Month: July 2011

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We Keep Ending Up in High Places

Another weekend, more high places. It was just a week ago we were hanging by ropes on the side of a very tall building in San Francisco and now we were hiking up Mt. Tallec, overlooking Lake Tahoe. This was our first attempt at high altitude hiking, even though the summit would “only” be 9,875′ above sea level. Our first experiment at hiking in thinner air was successful, although it was humbling when we realized that the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro is exactly twice as high. Wow.

Because of the record snowfall this winter, a portion of the trail was impassable and we found ourselves scrambling up and down treacherous scree and large jagged rocks. Other stretches of the trail required hiking through the snow. Note that we were hiking on JULY 30th.

The hike was only 9 miles round trip but it was moderately strenuous and took us 6.5 hours, including time for photographs along the way and eating lunch at the top. It was a long day with 7 hours of driving and nearly that much in hiking, but it was worth the effort. We couldn’t have asked for a better day and the photographs tell the story better than anything we could describe here.

Check out our photo gallery.

And our pal Tom took this video on the summit!

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Over The Edge

Last summer, during a conference call, a co-worker from Iowa mentioned what he was doing for the weekend: rappelling down the tallest building in Des Moines after raising money for Special Olympics and being filmed by a local television station for being the top fundraiser. While others on the call were telling him how crazy he was, I wanted to know if they did it in San Francisco because I’d be the first to sign up. Six months later, in January, we signed up on the day the registration website went live. Waiting until July 23rd to “plummet to our deaths” was going to be hard.

During the week leading up to the event, neither of us tried to think much about it. One of us because he would get too excited and think of nothing else, the other because she didn’t want to think of falling to her death at such a young age. When the big day finally arrived, we drove into San Francisco on a gloriously beautiful day. We arrived in Union Square, a popular shopping and tourist area, where the Grand Hyatt towers high above. As we approached the hotel, we saw tourists pointing to the sky and shading their eyes. They were watching rappellers climbing down the side of the hotel. This would be us in about two hours.

Resisting the urge to turn around and go home, we went inside to register for our final act on Earth.

We signed a waiver with the word DEATH  interspersed throughout it, were given Special Olympics wristbands, then led to the top floor of the hotel where we met our friend Sean who checked our wristbands and marked us off on his list. Sean is a big teddy bear who made sure that the tourists who were enjoying lunch in the adjoining restaurant didn’t try to sneak in, slip into rappelling gear, and dash up to the rooftop. We waited around with Sean and took in the spectacular views from the panoramic windows before being led into another room where we were outfitted with the gear we would be buried in. After they scraped us off of the cement 400 feet below. The big orange work gloves would be a nice touch in my coffin. I should also mention that Sean is a friend who works for the coroner’s office and assured us that he’d take personal charge of our remains. It’s great to have friends in high places.

Once outfitted, there was more waiting. We could see the people ahead of us rappelling down the side of the building, adding to the excitement/terror of the moment. Finally, we were led up the maintenance stairwell to the rooftop, where we were told to walk on the “mats” along the perimeter of the roof. I had visions of stepping off of the mats and falling through the ceiling. Great. One more thing to worry about. When we popped out onto the roof, the crisp air and unobstructed views of San Francisco were spectacular and much more adrenaline pumping than the same views from inside the hermetically sealed 36th floor below.

We were led to a mock-up of the emergency brake on a rope, where we were assured that the brake would engage if we descended too fast or got tangled up. How fast is too fast, I wondered? We were shown how to release the brake (wave our arm sideways to alert the rope handlers at the bottom, wait for them to create some slack in the rope, then tap the emergency brake to go again). I wondered “how will they distinguish between arm waving for the emergency brake thing and generic panicked arm waving”? After getting the emergency brake tutorial, we were told to climb up another set of stairs onto the roof of a utility structure in the middle of the roof. Yes, we climbed ABOVE the roof. We were met by a nice Over The Edge crew member who gave us a brief rappelling lesson. Yes, our first lesson was on a roof ABOVE the roof. Great. Quick practice session rappelling twenty feet DOWN to the roof, then it was over to the corner of the building for the big show. As we waited our turn in line, we watched our fellow mental patients get hooked in and disappear over the edge of the roof. Yikes. This also gave us a chance to take in the views a little longer. We could look at the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, the Financial District, and the clock on the centerfield scoreboard inside AT&T Park. Or pretend that we were standing in the backyard on a sunny day.

Finally, it was our turn to be strapped in. We were given final instructions, much like a death row inmate being told what to expect when he walks into the chamber. Step up on the ledge, turn your back to the building, walk backwards until the arches of your feet are on the building edge, pivot back until you’re perpendicular to the building, start walking down. Stop along the way and enjoy the moment. Piece of cake.

