It's about 4.5km around the Lake. I once ran 6 times around here, took about 3 hours, to prepare for the Korea Ironman.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Would You Exercise Your Right?
If a minibus taxi was huretling towards a pedetrian crossing at 80km/h, and the green man was flashing, would you exercise your right to cross?
Why Not Try?
This is one of about 8 books, costing in all about R1000 in total, including shipping, I've ordered from Amazon.com. It's not all entertainment, a few books are intended to serve as intruction towards scriptwriting and also writing children's books.
Do You Want to Publish Something?
One way to learn how to write, is to read. I've just spent $100 (of which $30 was for shipping) ordering 5 books from Amazon. What I can also due is take my cue from Krakauer, who talks about sending a query letter. I googled 'sending query letter' and found this at http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/apr98/keegan7.htm:
So my advice is, when you've written your novel, and re-read it, re-written it, then polished it to the best of your ability and laser-printed it with good margins, good spacing, correctly page-numbered and it's ready to send out, don't! Instead, sell the idea, learn to sell the story, preferably in a single page, never more than two. Why? Well, you know how busy editors are -- give them their chance of finding gold but give it to them in a short, snappy, interesting, read-while-having-a-coffee, byte-sized chunk. They'll have the time to read an unsolicited letter, it might be from a new Tom Clancy.
Now one response is, "But I can't write a short, snappy letter!" OK, say I, give up writing, go away and become a potter. You're a writer, a wannabe novelist and you tell me you can't, you can't learn to write one good query letter? So why should I think you can write an interesting opening, good characters, and dialogue that's alive? Isn't a good, professional letter an example of your ability? Oh and by the way, quiet confidence is OK, but please don't over-hype your story, don't be cute. Introduce yourself briefly and then outline your novel.
So what should your letter contain? Not the plot, definitely not the plot. Have you ever tried to describe a plot, even of a damn good film? Why does it always come over as boring, full of loose ends, hopelessly convoluted? Well, one, we don't actually care what the intricacies of plots are, what we care about are the protagonists and their problems. We want an idea of what kind of book it is, when and where it's set and what happens to the people. That's enough. Remember, commercial editors are pressurised, they make quick decisions. This decision is whether to answer you or not, then with a no or a "Please send more details." At this moment they are thinking ballpark only; they want to know if there's a possibility your story might suit them, could fill a slot. The letter suggests, the follow-up will contain the evidence either way. So hook them!
I got serious about my writing in October, 1992. In June, 1993, I went to another writer's conference. I listened to Caroline Oakley, then of Headline Books, who said that certain genres were out of fashion and that other genres were just coming into vogue. I listened when she said that Women-in-Jeopardy novels were in great demand. I listened at a second lecture when she explained how to approach a publisher, how to frame an introductory letter, how too many people sent in page after page of a detailed plot. What was needed, Caroline explained, was a short letter, one page, a maximum of two, outlining the essence of the book, the who and where and maybe the why. Caroline wanted to know the genre and the essential conflicts affecting the protagonist.
I decided to write to Caroline after the conference. But when I looked at my saved Caz Flood blurb it was five pages long! I set myself a target of 200 words which was really hard to achieve. When I'd composed the letter - and I took two days polishing it -- it was as good as I could make it.
Dear Caroline,
I attended two of your lectures at the recent writer's conference in Southampton and we spoke briefly about a WIJ thriller I've been writing. If I had to encapsulate the book in a line it might be:
"Caz Flood desperately needs to prove herself, she might die trying."
Caz Flood is a brand-new detective constable, an athlete and fiercely independent. She is confused as to what she wants from men and her drive to become a very special policeman conflicts with a budding romance. She stumbles on to a gruesome "domestic" killing and, a small cog in the resultant investigation, she fights to make an input. She is outgunned because she is junior, inexperienced AND a woman.
Her boss, DI MacInnes, is an obsessive catcher of killers. He sees Flood as his eventual replacement and steers her away from the worst excesses of the police department. Flood is at odds with her superiors but forced to keep her head down. When the series of killings is apparently solved, Flood has the last weekend to tidy up the loose ends and chooses to do this, rather than consummate the relationship.
