Climb for Hospice

I’m getting lots of emails and messages as Aug 12th comes ever nearer. It’s so frigging cool. People I know and love, people I’ve never met, people wishing me well, people asking me for advice, people telling me that I’m their “hero”. I never thought that this would happen.

I started this blog on January 1st as a way to invite people into my journey, and it has turned out far better than I could have thought. I get messages from all over the world! No kidding! I love it. LOVE IT! So, if you’re reading this, and haven’t ever written to me, please feel free to do so today. I’ve got a couple days on Canadian soil, and would love to have your messages in my heart when I trip the blue fantastic.

I’ve been getting requests about my itinerary, and so thought I’d repost it here today.

My climb starts on Aug 23rd, and we will be taking the Lemosho/Shira route that will take us eight days. I will summit on the 7th day (that’s right, I WILL SUMMIT), and then be back at the hotel for a final night on the 30th of August. It kinda’ goes like this…

Aug 23: Drive to Lemosho Glades and hike to Mti Mkubwa forest camp.
Aug 24: Hike to Shira One camp.
Aug 25: Hike to Shira Two camp.
Aug 26: Hike to Barranco camp.
Aug 27: Hike to Karanga Valley camp.
Aug 28: Hike to Barafu camp.
Aug 29: Hike to the summit and descend to Mweka or Millennium camp.
Aug 30: Complete the descent to Mweka gate and drive back to Marangu.

Shira 2 camp

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So, please feel free to follow along. The time change is pretty big, so be prepared to do a little math if you want to know exactly where I am at what time. Ok, so it’s 10:03am on Tuesday, Aug 10th right now, and so that means that it’s 8:03pm on Tuesday, Aug 10th in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  Got it? I’ll be 10 hours ahead of you all in Ladner. On Summit Day, we are woken up at about midnight, then climb, climb, climb until we reach the peak at about 6am Tanzania time – that would be about 8pm Ladner time on the 28th.  So send your good vibes our way, ok? Thanks!

Now… onto my last To-Do list before I go…

Two more sleeps.

xo

Last night while Chris was off doing guy-type things like watching football and getting laminated, I decided that I should pack my backpack and see where I’m at.

Yeah, I did a mock-pack a couple of weeks ago to look at space and weight, but last night I packed for real. And I totally cried my little face right off.  Hrm. That will make it very difficult to climb a mountain, I am sure.

I’m so nervous. I’m nervous, and I’m scared. I’m the type of person who likes to have all her ducks in a row, and who likes to know what’s coming next. I don’t have that with this. The one place where I really need to have it, and it’s not there.

I think I just have too many stressors in my life at the moment, and it’s taking a toll. I need to calm down, breathe, relax… I need to embody a yoga class, really. I need my brain to slip into a nice, long Savassana or something.

But no time for that now.

Three more sleeps…

“You’re so stupid sometimes, Robyn”

Gee, thanks mom.

Perhaps I should back up a bit…

My mom and I were sitting around chatting yesterday, and in the valley between two conversations she pipes up and, completely out of context, says to me, “You’re so stupid sometimes, Robyn!”

To which I understandably say, “Gee, thanks mom”

She continued…

“All this complaining you’re doing about this mountain… if only you would see yourself as other people see you, you wouldn’t even question your ability to summit.

“You’re the most determined person I know, and if you want something to happen, then for god’s sake, it’ll happen. There’s no keeping you from doing what you damn well want to do. You’ve always been like that“.

“Okaaaaay….”

“Don’t you remember when you played soccer? How old were you?”

“Um, I dunno’, eight?”

“That sounds about right. Anyway, you had these new soccer boots and they were horrible. You had blisters the size of fifty-cent pieces all over your poor feet. The problem was, there weren’t enough girls on the team that day, so if you didn’t play, your team would have to forfeit the game and take a loss. Your feet were in terrible shape. But would you give up? Nope. Would you quit? Nope. You knew that if you stopped playing, your team would lose, and you didn’t want that. So you ran up and down that field with your mangled, hurting feet in those terrible new boots”

“…I did?”

“Yes, you did. In fact, your coach wanted you to stop playing, but you refused. You convinced him to let you play! He was ready to give the game up, but you weren’t. I didn’t even have any bandaids for you. No one did. So you played with these big open blisters. It must have been awful“.

“Whoa. Really? Did we win the game?”

“Oh god, no. You had no chance, and you all knew it. But you still played it“.

“Well, guess I was pretty stubborn, eh mom?”

“No, I wouldn’t say stubborn. Determined.”

“But I’m stubborn now”

“Oh totally. You’re a pain in the ass now. But back then, I’d say you were determined. So anyway, to make a long story short, I really don’t think you’ll have a problem making it up that mountain. You’re determined, so I know you’ll do it. There’s no way you won’t.”

Gee, thanks mom.

xo

So strange. Usually when my vacation time draws closer, I get more excited. This is not at all the case with my African adventure. I’m feeling a lot of pressure right now, and I know it’s pressure that I’ve put on myself.

“What if I don’t summit?”, I ask.

Inevitably, the person I ask always says, “you’ll summit!”

But what if I don’t?

Really, what if I don’t?  I’ll feel like such a failure.

…God, you know, I keep setting these HUGE goals for myself, and when I achieve them, I write it off as luck, or some other mysterious thing that got me there instead of my own hard work and determination. And then, to ‘atone’ for my success, I set an even loftier goal, something near the impossible.

It’s almost like I set myself up to fail.