What you notice when hanging from a rope with your feet on the side of a very tall building in the heart of a major city is how quiet it is. There’s a stillness that’s remarkably peaceful. The only sounds are the wind blowing and your heart pounding.

Crazy. Insane. Nuts. Batty. Cracked. Demented. Idiotic. Mad. Mental. Psycho. Unhinged. Awesome!

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Mom’s Birthday

Today is Mom’s birthday. We’re pretty certain that she’s turning 79, but numbers don’t matter when it comes to her. She treats her age like a can just waiting to be sent sailing down the street with a swift kick. While all of their friends were dying or downsizing into retirement homes, our parents moved 2,000 miles and doubled the size of their home. That doesn’t sound like someone who cares much about “acting her age”.

Of course, the slow decaying process that our bodies begin at birth is real and there are certain things that the body can do at forty-three that it can’t do at seventy-nine. So, what do you get a 79-year-old who just moved across the country into a new home? You buy her a 43-year-old.

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This Is How the Crazy Talk Starts

I’ve decided that crazy people don’t know that they’re crazy. They believe that their behavior is perfectly normal. If a crazy person walks in circles talking to nobody in particular and all of his friends do the same thing, he could only conclude that his behavior is perfectly acceptable. To some extent, certain behaviors can be socialized across a group, introducing ideas that were previously considered ridiculous or unattainable. The same thing occurs with endurance athletes and adventure junkies. Somebody says ” I’m thinking of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro” and before you can engage the part of the brain that controls rational thought, your mouth forms the words “me too”.

Your friends do events with titles like Death Ride and you start to wonder… maybe. This should not be considered normal behavior in any population, yet we accept it, embrace it, and even turn it into a badge of honor. The insane in a constant struggle to out-crazy themselves. The latest example of this came after volunteering at the Western States Endurance Run, a 100 mile trail run in the California Sierra Nevada mountains. This is a race, where runners have 30 hours to run the course, which includes 18,000 feet of ascent and 22,000 feet of descent. The runners use pacers who accompany them for 20-30 miles at a time to provide safety and motivation. The course is pitch black at night, lit only by each runner’s headlamp. The trails are very narrow and the runners’ instructions warns of trail hazards including bears, mountain lions, and rattlesnakes. Runners are told to watch where they place their feet and hands. If you complete the race within the time limit, you get a big belt buckle. Silver for finishing under 24 hours, bronze for sub-30 hours. Unless you’re very fast, you will be running for two sunrises. Before the big day, night, and another day of running, you train for months, running 50 mile qualifying trail runs. You enter a lottery and hope that 1 in 10 odds work in your favor. If you hit the race entry lottery, you pay a large registration fee. Then you train more. You convince friends to pace you for a marathon distance in the dark woods with bears, cougars, and rattlesnakes. Once you’ve found enough stupid loyal friends to serve as pacers, you train more. You pay a bazillion dollars to a chiropractor and a massage therapist to keep you injury-free. All for a belt buckle with huge bragging rights.

Our primary reasons for volunteering were to give back to our running community and to check out the race. We’d heard about it for so long and I had even met someone who’d completed it a few years ago. We were intrigued by it. Upon arriving in late afternoon, we pitched in to help with assembling the aid station, located at the Auburn Hills Trail area, 85 miles from the start line.

All runners began at 5:00am and the first male runner arrived at our station at 6:07pm. He had been on the trail for just over 13 hours and looked better than I do after a five mile run. I should also mention that his name is Kilian Jornet and that he broke the record for running up and down Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,540′) in Africa last year. He did it in 7 hours and 14 minutes. It will take us eight days. Check out Kilian Jornet’s Kilimanjaro Run on YouTube. Those who knew the story of Kilian Jornet were a little star-struck when the Spaniard came running into our aid station. He was completely relaxed and very engaging with all of the volunteers. At that point, he held a four minute lead over the second place runner, the exact gap between them at the finish line 15 miles later.

The majority of runners arrived in the middle of the night after they’d already been running for 20+ hours. We witnessed runners in various states of physical distress but we were prepared for all of them, even though it meant staying up all night.

A normal person would have taken all of this in and wondered why in the world anybody would ever voluntarily put their body through such an ordeal. I can tell you why. Crazy people hang out with crazy people and none of them know that they’re crazy. They all think that paying a race organizer for the privilege of inflicting pain on your body is a perfectly normal thing to do. Proof? The conversation on the drive home went like this. “I would love to do that”. “Me too”. This is how the crazy talk starts.