In these few days, she manages to uncover the twist in the tail, comes close to being murdered herself, overcomes the real killer and realises she is becoming more like DI MacInnes every day. She hasn't yet totally forsaken her personal life for one catching bad people, but deep down, she knows the two don't go together.
I trust the above shows the three conflicts to be resolved without telling the story! One other thing - DNA finger-printing looks like taking half the mystery out of who-dunnits. But what if a villain turned the science to his advantage? I have 26,000 words completed from an estimated 90-110,000. I would be grateful if you would take a look at them on behalf of Headline.
This letter is 314 words, the actual book outline is 198 words.
The Reply
Many thanks for yesterday's fax -- and congratulations, your letter of introduction does the job extremely well. I'd love to see the first 25,000 words or so of Caz Flood's story. It sounds exactly the kind of material we are looking for at the moment.
And the rest, as they say, is history...
So my advice is, when you've written your novel, and re-read it, re-written it, then polished it to the best of your ability and laser-printed it with good margins, good spacing, correctly page-numbered and it's ready to send out, don't! Instead, sell the idea, learn to sell the story, preferably in a single page, never more than two. Why? Well, you know how busy editors are -- give them their chance of finding gold but give it to them in a short, snappy, interesting, read-while-having-a-coffee, byte-sized chunk. They'll have the time to read an unsolicited letter, it might be from a new Tom Clancy.
Now one response is, "But I can't write a short, snappy letter!" OK, say I, give up writing, go away and become a potter. You're a writer, a wannabe novelist and you tell me you can't, you can't learn to write one good query letter? So why should I think you can write an interesting opening, good characters, and dialogue that's alive? Isn't a good, professional letter an example of your ability? Oh and by the way, quiet confidence is OK, but please don't over-hype your story, don't be cute. Introduce yourself briefly and then outline your novel.
So what should your letter contain? Not the plot, definitely not the plot. Have you ever tried to describe a plot, even of a damn good film? Why does it always come over as boring, full of loose ends, hopelessly convoluted? Well, one, we don't actually care what the intricacies of plots are, what we care about are the protagonists and their problems. We want an idea of what kind of book it is, when and where it's set and what happens to the people. That's enough. Remember, commercial editors are pressurised, they make quick decisions. This decision is whether to answer you or not, then with a no or a "Please send more details." At this moment they are thinking ballpark only; they want to know if there's a possibility your story might suit them, could fill a slot. The letter suggests, the follow-up will contain the evidence either way. So hook them!
I got serious about my writing in October, 1992. In June, 1993, I went to another writer's conference. I listened to Caroline Oakley, then of Headline Books, who said that certain genres were out of fashion and that other genres were just coming into vogue. I listened when she said that Women-in-Jeopardy novels were in great demand. I listened at a second lecture when she explained how to approach a publisher, how to frame an introductory letter, how too many people sent in page after page of a detailed plot. What was needed, Caroline explained, was a short letter, one page, a maximum of two, outlining the essence of the book, the who and where and maybe the why. Caroline wanted to know the genre and the essential conflicts affecting the protagonist.
I decided to write to Caroline after the conference. But when I looked at my saved Caz Flood blurb it was five pages long! I set myself a target of 200 words which was really hard to achieve. When I'd composed the letter - and I took two days polishing it -- it was as good as I could make it.
Dear Caroline,
I attended two of your lectures at the recent writer's conference in Southampton and we spoke briefly about a WIJ thriller I've been writing. If I had to encapsulate the book in a line it might be:
"Caz Flood desperately needs to prove herself, she might die trying."
Caz Flood is a brand-new detective constable, an athlete and fiercely independent. She is confused as to what she wants from men and her drive to become a very special policeman conflicts with a budding romance. She stumbles on to a gruesome "domestic" killing and, a small cog in the resultant investigation, she fights to make an input. She is outgunned because she is junior, inexperienced AND a woman.
Her boss, DI MacInnes, is an obsessive catcher of killers. He sees Flood as his eventual replacement and steers her away from the worst excesses of the police department. Flood is at odds with her superiors but forced to keep her head down. When the series of killings is apparently solved, Flood has the last weekend to tidy up the loose ends and chooses to do this, rather than consummate the relationship.
