In the spirit of travel and adventure, my friend the Colossus writes about his experiences in visiting a place many wine connoisseurs probably haven't been to: Northeast, Texas. I don't know about you, but the fermented Hi-C sounded fantastic.
I've mentioned earlier that Thomas Nicols over at Jack's Army is currently in Iraq. He recently survived a VBIED (vehical-borne improvised explosive device) attack by insurgents terrorist scum. Send him your best wishes over at Jack's Army.
The adventure that I had put so much of myself into is slipping deeper and deeper into the past. The main page of this site only displays those posts I created in the prior 30 days and, as of today, there is only one post remaining within the last 30 days that was created while I was still there. My heart sank when I realized this--I'm now fully back into my "real life" again and faced the fact that my next adventure, of this magnitude, is a long way off.
Anyway, now you people: I stopped monitoring traffic on my website quite a long time ago. This website escaped the narrowly defined role that it was originally intended to perform, and since then, has actually kept a steady stream of traffic by people who mainly come to read, but not interact with it. Most of these people know me in some personal way, whether directly or through family and friends and have been curious about my Tibetan/Nepali/Everest adventure. It is always news to me to find out who is reading because I have no idea who exactly you are without some kind of online or offline interaction where you actually tell me that you are following along.
I really appreciate those of you who continue to read this and note that there is going to be a lot more material coming up. I never realized how therapeutic it is to write about it the further I get in time away from it. Each time I write about the trip, I remember its sights, sounds and smells (which isn't always a good thing) and has made me realize that it is a deep, expression of myself that I continually struggle to communicate to people in person. In person, much of my communication about it is clumsy, jumbled and does not even scratch the surface of exactly how meaningful it all was to me. By now, I should have my "elevator pitch" down, but I simply cannot do it. Some experiences do not have neatly packaged conclusions and this is clearly something that refuses to be shaved down to fit into something that is clean and easy to digest.
I sat in the peaceful garden of the Yak and Yeti Hotel, which was one of a handful of oases in an otherwise and utterly chaotic, Kathmandu. I had a good-tired going on; a tiredness that normally comes from a full day of progress, adventure, activity or hard work resulting in something resembling accomplishment. However, in this case, all I had done was show up on time to the airport, hand over my passport, pass through security without being molested, get on the plane when they announced "Now boarding: rows 35-50," sit in my assigned seat, turn my electronics on-and-off (when appropriate) and repeat these steps for the next two connections in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Although the very nature of this exercise is routine and monotonous, it was, nonetheless, one step in the telos, which was getting up and down from Mount Everest - Advanced Base Camp.
How does one prepare oneself mentally for something they've never experience before? How can anything from my past even remotely relate to this? Sitting in that garden with my notebook and pen, I strained to find something that could be considered an idea, but instead, I just watched the crows eat the peanuts left on the table next to me.
Let's try it again: I'd been to the Sierras, but although they are incredibly beautiful and technically challenging, I can often climb to the top of them during the summer in shorts and t-shirt and then return home without missing a day of work. 14,500 feet is nothing to brush off, but as Jules from Pulp Fiction said, 21,500 feet in the Himalayas "ain't the same &^$@in' ballpark, it ain't &^$@in' the same league, it ain't even the same &^$@in' sport." Although he was talking about foot-massages, it was still a bullseye in its application to me.
My mental abilities, which were clouded with dissociated uncertainty, needed some aid--the garden's server, came to rescue and gave me my healing tonic. Everest beer is enormous and tastes like Stella Artois; the label slapped to it shows Tenzing Norgay high atop Everest. photographic proof of Sir Edmund Hillary and himself becoming the first humans to stand on the summit of the highest peak in the world.
Tenzing Norgay is Nepal's greatest hero and instills them with tremendous pride, but in a different way than that of Neil Armstrong to Americans. Tenzing was able to sustain a rock star like status that more Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. However, although commercialism in Nepal hardly exists, I thought it was unique that the only item I saw which used their national icon's image to move some product was a gigantic bottle of beer.
And I thought that was cool.
You know who else was cool? This guy to my left: the garden's server, Bishnu (even though he might have stolen my chin while I took this picture). I introduced myself to him earlier and asked him about his family. Then, when things slowed down, he lingered a little longer. He showed me a picture of his family and told me about how proud he was of his teenage daughter who had done so well in school, that she was able to take her studies to Australia for a few months--although, he deeply misses their time they spend together around the dinner table every night.
