trained the less we saw of each other and the more responsibilities I pawned off on her.

In addition to the physical training, I both studied what little route info we could scrounge together and reviewed every mountaineering skill that I had developed over the past fourteen years. I inspected every piece of mountaineering gear searching for weakness and I developed field repair techniques, if some piece of equipment wasn’t deemed satisfactory it was tossed into the drawer and a new improved item was bought. My focus on Manaslu was complete; I didn’t have room for anything else. The more I ran, rode, climbed, studied and practiced the less accepting I became of weakness, and in the end I feel that became quite cold and dispassionate towards the trials of several of my companions.

We were going to climb a big mountain and we were going to need a big pile of food, fuel and equipment to do it. There are two schools of thought when it comes to high altitude mountaineering: expedition style and alpine style. Expedition style, some call it siege style, is where a large highly equipped team establishes a ladder of stocked camps and fixed ropes up the mountain. After everything is in place the summit team follows the chain of established camps up the mountain carrying very little in between. Acclimatization is accomplished through the up and down effort required to establish the camps and set the permanent ropes. Alpine style in contrast is a bottom to top climb up the mountain during which the summit team carries all the necessary food, fuel and gear in one continuous push. The alpine style climber acclimatizes by making forays up the mountain or by climbing neighboring peaks. The advantage of expedition style mountaineering is the safety of established camps and fixed lines, but it requires a large amount of gear which must be removed at the end of the climb, and expedition mountaineers must make repeated forays across dangerous terrain while stocking camps and setting lines. Alpine style climbers only have to cross dangerous terrain twice – once on the ascent and once on the descent – and have only a fraction of the gear requirements of expedition-style mountaineers, but climbing in such a daring – some say “fair” - fashion way requires a super fit and extremely competent climber.

As someone who didn’t know how his body would respond to the ravages of high altitude I wasn’t willing to expose myself to the dangers of strict adherence to the alpine style. But neither was I willing to lay siege to the mountain. In Nepal there is a large pool of for hire high altitude mountaineers, these fellows are commonly known as sherpas though many are not ethnically Sherpa. Sherpas are paid to carry loads, establish camps and fix rope and many of these professional climbers view as an unnecessary liability. It is quite common for foreign climbers to hire a number of sherpa climbers and then assign them the task of establishing a chain of camps and ropes up the mountain, this method leaves the other climbers free to acclimatize by moving up and down the mountain with little more than daypacks. The rewards of a summit reached only by having another man carry your weight didn’t seem to be worth the effort. We had to find a middle ground.

None of us had ever climbed with sherpas, so we spoke with mountaineers who had. Some swore by their hired companions while others stated that their sherpas were little more than an extra mouth to feed. With our small team of only six climbers it seemed to me that two strong sherpas would be worth their weight in gold. But what if one became sick or injured? We decided to hire three. Little did we know at the time that this would be our most critical and wise decision.

Manaslu Part 10

2011-01-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

To go to Manaslu without Brian Sato was out of the question. Brian is a perfectionist and so far this trip was far from perfect. During the first two weeks of January 2002 we debated and discussed every detail of the trip, we speculated, criticized and praised. In the end the desire to climb an eight thousand meter peak and the realization that a “perfect” trip exists only within the mind trumped all other concerns and we both decided to commit ourselves fully to this expedition.

We had a small team which consequently demanded the complete and unwavering commitment of each member. Without an extraordinary effort by all involved, this trip wasn’t going to get past the dreamy talk overheard by the semi-drunk business travelers with whom we shared the lounge at the SeaTac Double Tree Inn. I desperately wanted this trip to happen and felt that the only way that we would even arrive at base camp would be through sheer force of will. This very critical decision seemingly went unnoticed by all of my teammates save Brian.

Preparations

Grown men who play children’s games hold no stock with me, instead give me the great adventurers. Thesinger, Tillman, Shipton, Buhl, Unsoeld, Hornbein, these are the people who I aspire to emulate. When I committed to climb the world’s eighth highest mountain I vowed to arrive at base camp in the same manner as my heroes: fit, competent, and independent.

Brian had used indelible ink to inscribe the following quote on his foam sleeping pad; it’s by the alpinist Mark Twight :

“You must make yourself as indestructible as possible. The harder you are to kill, the longer you will last in the mountains.”

Good advice.

In order to reach the summit of Manaslu, and more importantly to come back down alive and intact, I knew that I must adopt a nearly psychotic attitude towards my fitness – not only physical fitness but technical and mental fitness as well.

The best way to train for climbing is to climb, and so I began carrying sixty pounds of water up Tiger Mountain - a three thousand foot hill near my house. I wore the same pack, boots, and clothing that I would take to the mountain in order to assess the fit and functionality of my personal gear. I ran endless cycles up and down the steepest and longest hills I could find and every morning I set a training goal and would not stop until it was reached. Occasionally I would force myself to exceed my prescribed goal. My rigid training schedule took its toll on my family.

Manaslu Part 9

2011-01-17T12:37:00.001-08:00

We began meeting twice a month at a south Seattle hotel where we delegated the work and reported on our progress. We debated everything from the number of tents we would need to the calorie content of our on-mountain lunches. Shortly before Christmas Tom arrived for one of our debate sessions slash meetings with the burly owner of a rugged weathered face, his name was Dan Percival.

Dan had climbed the highest peak in North America – Denali, the highest peak in the Americas – Aconcagua, the highest peak in Africa – Kilimanjaro and now he looked towards the Himalayas. Youth is not requisite when it comes to climbing big mountains. Expedition mountaineering requires the skills and patience developed over years spent in the mountains and therefore nobody on the team flinched when Dan revealed his age as fifty-nine. If he reached the top Dan would be the oldest climber to summit Manaslu. I immediately liked Dan, he was modest, self-confident and, most importantly, he enjoyed good beer. Dan had come prepared to sell himself: he hadn’t begun climbing until age thirty nine, three years older than I was at the time, but despite a late start he had made some impressive alpine ascents as well as some very serious ice routes. What I especially liked about Dan was enthusiasm for and commitment to climbing Manaslu, he was willing to throw himself completely into this project.

Six climbers, only one of which I knew personally, seemed a skeleton crew at best. In the mountains it seems that a small tightly knit group of friends is preferable to a large assemblage of strangers, but as the calendar rotated into 2002 all that we had was a small group of strangers.

I never have been, nor do I want to be a solo climber. Going it alone defeats the main reason I go into the mountains – friendship. I am very blessed to have a group of friends, Brain is among these, who I know for a verifiable fact would risk their life in order to save mine. We all like to think of our friends as true blue and till death do us part, but how many of us have the facts to back up this conjecture. I do. I see this type of friendship as a kind of marriage. You are more than friends with your spouse because of the physical relationship that you share, and similarly I am more than friends with these men because of the hardship, disappointment and triumph that we have shared. I am as loyal to these guys as I am my own family. Whenever I look back on a particularly rewarding mountaineering experience I first see the faces of my friends and the inside jokes and secrets that we shared. Any mountain summit is useless if I can’t share it with a friend, and it is on this point that I feel my Manaslu partners and I had the greatest rift.

Both Brian and I share a background of climbing with close friends and consequently we both placed the highest priority on compatibility and camaraderie. Neither Brian nor I wanted to go on an expedition with strangers. This may very well be a self-confidence issue – I believe more in the strength of my group than I do in myself. Dan, on the other hand, held an opposite view. Dan is a very skilled mountaineer who has led many Boy Scout and other organized club outings and seemed very accustomed to venturing into the hills with strangers. As a pragmatic mountaineer Dan clearly saw the advantages of intimately knowing those who will accompany you to an eight thousand meter peak, but he seemed to place it as a nicety rather than a necessity.

In early January of 2002 I found myself in a position that I didn’t want to be in. By this time I had invested three months in the prospect of climbing Manaslu, but mostly my energy was expended in the form of thought and not action. Because we had not yet climbed together as a group my option to withdraw from the team remained intact, but the clock was running out. We planned to be flying towards Kathmandu in early April, which left us a mere three months to prepare and pack this entire expedition. Looking back I am amazed that we actually did it. I could remain undecided no longer; I had to either attack this thing with all of my energy or retreat.