In these few days, she manages to uncover the twist in the tail, comes close to being murdered herself, overcomes the real killer and realises she is becoming more like DI MacInnes every day. She hasn't yet totally forsaken her personal life for one catching bad people, but deep down, she knows the two don't go together.
I trust the above shows the three conflicts to be resolved without telling the story! One other thing - DNA finger-printing looks like taking half the mystery out of who-dunnits. But what if a villain turned the science to his advantage? I have 26,000 words completed from an estimated 90-110,000. I would be grateful if you would take a look at them on behalf of Headline.
This letter is 314 words, the actual book outline is 198 words.
The Reply
Many thanks for yesterday's fax -- and congratulations, your letter of introduction does the job extremely well. I'd love to see the first 25,000 words or so of Caz Flood's story. It sounds exactly the kind of material we are looking for at the moment.
And the rest, as they say, is history...
Sunday, April 10, 2005
City climber tells of Everest deaths
Copied from the Cape Times article:
http://www.capetimes.co.za/
index.php?fSectionId=271&fArticleId=2099386
'the bulgarians lost one guy and the koreans lost two'
June 3, 2004
By Melanie Gosling
Capetonian André Bredenkamp helped cover an injured climber with snow near the summit of Mount Everest where he and fellow climbers had to leave the man to die.
Bredenkamp, who arrived back in the city yesterday, said on the same day that he summited, three climbers died in their attempt to scale the world's highest mountain of 8 848m.
"One of them, a Korean, fell and broke his leg. No one was able to move him or do anything. We covered him up with snow and he just went to sleep," he said yesterday.
It was one of Bredenkamp's more harrowing experiences on his successful climb of the north face of Everest from Tibet last month.
"It's difficult to try to help anyone at that altitude because you're just trying to keep yourself alive."He summited in almost a complete white-out of driven snow.
"You're just trying to survive, trying to balance and concentrate on getting to the top. I just wanted to sleep and for 10 or 15 minutes I lay down in the snow and slept until the Sherpa woke me up. It was a very bad season. Nine people died on the north face," Bredenkamp said.
"You get completely disorientated. I had to keep reminding myself I was climbing a mountain. Every step of the way I had to try to motivate myself. At that altitude I took at least 10 to 15 breaths each time I moved one foot."
When he reached the top, he had unfurled the South African flag and the Boy Scout flag, an organisation to which he has belonged since he was a boy.
Fellow Capetonians, Mike Nixon and Chris Drummond, did not reach the summit. Nixon developed a serious lung infection and was forced to turn back at 7 500m - higher than any mountain in the southern hemisphere.
Bredenkamp and Drummond pushed on to the top camp.
"Those three days were hell. You'd wake up with your sleeping bag covered in snow and ice and icicles stuck to your face.
"Then you'd pack up your wet sleeping bag and have tea and porridge and walk all day.
"It took 45 minutes to climb 100m. It was absolutely awful.
"When we arrived at top camp we had to collect ice in a black bag and melt it in a cup on the stove. We spent several hours just melting ice to make soup and tea."
The two set out for the summit at midnight wearing torches on their heads.
Said Drummond: "It was a lot more difficult than I anticipated and we came close to death on more than one
occasion.
"On summit ridge there was a huge gust of wind and I took off backwards like Mary Poppins. I hit a rock.
"I fell about 13m and landed on my backpack, which probably saved my life. By that stage I lost my nerve. It would take another seven hours to do the last 200m and I knew I couldn't make it."
Drummond is still in pain from severe frostbite on his toes.
Nixon, back at advanced base camp, spoke of the harrowing time they had watching the weather closing in over the summit.
Nixon said: "We were surrounded by groups from Bulgaria and Korea. The Bulgarians lost one guy and the Koreans lost two. So when we heard André had made the summit there were huge celebrations."
