Climb for Hospice

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 get on the plane in 50 days.

I’m not ready.

Whenever I meet people I haven’t seen in a while, they inevitably ask me a variation of the following two questions:

1) How’s the training going?

2) Are you ready?

To which I usually answer with a variation of:

1) Great! I’m getting really excited!

2) I’m gettin’ there!

What I’d like to answer with is:

1) Awful. I feel like I’ll never do enough training, and I’ve gotten lazy and complacent, underestimating the mountain and totally overestimating my physical prowess. I don’t know the exact start date of my climb, and I’m petrified of having to crap into a bucket that some poor ill-paid porter has to lug up a mountain and back. My cardio sucks, my leg strength blows donkey nuts, and the thought of multiple nights of high-altitude camping makes me crazy. I may die before I reach the summit.

2) Nope. Not ready at all. In fact, the thought of getting on the plane is enough to make me want to vomit and convulse with fear and apprehension. I’m going broke, I don’t have solid plans in place, and I’m afraid that I’m going to get robbed and beaten while wandering the streets of Zanzibar. I may die before I reach base camp. But hey, thanks for asking!

So much to do, in so little time, and I’m wasting precious moments worrying about how much I have to do in such a little amount of time.

50 days.

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

Mt. Kilimanjaro was created when two warring factions of African squirrels made the decision to bring an end to their decades-long tribal dispute. Knowing that both tribes were facing extinction, they made a pact to work together and simply erect a barrier between their territories. This allowed both sides to live in peace, and to protect their significant cultural differences for years to come.

For over 30 years, squirrels who were once the bitterest of foes worked side-by-side to build Mt. Kilimanjaro. Skirmishes were few and far between, as each worker understood the importance of the work they were undertaking. Generations of squirrels toiled as family, and each tiny paw had a massive impact. They built the mountain together.

Many squirrels died in the process, but today Mt. Kilimanjaro stands as a testament of their dedication to peace.

Sadly, the African Squirrel has long since vanished from the veldt, but I think we can learn great lessons from these selfless creatures who put aside their hatred, and took full advantage of their opposable thumbs to erect a monument to brotherhood, fully worthy of respect.

Thank you, African squirrels. I promise you that I will do my best to make you proud as I stand atop the powdered bones of your long-dead squirrelly ancestors.

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’ve started running again.

Yes, it hurts my hips the next day, but it’s worth it.  Besides, I know my hips are going to hurt on my Kili climb, so I’d better just get used to it now.

Training for pain.

Well, that’s new.

I’ll be taking it easier on myself this time around, and won’t be doing my 10km 4x/week. That’s too much right now. Maybe I can work up to that again, but for now I just need to work on my cardio and my stamina, and the best way to do that is to run. Because I know I’ll run.

I have a bike that I rarely use, a swim pass that collects dust, and a bamillion work-out DVDs that pretty much still have the plastic covering on. But I’ll run.

I’m going to be stubbornly defiant about this, and I’m sure I’ll pay for it, but I’m just in this rut of non-exercise. I don’t care right now. I don’t want to train. I’ve given up, and I’m trying to justify my slovenly self in any way I can: “I need to have extra weight on! I’m going to need it for the cold… for energy… for the inevitable weight loss that will occur on the climb…”  I’m getting quite creative.

But I’m also getting scared. What if I don’t make it because I wasn’t physically ready? I would never forgive myself.

So… I’ll run.

I’ll try to keep my griping and complaining to a minimum.

The other day I was sitting  with a (totally awesome) friend, and I was recounting the upcoming concerns I have about my Kilimanjaro climb; buying gear, training, getting a Visa, finding a phone to use there, training, altitude, fund raising, expenses, training, packing, culture shock, training… and I sort of threw my hands up and asked, “what am I doing?!”

And, simply, he replied, “it“.

I needed that.

I am a morning person. Always have been, always will be, and I’m totally a-ok with that.

