Climb for Hospice

As I type this, Chris is attempting to corner a spider in the house. I don’t want him to kill the spider, just help him to find a new home outside. Of course this means that Chris has to chase the little bugger around with a coffee cup and my most recent mortgage statement. Aaaaaaaaaaaand, that’s why I’m in here.

Maybe I can bring him along with me to Africa…

“Honey, there’s a spider the size of Texas in my hiking boot. Can you get him out for me, please? But don’t kill him! Ooooh… I think he has fangs… and wears boxing gloves… and I think he has a knife. Thanks honey!”

I’ve done a bit of solo traveling (America, France, Australia, Mexico…), and as great as it is to see the world, it’s just so much more fulfilling to share the world. I’m tired of traveling alone. Seeing all these amazing, strange, breathtaking things, and then turning around to see no one beside me to be in awe with. As much as I like the fact that I can wake up at 7am with an entire day ahead of me in an exotic locale, going to bed alone at the end of the day with no one to excitedly recount the adventures of the day with is really difficult.

I remember being in Paris on Christmas Day, and being totally alone. I was in this *tiny* hotel room, and all I had was my book, a journal, some bread, and my 14 billionth wheel of brie to keep me company. I had spent the day in a laundromat (which I promptly flooded owing to my inability to read French directions on the washing machine), then had gone out for coffee before running to the local store and grabbing some important provisions (fruit, wine, chocolate…).

I came back to my horrendously expensive rented hovel, and rooted through my groceries for a make-shift dinner. After the rattling of the plastic bag was finished, and the brown paper on the bread had been ripped back, I sat down on the bed in total, complete silence. It was so quiet that I lost my appetite.

It wasn’t that I had a bad day or anything – in fact, I kind of get a kick out of the fact that I destroyed a Parisienne laundromat and wandered around in the sleet of December 25th – it was that I had no one to laugh with about my adventures of the day. I became very, very lonely.

I wrapped my dinner back up and put it carefully in my backpack. At 6:30pm, I went to sleep.

I’m tired of traveling alone. I love the fact that I’ll be sharing my Kili experiences with Ali, Christopher and Amanda, and I’m thrilled that I get to blog about it to all of you, as well. I may be on my own when I wander through Dar es Salaam, and I may be swimming with dolphins in Zanzibar all on my own, but I know that you’ll all be here. I’ll get to tell my stories, and recount them moments after they happen, not 2 weeks later when I’m picked up at the airport and want to breathlessly cram 3 weeks of stories into the 20-minute car ride home.

So thank you. Thank you for coming along with me on this journey. Your support means more than you know to the lonely, solo traveler in me.

48 days…

I had a dream last night that Chris reminded me that I ‘leave for Africa in 13 days’. I completely freaked out, and started crying because I wasn’t ready to go.

So when I woke up, my immediate thought was to get my Tanzanian Visa application printed off and sent.

I have to go get a passport photo done now, grab a money order, stuff it all into an envelope with my passport and mail it off to Toronto. Putting my passport in the mail is almost as frightening as putting my butt on a plane!

I’ll feel better when I’ve sent that off. My next step is to buy travel insurance.

This… ummm… this is really happening, isn’t it?

Oh dear god. What have I done?

YAY!

I have a job interview today.

It’s a job I’d love to have, but one that I’d be nervous about getting. It’s a lot of responsibility, and although I know I’d handle it just fine… I also know I wouldn’t sleep a wink before my first day of work. Gone are the days of having Mitch McJohnston teach you the ropes at the fry machine – at this stage in my career, I am expected to learn my job on my own, and meld my skill and experience with the job description. I love that.

I’m having a really difficult time being out of work right now. I love to work. I love to be a contributing member of society, and to be working at a job that I enjoy, to allow myself to live well outside of work. When, as a teen, I started working, it was all about making money. Later, it became about liking the job AND making money. I’m now at a stage where I am looking for a challenging and fulfilling job, and working with a team that I respect and can learn from. The office environment is key to me now. If I can’t laugh with my coworkers, and if I can’t trust them… well, that’s not the kind of work environment I want to be in.

Today I am interviewing with people I know and already like, so I’m hoping that will help me be a little more at ease.  Interviews are so difficult! How stressful to sit in a room, across from a panel of professionals who are asking you questions about your career. You’d think that talking about your OWN career would be easy – but I get all flustered. I would feel so much better if I could bribe them with baked goods or something.

Ok, I need to go get ready – wish me luck!

xo

I’m having a lot of thoughts swirling around my head of late, and it’s proving difficult to push them aside to access that creative, squishy bit of my brain that allows me to write.

Not that the thoughts are bad, per se, there are just a lot of them. I’ve been thinking about my future, and how different it is going to be than what my past had once dictated. I think about my past, and how insignificant it is compared to the expectation of tomorrow.