"I have not conquered Everest, it has merely tolerated me"
"We encourage young people to go out and exceed their goals. Everest is an icon of that" Neil Beidleman
"Such arrogance, I believe, is dangerous for any climber, but it is especially dangerous for one who purports to be a Himalayan guide " Jon Krakauer-regarding Anatoli Boukreev and the 1996 disaster
"Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous." Reinhold Messner
"I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits." Reinhold Messner
"Pissing through 6 inches of clothes with a 3 inch penis" Anonymous Everest summiteer when asked what was the hardest thing about climbing Mt Everest
"As far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how." Edmund Hillary, referring to the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
"The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest ?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is no use'. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for." George Leigh Mallory, 1922
"Mountains don't kill people, they just sit there..." Ed Viesturs
"Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is the most important. This willpower you cannot buy with money or be given by others..it rises from your heart" Junko Tabei-1975 after becoming first woman to climb Everest
"You feel like you're one giant lung, as if breathing is all there is to life." Mike Groom
"Everest for me, and I believe for the world, is the physical and symbolic manifestation of overcoming odds to achieve a dream." Tom Whittaker
"Oh, the absolute lethargy of 24,600'. You want to pee, and you lie there for a quarter of an hour making up your mind to look for the pee bottle." Chris Bonnington, 1975
"Hey, look, don't worry too much about me" Rob Hall ..His last words via satellite radio-phone to his pregnant wife in New Zealand
"Such arrogance, I believe, is dangerous for any climber, but it is especially dangerous for one who purports to be a Himalayan guide " Jon Krakauer-regarding Anatoli Boukreev and the 1996 disaster
"Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous." Reinhold Messner
"I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits." Reinhold Messner
"Pissing through 6 inches of clothes with a 3 inch penis" Anonymous Everest summiteer when asked what was the hardest thing about climbing Mt Everest
"As far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how." Edmund Hillary, referring to the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
"The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest ?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is no use'. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for." George Leigh Mallory, 1922
"Mountains don't kill people, they just sit there..." Ed Viesturs
"Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top; it is the willpower that is the most important. This willpower you cannot buy with money or be given by others..it rises from your heart" Junko Tabei-1975 after becoming first woman to climb Everest
"You feel like you're one giant lung, as if breathing is all there is to life." Mike Groom
"Everest for me, and I believe for the world, is the physical and symbolic manifestation of overcoming odds to achieve a dream." Tom Whittaker
"Oh, the absolute lethargy of 24,600'. You want to pee, and you lie there for a quarter of an hour making up your mind to look for the pee bottle." Chris Bonnington, 1975
"Hey, look, don't worry too much about me" Rob Hall ..His last words via satellite radio-phone to his pregnant wife in New Zealand
The Dark Side of Triathlon
I have personally had a very positive experience, culminating in the Ironman, in the sport of triathlon. It has certainly sustained me, and brought me a lot of pleasure, pain (but the ability to overcome it), and taken me to a lot of places where I have met some very interesting and inspired characters. Triathlon though, is a sport, that more than most, caters to the obessive-compulsive personality. If this is true, it also provides a healthy outlet, as long as we are not driven to overtrain or train when we are sick. I have been, and that's the dark side of triathlon.
But beyond what we do to, or for ourselves, there are also fellow athletes that either command our respect (for me it is guys like Raynard Tissink and Peter Reid), or indiciate what lengths some will go to satisfy a need either to be superior, or be seen as superior, by unsportsmanlike means. A good example of this is Nina Kraft, who won the Ironman world championship, accepted the awards, amde speeches, and then tested positive for EPO.
EPO triathlon cheat Nina Kraft gets reduced ban
FRANKFURT (Germany): Germany’s disgraced Ironman Triathlon world champion Nina Kraft has seen her initial two-year ban for using the blood-boosting drug EPO sport reduced to 12 months, the German Triathlon Union (DTU) confirmed on Monday. The 35-year-old became the first German woman to win the Ironman triathlon in Hawaii back on October 17 2002 but tested positive for EPO (erythropoietin) a month later and was hit with a two-year ban.
It seems ludicrous to me that people at such a high level will try to take short cuts, but I suppose that they are driven to survive financially by their sport, and their sponsors put a great deal of pressure on them for results. Evens so, it seems nonsensical to me that elite athletes will try to gain an advantage over their competitors, because if successful, what does it mean in their private hours after the awards ceremony.
