Now, where was I?

Back to blogging.

There have been very few posts since my Everest base camp trek. Here are my excuses, and I'm sticking to them.

First:
Facebook. An anti-social networking apparatus that helps one excavate the departed. So much has been written about this thing that I not need have my say except to say that I have been as pleasantly surprised to find old friends who have decomposed quicker than I or gained a lot more weight than me, as I have been disappointed to find lassies of yore still looking great, and in some cases, are even hotter now and just as doable (if not more so) since back in d’day when most of them (for this reason or that reason) strongly suggested we were parting ways by cramming my stuff in boxes, leaving the boxes on front porches, revising the answering machine messages from "We're not home" to "I'm not home" and changing locks on the doors.

I do not believe that they've accepted my request to become a Facebook friend because time heals all wounds as much as they want to be sure I haven't moved back into the neighborhood.

I haven't found a more powerful and remorseless devourer of time on the computer since discovering there are a lot of pictures of nekkid women on the innernet.

Second reason for not blogging: Last spring/And "No" I just can't let it go:

Almost as soon as I returned from the base camp trek, fit and trim, having taken mind, heart, and consciousness to their deepest levels of non-medicated tranquility to date, I returned to work and was asked if I'd consider taking my E-learning talents to the community college just outside the university's main gates.

I vaguely remember cautiously deliberating the semester-long assignment, telling the director I needed to sleep on it. I got back to her with a shortlist of provisos--and topping that list was a daytime schedule. She agreed. The Community College campus coordinator agreed, so I went.

The following day, I am sure I overheard "sucker!" spoken in Arabic whenever I entered a room, but I do not know Arabic's colloquial equivalent, so I cannot be certain of this.

I was assigned an evening schedule. I pissed. I moaned. I bitched. I wailed "foul", but there was nothing I could do about it. Whatever peace of mind and soul cleansing tranquility I'd returned from Everest with withered like a dream deferred the first week of night time classes.

For the next three and a half months, I would spend my days pacing from computer to TV, shoveling one sandwich and schnack after another into my stomach, expanding my 34 inch waist to an uncomfortable 36 inch gut that I'd spent months working off two years ago, followed by two years of health clubbing just to maintain.

I have enough self awareness to know that the fat pants should not be sent to a charity bin. By June, revisiting my Fat Elvis phase, I took off for my holiday ten days ahead of the wife, ten days I would not be able to recall in great detail, ten days of going full Elvis. Had I been given a two-week head start, I have no doubt that my friend K. would have found my cold and bloated corpse stenching up his guest bathroom.

Today, I'm draggng my fat ass back to the high impact aerobics and boot camp classes where I stand in the back of the class and leer; leering motivates--end of story.

I also started sorting out work stuff, so I went about emptying the contents of my briefcase in order to cram it full of newly photocopied handouts, white board markers and a bunch of other office shit. While doing this, I came across my (literally) weather beaten base camp trek journal which I'd meant to put on this blog months ago.

So.

When last I wrote of the trek, I wrote about having had a few beers in Kathmandu with a Nepali lesbian who was keeping company with the young man who helped me acquire a provision not sold in stores.

Here's where the journal takes up from that entry.

Kathmandu to Lukla to Phakding

December 31 (New Year’s Eve 2008, Phakding Guest House)

I stayed up later than I should have last night, enjoyed meandering through the not-as-seedy-as-one-would think underbelly of Kathmandu night life, the narrow streets and labyrinthine alleys of the touristyThamel district, jam packed with dread locky, tattooed, gap year backpackers who outnumbered tourists in my age and income bracket, I’d say roughly, 100 -1.

I’d begun yesterday afternoon after the pre-trek meeting with the tour operator and Sherpa guide by stocking up on supplies (energy bars, peanut butter, water, powdered Gator-Aid, a first aid kit, stuff. . .) Then at sunset, a rolling blackout rolled through the district and darkness came with flickering candle light and the rumbling groans of deisel-powered generators. I went to the Maya’s Mexican Cocktail Lounge and Restaurant three doors down from the Excelsior Hotel.

I’d missed happy hour by fifteen minutes but the bartender recognized me and even remembered my name and so he cut me a twofer deal anyway. I've known him since my first visit to Nepal back during my blond wife years through the red headed wife years. He hasn’t met my newest spouse, my personal best marriage now going on six years, but one day soon, I am sure he will be serving her up her standard gin and tonic, short on the gin, heavy on the tonic which she nurses for hours and hours before letting me have the last few watered down sips. I wanted to order the usual nacho platter supper and a margarita or two, but the microwave wasn't melting cheese. I ordered something cooked on a wood burning stove.