Manaslu Part 8

2011-01-13T06:48:00.000-08:00

The Team

For the past decade I’ve only ventured into the mountains with a very tight and close group of extremely competent and extraordinarily fit friends. Mountaineering is a game of trust, and when two climbers share a rope they literally, as well as figuratively, entwine their lives. After returning from my first trip to Denali in 1993, an expedition that consisted of Brian and two other close friends, Bill Hartlieb and Scott Saufferer, I suffered serious withdrawals from my teammates. For twenty seven days we had remained within one hundred feet of one another, and saying goodbye at the airport was accompanied with unexpected sadness and a very real sense of loneliness. It was a strange emotion that I believe was indicative of how close and interdependent we had become. This is how it should be. I was not going to go on the greatest climbing trip of my life with strangers, and I told Tom that before I committed anything to this trip I would have to meet and climb with every team member. Tom agreed.

I first met Scott Boettcher in the lounge of the airport hotel where we began holding bi-weekly team meetings. Six months my junior, Scott was both the youngest member of the group and the most physically fit. He didn’t just “participate in” or a “finish” ultra marathons he instead was a “competitor” a person who actually won those wild crazy races. By Scott’s own admission he was more of an athlete than a mountaineer, but he threw himself into a crash course on all aspects of mountaineering technique. When I first met Scott my main concern was that he had never been on a mountaineering expedition, and would he have the resolve to continue day after day. In the end Scott’s resolve proved equal, if not greater than any other member of the team, and I suspect that this was so due to his experiences as a long-distance runner. Training for and completing an ultra-marathon will certainly test your dedication and mettle as much as any mountain.

The final member of the committed team was Jerome Delvin, a police officer in the Eastern Washington town of Richland and a Representative in the State Legislature. Jerome is a small town conservative I am a big city liberal, but despite our political dichotomy we quickly found common ground and got along quite well. Mentally Jerome was the toughest of the group, and was able to push himself very hard physically without becoming disheartened or temperamental. All in all I felt very much as ease with Jerome and enjoyed his company greatly.

We now had five climbers committed to the notion of climbing Manaslu.

Manaslu Part 7

2011-01-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

So it came to pass that on a rainy night in October of 2001 Brian and I met to discuss our shared future. Brian who had been to Nepal some years before was very much pro Manaslu. He saw this as a once in a lifetime opportunity; the shadow of this big mountain had plunged our Tibetan plans into the darkness of mediocrity (some snappy English for ya). I wasn’t so hawkish. Overwhelming desire is the glue that holds these big trips together, and if I was going to commit to Manaslu I would have to commit every resource at my disposal. I would have wholly and entirely commit to the project. There was no happy medium, and saying yes meant risking all that I cherished. By the end of the night I knew what I knew at the beginning: that I had to go. In hindsight I see that I was going to say yes all along, but I guess I had to go through the motions.

I finally had to confess my intentions to Mel, who met the idea of her husband leaving home for two months in order to climb an eight thousand meter peak with silence. Melony used to climb, she knows the risks, and I couldn’t con her into believing that Manaslu was just another mountain, only higher.

If you discount this climbing stuff I’m a fairly decent husband. Mel and I have always been very compatible and not only do we love each other we also like one another as well. We rarely disagree and when we do the middle ground is found quickly. This is true for everything except my mountaineering.
My desire to climb Manaslu placed Melony into a Catch-22, if she had said that I absolutely could not go I wouldn’t have, but such an ultimatum would have placed a very large monkey wrench into the cogs of our marriage. On the other hand if she supported me she might just be supporting her way into single motherhood. In the end Mel said that she did not want me to go, but if I had to she wouldn’t stop me - she wasn’t going to feign support for something she opposed.

So there I was, a thirty six year old suburban househusband, a member of a six-man self-supported Himalayan mountaineering expedition.

Manaslu Part 6

2011-01-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

I’m drawn to the sepia toned photographs and washed out Kodachrome images of the great Himalayan expeditions of the fifties and sixties. Many of these expeditions were organized along military lines with a few pre-chosen prima donnas supported by a host of just happy to be here worker bees. In the new millennium an expedition leader would be hard pressed to put together such a trip, but nonetheless I brought this paradigm to the meeting. I’d done some respectable climbing and had as good a resume as most, but I didn’t view myself as eight thousand meter material.

I liked Tom at the outset; he had come prepared, and spoke to the two of us as though he were addressing peers. I had arrived at the meeting a cynic, and consequently twisted every one of Tom’s words searching for that piece of convincing evidence that would provide me with a convenient face-saving way out. Tom didn’t oblige, and for the first time I allowed thoughts of Manaslu to begin their slow seep into my consciousness. At the end of the meeting Brian and I listed our mountaineering credentials; Tom immediately invited us to join the team. Once again this is not what I had expected. I had figured that Tom would take our resumes to the rest of the team, who would then hold a kind of secret meeting during which they would scratch their weathered chins, and make comments such as, “gee Tom I don’t know these kids seem a little inexperienced to me.” Nothing had come off as expected. Brian and I drove home in silence. My mind spiraled. Should I do it? How could I do it? Is it worth it? What it I don’t go? What if I do go?
Normally I think with my heart instead of my head, desire always trumps reality, but when it came to the prospect of spending two months and upwards of ten thousand dollars attempting to perform a dangerous and essentially useless task I didn’t have the luxury of such a cavalier attitude. On the first day of September 1990 I married my one and only girlfriend, Melony Matte, and from that day forward my life was no longer mine to lose. Prior to meeting Mel I viewed death with easygoing indifference. I don’t know if there is an afterlife, but I hope there is because I know can stand tall and justify my life, and if there isn’t, well who cares because if you’re dead then you wouldn’t know that you’re dead because you’d be dead. So in my pre-Melony years I figured that I had death beat, you make the most of your life every single day, and when your number comes up it comes up. Mel’s arrival forced me into a more mature view of life and death. My marriage is a serious undertaking wherein the physical death of one would mean a kind of spiritual death for the other, and needlessly risking my life is, I guess for lack of a better word, a kind of sin. On a wet October day in 1997, my life became even less of my own. This was the day I first held my son Sam. To my son I owe my presence. So this is the conundrum of living recklessly: you go out and kill yourself so what you’re dead it doesn’t matter to you, but what about the damage to those you leave behind.

It would have been very easy for me to simply dismiss the idea and walk away.
The risks were high, the rewards few, so why do it? Adventure for adventure’s sake is becoming more and more of an anomaly in a nation where most decisions are governed by the shortsighted financial theory of maximum return for minimal investment – take as much as you can and give as little as possible in return. This bullshit Wall Street mentality doesn’t work in the mountains. Mountaineering offers very little material return on investment unless you profit from pain, exhaustion and disappointment. Many climbers have tried to explain their habit, some with pithy catch phrases others with elegantly worded prose, but in the end it all comes out the same – some are irresistibly drawn to adventure, while others are repelled by it. That’s just the way it is.

Manaslu Part 5

2011-01-06T09:21:00.000-08:00

Climbing mountains is dangerous, there’s no denying that, but going to extreme altitudes is especially treacherous. Above seven thousand five hundred meters the human body is dying, and it ain’t dying slowly - if an airplane were to drop you off on the summit of Manaslu you would suffocate within a few minutes. One solution to thin air is the use of bottled oxygen a common practice on the world’s two highest mountains: Everest and K2. Using oxygen allows you to move faster and stay warmer, but the apparatus is clunky, heavy and unreliable, not to mention the logistical headache of ferrying oxygen cylinders up and down the mountain. In short sucking O’s causes more problems than it’s worth on all but the most extreme altitudes.

Oxygen or no oxygen in order to get to the summit of a high altitude peak you’re going to have to acclimatize - slowly ascending and descending in order to increase the number of red blood cells pulsing through your veins. Acclimatization is not an antidote, it simply means that you will die slower, and it is for this reason that mountaineers refer to the region above seventy five hundred meters as the “death zone.”

In the death zone the small mistake that would normally rank as an inconvenience can easily and quickly kill. You cannot afford to expend precious time and energy wandering aimlessly in a whiteout, you cannot lose a glove and expect to keep your fingers, you cannot afford to spill water on your sleeping bag. Going high is like running through an active firing range: if you do it too often, are too slow or simply unlucky you’ll probably die. The mountain doesn’t care who you are, how much money you made last year, or who you have waiting at home. The “it’s nothing personal” coldness of high altitude mountaineering is quite sobering.

Further research showed that it wasn’t until 1997 that an American climber, Charlie Mace, first reached Manaslu’s summit. As of the fall of 2001 only five American climbers had followed Charlie to the top, one of which was Ed Viesturs. At that time Mr. Viesturs had climbed eleven of the fourteen Eight Thousanders and was arguably the most competent high altitude mountaineer currently pursuing the high peaks. The common adjective attached to Mr. Viesturs is superhuman. It seemed as though Manaslu remained a considerable prize for American mountaineers, which made me quite surprised by the small scale of Tom’s project.