"Life is good, sir," he passionately said, "It is great to be alive, here in Nepal, which I think is the best."
I smiled and couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't diminish what he had just told me. Normally, I say something smartass, but he was way too genuine and he wasn't finished:
"There are no bad days, sir. Life is too good to have a bad day."
It is odd coming to a country where people have so little and guys like Bishnu, who serve Westerners all day that probably make more in a week than he'd make in a lifetime, continue to smile from the inside-out. Not a care in the world; not because they're ignorant of the sufferings in this world, but because they've suffered greatly and have overcome it not materially, but mentally and spiritually.
Everyday for the rest of my stay at the Yak and Yeti Hotel, I went downstairs for another Everest beer just so I could hear about how good life was. I'd need to bottle some of that and bring it with me into the unknown--still, I was a little uneasy.
Indiana University Head Football Coach Terry Hoeppner died this morning from complications related to brain cancer at age 59. Coach Hep only coached two seasons at Indiana with a 9 - 14 record, but he will be always be remembered for being the man who did the impossible: he put hope back into an Indiana Football program that was previously dead.
Today, Indiana University lost its football coach, but the world lost a tremendous man whose presence was always felt and his positive attitude infectious to anyone who came into contact with him. He will be greatly missed.
On Mount Everest? Um sorry, there is no civil engineering team in the world that could pull that off. I think mankind would have a better shot of landing on the moon with a bicycle than building a road on Mount Everest.
Anway, I think Drudge was lost in translation on this. The article he links to probably orginated in Chinese as their headline also reads, "China to build highway on world's tallest mountain." But reading further, you will see that they are just building a paved road from New Tingri to Base Camp, which is 12 miles away from the actual mountain:
China will begin Monday building a "highway" on Mount Qomolangma, the world's tallest peak, in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region so as to ease the path of those bearing the Olympic torch.
Budgeted at 150 million yuan (19.7 million U.S. dollars), construction of the road will kick off at Qomolangma Base Camp 5,200 meters above sea level.
The project aims to turn a 108-km rough road linking Tingri County of Xigaze Prefecture at the foot of the mountain to the Base Camp into a blacktop highway fenced by undulating guardrails.
This is a really good thing. The ride in the Land Cruiser from New Tingri to the Rongbuk Monestary put my kidneys in my mouth. It is a rough dirt road that actually goes over a 4,500 meter pass called Dongla (-la means "pass" in Tibetan). Here is the road down from the top of Dongla:
The pass is absolutely gorgeous and gave us our first look at Everest:
I think the Chinese have found out that trips to Everest are good for tourism revenue. This road will get more climbers, trekkers and visitors to Base Camp much quicker, easier and, conversely, will aid in getting the injured out faster. Interestingly, our Tibetan guide said that just a few years ago, you would have to drive through the rivers because there were no bridges on them.
UPDATE: Here is a video recorded from Dongla from my digital camera:
This blog started as just a place for an extremely curious, yet dim-witted numskull, to write freely about world events and politics, which was born out of my passion for history and recent world events. Due to the complete lack of desire for any name recognition or personal praise, I authored under the pseudonym: Ten Fingers 6 Strings (TF6S). Seeing the disaster that the blogosphere has devolved into with the personal attacks and internet trolls on political and world event blogs, I'm very relieved that I made this decision.
The five of you who read this site know that I lost my appetite for writing about politics a while back because I've pretty much said all that I've wanted to say. Now my passion is just for writing about life, adventure, exploration and pursuing my passions.
Because of this, this blog has taken on a very personal tone and will continue to do so for as long as I care to keep it running. I like writing about life from my perspective and I like writing about things that inspire instead of inflame (mostly). It forces me to be more vulnerable and open to myself and to the world around me; this is a deliberate and intentional path that I want to follow and hope to bring the reader something imperfect, yet honest.
This leaves me with a problem: how can I be "open" and "vulnerable" to those reading this blog if you don't even know who I am? Well, actually, many of you do know me in real life, but there is a chance that many of you don't and I have no idea how many people have walked away from here wish they did (I'm guessing two, maybe three, tops?).
So it is time to come clean and reveal the man (thing?) behind the curtain: I am Doug Heinz from San Francisco, California, via the 'burbs of Philly and Indiana University. I like running, swimming, aerobics, long walks on the beach at sunset...