Natascha Badmann, the always smiling Swiss woman who came second at the World Championships, felt cheated and unsure of the reality, and credibility of the title that was taken from Kraft and given to her. Understandably so. She raced again in South Africa, only 5 months after Hawaii, to put it behind her. She says:
“I was frustrated at the beginning, but now, finally, after some time has gone by, I got so much nice correspondence from people – people who I didn’t know at all, who talked to me when I went to the supermarket, and would say “We were with you, and know you won – we knew you were good.” Reaction from people that I never expected to get. Things like that really helped me to get over it,” she said in an interview a couple of days before she raced at the Spec-Savers Ironman South Africa event.
Kevin Mackinnon of Ironmanlive, writes:
The five-time Ironman Triathlon World Champion has become a major proponent of drug testing after her bitter-sweet win in Kona last fall.
Last fall Natascha Badmann, who turned 38 in December, became the oldest ever winner of the Ironman Triathlon World Championship. For Badmann the victory was bitter sweet – it wasn’t until Nina Kraft’s positive test for EPO that the Swiss star was given her fifth Ironman title.
Now, months after the fact, Badmann is beginning to come to terms with the frustrating way she achieved her fifth Kona title.
If it is ludicrous to cheat at such a high level, then it really defies belief to do so at an amateur level. Perhaps the cheater is not really aware that he or she is cheating, but is simply in a hurry... No, I don't think that washes. I think cheating is cheating, and no matter how strong your will to win is, when in a race, everyone should hold to the same standard. The winner wins because he faced the same challenge as everyone else, not because he was the only one to bullshit his way through the system, outsmarting his fellow competitors through guile, good looks or some other charade (as may happen in the real world).
I introduced a New Zealand athlete, Bernard Adams, a stocky, redheaded ex marine, to the sport (of triathlon) towards the middle of 2003, perhaps a little earlier. I did so because he was an exceptionally good swimmer and runner at the time anyway, and was committed to training often. In short he was motivated and habituated to training, and I thought triathlon was the perfect fit. He didn't feel the same way, and actually said on several occasions, "I will never do this..." To his credit, he reconsidered when a friend suggested they give it a go, especially since his friend had a brother who had some experience at the sport. Within a very short time, Bernard had acquired all the very best equipment, including a bicyle frame identical to mine, but the very latest technology.
I remember him as being excessively careful with money, more of a penny pincher than I am, so was surprised to hear that he had suddenly spent a huge amount of money at the drop of a hat on all sorts of equipment. But I also knew he could afford it (more than I could), and also realised with a pang, to what extent he was serious about what was obviously a newfound passion. At one stage he asked me to join in a bulk order, thereby assuring shared discounts. I offered some advice on bicycle wheels, but there our views differed, and while he went for a pair of heavier trispokes, I went for less flashy but high performance Zipp Deep Section rims.
Although we had trained a great deal together when I was a triathlete and he was not, including swimming and running, once he began his preparations for triathlon I am not sure if we trained again after that, beyond a handful of swimming sessions. It became obvious, very soon, that he was out to beat me.
This seemed very unnecessary, because I was far more experienced than he was, and I felt the point was that he should get to know the sport, especially in the first races, and enjoy it, and then worry about performance.
As it turned out, at the very first event, I had an electrolytic and more than likely a glucose bonk, and ended up walking on the run. This obviously gave the appearance that I hadn't much experience or knowledge in the sport. Bernard though, managed to do a really good race, despite an extremely chilly swim, and before the run, he was as much as 1 or 2 minutes ahead of me.
I felt a strong sense that he would go far in the sport, and enjoy it.
I felt profoundly disappointed with my race, not only due to the preventable bonking experience, (due to lack of sleep, I simply had not thought to eat more than I did)but also because I had taken a wrong turn and so lost touch with riders I was drafting with (it qas a draft legal race), and had to recoup lost time at a great cost in terms of energy.