To be honest, I was only attending the meeting as a consideration to Brian, who I believed was only attending out of consideration for his boss. During the drive down we speculated that we would find a large highly funded team of super climbers who would only court two amateurs such as ourselves either to defray costs or, worse yet, consider us low altitude load bearers - a couple of strong backs with fat wallets, but not serious summit contenders.

Manaslu Part 4

2011-01-05T19:38:00.001-08:00

Seven days later Brian and I sat in a McDonalds in Fife, Washington talking with Tom Fitzsimmons. Tom was physically big and professionally successful, but he carried himself modestly; my first impression of him was one of soft-spoken kindness. Tom’s climbing resume went back thirty years, and in 1980 he had nearly reached the summit of Mt. Everest via its difficult, and at the time unclimbed, North Face. Tom had also been very successful out of the mountains, and at the time was a member of the Governor Gary Locke’s Cabinet.

It all seemed very flattering, here was a Himalayan veteran seriously talking to me about climbing an eight thousand meter peak. Flattering but not realistic. Tom knew where and when: he wanted to climb Manaslu by its first ascent route in the spring of 2002, and his estimates of time and money: eight weeks and eight thousand dollars, proved surprisingly accurate, but I was disturbed by the short roster of committed team members.

Two months earlier Brian and I sat in the sparse living room of Daniel Mazur, one of America’s pre-eminent high altitude mountaineers, listening to his thoughts on how to assemble a big mountain expedition. Dan’s prediction that our most significant obstacle would be finding enough climbers to form a respectable team had certainly come true for us, and now it appeared that this was also the case for Tom. Like us Tom had a long list of “interested” climbers, but a very short list of “committed” climbers. Committed being defined as someone with desire, money and, most importantly, time.

In addition to himself Tom had only two committed climbers, but he viewed this as a temporary situation, and that soon we would be turning climbers away. This is not at all what I had expected.

Before meeting with Tom I had researched Manaslu. At eight thousand one hundred and sixty three meters (26,782’) above the level of the sea, Manaslu is the world’s eighth highest mountain. The summit was first reached in 1956, a feat that remained unrepeated for fifteen years. As of 1999 one hundred and eighty nine climbers had reached its summit, and over fifty had died trying. Of the fourteen mountains over eight thousand meters only one, Annapurna, boasts a higher death to climber ratio.

Manaslu Part 3

2011-01-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

“Hey Mike, okay now hear me out, this is just a thought,” Brian was uncharacteristically cautious, which thereby made me more than a little nervous. “What do you think of switching our plans and going to Manaslu?”

“Manaslu!” I responded. “That’s an eight thousand meter peak. A little out of our league don’t ya think.”

As an environmental engineer with the Washington State Department of Ecology Brian orchestrates and oversees the cleanup of toxic waste sites. The head of the Department of Ecology at that time was a fellow climber by the name of Tom Fitzsimons. Brian explained how he had run into Tom at a meeting, and as two climbers often do the pair got to talking about current plans: Brian mentioned Tibet, Tom brought Manaslu.

Tom, knowing Brian to be an experienced and competent mountaineer, proposed a possible merging of the two projects and since Manaslu presented a more challenging and ambitious objective it remained on the table.

Only fourteen summits exceed eight thousand meters; climbers know these as the Eight Thousanders. During the fifties and sixties the rush to put a man on the summit of an eight thousand meter peak reached nationalist levels with France, Germany and Great Briton all racing to plant a flag on a high Himalayan peak. The bodies of some of the most powerful and viciously tenacious humans ever to climb a hill litter these mountains. Climbing legends like Kukuczka, Buhl and Genet all died while descending eight thousand meter peaks, but it was the more recent deaths of Scott Fisher and Alex Lowe that had severely shaken my notions on how to survive in the mountains. Prior to the death of these two men in the high Himalaya (Scott on Everest and Alex on Shisha Pangma) I had believed that through fitness, competence and knowledge you could all but avoid an untimely death in the mountains. Scott and Alex were the best and yet both were snuffed like ants underfoot; their deaths taught me that life in the high mountains is a loaded dice game: yeah you might win on occasion, but play enough and the house invariably wins. How audacious even to contemplate such an intoxicating proposal.
Brian is as diplomatic as he is self-confident and over the course of an hour he managed to convince me that at least we should meet with Tom and hear his ideas. To be honest I felt more than a little blindsided, I had put four months of work into our Tibet trip, work that Brian was proposing that we simply throw away. The blow to my ego, however was a minor concern compared to the knowledge that my friend, Steve Steckmeyer, had, eleven years earlier, buried three of his companions at the base of Manaslu following a catastrophic avalanche.

I didn’t mention the idea to my wife.

Manaslu Part 2

2011-01-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

An Idea

It was late September and I was taking yet another lap around my suburban lawn, hoping that this would be the last mowing of the season, when my three-year old son Sam peeked out the back door and waved his arms. I killed the walk behind mower to hear Sam yell, “dad it’s Brian Sato on the phone.”

Brain, a longtime climbing partner and friend, and I were planning a modest ski/mountaineering trip to an obscure mountain in the Chinese Autonomous Region of Tibet, and consequently had been talking quite a bit during the summer of 2001. I have long had the ability to identify and associate myself with people of superlative quality, and consequently my entire life has been one shared with the best of friends. When I first met Brian during an advanced mountaineering course I knew without a doubt that I wanted a friendship with this man. For several years we shared the occasional skiing or mountaineering outing, but it wasn’t until 1993, when together we climbed Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, that I realized he and I were indeed going to go places.

The mental and physical stress of mountaineering, especially expedition mountaineering, brings out either the best or the worst in people. Rarely do you return from an extended trip into the mountains without specific and ingrained opinions of your companions. In the case of Brian our 1993 expedition resulted in a fraternal brotherhood and marked the beginning of a very deep friendship. I find it difficult, maybe impossible, to explain the depth of friendships born in the mountains. I have on numerous occasions willingly placed my life entirely into the hands of Brian Sato. Over time when you place such extreme confidence in another man there develops a brand of love for one another – I know no other word for it. My family, my friends and my memories are all that I cherish, everything comes and goes.

Brian and I make an odd couple, I am stoic he’s outgoing, I am flighty he is fastidious, my life abounds in clutter and disorganization while Brian is meticulous and neat. For the most part we are happy opposites, but Brian does have one characteristic that I very much attempt to emulate – his compassion. While I care deeply about the welfare of my family and friends, I typically wander through life oblivious to the suffering of everyone else. Brian, on the other hand, has the gift of truly caring about and caring for those around him.

I picked up the receiver, “What’s up Mr. Sato?”

Manaslu Part 1

2010-12-26T19:44:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Approximately ten kilometers south of the mountain chain that forms the Nepal/Tibet border, in the Gorkha Himal, stands the world’s eighth highest mountain: Manaslu. Weighing in at 8163 meters, Manaslu is one of fourteen mountains that rise more than eight thousand meters above sea level. To mountaineers the number eight thousand is important in the same way that twenty six point two has special significance among runners.

I went to Manaslu in the spring of 2002 with five American and three Nepali climbers. The Nepalese climbers were on the clock, in other words we paid them to help us reach the summit; these three men were invaluable to our success and I will have much more to say about them in the pages to come. Among the American climbers was my very good friend Brian Sato. Brian and I have climbed together for over twenty years and the friendship that we shared – one in which two men completely trust one another – is a theme woven into the fabric of this story.

All writing, even non-fiction, is conjecture. I am not a journalist and have no particular affinity towards books that simply tell how, when and where such and such an event occurred. I personally have always been more interested in the why. This is a story based entirely on recall, which is not to say that I’m making things up, but memory is fickle, and what I remember as a seminal event may have passed by my companions unnoticed and vice versa.

As our society becomes increasingly immunized the adventurer becomes more of an anomaly. What one hundred years ago was the danger of everyday life has, today, morphed into an unacceptable risk. The price of an unexplored life is mediocrity; you don’t know your capabilities until you’re forced to find them.

So that’s the upshot, this is a story about friendship, challenge and discovery: the three ingredients of a wonderful life.

Subprime Intelligence

2010-12-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

I’m reading this book The Monster by Michael Hudson, it’s all about the subprime mortgage debacle and it got me wondering: why don’t they teach personal finance in high school? It seems that a class on basic household finance – what is APR, what’s wrong with credit card debt – should be required in order to graduate high school.