Sorry, this is supposed to be a serious moment--This is the guy who you are reading (it better be everyday!) and I hope to see you around for the rest of the Everest/Tibet/Nepal stories, at least, and hope that someone with millions of dollars reads this and feels compelled to fund my next adventure.
It was about two or three A.M. and I was violently shivering at Interim Camp in what was supposed to be a 20-below North Face sleeping bag, but instead was a synthetic cover stuffed with feathers. It seems that the gear shop in Kathmandu rented us the equivalent of the "Rolax" watches you can pick up in Hong Kong on the street. The "Rolax" might make you late for a meeting, but the feather sleeping bag at 19,000 feet will literally turn you into a popsicle. I mumbled audible obscenities while trying to find ways to stay warm wearing top and bottom thermals, a down jacket, down pants and two pairs of wool socks. I looked ridiculous and it was the first time in my life I really felt claustrophobic.
No matter what I tried, I could not keep my feet warm and eventually had to take off the second pair of socks because they were cutting off my circulation. So, every 1/2 hour or so, I'd have to rub my feet for ten-minutes, stomp up and down and then practice my tap-dancing skills to keep the blood flowing. While doing my tap dancing, I wrote a song called Eff You Sleeping Bag Man:
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man (repeat)
The sincerity in my heart and the sweet harmonies produced by this song kept me warm during this tribulation. But it wasn't until the sun broke through the night sky that I knew I would be able to keep all my toes (although the milky, white-color they reflected didn't make me feel all that comfortable either). A very inauspicious start to the most important day of the entire trip to Mount Everest: the push to Advanced Base Camp (6,400 meters).
After a few bites to eat (I am not capable of eating very much when I'm excited), Chandra (our Sherpa) and I set off with our spirits high and our Camelbaks frozen solid. Walking through the seracs in the vein between Interim Camp and the moraine leading to ABC was a welcomed change in scenery. The route from Base Camp to Interim Camp puts you behind Changtse and a host of other lesser peaks, which ultimately block your view of Mount Everest, so, by this point, we hadn't seen Her for three days. In fact, about the only thing we saw during this period were rocks, dirt, about 40 yak men a day looking for free food and tea, the yaks themselves and the respective pies they would bake and deliver with regularity. I saw so much yak shit, that when I did sleep, I would dream of yak shit zombies chasing me all around the Himalayas causing me to wake up gasping for air (the zombies were gone, but the smell wasn't).
We switched-back up to the top of the moraine while trying to find a rhythm. Typically, in the high altitude, the worst part of climbing is the beginning when you haven't found your rhythm; you are out of breath within minutes and questioning how you could possibly sustain another ten hours this movement. For me to get my rhythm, I look down, start singing a song in my head and watch my feet taking deliberate and conscious steps forward. It only takes me about five-to-ten minutes to find my rhythm: each body part moving in perfect harmony with all the others, while regulating my breathing at a rate just slightly above resting.
I had just hit this stride when I looked up and immediately lost my breath seeing this:
Then I looked left and saw this:
Have you ever been in an old church or basilica that was just so impressive you knew that you were in the presence of something Greater? Well, I haven't. As incredible and amazing as the Sistine Chapel is, in the end it is always something that was built by men (albeit extremely talented men) as an expression of their devotion to something or someone bigger than themselves. But, the natural world and the universe provide the expression of something not man-made (which I cannot exactly relate to); something that was created outside of man's mind (which I can relate to). Through observation, man can collectively learn and understand "how" this world works, but the "why" is the Big Mystery. Looking up at the most massive and brooding mountain in the world made my place feel beyond insignificant in the grand scheme of things...and it was absolutely terrifying.
The shark-fin pinnacle you see above is fairly unique to Mount Everest. Due to the warm, day-time temperatures caused by the air in the high Tibetan desert, the apartment-sized seracs melt during the day before the sun drops. Amazingly, even though these seracs are traveling downhill and would normally point that way, these seracs are all pointed uphill, towards Mount Everest. The mountain's mass is so large that it actually pulls some of the objects around it towards itself. Walking up the moraine, you are passing through tens of thousands of seracs that are all bowing towards Her in reverence.
Almost-frozen toes, yak pies and Tibetan food were all small prices to pay to stand where I was standing at that moment. After regaining our composure, Chandra and I began the long slog up to Advanced Base Camp.
North Face of Mt. Everest from Base Camp on our last, full day. Her large plume reveals the ferocious winds, which had been pounding the mountain for three-straight days, causing all the teams camping high on the ridge to retreat to Advanced Base Camp.
