The Plastic Bag Conversation: A Good Place to Begin

If you build it, they will come.

There she stands...so tall...so majestic...so freakin' cold!  And so the Kilimanjaro adventure begins.  A challenge that has been collecting dust on my bucket list is becoming reality.  Two months from now, I will set off for Africa with Smurf and Smurfette in tow to climb to the highest peak in Africa, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.  That's the goal anyway.  Today when I cracked the guidebook (a good thing to do at two months out I think), I discovered that our chosen route has a 50% success rate.  WTF?  Smurf?  This was your call!  Why are we hiking the Rongai Route again?  Does it have anything to do with my apathy about research and reading in advance? I am not traveling half way around the world to get only half of my body to the summit. 

Remember these two?
Jet-lagged, wet, and cold in Hanoi.

I would ideally like to get 100% of myself to the top of this mountain and back down again.  Brianna, in her sweet, loving, teenage way is less concerned with my success than she is with a well-documented multimedia record of my failure.  "Mom, if they bring you down convulsing in one of those plastic bags, make sure Uncle Chris videos it for me."  Nice.  No doubt I will go viral on YouTube the day after my funeral, and she will post the clip on her Facebook page in hopes of getting a million "likes."



Documenting the lead-up to the climb seems like more fun than actually climbing (and gives me just one more reason to avoid the "training" that everyone but me seems so fixated upon). Smurfette's trainer keep giving her little motivational speeches and talking to her about lactic acid production.  I don't even know this guy, but I find him annoying.