The purpose of public education is to create a responsible citizenry, but when you have so many people who are so gullible you actually begin to create a failing state. The financial meltdown spawned by subprime lending is a case in point. I mean how can you explain to the public the problems of deficit spending or global warming when so many members of that public will willingly sign an adjustable rate mortgage that begins at fourteen percent and climbs to twenty two percent.

Keep It To Yourself

2010-12-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite editorial writers is New York Times columnist David Brooks. Unlike most blow with the wind conservative columnists who are adamantly for something until they become adamantly against it, Mr. Brooks remains true to a very well-defined ideology, and even though I usually don’t agree with him, I do respect him for his intelligence and his consistency. In today’s editorial - The Joys of Social Science - Mr. Brooks accumulates the findings of several social scientists, my favorite of which was a study performed by David Gal and Derek Rucker.
Here's the abstract of the study:

A seminal case study by Festinger found, paradoxically, that evidence that disconfirmed religious beliefs increased individuals' tendency to proselytize to others. Although this finding is renowned, surprisingly, it has never been subjected to experimental scrutiny and is open to multiple interpretations. We examined a general form of the question first posed by Festinger, namely, how does shaken confidence influence advocacy? Across three experiments, people whose confidence in closely held beliefs was undermined engaged in more advocacy of their beliefs (as measured by both advocacy effort and intention to advocate) than did people whose confidence was not undermined. The effect was attenuated when individuals affirmed their beliefs, and was moderated by both importance of the belief and open-mindedness of a message recipient. These findings not only have implications for the results of Festinger's seminal study, but also offer new insights into people's motives for advocating their beliefs.

Funny the timing of this bit of info as I yesterday I was emailing a couple of buddies my hypothesis that the more someone doubts their religious beliefs the more likely they are to go around trying to convert others. I think David Puddy from the good old Seinfeld days had the right approach.

First Turns

2010-12-06T14:56:00.000-08:00

Finally it's the time for ice cream for breakfast. Nothing fuels that big ski day at Alpental like a big Belgian waffle topped with ice cream and berries. I was up at five thirty beating egg whites to soft peaks so that we could be in line at opening bell.

The coverage was spotty but the snow was cold and soft, so all in all it was a good day. Here in the Northwest any skiing before Christmas is gravy so I can't complain. As a general rule you can't ski Alpental if you're a complainer: I am continually amazed by just how challenging Alpental really is. There just aren't that many people willing to put up with that place.

A Balancing Act

2010-12-01T16:13:00.001-08:00

I like to balance my rants with something positive. Not everything manufactured in the twenty first century is complete crap, all you have to do to prove this point is look to the small town of Red Wing Minnesota. There is a factory in that town, a factory known as "The Shoe" where craftspeople still make a product that is built with pride and built to last.

My Red Wing Iron Rangers are the most comfortable and most well-made shoes that I've ever owned. They are my go-to winter shoe and I predict that ten years from now I'll still be wearing these same shoes.

The Land of Broke S**t

2010-11-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

My father-in-law used to have a ranch in rural east Texas, a place he accurately referred to as “the land of broke shit.” The roads leading to the ranch were lined with trash and nearly every home we passed was surrounded by a garden of broken lawn mowers, motorcycle frames, rusted farm equipment, disused playsets and no-wheel cars on cinder blocks. It was as if owner used something until it broke down and then simply got off and walked away, leaving a metal hulk to rust in the knee high grass. Now it seems that the WalMartization of America has made, not just East Texas, but our entire country a land of broke shit.

Last week I bought one hundred and fifty pounds of grass fed beef from a rancher in Eastern Washington and wouldn’t you know it my six year old chest freezer decided that this was the time to take a crap. We go to Home Depot, but all they have is the same piece of junk I already had so off we went to Sears. Sears had two options: the same piece of junk with a Kenmore instead of a GE sticker and a $250 stand-up freezer. I didn’t want the same ole same ole so I inquired about the stand-up. They wanted $70 to have it delivered; seventy bucks to deliver a two hundred and fifty dollar unit, no thank you I’ll take the POS chest freezer and borrow Jane’s Jeep Cherokee to get it home.

So here I am with POS 2.0 in my garage and next to it sits a worthless piece of scrap metal. The old freezer didn’t completely fall apart, what happened was some tiny plastic part had finally had enough and gave out thereby rendering the entire unit worthless. What irks me is the waste.

As Americans demand cheaper and cheaper products manufactures’ respond by examining each individual part of their product and systematically replacing relatively expensive durable parts with inexpensive failure prone parts. Eventually the unit becomes so cheap that it’s more economical to purchase a new unit than it is to have it repaired. This would be no problem if the product were made out of say corn, but they are not, they are made of and packed in non-renewable resources. My old freezer is a complete waste of finite resources. Whether it’s pots and pans, televisions or freezers we have become a throw away society.

Throwing everything away just isn’t a sustainable model. Perhaps we should task prison inmates with the job of repairing all the broken down freezers, water heaters, dishwashers, ranges, washers and dryers. You should just be able to make a call, have someone pick it up, have it transported to some lock-up where it would be fixed and put back out for sale. Seems like a win, win, win.

Community

2010-11-26T09:03:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I listened to a story on NPR about the family of severely disabled girl who was turning eighteen and facing severe reductions in her Medicare. The girl required full time medical care, which came from either the parents or an in-home nurse. There was a lot of pressure on the parents to put their daughter into a home for disabled adults, an idea they were against because of the poor care she would receive. The parents brought up the subject of whether or not the public ought to care for a person who, at least in the traditional sense of the word, has nothing to “contribute” to society. The parents tried, in vain in my opinion, to make the case that their daughter did have value to society, a topic some emailer seized on the next day stating that he had no responsibility for someone who can’t contribute. In my humble opinion both the parents and the emailer completely missed the boat.

This girl doesn’t contribute to society, but she does define us as a society. Imagine a scenario wherein one hundred pregnant women were put into a room where a doctor walks in and states “I’ve studied each of you and I can tell you that ninety eight of you will have healthy babies, one of you will have a mildly disabled child and one of you will have a severely disabled child. My combined fee for providing care for the two children is one hundred thousand dollars. These are the facts you decided how to best handle it.” I think that the room would be split about eighty/twenty with the eighty being a community oriented group and the twenty being a screw you group.

The community group would propose that everyone kick in a thousand dollars for a total of one hundred grand, thus ensuring that the two disabled children will get the care they need. The other twenty percent will say screw you, I’ll go ahead and take my chances. In my humble opinion the community group has the more worthwhile solution: everybody kicks in a little in order to care for the community as a whole. The screw yous would argue that they are forced to pay for something that their family doesn’t need, while the community people would counter that they are paying for something that that their society needs. Do we stand alone or do we stand together.

The disabled child has value outside of her immediate family not because she can go out and handle a shovel or enter data into a computer, but because she defines who we are as a society. Are we a community or are we a collection of screw you individuals. The screw you mentality falls apart when one of that group ends up with the disabled child; suddenly they want to change their vote. Kind of like when Limbaugh found himself addicted to hillbilly heroin or when Wall Street bankers stuffed money in their pockets just before coming to the American people – the very same people they’d been screwing for a decade – hat in hand.

When you look at American history you see an attitude shift right around nineteen forty. I believe that WWII changed the American psyche from one of “grab all you can get” to “we’re all in this together.” It was this shift in world view that fueled something that America had never before seen: a prosperous middle class. Today The United States of America faces a very difficult challenge wherein a minority of screw yous are presenting themselves as a majority. The community group, led my President Obama, has done a very poor job of making their case, it’s time he/we step up and show the voters just what kind of crappy world these Ayn Rand reading screw yous are trying to create.

Wise or Chicken

2010-11-24T09:07:00.001-08:00

The past twenty two years in Seattle have reduced me to a bit of a wimp when it comes to snow driving. When I was a kid back in Des Moines we used to hide behind snow drifts and when a car passed we’d hustle out and grab the back bumper for a ride. We called it bumper sliding or hookey bobbing. I remember once we went snowmobiling and my dad was driving a pick-up with the sled in the back and I rode the entire way just holding onto the tailgate – totally normal in 1978, completely crazy in 2010. My point is that in order to slide behind a car the roads would have to be pretty darn slick, and we thought nothing of driving on those roads.

I remember mom carting us to school in this 1974 Chevy Impala station wagon, you couldn’t design a worse snow car, but every morning off we went. When I got my license we used to go out on icy nights specifically for the ice. We didn’t avoid it we looked for it. Today I have a Subaru Outback – the consummate snow car – and I find myself inching along, nervous on any hill. On the one hand you could say I’ve grown wiser, on the other you could argue I’m more chicken.

