Current Mental Status (Questionable)

Time left at posting: 3095 hours

I am so ready to go on this trip!  Mentally I am strung out and really need a break from the day-to-day stuff that makes up life.  I know what your thinking, but nope, it is not the family.  They are great.  It's not the job either, although that does play a small part in my stress level.  It is going to school every night that has me so tired I can hardly see straight.  Every night it is homework, homework and more homework.  Even if I do take a night off, I spend the time thinking about how I really should be doing homework.  Even posting this blog is taking away time from the homework that I really should be doing. I have until this October, then I will be finished with my classes at the University of Phoenix.  No more &%$@ing homework!

It seems rational to think that it is because of all the homework that I find myself daydreaming about a time when I won't have any.  And as we are departing for Nepal less than two weeks after I graduate, it really has me looking forward to this trip even more than I normally would.  I can't wait to get off the bus in Jiri and just start walking.  If there is one thing that I really enjoy about being on the trail is just the lack of mental distractions.  My mind is able to let go of many of the day to day drivel that normally occupy my head and can instead focus on more important issues such as the painful blister that is forming on my big toe, or how tired my legs are from climbing up this damn mountain.  Instead of thinking about work, I can instead turn my attention to the mental and physical complexities that are involved in avoidance of Yak poop on the trail or falling off a rock face while I am taking my own bathroom break.  God am I looking forward to this!

For some people a perfect vacation is sitting on a tropical beach and doing absolutely nothing.  Others may like the thrill a minute adventures where they are constantly on the go.  While I like tropical beaches and wild adventures, I think I would much rather go to Nepal or some other exotic location and  get off the beaten path somewhere.  Throw out the schedule and take it one day at a time.  Walk when you want to walk, eat when you want to eat and stop when you want to stop.  Just be at the airport for your flight home and you're good to go.  I guess I just don't like playing the stereotypical tourist.  And it is not like we don't have any goals in mind for this trip, but they are all negotiable and not set in stone.  After all, we may get all the way over there and not even see Mount Everest due to cloud cover or some other reason.  I am trying to focus on enjoying the entire trip, not judging it strictly on whether we get to put a check mark next to everything on our to-do list.

Test email

Testing to see if I can post through email.

Time to make some decisions

When booking our flights a few months back, I was finding it difficult to keep my excitement level down. After all, it would be another nine months before we started our journey, so no point getting all worked up in to a bother quite yet. Well we are now quickly getting to the point where we need to start making some decisions.  Jeff and I got together this weekend and decided on a guide and porter service.  There is still some question on our route to Gokyo and if we can do it comfortably with the amount of time we have.  We really need the expert advice of a guide to help us make a final decision.  23 days may sound like a long time, but it is actually pretty quick for a trip like ours.  Many people take a full month and will add a side trip or two if they need to kill some time.  As Jeff and I are pretty decent at backpacking, I am hopeful that we can stay ahead of the sample schedule our guide provided us and free up a day or two.  We will need to arrive at Lukla for our flight back to Kathmandu the day before departure so we can check-in and get our boarding passes and the last thing we want to do is have to rush to get there.  There is also the possibility of weather delays out of Lukla, so the more time we have the better.  We don't want to miss our flight back to the US.

Another thing I seem to be overly concerned with is my gear.  I don't know why I am so focused on it, but I find myself constantly going over what I should bring.  Honestly, buying gear is one of my favorite things to do, but I wish I could just be satisfied that I have what I need so I can focus on other issues.  I just can't stop wondering if my sleeping bag will be warm enough, or do I have enough layers to keep me comfortable during the trip. Throw on top of that the fact I don't want to look like some goober that just came rolling out of an REI store with all new gear.  This is a Big faux pas in the hiking world, so I might have to roll around in the dirt before we leave and break things in a bit.  I do think however that I am going with a new day pack.  I played around with my regular pack and have decided it is just too heavy.  No point carrying any more weight that I absolutely need to.  Jeff created a spreadsheet for listing all of our gear, so I will play with that for a while.

The next few items to check off on the to-do list is to find a cool hotel in Kathmandu and cement in our guide and trip itinerary.  We are also going to obtain our visa's for Nepal before we leave so that it will be one less thing we have to stand in line for once we arrive.  I should probably also generate a informal list of things we might want to visit while in Hong Kong.  We don't have much time and a plan can help make sure we see some cool stuff.

You're going where?

While I have talked about this for some time, it appears that I will finally be going to Nepal this October. As one might put together from the title of my blog, I will be gone for a glorious 23 days on a trek to the Gokyo region of Nepal. We chose this trek as it offered an amazing experience and fantastic views of Mount Everest, but strays just a bit off the beaten (literally) path. My trek mate on this adventure will be my good friend and backpacking buddy Jeff from nearby San Rafael.  Jeff is a serious photographer and has taken some really great shots on our earlier adventures.  Not only is he a good guy to have around, but we are going to have some fantastic photo's to share afterwards.  I will hopefully post some of them here.  I have also added a link to his photography page in the my links section.  

So the basics of the trip for those interested are as follows. We are booked to fly out of San Francisco on the 21st of October and will return to SF on the 11th of November. From SF, we will travel to Hong Kong where we will have a 23 hour layover. We plan on hitting the town for a quick visit before jumping back in an airplane to Kathmandu. Once there, we will hook up with our guide(s), get our permits and jump on a bus for a 10-12 hour ride to a village called Jiri.  Jiri marks the formal beginning of our trek as we are on foot from here on. Our route takes us up and through Lukla, where most people fly in and start their trek to Everest Base Camp, and then to Namche Bazaar where we will peel off from the main herd and continue on our trek towards Gokyo. We will spend a couple of days exploring the glacier, nearby peaks including Gokyo Ri and the breathtaking views of Mount Everest before departing down the hill to Lukla for our flight back to Kathmandu. If you have never heard of the Lukla airport, I have added a link for a video that shows an aircraft landing there. It is listed as one of the ten most dangerous airports in the world (notice I did not say deadliest...) and should be quite the experience.  I am actually looking forward to this flight! After a couple of days in Kathmandu, we catch our flight back to the states where we will resume our routine yet wonderfully satisfying lives.

This blog will serve as a personal journal and as a medium for sharing my experiences with my friends and family. I had such a great experience with the blog I kept during our adoption of our son Jack, that I decided to create one dedicated to our Nepal adventure. Our adoption blog is still something that I return to visit and reminisce over quite often and I plan on using this blog in the same fashion.