After dinner, I crossed the alley to an Internet cafe where a generator roared as busy fingers drummed on keyboards and where most monitors displayed Facebook home pages. I wrote an Email home detailing expenses which are always a topic of great interest in this, my longest lasting and most financially secure union of man and woman:

"Hello my long-suffering wife. It's just gotten dark. The power is out, but the Internet cafe has its own generator, so. . .

I met my guide earlier today. His name is Dawa. Dawa says when I come down from the mountain I will leave many fears behind. We shall see. I bought boots for 60 dollars and an extra memory chip and battery for the camera--45 dollars. I picked up other supplies including rain gear and a first aid kit , totaling about 50 dollars. I leave for the airport tomorrow morning at 5:30. I've been told that tomorrow night we'll rest in a village with electricity and Internet, so I will try to write New Year's Eve.

New Years day I will be in Namche where I will acclimatize to the altitude for two days. There will also be an Internet connection in Namche, so I'll write from there as well. After that, for about 9 days, probably little to no communication.

The trekking company has your telephone and Email address. If they contact you, tell them to feed my body to the birds."

After I sent the Email, I dedicated the rest of the night to getting hold of a few grams of a stuff, had a conversation with that Nepali lesbian, then retired to the Excelsior Hotel to watch the last half hour of the DeNiro/Pacino pairing, “Heat” on Star Movies Asia.

This morning I woke up at 5 to meet Dawa, my Sherpa guide in the hotel lobby. The room was cold and dark and stank of cigarette smoke, mildewy blankets and lingering diesel fumes.

I lit a candle provided to me by the desk clerk the night before then dressed in layers—thermal underwear, jeans, flannel shirt, sweater, scarf, hat and parka. Threw on the backpack and felt my way down the stairs in the dark.

Dawa and our taxi driver were waiting for me in the lobby. Dawa was more lightly dressed in a thin fraying, knitted sweater (probably Yak fur) and a much lighter parka, which he hadn’t zipped.

We arrived at the airport in time for our 6:30 flight, but because of the heavy fog, Dawa and I made ourselves comfortable in the local flight departure lounge, which was a large, drafty hall filled with nodding backpackers and their guides, most of us slouching along the walls as all of the chairs had been taken.

We waited three hours before boarding our twin-engine Jetstream-41. As we walked the tarmac to the plane, Dawa told me to grab a seat on the left, in the front row of a dozen rows of seats--one left, aisle, two on the right. The best views would be on the left.

I sat up front, window seat, separated from the cockpit by a pile of backpacks and gear. In the cockpit the pilot; a man sat on the left and his co-pilot , a babe wearing her black hair in a pony tail and a matching black leather jacket sat on the right as he and she went over their pre-flight checklist. Behind me, a chatty tour group from Quebec laughed it up and continued to chatter and chortle throughout the flight, a nervous laughter as the tiny flying tube bounced around the sky, buffeted by Himalayan winds that held us all hostage to fate.

The flight attendant crawled forward and served me a breakfast of sorts—a single caramel mint and a plastic glass of water. Dawa tapped me on the shoulder at one point and pointed out Mt. Everest. It was surrounded by rows of white dreamy peaks that stretched from one side of the horizon to the other and from the distance, it didn’t stand out as “the one”

About an hour after take off, the Lukla runway came into view. It ends at the foot of a mountain and looked to be no longer than the distance between home plate and second base. The implausibly undersized runway begins (or ends depending upon whether it’s a take off or landing) at the side of the mountain, and the twin engine plane sharply pitched to one side as it circled once high over the asphalt before it quickly descended, dropping like a stone safely to the ground.

Before leaving Lukla, we stopped in a guest house and ate eggs and hashbrowns cooked on a griddle heated by burning wood. We were at 2800 meters, about half the elevation to base camp.

After breakfast, we rucked up and began our trek that first wound down 200 meters to the village of Phakding. Though we scooted out boots at a steady, deliberate pace across the rocks embedded in the path, going downhill still took us three hours to reach Phakding. Uphill will be cruel.

It is New Year’s Eve. We arrived at sunset, and I have celebrated the night with small cheese pizza, cooked in a ubiquitous wood burning clay oven, a San Miguel beer and a Courvoisier from a small inflight bottle I had stashed away in my backpack with a dozen bottles, one for each night of the journey.