1978 before the tourist boom, before the Maoist terrorist time, before the expensive ‘we carry you up the mountain to queue for the summit’. Before those Sherpas died in the serac fall and before that horrendous earthquake. The future Mrs Scouse and I took a months hiking trek in Nepal. I’d been obsessed with Nepal and Everest since Sir John Hunts expedition when Norkay and Hillary summited the mountain in 1953. My mum bought me the book by Hunt. I still have it even after living in four countries and four US States. Along with a stack of other books of Everest climbs. My goal for this trip was for us to fly into Lukla and hike to base camp. No way I could afford to go up the mountain at best I wanted to get part way up Mt Pumori it has great views of Everest for photographs. But as life has a habit of screwing with plans and dreams. They had a landslide on the landing strip at Lukla and stopped flights in. We, along with another couple tried to get a flight on a helicopter in. All set to go ‘But’ the copter went off to rescue Hillary’s son who fell off a Mountain! Next day we tried again ‘But’ some unfortunate climber from Japan, yes, fell off a mountain. Clumsy bastards!! We accepted that fate and Sagarmatha didn’t need us there. Instead we went off to Western Nepal and had a fantastic hike around the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri Area. With a Sherpa a cook and a couple of porters. Tenting it mostly, sometimes sleeping in tea houses (think coffee shops) or Bars. Couple of bars were fun we did our share of singing folk songs with the help of raksi? a local rice brandy. One place was run by a retired Ghurka sergeant. I’d served alongside an outfit of Ghurka’s when I was in the Paras in Cyprus. He made us really welcome as we chatted, and drank the night away. Even took a stop to help build a school. Great experience of a great country. If anyone wants to see it as it was. I can dust off about 1,000 slides of the country and its people, Including a few of Everest as we few home. oh yeah, we packed our trash out.
Sing us a song, you're the guitar man Play us a song tonight Well, we're all in the mood for a melody And you've got us feelin' alright
don't wanna holiday in the sun I wanna go to new Belsen I wanna see some history Or Geography played this with the old group yesterday.
Belated Happy Birthday to @usscouse! I turned 57 Thursday; hope I age & thrive half as well as you have in the next three decades.
And Happy Birthday to you too. I hope you do thrive, life keeps evolving, changes in pace and attitudes are part of it. Your posts show that good attitude to life. Enjoy. Just thinking. At 58, I took a year off work and built us a house mostly by myself. Memories.
Finally a mountaineering accident we can all get behind Oh no! Anyway, how’s everyone’s Friday night going pic.twitter.com/aWOKe233Ai— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) October 12, 2024
Midriff Hall of Famer, first ballot. I still have no explanation for how she hooked up with Sonny. None, Not even money can explain it. Maybe his middle name is Porfirio, but beyond that, I just don't see it.
That’s been asked before. They were kids back then though. Thats a good reason as any. I remember them on the 6:5 special on BBC as a new American couple singing “I Got You Babe” about the same time as Tom Jones did “It’s Not Unusual” edit: First time we heard “I got you babe” we argued over which voice was male or female.
When I said I would be subscribing to ad-free YouTube, I lied. I'm just too lazy and stingy to do it. And yes the ads keep getting worse. But I just saw one that was mindblowing. There was an earnest guy who was advertising his blackmail handling services. If you are being blackmailed, call him and he will take care of it. It's like I left the real world and I stumbled into the universe of a 1980's TV show. I'm just hoping I'm a background character and not this week's guest star.
Bumming. Lost a former student today (found out today, kid died on the 6th). Just 34 years old. Car wreck. It's happened before (one to lupus and one to drug violence), but there's no getting used to it.
Although I am a teacher too, it never happened to me yet (at least as far as I know: I had hundreds, maybe a few thousands, students in my career so far and I sure can't track all of them) to tragically lose one of my former (or, even worse, current) students. By imagining that kind of event, though, I guess I can relate quite well and I agree that it's not something a teacher can get used to. My condolences to you and my thoughts to him.
Over the weekend on a flight I watched an Arabic language movie in which this psychiatrist advertised online that he would buy annoying husbands from wives. Another case where a comedy movie can't touch real life.
Sorry, and I understand. I lost several over the course of my career, though all of mine were to some kind of gun violence. Never fun to learn.
I don't want to beat a dead horse here but alpinists* usually have 2 paths they take. They either quit climbing big mountains or they die up there. I looked them up and they are actually good. Fay Manners is professional and Dvorak is at least sponsored. Having said that, my first thought would not have been "oh great. I guess I have to wait until next year." Alpinism isn't my cup of tea. I have tried it once and the weather did not cooperate. *There are different disciplines of climbing. This is alpinism