I have woken up in many different places, in a handful of different countries to begin great moments in my life. I have woken in the mountains to the muffled sounds of avalanche bombs in the distance. I have woken on the rocky shores of rivers, to the gentle still of  quiet lakes, to the eye-widening blue of foreign seas, and to the sounds of four great oceans. I have woken in the echoing Rainforest, to the raging city, and among the wildflowers…

But there isn’t anything quite like waking up in my home town.

Ladner’s symphony starts early, with the harbour seals barking to wake the swans, and the ducks (mumbling) waddling to the water after they stretch the night off their wings. Handfuls of tiny birds, (looking more like puffy feather balls as they fluff themselves up and get ready to start the day), apparently sit outside my window and chat with one another about how best to go about the day ahead.

Aaaaand then I’m usually attacked by two ecstatic dogs with big, wet noses who are very grateful that I’ve finally stopped sleeping.

Morning in Ladner – there’s nothing like it in the world.

And I wonder; What music will I wake up to in Dar es Salaam? What will it be like to start a new day in Zanzibar? Will I know where I am when I wake on Kilimanjaro to the sound of no birds?

Well, it’s going to be nice to find out.

I’m not one to make New Year’s Resolutions, because I tend to break them by about 3pm on January 1st. All those years, all those broken promises to myself, over and over again. It’s really quite defeating. To try and atone, I even tried to make a resolution to break my resolution, but I just ended up getting all confused, and had to stop thinking before my brain reached critical mass.

I realized I was going about the whole ‘it’s a brand new year’ thing all wrong. It isn’t about making resolutions. I found that to me, it’s about making plans. So I started to label my years, and then worked each day to live up to the labels. Kind of like The Secret, but you know, not creepy.

2009’s label was “It’s all about me”, and it was absolutely true. I ended up taking that trip to Greece that my friend Bin and I had been planning for more than 20 years, I spent some time on stage again, and I focused on believing that I actually deserved good things, and those good things were even better when I created them myself.

2010 was dubbed “The Year of Adventure” – and my god, does it get any better than it has already? Mt. Kilimanjaro, hiking, kayaking, avoiding camping, changing tires, changing jobs, dating boys who at first glance would totally frighten my parents… it’s all been so incredibly awesome. So much so that I can’t wait for tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

The biggest adventure of this year has been discovering how ok I am when things go completely sideways*. I could at one time expect to lose my mind over the simplest of things, (like changing the duvet cover), but this year I find a new sort of inner tranquility has allowed me to experience a peace in the midst of chaos. Everything is going to be alright.

And so, in 2010, I am constantly being reminded to seek the adventure in all things. Be it in climbing a 19,340 ft African peak, or in drunkenly baking a cake to look like a 19,340 ft African peak… from drinking tea atop Mt. Finlayson, to not running from the white Corporation of Delta van that pulled up to the park where I had my dogs running off leash… from laughing hysterically with Ali as we change a tire in the middle of nowhere, to staying present in Savasana at Open Space.

There is adventure in all things. I just didn’t know how to look for it before. And now that I’ve found out how to go about finding the things that have always been there, I don’t ever want to stop looking.

*This may not apply to sailboat situations…

Sometimes I think about my upcoming Kilimanjaro adventure, and I’m proud of the fact that I’m attempting to accomplish a monumental feat. Yes, the world is full of dreamers and doers, and with the Kili summit under my belt, I too get to be one of those dreamers and doers.

And so I get to thinking about what an incredible, brave, driven company of doers I am in Ed Viesturs, Thomas Edison, Jane Goodall, Christopher Hitchens, … the list is entirely endless. All of those people out there who at one point thought to themselves that they wanted to do something for themselves, or they wanted better things for the world, and they just went out and did it.

Be it an invention, an idea, a manuscript, a sanctuary, an organization, a mountain, or a thousand other things, it’s all achievable. And with that, of all those that did achieve… well, this incredible company of dreamers and doers will soon have one more member: me. And that makes me so proud to be in such distinguished, monumentally important indiv…

*blinks*

Wait.

*blinks*

What?

OH FOR THE LOVE OF-