Winter

2010-11-23T09:28:00.001-08:00

It's not supposed to snow in Seattle, but every year we get at least one white storm. This year the white stuff came a bit early. Our new old house isn't insulted nearly as well as our old new house; despite storm windows I can feel a steady breeze blowing through the single-pane windows. Perhaps I'll have to get out the Sawzall this spring and install new windows.

No Bull

2010-11-16T14:52:00.000-08:00

Last week I spent three days sneaking around the Utah mountains looking for a bull elk. I was visiting my friend Bill, and tagged along behind him while he went in search of an animal to top off his freezer. We put in three twelve hour days and came across several groups of the massive animals, but we saw no antlers and consequently couldn’t fire a shot.

When I was a kid in Iowa my dad really enjoyed pheasant hunting, and my brothers and I used to go out with him walking the ditches and draws on crisp Midwestern mornings – eventually dad spent more and more time in the car, but he still loved being out with his son’s giving us pointers and telling us where to go. For me hunting has been more about laughing and telling exaggerations than it ever was about firing a gun or putting meat in the freezer.

I quickly discovered that elk hunting and pheasant hunting are two ends of the hunting spectrum: one is slow the other fast, one is silent, the other social. Every morning Bill had me in the woods an hour and a half before sunrise moving quietly, listening and looking for any sign of a passing elk. Once we found a favorable spot we hunkered down and waited. This is when I typically assumed my “hunting posture” of lying on my back with my eyes closed, calling in the unwary prey with an elk call that sounds surprisingly like a light snore. Sometimes I’d nod off for thirty, maybe even forty, minutes only to wake and find Bill standing in exactly the same place and in the same position that he was when I dozed off. He had his sneak down that’s for sure.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods, climbing, hiking, trail running, mountain biking, but elk hunting was something entirely different. Hunting is all about immersion and absorption: you have to immerse yourself in the forest and absorb every noise and every flicker of light. For me outdoor sports were all about getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible, basically I was just crashing through the woods oblivious of my surroundings. Hunting opened me up to those surroundings. Lying on the warm ground watching the light from the rising sun track down through the forest canopy is something I never before noticed despite having spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in the woods.

I know I might piss off a few friends when I say this, but serious hunters – and when I say serious I’m excluding the beer can shooting guys who have their asses glued to the seat of four-wheelers – and REI shopping enviro folk have a lot in common. I think that there is significant common ground on which both groups can stand. Both groups have a sincere love of the untamed and both want to preserve it.

I think that there is a lot of political hay to be made by separating one group from the other, and it’s sad that both groups are so eager to lap it up. “I ain’t no tree hugger,” is a common refrain among hunters. I’d like to say “heck dude you probably hugged, leaned against, hid behind more trees than I ever did, elk seek refuge in the forest, without trees you’d have no forest.” Likewise environmentalists so often act appalled whenever the issue of hunting comes up. Bill and I were out hunting for food, good tasting healthy food essentially doing the same thing that Homo Sapiens have been doing for two hundred thousand years. It’s in our blood man.

I went hunting for wild elk and hope to do it again really soon.

Finding Pablo

2010-10-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) is hosting an exhibit from the Picasso Museum in Paris. I was able to check it out this morning as a chaperone of the Islander Middle School Art Class. Ten years ago Melony, Sam and I visited the Museum while on vacation in Paris, here are my thoughts at the time:

From Notre Dame we continued across the Seine, past the many statued Hotel de Ville and up the shop lined alleys towards the Musee Picasso. We were in no hurry and so we wondered through back streets filled with chain smoking art students. We had already seen the Muse D’Orsay and the Louvre where for lack of a better term what hung on the walls resembled the actual world. Now I wanted to visit the Picasso Museum in order to see the work of the quintessential abstractionist.

Picasso claimed to be the greatest collector of Picasso and the Museum in Paris houses the artist’s personal collection of his own work. The Musee Picasso contains an eclectic collection of paintings, line drawings, ceramics and sculptures, the largest single collection of the world. I confess that I don’t understand abstract art, and have difficulty seeing Picasso’s work as anything other than childish scribbles. Secretly I hoped that surrounding myself with Picassos would switch on the light – oh now I get it.

Unfortunately our visit to the Musee Picasso only served to convince myself that much of what the guy created was little more than a big con. I’m convinced that if I would have brought in six paintings from this collection to the art gallery that displayed my photography I would have been laughed out the door. Maybe I’m too shallow for abstract art, but the bottom line is that I neither understood nor enjoyed the work of Picasso. The best I could say about the collection was that there were a few inspired pieces scattered among a bunch of crap. I would think that many artists would become disheartened after touring the museum because it convincingly demonstrates the fickle nature of the art market.

What a bunch of cynical dribble. Good thing I’ve grown up since then. I find that when it comes to art a little explanation goes a long way. Today a SAM volunteer explained a half dozen of the more important works in the exhibit and things made one heck of a lot more sense. Picasso was that once in a century type of artist who takes the status quo, cuts it up into tiny pieces, shuffles it up and presents an entirely different view. He literally redefined art.

The Badass

2010-10-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

When you live in one place too long it becomes easy to think that the entire world lives, and thereby thinks, like you do. This is why travel and literature are so important. Travel, I don’t mean tour bus sightseeing, but true travel – wherein you meet, interact, and hopefully to some small extent live like the locals opens your eyes to the fact that many of the things we consider to be “normal” are completely crazy to people who weren’t raised in the same society as you were. Toilets are a good example.

When I worked in Japan the company had a Western style sit down toilet installed in the company bathroom. That stall became my private throne room as nobody else in the office wanted to put their bare butt where someone else had just plopped their fat ass. The Japanese toilet looks like a porcelain baby bassinet set into the floor, you don’t sit you squat. To me squatting was a bit weird, to them using a Western toilet was just plain unsanitary.

When I worked at Boeing I worked on the lavatories and we kept getting complaints from Middle Eastern and Asian airlines that their toilet seats were breaking. After some investigation we discovered that instead of sitting on the toilet seats the passengers were actually standing on them. We hadn’t designed for this and consequently the plastic seats were breaking. I think that once you realize that the vast majority of the world’s population views your toilet habits as nasty and gross you start to realize that not everybody wants what we think they want.

You may be asking “what the heck do I care about how people use the bathroom?” Well it’s not really about bathroom habits it’s about understanding the world, what motivates people what makes them tick. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney could have used a little more of this “worldliness” when they misused their extraordinary power to declare war at their discretion. Both men lived sell-out lives: was George Bush among the top applicants to Yale or Harvard, no, but he took advantage of the fact that his people knew their people, and undeservingly he walked on through the hallowed doors. Was Dick Cheney, a lifetime politician, the best business mind that Haliburton could find? No, but he had a thick Rolodex and he parlayed that into a multimillion dollar a year salary. When you look at it in these terms it’s no wonder that the post invasion behavior of the Iraqis is, to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, a complete mystery.

There is no doubt that if the Iraqis would have just played ball with us they would have, right now, a much more pleasant lifestyle. If they would have just sat back and let us install a government, rebuild what we bombed, pump their oil they’d, for the most part, be living a much easier life: no roving death squads, no power outages, no militants wanting to drag them back into the middle ages. I’m sure at one time or another Bush said to Cheney “heck Dick we’ve been puppets all our lives and look how good we have it, why won’t they just play ball?” What they didn’t understand was the mentality of the badass.

The badass is that guy who refuses to be told what to do, despite the fact that if he does what he’s told to do his life would be much easier. Cool Hand Luke was a badass. The North Vietnamese were badasses. The Iraqi’s are badasses. They ain’t gonna play our game, as a matter of fact their game is going to be whatever our game isn’t. When you understand the mentality of the badass you start to understand why Iraq is moving toward Iran. Iran and Iraq are blood enemies, but our game is to keep them separated so their game becomes one of developing close ties. This why we failed in Vietnam and this is why we are destined to fail in Iraq. No matter how much good we do they are going to hate us for it, it’s jujitsu, the more power we exert the more powerful our opposition becomes.

Dad Tales

2010-10-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

My dad was a civil engineer and was a “true” engineer in that he knew how things worked, why they failed and consequently how to fix them. I would equate him to a ship’s engineer – the guy responsible for keeping the boat afloat. If he didn’t know how to do something he knew where to get the information required to figure it out. As our American lives become increasingly surrounded by disposable crap; mechanical devises designed to be thrown away instead of repaired, I’m reminded of two “dad stories.”