I made good on my commitment to improve on my performance, by winning the next race at Tongyoung. I knew the race offered prizemoney, and few do for age groupers these days, so I was focussed on a top 3 podium finish. To win, was a bonus. But there is an interesting aside to this story. Bernard had managed a podium finish in Gangneung, at number 3, but at Tongyoung, he came out the water first (me second, about a minute behind) and then punctured after 4-5km. Knowing he was probably capable of running 4-5 minutes faster than I was in that race, I still believed the race, between the two of us at any rate, was not over. I would be competing against him directly, if I meant to make the podium. So I was in a very competitive mode for this race. But he was unable to fix his puncture quickly, and so lost time and ultimately fell out of the top 10.
Although I was determined to do well, I was also determined to run my own race, and stuck closely to a heart rate, and did not deviate virtually for the duration of the race. When I finished the race, I was extremely happy to have held it together so well, and to have finished ahead of an outstanding competitor called Mr Pee, but was actually unaware that I was first. I knew I had done well, but I had no idea what my placing was. That's to what extent it was a private race, me just pushing myself as hard as I could, noticing other athletes but not focussed on them.
It was some time later that I heard that Bernard and his friend were both disqualified for drafting. I thought perhaps, due to inexperience, they had drafted without knowing that in this race, as opposed to the last, it was illegal. But I later heard from other Koreans that many people had shouted and called to them to stop, but both athletes had just ignored this. I thought this was a bit of an aberation, didn't quite know what to think of it. But later I heard a comment that Bernard wondered if I had intentionally sabotaged his race, that perhaps I had caused him to puncture. This surprised me, and in fact, annoyed me. I'm not sure if he seriously considered this, but the fact is he was thinking about it, because I heard about it. The implication was that in order to win I had to cheat, and this didn't sit well with me at all.
In a peculiar quirk of fate, later that day when I went to finally collect my bicycle in the transition area, my back wheel was completely flat. I remember seeing a lot of flat stones on the course, and I know on the very last lap I had strayed over a piece of road, riding over these stones that I had intentionally avoided. Evidently they had pierced my tyre on the final lap (of 5), but not enough to prevent me from completing the lap. As it was, I was completely unaware of it until I fetched my bike.
If the disqualification at Tongyoung was an aberation, what happened in Cheolwon was not. Bernard won the very next race, by fair means, but at Cheolwon he later indicated in his log, on beginnertriathlete.com, that he had swum on the inside of the lane ropes (Cheolwon had spanned ropes from buoy to buoy) to avoid the bottlenecks of swimmers. I was also painfully aware of the large amounts of slow swimmers hogging the passage of water, but I took a very wide route in order to avoid all of them. I believed I would have one of the fastest swims of the day, and I also thought it was very likely that my swim would be faster than Bernard's that day. One of my goals, for Cheolwon, was to have an excellent swim as I had had the year before. To hear afterwards that he had swum on the inside, was really disheartening for me to hear. I don't know whether he knew he was cheating, but where lane ropes are setup, a swimmer may not swim on the inside of them. In the Ironman, to do so invites disqualification. In any event, his doing so meant his race was completely different to everyone elses, particularly here, in terms of the swim.
Once again I was not sure whether this was just an aberation, a bad decision, but one borne out of the necessity to get around people in the way. But I was beginning to think so, feeling that a pattern was emerging, and the need to win, for him, was paramount. More important than fairness. This same attitude prevailed, I suppose, at Tongyoung, where many Koreans shouted to no avail 'NO DRAFTING' but they drafted for the duration of the race. Did they think the Koreans didn't know what they were talking about? That they knew better? Who knows? It just sat very badly with me, that this guy that I had introduced to the sport, was running amuck, arrogant because he thought he was so good, flouting the rules. I didn't like it at all. I believe he is a great athlete, but that is no license for dishonesty, to cheat, to serve a superego.
Finally, and this has prompted me to write this and post it in a public place, he made a claim to a close friend of mine that he missed a slot for Hawaii by 'just one place'. He had a very good first Ironman (the race in Korea was not a complete Ironman as the swim section was cancelled due to a typhoon), and he deserves the credit to had lifted himself from absolute rookie, to an Ironman, in a single year. I did triathlon for over a decade before I felt ready to attempt the Ironman. I did my first 3/4 Ironman in 1996 I think, in under 7 hours, and felt I had a special talent over longer distances. But to go under 10 hours over the full distance, in the first time, is truly exceptional. It was my goal, and it remains my goal to go under 10 hours, but I am happy to approach it with not just fortitude, but also patience. The lesson I learned from the Ironman is 'everything in good time', and 'believe in yourself, respect yourself, and then try...'
