Travel Update

My dance card for the the next few months is filling up fast. Tomorrow I'm taking WaveGuide up to the San Juans to visit Bonnie on DragonFly for a few days. I'll come back on Sunday and then head up to Vancouver, BC, later in the week. On the way back, I'll stop at Oak Harbor for Race Week, a.k.a. Summer Camp for Adults. A couple of weeks later I'll be in Edmonton (by motorcycle, not boat) to visit family and take in some music at the Folk Festival. By the time I get back from there, I'll be in full planning mode for this fall's Himalayan adventure.

The Himalayan plan is taking shape. Himalayan Megan (as opposed to daughter Megan) and I plan to fly to Beijing around the end of September. After a couple of days of de-jetlagging and seeing the sights in and around Beijing, we'll take a two-day train ride to Lhasa. The train route goes through passes so high (over 5000m) that the cars have supplemental oxygen! After a few days in Lhasa, we'll join an overland Land Cruiser expedition to Katmandu, with a possible side trip to Everest Base Camp. We will spend some time in Nepal and hope to visit the host parents of Megan's daughter, who just came back from Nepal after a year there as an exchange student. This could be a very interesting part of the trip since she was staying in the hinterlands of Nepal, well off the beaten tourist track. We'll then travel across Northern India to Delhi (probably via the Taj Mahal) and then fly back to Seattle. An added feature of this itinerary is that for the first time, I will actually travel all the way around the world!

We've got to get visas and shots, and I've got to buy a bunch of stuff that a fat, out-of-shape, middle-aged, old fart like me doesn't have lying around in the closet. Megan is a serious climber and trekker with world-wide experience, so her list is a lot shorter than mine. As my expert on all things trekking related, she took me to REI the other day to buy me a decent pair of boots. We found the perfect pair and a couple of other odds and ends I'll need. In the checkout line, she ran into a couple of her super-buff, 30 or 40-something climbing friends, and they were soon comparing notes on recent and planned expeditions. Megan introduced me, and soon started talking about our Himalayan plans. Her friends asked who she was going with, and Megan pointed to me. The conversation carried on, but since I didn't have a lot to add, I was relatively quiet. A bit later they asked about travel mates again, as if the answer didn't quite register the first time. The look on their faces said Huh?! The next time that sort of thing happens, or if someone asks me what sort of climbing I'm into, I think I'll reply, "Oh, I'm not a mountain climber, I'm a social climber." (Hat tip to Hal for coming up with the line after I told him the story)

Mundane housekeeping update.....I managed to fix two of the three issues with my downstairs bathroom yesterday. It involved opening walls, moving the washer/dryer unit, sweating and swearing, giving a bit of blood to the plumbing gods, and I didn't finish until 10PM, but I think (hope) all's well. I've lived with the third issue since I've been here, so I can live with it a bit longer.