Ugh. My output here will continue to trickle for a while. I have a lot of work that I want to do and have all these fabuluous ideas, but it looks like some of my equipment is failing me. My personal computer is on its last legs and some of the music that I was going to record for the videos is going to be held up due my amplifier getting fried.
Until my funds replentish, I'm going to have to do my best with what I have, which is essentially using my work computer when I can carry it home and my spoon collection for creating music. Nothing like listening to a hand-bone soundtrack while looking at video of Everest.
* Note, this was supposed to be posted last night, but my computer at home froze up and I couldn't get it out until today.
The fog is hovering over the Bay, the air at a cool 50-degrees and the City is well on its way to a slumber as the beginning of the workweek approaches: a normal Sunday night in San Francisco. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a tent shivering my self to sleep (if one can call dozing in and out of consciousness and being forced to wake up to deliberately breathe in order to avoid suffocating "sleep") and I longed for this typical night where I could crawl into my bed, read a book and breathe involuntarily.
Full disclosure: I tried to avoid the "it was a dark and stormy night intro," but this was a longing I had so many times while in Tibet and it was way too strong to avoid.
My apartment is covered in stuff I didn't do today. After being a way for a month, entropy is well on its way in just about everything. Half my electronics are on the fritz after months of dormancy (my computer and my Line6 amplifier among the more costly casualties), dust is everywhere and, regardless of how clean I thought I got everything in Kathmandu after coming back from Everest, everything I took with me is still covered in sand. Despite all of these things demanding my attention, I decided it would be best to give myself a holiday knowing that I'll have another mountain of responsibilities to conquer at work tomorrow that will put to test my newly found fortitude, strength and endurance. Either that, or I am suffering from inflated sense of genitalia that isn't really there. Regardless, a large Peet's Coffee isn't going to provide the proper fuel to deal with 7,000 unread emails and 1,400 waxing condensed "how was your trip" stories, where around version 1,128, it'll be reduced to a series of mumbles and hand gestures about how the big pile of rocks is really big in person.
Normal life will settle back in, and in many ways it already has, however, there has been a profound change with your's truly that I hope will endure. This trip ended up confirming that adventure and exploration are deeply embedded within my DNA. At its core, it does not have much to do with taking outlandish and bold trips to the far ends of the world; it has more to do with living a deliberate and intentional life that causes one to constantly overcome personal fears and avoid the dreaded path of least resistance where one can find safety, which goes hand-in-hand with mediocrity.
There will be many, many stories written here over the next few months about my trip, but what you won't see, will be endless posts where I say, "and then I did this, and went here, and saw this and it was cool and then I went over there and it was stinky, which caused us to do this while holding our noses." It isn't going to be an account about facts (although there will be lots of them to provide you with context) since anyone can Google anything they need to know about Mt. Everest and read facts from people far more daring and bold than I.
The subject matter will, at its very core, be me and the unique feelings, visions, actions and interactions I had (and am still having) as a result of going on this trip. To me, most travel books are unreadable because instead of giving you a glimpse into the mind of the author they are loaded with chronological facts that end up being a rehashed, first person versions of the travel brochure. This isn't to say it won't be informative or sometimes deliberately chronological (this isn't Pulp Fiction, you know), but what it will be is a clear and unabashed look into my head and heart, which was considerably warbled over 20,000 feet. So maybe you should click the "Back" button on your browser and get the hell out now before it is too late.
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Here are a couple quick notes of thanks for various blogging/online writers for their attention to this venture.
To my good friend Ian Wood, who continues to astonish and is back writing full-time at his place. Check him out because he is as insane as ever (which is a good thing).
Also, a great thanks to Thomas Nicols at JACK ARMY for following along as well. Pop on over and say hello to the man as he is currently serving in Iraq. Wish him the best and say a prayer or deliver some good vibes for his safe return.
Lastly, a huge thanks to Alastair Humphreys who dwarfed my piddly "adventure" a billion-fold. Alastair rode his bike around the entire world for charity and I had the pleasure of hanging out with him for a couple of days when he passed through San Francisco a few years back. Alastair wrote a book about the first part of his trip called Moods of Future Joys and it has served as an inspiration as to approaching adventure writing. Chances are if I write something remotely interesting, Alastair did it first and I just ripped it off.
Did I mention that he rode his freaking bike AROUND-THE-ENTIRE-WORLD?