As I say, Bernard's performance, the result of 6 months of dedicated training in New Zealand, is remarkable for someone so inexperienced, so new to the sport. This achievement though was not enough to guarantee a place at the World Ironman Championships (another goal I have had for some years). In fact, his time was only good enough for 18th of some 186 competitors. This shows the depth of the New Zealand field. I was surprised to hear a friend relay a message Bernard had conveyed to her, saying he had missed his slot to Hawaii by one.
How it works is 2000 people compete in the World Championship, and roughly a thousand or more slots are up for grabs at some 20 qualifying events around the world. Usually 25-50 slots are allocated to each event, divided into various age groups. Ironman New Zealand had 70 slots, the most of any race. 10 went to the elite athletes, and the other 60 get divided into the 20-24 age group, 25-29, 30-34, all the way up to 60-64 and higher. This means if there are 6 groups, each allocated 10 slots, then to miss a slot by one means one has to have come in 11th. For this reason I was once again really annoyed to be aware of this unsportsmanlike attitude to the sport.
Having read Into Thin Air, and having heard Broukeev's explanation for acting as guide without oxygen, I agree with Krakauer that his book was not about a blame game, but was simply an honest attempt to uncover what really happened, and also to hold everyone accountable for what happened. He admits that he needed also to exorcise his own experience, laying down the facts honestly and without judgement, including his own culpability on that mountain.
This account is somewhat different. Ironman does share the goal (with high altitude mountaineering) of attempting to defy the odds to an extent, to be courageous, but one also hopes, to be sporting and fair if it is possible, even in extreme conditions. Be Fair, Play Fair. This is why Woodall and 'O Dowd are an embarassment to that year, '96, because it was one rule for them, it was about their selfish ambitions, their glorification, and to hell with etiquette and everyone else.
Maybe morality does not belong on a mountain, but if one can help someone, if one can be true to oneself about the facts and reasons behind actions, I think one ought to try, and face a disapproving audience if not.
In that sense I thought it was necessary to mention Bernard by name. This certainly isn't a forum frequented by Ironman officials or only triathletes, but it nevertheless presents some kind of audience. I will also bring his attention to what I have mentioned here. Some, most I think, he already knows, from me directly, but if not, here it is. At the very least, it will provide an incentive for him, and others possibly, who are out there, whether in sport or not, to continue to race (or live) well, but to not continue to put himself, unfairly, above other competitors. Sport is after all analogous to our lives, but hopefully better than our lives in the sense that we see definite results for all our efforts, are rewarded, we have comaraderie, attention and support and importantly, fair play. This is how, certainly in the arena, we can all be winners, all be enriched.
But beyond what we do to, or for ourselves, there are also fellow athletes that either command our respect (for me it is guys like Raynard Tissink and Peter Reid), or indiciate what lengths some will go to satisfy a need either to be superior, or be seen as superior, by unsportsmanlike means. A good example of this is Nina Kraft, who won the Ironman world championship, accepted the awards, amde speeches, and then tested positive for EPO.
EPO triathlon cheat Nina Kraft gets reduced ban
FRANKFURT (Germany): Germany’s disgraced Ironman Triathlon world champion Nina Kraft has seen her initial two-year ban for using the blood-boosting drug EPO sport reduced to 12 months, the German Triathlon Union (DTU) confirmed on Monday. The 35-year-old became the first German woman to win the Ironman triathlon in Hawaii back on October 17 2002 but tested positive for EPO (erythropoietin) a month later and was hit with a two-year ban.
It seems ludicrous to me that people at such a high level will try to take short cuts, but I suppose that they are driven to survive financially by their sport, and their sponsors put a great deal of pressure on them for results. Evens so, it seems nonsensical to me that elite athletes will try to gain an advantage over their competitors, because if successful, what does it mean in their private hours after the awards ceremony.