John T. lived across the street and he drove around in this big ole’ Chevy Impala. My dad had a soft spot for Detroit iron and when that car didn’t move for two months he started to hatch a plan. On a summer Sunday morning he crossed Lawnwoods Drive with two twenties and a ten in his pocket and laid them on the table. “I gotta tell ya Mr. McGuffin,” John said “that car don’t run.”

Thirty minutes later dad and my brother Donald had that car running and were backing it out of the driveway. I wonder what John thought when he heard that V-8 kick over. I think Donald drove that car for another two years before it finally crapped out for good.

Dad was a good mechanic and consequently many of my stories about him concern cars, this second story is no exception. Back when he was in college my brother Mark had a girlfriend who owned a late seventies model Honda Accord. One day while my brother was puttering around in it the engine seized up, probably due to a lack of oil. Somehow dad and Mark got that car into our driveway where they pulled out the ruined engine and replaced it with one they picked up at Sam’s Riverside Auto – our second favorite junkyard after Easy Eddie’s Trails End Salvage. In a single afternoon they were able to pull and replace that engine. “It started on the first turn,” dad later told me.

“I can’t believe it,” dad said, “that engine was sitting on its pan in the mud, we didn’t even change the oil.” From that day forward dad bought only Hondas.

When people ask me how I know how to do things I always give credit to my father. He taught me a lot about woodworking and engines, but more importantly he taught me how to roll up my sleeves and just get in there and do it. Just getting started is nine tenths of the battle.

Freedom

2010-10-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

Just finished Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and am now starting Freedom. I must admit that I kind of enjoyed the fact that Franzen rejected Oprah when she wanted to include The Corrections in her book club. Oprah’s a fine gal, but we all need a little rejection in order to keep our feet on the ground. I now see that Franzen relented with Freedom as it is now officially christened an “Oprah book.”

For me reading Franzen really stinks as he continually shows me just how high the bar is set and how low I can jump. He is just so dang good. Reading schmaltzy books like Eat Pray Love or The Pilot’s Wife gives me hope because these are more works of perseverance than innate talent: anyone can persevere, but only a select few have the talent.

The first sixty pages of Freedom has lived up to the hype; perhaps by the time I’ve finished it a little of the author’s talent will have rubbed off.

2010-10-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

Back in 2002 I went to the Himalaya to climb one of the least, if not the least, known eight thousand meter peaks: Manaslu. The trek to high camp was eight days of unspoiled culture immersion, meaning that there had been very little Westernization and we witnessed a way of life that has progressed with little change for hundreds of years. Our trek ended at the eleven thousand foot town on Sama, very near the Nepal/Tibet border. Sama is home to a large Buddhist temple and our team was invited to join in for what I can only describe as a good luck ceremony.

Some members of our team turned up their noses at the invitation, but my buddy Brian and I hustled up the hill so as not to be late. The ceremony was a mixture of chanting and incense burning and it gave me an opportunity to think about things. Now Buddhists don’t worship some singular deity, some omnipresent, omniscient being, so I had to ask myself “who are they praying to.” In Western Christianity you pray for the protection of an overseeing God, and if you don’t die you say “thank God,” and if you do die your family says “well I guess God had other plans.” Simple enough, but what about these Buddhist fellas.

I came to the conclusion that the monks were, in essence, giving us their sincere good wishes. We, like them, are travelers on a road, and if in our case that road contains a really high mountain, well then so be it. I’d bet that most, if not all, of those monks saw nothing but futility in our quest, but they accepted that this was the task we had chosen for ourselves, and so they said good luck, hope you make it out alive. In hindsight I don’t think that I could have asked for anything more.

Live Honest Die Happy

2010-10-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

A little something I wrote in response to an email I received giving examples of how God destroys anyone who mocks him.

That kooky God of Vengeance stuff always splits my mind: on the one hand I’m tempted to ask “so while some nameless guy was being fed his severed fingers in some concrete-walled torture chamber in Cambodia and praying for a quick death, God was too busy to listen to him because he was out knocking off Bon “Highway to Hell” Scott, or while that mother in Sudan was lying on the floor of her hut praying do die so she wouldn’t have to watch a hoard gang rape her ten-year old daughter God was a little preoccupied killing John “we’re more popular than God” Lennon, how do you explain that.” The answer invariably is “well God works in mysterious ways,” well he wasn’t so mysterious a minute ago when you were preaching about all the death and destruction He’s caused, he was pretty damn un-mysterious then. On the other hand if some prick doesn’t abduct that girl because he’s afraid of God’s vengeance, or that drunk doesn’t drain a sixth gin and tonic and bloody his wife because he fears divine retribution, well I guess that’s one less pedophile and one less wife beater.

Personally I side with Jefferson and Franklin when I say “I don’t know.” This is the only honest answer anyone can give when it comes to the existence of some godlike entity. One thing I’m certain of, the one conclusion supported by overwhelming evidence, is that if there is a God he/she/it plays no role whatsoever in the day to day workings of this planet. What kind of God brings an idiot who broke his neck while flipping his ATV back to life while sitting idly by while the son of a Liberian fisherman has to watch his dad get his hands cut off before being forced to put the final bullet into his father’s brain. As Desie would say to Lucy “he’s got some ‘splaining to do.”

My plan, and the plan I pass down to my kids, is to live life in a descent way, and in the moment before death reflect back on a life well-lived. I believe that when you just let go of the mumbo jumbo and simply accept the fact that there is no divine intervention; that God suffers as we suffer, you free yourself. Sadly most folks are not willing to be free, they would rather harbor dreams of being “born again” having their sins “washed away.” Sorry sucker you are who you are so think twice. Same story with the bible – a valley was flooded, a farmer along with a goat and a cow floated to safety and over the generations the story grew to the entire earth being flooded and a giant ark with every living animal aboard. The bible was written by folks with a very limited world view: to the author of the great flood story the entire world was that valley. The bible is basically metaphors and rules for how to behave in a lawless world. When you accept it as the work of fallible humans you free yourself from all the denials, conspiracy theories and circuitous logic required by the creationist crowd.

The sad truth is is that most folks would rather be led around by the nose than to truly think and be held accountable for their actions. They want to blame someone else for their poor miserable lives: it ain’t my fault that my marriage failed: it’s because of that homosexual over there. This is why the God of Vengeance theology needs an enemy – someone to slaughter as a scapegoat. Is it any wonder now that the homosexual card is becoming played out that churches are beginning to take aim at Islam.

Just In Time

2010-10-12T14:29:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I did something I’ve been meaning to do for two years: I shut off my cable TV. I’m not one of those folks who like to claim that television sucks, because I don’t think that it does. I have no problem with entertainment – all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy – and television offers some good entertainment.

The now cancelled show of Deadwood is Shakespearean in it’s intriguing dialog, it’s complex characters and it’s interwoven themes of myopic greed, redemption, human fallibility and petty jealously just to name a few. Currently my family and I are watching Lost, and though it’s gotten a bit longwinded and what appears to be unnecessarily weird, it’s good fun and during dinner we like to speculate on what’s going to happen next. And don’t forget The Office, when Andy tore his scrotum, I’m laughing right now just thinking about it. Who thinks up that stuff?

Luckily we can now watch the shows we want to see without having to wade through the sewer dodging turds like Jersey Shore and Desperate Housewives as they float by. I’ve never seen either show and will die a happy man if I never do. Unfortunately TV executives must have fallen asleep early in their college drama classes. Yes drama needs conflict, but conflict alone isn’t drama it’s voyeurism. The reality show formula is to put a bunch of weak people together and incite a conflict. Watching two chicks catfight over a bum pretending to be a millionaire might be fun for a minute, but then it just gets sad. Really sad.

Shutting off the TV in October was just in time as we have totally avoided the political lies, I mean the political ads.

It's the Economy Stupid

2010-10-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

The entire Seattle region is gridlocked, and despite having a newly elected bike friendly mayor there still hasn’t been a serious, or even a non-serious, discussion about making the city more accessible and safer for cyclists. It’s taken me a while to understand the reason, but I’ve finally realized that it can be summed up in three letters: GDP.

Everyone seems to be talking about the economy lately; what they are really talking about is the Gross Domestic Product – the total of all goods and services produced in the U.S, and let’s face it cars are good for the economy and bikes aren’t. Bikes reduce pollution- bad for the economy (nothing to clean up). Bikes promote good health – bad for the economy (no more oxygen tanks for emphysema sufferers to lug around). Riding a bike makes you happier – bad for the economy (the U.S. leads the world in antidepressant drugs). Riding a bike doesn’t burn fossil fuels – bad for the economy (no more massive profits for oil companies). Riding a bike doesn’t require massive road building projects – bad for the economy ( no more Senatorial pet building projects). People in the know know that cars contribute to the economy whereas bikers, well they’re just freeloaders.

