Day 10. Always Bring an Onion

This is ridiculous, I thought. I already travel with a towel (thank you Doug Adams), a pocketknife and a hand powered flashlight. Why the hell don’t I keep an onion in my car?

You see, my plan for the evening was to have a quiet night at my lodging, making a simple noodle thing I had in my car and getting organized for the adventures ahead. The thing about dried noodle dishes is they are so much better if you can add something fresh to them. Anything, really. But for all the supplies I had in my car, there was nothing.

Read more at Day 10. Always Bring an Onion,

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Happy Peace Day, Chinese Person in Tent Number 59

 

My Amateur Photo

I traveled 8000 miles to see Mount Kilimanjaro, and I almost missed it. It’s true that I also came to see lions, elephants and zebra in the wild, and to have an adventure with my relatives, but Kilimanjaro was near the top of my list of reasons for making a daunting journey that took three plane flights, eighteen hours in the air, four vaccinations and sixteen days on malaria meds.

Unfortunately, the 19,341 foot former volcano that rises 15,000 feet up off the plains of Tanzania tends to be covered in clouds in August, which is something I didn’t know ahead of time. On the drive to our camp, we got to see the very top of the peak poking out above the clouds, impossibly high in the sky.

I hope his photo looks like this

At the very end of our stay, we would get to see much of the base of the mountain glowing in the sunrise. But my one chance for the best, the fullest view, happened when I was busy reading a guidebook to Kenya. I know, it’s ironic. And I should have read that book before I left home.

Read more at Happy Peace Day, Chinese Person in Tent Number 59.

(Read more about my trip to Kenya at Like Eating Crab, Still a Sunrise?, Replacing me with … and Smiling my way across Kenya)

“Everest” and “Into Thin Air” and armchair mountaineering

I am fascinated by mountain climbing, even though I have never done more than hike to the top of a mountain with a good trail. You can’t pack everything that intrigues you into one life, and this is something that didn’t make it into mine. So when I had the chance to climb a major peak in the Himalayas, in my imagination, along side my character Haley, I welcomed it and relished the research that went with it.

Read the entire post on my c3 blog at “Everest” and “Into Thin Air” and armchair mountaineering

That’s how far down?

My husband and I, dumb tourists that we were, had driven past road closed signs and ignored warnings of seasonal winds to get to edge of the earth and stare 2000 feet down into the wild blue water of the Atlantic. A gust of wind came along that was so strong that it made us both hit the ground, grabbing on to rocks and brush and thinking the same thing.

That’s how far down?