2010 has become overwhelming. The adventures, the travel, the people, the experiences, the circumstances…  and it’s only JUNE, people! I wasn’t expecting 2010 to be THIS adventurous! Not that I’m complaining.

I love the fact that I write everyday, but sometimes I wonder what the hell I was thinking when I decided to blog each morning. I’ll be honest, I’ve been tempted to go back to that first post when I said I was going to blog everyday, and change it to read “every once in a while“.  But I just can’t do it.   …Dammit.

I’m going to step away from my laptop for the day, and give my brain a break. I’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully with an astoundingly creative, and endlessly inspiring post for you.

No pressure.

I was asked an interesting question last week about my trip. A lot of people ask how I’m preparing myself to go to Tanzania, physically, mentally, emotionally… but no one has ever asked how I’m preparing myself for coming home.

I have no idea. I’ve never thought about it. But now I can’t stop thinking about it.

How can you prepare to recover from what you have no idea that you’re going to experience? To say that I’m going to experience Culture Shock in Africa is a wildly fantastic understatement.  I’m already apprehensive, and I haven’t even started packing yet! I’m apprehensive, nervous, scared, bewildered, unprepared, ignorant, and terribly frightened of getting off that plane in Kigali.

I won’t be ready.

I’m also excited, hopeful, mesmerized, awed, moved, awakened, and terribly aware of getting off that plane in Vancouver. It’s going to come so fast, I just know it. I’ll be back on home soil before I get a chance to remember the taste of African soil. I have to return to my own country, and my own culture – one in which I, at times, disdain. The consumerism, the pessimism, the ignorance… it’s all too much sometimes. And after scaling the world’s tallest, free-standing equatorial mountain, and staring at the curvature of the earth at sunrise… I have to come back to stop lights, grocery stores, flush toilets and line ups.

I won’t be ready.

I’m not going to reveal a Kili Gala raffle prize today, my friends. I will do so tomorrow, though. Today, I’m hoping you’ll be ok with me revealing a little more of myself instead…

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Once more, I feel that I need to say this to myself, and to all of you:

“Sometimes the seemingly most traumatic events often are the inspiration for doing the things we love to remember”

I’ll admit it, I have been dealt many difficult hands through my short time on this planet, and I’m still standing. In fact, I’m standing taller because of those difficult hands that I have been dealt.

My good friends know very well of my struggles and my trials, and I know that I gain the strength that I need to weather those storms, from those very friends that I hold close in my heart.

When life-changing, dramatic, shocking events occur, I look at them through the lens of my personal history. “How does this compare to…?”, or, “Is this as bad as…?”

I am amazed at how easily things fall into place when my perspective is changed to suit my reality. It often shocks me when I look at monumental events and compare them with previous disasters, and realize that you know, this newest one ain’t that bad. And I realize how little energy I need to expend on dwelling on it, and I am refreshed.

Perhaps that’s a good thing, perhaps it’s a bad habit. I’m not sure. But I do know one thing: it’s a survival technique that I am grateful to have.

And so, for today… I’m going to spend my time making my life a little better. Because every once in a while, it’s important to do that. And every so often, it’s necessary.

Happy Tuesday, all…

xo

I’m not ready for this week.

I’m not ready for today, even.

I need a break.

In a never-ending quest to find new and exciting ways to train, I decided to do something really stupid: take up swimming.

“But swimming is great exercise, Robyn!” you say, “it’s low-impact, good for your wonky hips, works all your muscles, and lets you gawk at hot lifeguards while working out. What’s not to love?”

I like swimming, I do. As you know, I used to be a Ladner Stingray (along with my climbing teammate, Alison), and so am fairly confident in my swimming skills. However, my body mass is quite different now then when I was a young Stingray, and so there are parts of my body that now sink, as opposed to when I was young and was possessed with all-encompassing buoyancy. It’s a humbling experience. But whatever, it’s worth it… right?

As much as swimming is a great sport and a fantastic workout, (and I find those little blue kickboards to be kind of adorable), and as accessible and inexpensive as it is… it’s the trauma that accompanies it that makes me smack my forehead repeatedly, while muttering “why? why? why? WHY?”

That’s right – Bathing Suit Shopping.

It has got to be one of the most traumatic, depressing, shock-inducing, rage-creating, tear-worthy events that women undertake. I’m not in bad shape, but when I put on a bathing suit, little neon arrows pop up in mid air to point at the poufy spots that shouldn’t be poufy. Alarms sound! Lights flash! There is panic in the street! Cats and dogs living together! MASS HYSTERIA!

There is nothing in the world that a woman does faster than take off an ill-fitting bathing suit. GAH! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! Get it off! get it off!! Bathing suit shopping is the LSD of retail experience.