We assume that a roaring economy is a good thing, but why do we assume that? Robert. Kennedy put down some very insightful words on the matter:

Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm, nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Study after study show that once folks rise above abject poverty wealth and happiness have no correlation. Money can’t buy happiness, but a lack of it sure can buy misery. I wish that I was living the monastic life, free of material wants, but it would only take a minute for me to lay out exactly what two new bikes I need and what new camera will be the “last camera I ever own.” At least I’m starting to realize that the satisfaction is more in the acquisition than in the possession.

When we talk of the economy it’s worthwhile to realize that it’s much better to be overweight, depressed, divorced and behind the wheel of a Hummer than it is to raise a garden, get another year out of your car and only purchase that which you can afford.

Finding a Good Fit

2010-10-10T09:40:00.001-07:00

10-10-10 a good date for a blog post. I really need to get on the stick and post everyday.

Kris and I took a step closer towards making our bike racing dreams a reality yesterday by joining up with the Blue Rooster team meet and greet. Blue Rooster is a Seattle-based bike team and I was impressed with the turn-out and enthusiasm of the team members. Once I decide to do something I want to have done it yesterday, and so I’m a bit impatient with regards to finding a team and getting all decked out in the kit colors. Normally I’d just go with the first team I was exposed to, but now that I’m older and, hopefully, a little wiser I’d like to take my time on this decision and find a team wherein I’d be a good fit. Next week I’ll ride with Cycle U and the week after that I’ll hit Motofish.

Triathlon biking is a lot different than team riding mainly because in triathlon you’re penalized for riding in a group wherein during a bike race group riding is not only encouraged it’s nearly mandatory. Most of my Ironman training rides were either solo, or with a few friends whose rear tires I normally kept at a safe distance. If you’re going to ride in aero (i.e. unstable and without quick access to brakes) you can’t ride tight. This is what I’m used to. Riding with a group of thirty was completely new to me, but I must say it didn’t seem all that stressful. I have to confess however I don’t think that the team was pushing the pace very hard. My bike handling skills are above average, and so long as I don’t fall into too much daydreaming I think I’ll be just fine.

Looking For Clint

2010-09-30T09:07:00.001-07:00

Caught a bit of the California Indian summer down in Carmel; the locals told us that the ninety five degree temperatures we were experiencing were pretty darn far from normal. It's been cloudy and cold up here in the Northwest so a little heat and sunshine was received without complaint.

Carmel started out as an artist's community and it maintains the look and feel of a place predating fast food and cheap tscotchkes. I'm sure that McDonalds and Super Eight would love to sink their mitts deep into the place; I'm sure that it takes more than a little effort by civic leaders to maintain authenticity. The winding streets and give a damn architecture reminded me of the tiny Beaux Arts community located adjacent to the ever growing city of Bellevue, Washington.

With the exception of a few newlyweds, Melony and I definitely were the youngsters. When I went out for morning coffee the typical scene was a fit woman in her late fifties-early sixties decked in the latest fitness gear including cap and expensive running shoes leading a dumpy man wearing cargo shorts and grass-stained white athletic shoes. Carmel seems to be the vacation spot for the guy who long ago made a Faustian deal - money for your soul.

I'm glad to see that these tiny slices of life endure, that they overcome the pressure to be like everywhere else.

Clandestine Footwear

2010-09-23T08:17:00.001-07:00

Last weekend my son Sam and I attended the Starcrossed cyclocross series in Marymore park. It was the same night as a Grateful Dead (I didn't even know that these guys were still around) concert and as we crawled along behind a Microbus I commented to my son, "who the hell are all these dopers anyway?" I had momentarily forgotten that I'd attended a Dead concert back when Jerry Garcia wasn't just an ice cream flavor, but an actual real live person. I guess we're destined to turn into our parents.

Anyway I love finding new cool groups of people who live colorful in this monochromatic age, and cyclocross racers and fans certainly fit the bill as being colorful. We live in crazy times, a period in which outlandish lies are sold as truth and when appearance is valued over substance. It's hard not to become cynical. All I can say is thank God for the honest few, thank God for the few who wear crazy shoes, and thank God for those who race hard and smile when they cross the finish line.

And to the Deadheads I say the Dead are dead, let 'em rest in peace.

Cle Elum Ridge 17 Mile Trail Run

2010-09-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

Kris, Tina, Wendy and I ran the Cle Elum Ridge 25K Trail Run on Saturday – I call it the Cle Elum Ridge 17 mile Trail Run because the course was a mile and a half long. Based on the few organized trail runs that I’ve participated in I can say that so far two constants hold true: cool people and beautiful women. Nearly all of the gals had a dog on a leash, a big white smile and a halo-like glow that comes from ample time spent in the out of doors. If I were a single fella I’d be at one of these races every weekend.

It’s been extraordinarily wet, even by Pacific Northwest standards, recently and I expected a muddy course, but what I didn’t expect was all the standing water. The race course was on an ATV track and those knobby tires and internal combustion engines leave behind a rocky, potholed, stair-stepped mess. Luckily we only encountered only two riders as I think most of the bikers tuned into our presence and wisely chose other routes. The course also involved a lot of monster climbs most of which were best climbed at a fast walking pace in order to spare the calves and thighs.

My disadvantage on a hilly course is the downhill portion – I just can’t seem to let ‘em go and fly downhill, and consequently lost a lot of time on the descents. Concern over more stress fractures combined with a fear of rolled ankles and a general lack of catlike reflexes keeps me overly constrained when going down. I followed Tina for a while and was amazed at how nimbly she floated downhill: she was skipping and dancing while I was skidding and sliding.

I carried a Nathan Quickdraw handheld water bottle which I’d bought the day before, and filled it with Cytomax. I liked the handheld, it was easy to carry and comfortable, but disliked the Cytomax. The last time I used Cytomax was 2002 on a climb of Manaslu in Nepal and had no trouble, but on the run it upset my stomach. Perhaps it’s better used at lower intensities.

My finish time was 3:23 and during that time I took on 20 ounces of water, two and a half gels, two Oreos, a handful of gummy bears and two fun sized Snickers bars. I might have been a bit light on the hydration but other than that I felt really strong at the finish and had no signs of bonking.

Long trail runs become kind of a solo event and after the first aid station at mile 5.6 Kris, Tina, Wendy and I were all kind of on our own. It’s cool that even though each of us ran our own race we finished sequentially, each of us just minutes or even seconds behind the other. Jim Varner puts on a great race, and I felt fine for the entire seventeen miles. I think next stop will be the Orcas Island 50http://orcasisland50k.blogspot.com/K.

Thirteen on the Thirteenth or What's SUP

2010-09-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

I don’t remember my parents ever preaching the gospel of commitment and determination, but for some reason or another my three brothers and I all have an almost masochistic aversion to quitting. Not following through is anathema to me and I figure that’s a good thing; I’ve held on to some stupid ideas longer than I should have, but on balance I’ve come out ahead, so I can’t complain. With that said, it was with great consternation that on Sunday I walked away from the Round the Rock – a thirteen mile standup paddleboard race around my home isle of Mercer Island. In my defense it was a pretty stupid idea to begin with, I was wholly unprepared and completely clueless; this was a major endurance race and my sole preparation had been a ninety minute chill SUP lesson in Elliot Bay.

I have a whole suitcase full of really good excuses for not doing the race, but the short of it is that walking away really soured in my stomach. To make matters worse I felt like my son saw me as a hypocrite – that I push commitment on him but in the end I bail. Unfortunately the fact of being a parent is that you can do fifty awesome things and your kids couldn’t care less, but you screw up once and they pounce like a crouching tiger. So to make a long story short, yesterday I put Sophia on the bus, strapped the borrowed board atop the Subaru, drove to the beach at Luther Burbank Park dipped the board and started paddling.

Despite some headwinds on the last four miles, the day was a good one for paddling; the thirteen and a half mile circumnavigation took me three hours and fifty minutes. I have to say that the Mercer Island shoreline looks rather like something from Martha’s Vineyard, I half expected to see the Kennedy clan playing touch football out on one of the manicured lawns. Who are these people?

All in all SUP is good simple fun, much easier than lugging around a heavy bulky kayak. Too bad the price of admission is so high – a descent board will cost you at least fifteen hundred.

Gimme Shelter

2010-09-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

Recently my son and I spent a sunny morning in Northern Idaho building a tipi. It was a place for him and so we made the opening big enough for a kid, but too tight for an adult.

