Days Until....

9 days until Rainier.

This should be a relatively painless trip (it's mostly just for the purpose of high-altitude, winter-time how-to-stay-alive training), and I'll find out with great certainty whether my current exercise routine is going to be sufficient for McKinley, and if it proves not to be, then I've got two months to make adjustments. Not a lot, but better than nothing.

Particularly interesting aspects of the trip include that of: pulling yourself out of a crevasse; pulling someone else out of a crevasse; not getting killed when someone on your rope team decides to start sliding down the mountain; doing a happy dance upon reaching the summit; etc.

I'm picking up two people from the Seattle airport and giving them a lift to the mountain. One of them doesn't arrive until several hours after the other guy, so we're going to cruise around Seattle and see what there is to see. I've never been to Washington ... should be fun.

74 days until McKinley.

The pictures look a little daunting, but we take nearly three weeks walking up it, so, I'm not too worried. Summit day is going to suck though, I'm pretty sure.

So, I'm wondering about shaving. I'll be gone for nearly a month and most of that time I won't have access to hot water. I really don't want to have a month's facial hair growth going on at the end of the trip. And dry-shaving or using cold water doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun. Electric? It'd have to be very light-weight. Hmm. I'll have to look into that.

I need a little vertical filler, so I thought I'd mention q-tips. Two people mentioned to me that their doctors told them not to use q-tips in their ears - something gross about clogging up your ears. Maybe these doctors don't know how to use q-tips, because I've *never* had any such issues, but, of course, no I'm all paranoid.

127 days until Half Dome.

After Rainier and McKinley, Half Dome isn't really concerning me very much. A leisurely afternoon walk, really. I haven't been camping in Yosemite since I was a kid, so, I'm really looking forward to that. I've haven't taken a shovel and a bucket and dammed up a creek in that park in years.

In other news, I finally surpassed 155 lbs again. Water weight? Fat? Muscle? All three? Who knows. I'm not picky.

And I got my l33t Rubik's Cube skilz down to ninety seconds.