I have NO IDEA why the US government has such a hard time getting confessions out of terrorists. They don’t need waterboarding. They don’t need Barney and Friends theme music.  All they need is a fully-mirrored room, and multiple bathing suits of descending size.

If I were President, I would turn Guantanamo into a Swimco. And then staff it with size zero women.

“I DID IT, I DID IT! I’M SORRY! NOW FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS!!!”

Aaaaaaaaaaanyway…

I braved the mall, and  *shudder* tried on a couple of suits. I mean, that’s bad enough, right? But to add insult to injury, someone felt that it was a good idea to charge an astronomical sum for swimsuits! Do you SEE how much material is there!? And when you buy a bikini, it costs even MORE! I think the people who set the price for swimsuits are the same people that set the price for printer ink.

But I did it. I bought myself a swimsuit. It was even on sale! I feel much better now… mostly because I won’t have to go swimsuit shopping for another few years.

Now… where is that over-sized beach towel of mine…?

I skipped the gym on Thursday. Normally I don’t do that, but I was feeling overwhelmed and I needed to take a break from something – unfortunately, it was the gym that got the axe this week.

I felt guilty about it, yes, but at the same time I knew that I needed a rest. I’ve been going at Mach 2 since I made the decision to climb Mt. Kilmanjaro – it’s all I think about! Training, fundraising, buying gear, looking at flights, researching hotels, researching safaris… I’m the Chuck Yeager of thinking.

And when I’m NOT thinking about something revolving around this trip, I’m feeling guilty because I’m not in “perfect” shape. I feel guilty when I eat a cracker, guilty when I drink a Gatorade, guilty when I drive to the grocery store, guilty when my pants are too tight, guilty when I eat bread, guilty when I drink wine, guilty when I give in to one of my many, MANY chocolate cravings – guilt, guilt, guilt!! My brain thinks it’s a Jewish matriarch.

On Thursday night, I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘you know what? I don’t look that bad right now…’ I finally saw that maybe I was being a little hard on myself for not having a body that looks like Elle MacPherson‘s.

Maybe I’m ok with having a body that looks a little different. Is having a muffin top all that bad? I mean, it’s not THAT much of a muffin top – it’s like… like… like if a baker only half filled the muffin tin, and the muffin just sorta‘ baked over the top. My belly kind of looks like THIS…. (and I certainly wouldn’t complain if the rest of me looked like that!)

I love women like Sophia Loren. She’s all about women having a little pudge. Drink wine! Eat pasta! Eat bread! Now THAT’S a role roll model!

So maybe I’ve had a brief glimpse of acceptance. Maybe I’ve had a moment of being ok with what I look like. So what if I don’t weigh 128lbs. I haven’t weighed 128lbs since high school! And who wants to look like they did in high school?!

Muffin-top or not, I can still climb a mountain.

…I just had a thought.

Have I finally found acceptance, or have I just found the perfect excuse for laziness?

Who cares!  I’m climbing a mountain.

It is very difficult for me to not have 100% control over the planning of this trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I sit here on one continent and know that in 113 days I will hop on a big fat plane to take me to another continent… which will then give me the chance to hop on ANOTHER smaller, thinner plane to take me to yet ANOTHER continent… where I will then get on a teensy, tiny plane and get dropped in a country that, in all honesty, scares the living bejeebus out of me.

Then, I will meet up with my friends, who are arriving in that country at a different time.

Then we will go to an orphange and do some work…

Then we will cut a swath through the scary (spider-friendly) forest to see if we can hang out with Mountain Gorillas.

Then, we will go to Mt. Kilimanjaro and you know, climb it. I’ll sing a song on top, then we’ll head down.

Then I’ll stay in Tanzania and go on a safari.

And then I come home.

…I think.

I have *no idea* if any of this will happen, when all this will happen, who will be with me, what to expect, and how I’ll get to where I need to be once I’m actually in East Africa. I don’t know the orphange we’re visiting, the gorilla tour we’re doing, or the safari company I’ll be with. I don’t know when I’m supposed to be at Mt. Kili to start the climb. I don’t know my guides or porters. I don’t know how to pay them, how to dress, where I’m staying before and after, and who is actually going to BE on Team Kili 2010.

But hey, at least I have my flights booked.

I’m scared, I’m nervous, I’m stressed out, not in control, feeling pressure, trying to communicate with the right people, I’m hoping, trusting, and wishing I could win the lottery… I’m feeling totally trapped right now.

If it were just me planning this trip, and in total control, I’d have all my flights, transports, hotels and journeys booked and paid for by now. THAT is how I like to travel. I like to know what the plan is, so that if it veers off course (as it inevitably will), I’ll be able to work with it.

However, when trying to put a plan in place on the other side of the world, nothing is simple.

…I’d just like to stop crying soon.