Since I was a kid I've been enthralled by Native American culture, and am especially drawn to the great tribes of the Western Plains. I'm sure I'm romanticizing a bit but it seems to me that the tribal culture was more "real." I think there is something inherently positive about a society in which everyone lives in a home of their own creation. Your character is on full display when what you own is a reflection of the pride and care you take in living life.

Modern Western society is so full of B.S. We've created a society of illusion - one in which you are what you appear to be, which is often in direct opposition to what you actually are. Line up Ronald Reagan, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Kerry and ask "who is the war hero?" Chances are you wouldn't get the right answer. Love him or hate him it doesn't matter, the fact remains that Senator Kerry is a bona fide warrior - he has the medals and scars to prove it - but that just never caught on with the U.S. public because he doesn't fit the Hollywood mold.

If anything I hope I've taught my children to take pride in what they do, because in the end we are what we create, and what you say, claim or brag makes no difference.

An Old Dog

2010-08-30T18:46:00.000-07:00

Way back in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety I bought a top of the line mountain bike – a Trek 990 – for $450. Now you gotta remember that back in them thar dark ages I was earning five hundred a week as a budding up and coming aerospace engineer, so the price tag was as steep as the hills I was dreaming of pedaling up. Over the decades I’ve made a few upgrades like a front shock and new brakes but the old black and pink paint job never sat well with me. Well finally I took matters to task and had the old steel lugged frame stripped down and powder coated orange. It was a bold move, but it turned out fantastic.

I rebuilt the bike the other day and must say I’m happy with the result. If I throw on a sealed bottom bracket and some modern wheels I think I might have something to take me into the next decade. Obviously a Santa Cruz Blur XC would be a nice upgrade, and the full suspension would be EZ on my old bones, but dang a fella's gotta draw the line somewhere. I have a single speed, a TT bike, a road bike, a mountain bike and am looking at cycle cross bikes, do I really need a full suspension mountain bike. We all know the answer to that question, but before I go shopping the old dog is going to have to get me around the mountain a few more times.

Mike's Saw Works

2010-08-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Last week while I was hanging out at a friend's cabin in Idaho I had need of a hacksaw, but could only find a single blade in the tool closet. After hacking away for awhile with just the blade I decided to make a backwoods saw; the only tool I used was a Leatherman Wave. The resulting saw felt better than what I have in the shop at home. All said and done it took me less than ten minutes to make and best of all my son Sam was impressed with the result.

Over The Top - Highway 20

2010-08-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Many years ago a friend of mine wrote a story with the theme of transforming a dream into memory. It’s a theme I’m not afraid to steal. For two decades now I’ve been driving over the North Cascades Highway in a car loaded down with either mountaineering or skiing gear, and often I’ve said aloud “man I sure would like to ride this.” Summers are too short and time slips away, but after several false starts I managed to get a group together; August 14 was the date.

The alarm on my James Bond wristwatch never fails me and I was pulling on my new cycling shorts at four AM. Bradley, my partner in this particular crime, is, like me, an early riser and he was standing patiently beneath a dusky sky when I pulled my trusty Subaru into the Mercer Island Park and Ride. Twenty minutes later we met up with Kris and Wendy beneath Interstate 5 near Greenlake. Bradley and I were planning on riding one hundred miles round trip from the Colonial Creek campground to the Mazama General Store while Kris and Wendy planned to turn around thirty two miles down the uphill road at Washington Pass.

The temperature at Colonial Creek was cool, but the clear windless skies foretold heat so I put on sunscreen and left the arm warmers in the car. Normally I’m not much of a sunscreen kind of fellow, as it hints of forethought, but it was going to be a long day in the sun so what the hell.

Colonial Creek to Mazama is nearly to the foot fifty miles, and since I believe in the keep it simple stupid mantra I elected to start our day where Colonial Creek flows into the unnaturally green waters of Diablo Lake. Ten miles east of the Seattle City Light company town of Newhalem and sandwiched between the Diablo and Ross Dams, Diablo Lake is clear and toe numbing cold, but from the road it reflects a deep emerald green due to sunlight passing through microscopic particles of the mineral gneiss which has been ground off the surrounding mountains and held in suspension in the glacial waters.

Highway 20 eastbound from Colonial Creek rises steeply towards the Ross Lake Resort parking lot and provides no opportunity for the legs to adjust to a long day of pushing and pulling pedals. With only a pair of short respites the trip up to Rainy Pass is entirely uphill. We were in cycle tourist mode and consequently kept the speed slow and steady, the grade was gentle enough to allow each of us to find an all day rhythm and gradually we knocked off the miles. The road was smooth, the shoulder wide and the sun warm and I greatly enjoyed the soft pace and the rare opportunity to converse with my riding partners. I made good use of the opportunity to tell stories of the mountains I’ve climbed or attempted to climb. At one point I think Wendy became fairly exhausted with yet another story that began with “I remember one time…”

The drop from Rainy Pass was much too short and after only a minute of speedy descent we were back again to climbing – this time up to Washington Pass. Once again the grade was gradual and I feel into a smooth easy cadence and sooner than expected the fanglike Liberty Bell Tower began appearing over the treetops. At Washington Pass we joined the Harley Riders at the precipitous overlook where Bradley and I caught our first glimpse of the daredevil descent into the furnace of Eastern Washington.

The water fountains at the elaborate structure in the center of the Washington Pass Overlook parking lot were turned off, quite a disappointment, but it was downhill for all of us so our survival wasn’t in question. Bradley bid goodbye to Kris and Wendy as we headed east down the seventeen mile descent into Mazama.
Despite a recent remodel the Mazama General store was still funky and eclectic. The little store in the middle of nowhere is one of my favorite places, it was refreshing to see that even though things change they also stay the same. Bradley and I rehydrated and ate sandwiches in the shade, oblivious to the fact that the thermometer was now reading triple digits. “How hot do you think it is?” Bradley asked.

“Must be at least ninety,” I replied. I was shallow by twelve degrees.

Seventeen miles of continual uphill in one hundred and two degree heat is a bit daunting and luckily I now have the maturity to know how to pace myself. At times like these you need to count your blessings and I was grateful for the small tailwind and the stunning scenery. This little pocket of Northeastern Washington is my kind of place.

I drank nearly the full measure of my two oversize water bottles and wondering why I hadn’t packed a third when I hit Washington Pass. I was thinking of flagging down a passing car to inquire as to whether or not they might sell me a can of Coke. As it turned out I scarcely took a drink for the next thirty miles as it was nearly all screaming downhill.

Bradley and I arrived at the car a full nine hours after starting out, our odometers agreed at one hundred and one miles. Our riding time was almost an even eight hours. We soaked our legs in the ice bath known as Diablo Lake and then got on the road, stopping at the Buffalo Run restaurant in Marblemount for elk burgers and cold Stella beer.

Every Breath...

2010-08-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

Seattle is such an eclectic city that I often forget hidden gems. Ballard is one such jewel. Last Thursday Sam, Kris and I headed down to the Shilshole Marina for a stand up paddle board lesson from the guys at Ballard Surf. The lesson lasted all of thirty five seconds: stand here, hold your paddle like this, if you fall get back on the board and try again.

Getting on the board was easier than I had imagined, I was a little nervous about Sam as he was on a more tippy standard surf board, as opposed to a wider stand up paddle board (SUP). The head instructor had told me that Sam really should have a life jacket, but that he’d leave that decision to me. Sam has been in competitive swimming for three years, and because the board his was tied to was in essence a floatation device I opted for no jacket. It was one of those decisions that you kind of begin to regret as you get further and further from shore. But in the end Sam stayed atop his board the entire time and was even jumping up and down by the end so all’s well that ends well.

The assistant instructor was a cool fellow; he had the only tattoos I’d ever actually liked. On his right forearm were the words Every Breath, and on the Left was Is A Gift. I told him that he should have had it written upside down so he could be reminded, but he said that he needed to remind others more than he needed to remind himself. On his right shoulder was an image taken from a famous photo of the late great skier Doug Coombs. I would seriously consider a similar inking for myself but I would have to be a shot of Bill, Brian or Scott.

We paddled around for two and a half hours and then hit a little Caribbean sandwich shop called Paseo. Little did I know that this was some “must go to before you die” place. The Cuban Pulled Pork was definitely worth a second visit.

I’m now in the market for a SUP. Dang they are expensive. Julie and I are going to do the race around Mercer Island come September so I’m going to have to get a little practice. I like the simplicity of the sport. I live fifty feet from the water and could zip through my neighbor’s yard and be paddling inside of two minutes. It’s always something isn’t it.