Funny, I’m fine with believing that I’ve failed, but if I succeed at something, I can’t take it in. I’m not willing to give myself any credit if I achieve what I set out to do, but if I don’t succeed, I never stop blaming myself. I don’t ever want to feel as though I’m patting myself on the back, or getting a swelled head. But I don’t mind allowing myself to feel defeated and lost. It’s all twisted and backwards.

Maybe that’s why I’m so nervous.  I think maybe it’s because my brain is trying to gear itself up for the onslaught of negativity that is going to come my way, whether I fail, or whether I succeed. My poor brain is working overtime, roiling and sluicing at terrible speeds.

I wish there were Tums for the brain.

Six more sleeps.

Six days.

In less than  a week, I board a plane that will take me to Amsterdam, then to Nairobi, then finally to Dar es Salaam, where I will sit and recuperate for a few days before hopping a ferry to the exotic and mysterious island of Zanzibar.

After about a week on the exotic and mysterious island of Zanzibar, I will hop that same  ferry back to Dar, then slip onto a bus that will take me to the Kilimanjaro airport. Once there, I will get onto a shuttle bus that is bound for the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I will spend the night at the Marangu hotel, hopefully finding a few hours’ sleep between the anticipation and the fear.

And then… I climb.

Eight days later, I roll down that big dirt mound, and into a shower at Marangu. For the next 10 hours, I try to vigorously scrub the dust and blech from my skin, while attempting to scour the ‘carry-your-own-waste’ memory from my saturated mind.

After one more night at the Marangu, I roll on back to Dar, where I spend the next 5 days lounging in a beach hut, recovering, reading, recharging and reclining.

And finally, I jump on a plane that takes me back through Amsterdam before depositing me back on home soil.

I can do this.

The Inspiration Angel is flying around my heart:

Life is a fight to the finish! Kick ass and for those who can’t (ie. Palliative Care), do it for them! Go Robyn!!

And of course that made me cry.

Up, up, up!

I am eating a lot of Tums.

As I was watching my belly reverberate with my steps on my walk this morning, I realized that my fleshy echos are proof positive that I have underestimated Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I haven’t been training for about 2 weeks now, and boy, am I feeling the effects. I mean, it’s not like I’m putting undue pressure on my joints or anything, but I did notice that I was getting a little winded when I had to walk from the car to the pizza place.

Chris kindly asked if I’d like to spend the next nine days hiking and training, but then seemed somewhat offended when I spewed my coffee out my nose and onto the dog as I snorted with laughter.

No, I don’t think I’ll be doing much more in the way of training before I leave. Handily, I can now use the “I don’t want to sprain an ankle/hurt myself/break my leg/ before I go” excuse. Dude, I’ve been waiting for months to be able to use that one!

So yes, I am not as prepared as I had thought I would be. I had such grand plans to camp every weekend, and hike at least eight times a month. I was going to be able to tango up the Gingell steps by now, and would be a lean, mean sinew machine standing tall and proud as I gazed at my rock-hard and deadly perfect body in the mirror.

Often.

You know, when I wasn’t handing out quarters to random strangers, daring them to bounce spare change off my trampoline-esque abs.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway…

To recap: I’m not as fit as I had hoped, and there’s a bag of chips in the cupboard that’s calling my name. Breakfast of champions… breakfast of mountain conquerers.

*waddles away*

Given that I’ve been fairly stressed out of late, Chris made the wonderful suggestion of using this day off (Happy BC Day!) to do absolutely nothing.

So far, I’ve gotten so engrossed in this nothing, that I almost forgot to blog. I jumped out of bed, scattering the newspaper crossword pages all over the floor, and ran to my laptop to write a short entry.

But now that I’m up, I think I’ll make another pot of coffee.

And while I’m up, I think I’ll ignore the laundry.

And I’m definitely not doing anything Africa-related.

So this blog is going to be the most activity I do all day.

Aaaaaaaaaaand…. I’m done.

Happy Nothing Day, everyone!

11 more sleeps.

It’s funny, as my departure day edges closer and closer, I am beginning to do those things that I have been saying, “I’ll do it closer to the date…”  to for the last 7 months. I mean, I’ve got all the big stuff done (flights, insurance, inoculations, traveler’s cheques, Tanzanian Visa…), but its those little things (figure out medication timing, what’s the time change like, what am I wearing on the plane?…)  that are being checked off the list at an alarming rate.

11 more sleeps.

This feels like something I can’t quite get a grasp on, and something over which I have very little control. Like the proverbial snowball that’s completely moving at its own rate, by its own volition, with nothing that I have in my power to stop it, or slow it, or make it disappear. The only real control I have at this point is the option to cancel.

And that’s not an option at all.

I wish the time would go by faster, so that I didn’t have to wait for the time to come.

11 more sleeps.

How does one write with shaking fingers?

How does one sit still to compose a simple blog, while simultaneously wiping the cold sweat from her brow and the tears from her eyes?

How does one ever, EVER get across to the world just how grateful and humbled one has become, by the simple act of reading one tiny, emotion-packed, joy-laden, intensely exciting and endlessly moving email?

I have been truly honoured by the kindness and generosity of the most kind and generous souls.  But this… THIS goes beyond all that one could ever expect.

Ladies and gentlemen, it has finally happened:

I

am

speechless.

It is my pleasure to relay this email to you, to pass on to you the exact feeling of elation that exploded -EXPLODED!- into my heart mere moments ago…