Natascha Badmann, the always smiling Swiss woman who came second at the World Championships, felt cheated and unsure of the reality, and credibility of the title that was taken from Kraft and given to her. Understandably so. She raced again in South Africa, only 5 months after Hawaii, to put it behind her. She says:
“I was frustrated at the beginning, but now, finally, after some time has gone by, I got so much nice correspondence from people – people who I didn’t know at all, who talked to me when I went to the supermarket, and would say “We were with you, and know you won – we knew you were good.” Reaction from people that I never expected to get. Things like that really helped me to get over it,” she said in an interview a couple of days before she raced at the Spec-Savers Ironman South Africa event.
Kevin Mackinnon of Ironmanlive, writes:
The five-time Ironman Triathlon World Champion has become a major proponent of drug testing after her bitter-sweet win in Kona last fall.
Last fall Natascha Badmann, who turned 38 in December, became the oldest ever winner of the Ironman Triathlon World Championship. For Badmann the victory was bitter sweet – it wasn’t until Nina Kraft’s positive test for EPO that the Swiss star was given her fifth Ironman title.
Now, months after the fact, Badmann is beginning to come to terms with the frustrating way she achieved her fifth Kona title.
If it is ludicrous to cheat at such a high level, then it really defies belief to do so at an amateur level. Perhaps the cheater is not really aware that he or she is cheating, but is simply in a hurry... No, I don't think that washes. I think cheating is cheating, and no matter how strong your will to win is, when in a race, everyone should hold to the same standard. The winner wins because he faced the same challenge as everyone else, not because he was the only one to bullshit his way through the system, outsmarting his fellow competitors through guile, good looks or some other charade (as may happen in the real world).
I introduced a New Zealand athlete, Bernard Adams, a stocky, redheaded ex marine, to the sport (of triathlon) towards the middle of 2003, perhaps a little earlier. I did so because he was an exceptionally good swimmer and runner at the time anyway, and was committed to training often. In short he was motivated and habituated to training, and I thought triathlon was the perfect fit. He didn't feel the same way, and actually said on several occasions, "I will never do this..." To his credit, he reconsidered when a friend suggested they give it a go, especially since his friend had a brother who had some experience at the sport. Within a very short time, Bernard had acquired all the very best equipment, including a bicyle frame identical to mine, but the very latest technology.
I remember him as being excessively careful with money, more of a penny pincher than I am, so was surprised to hear that he had suddenly spent a huge amount of money at the drop of a hat on all sorts of equipment. But I also knew he could afford it (more than I could), and also realised with a pang, to what extent he was serious about what was obviously a newfound passion. At one stage he asked me to join in a bulk order, thereby assuring shared discounts. I offered some advice on bicycle wheels, but there our views differed, and while he went for a pair of heavier trispokes, I went for less flashy but high performance Zipp Deep Section rims.
Although we had trained a great deal together when I was a triathlete and he was not, including swimming and running, once he began his preparations for triathlon I am not sure if we trained again after that, beyond a handful of swimming sessions. It became obvious, very soon, that he was out to beat me.
This seemed very unnecessary, because I was far more experienced than he was, and I felt the point was that he should get to know the sport, especially in the first races, and enjoy it, and then worry about performance.
As it turned out, at the very first event, I had an electrolytic and more than likely a glucose bonk, and ended up walking on the run. This obviously gave the appearance that I hadn't much experience or knowledge in the sport. Bernard though, managed to do a really good race, despite an extremely chilly swim, and before the run, he was as much as 1 or 2 minutes ahead of me.
I felt a strong sense that he would go far in the sport, and enjoy it.
I felt profoundly disappointed with my race, not only due to the preventable bonking experience, (due to lack of sleep, I simply had not thought to eat more than I did)but also because I had taken a wrong turn and so lost touch with riders I was drafting with (it qas a draft legal race), and had to recoup lost time at a great cost in terms of energy.
I made good on my commitment to improve on my performance, by winning the next race at Tongyoung. I knew the race offered prizemoney, and few do for age groupers these days, so I was focussed on a top 3 podium finish. To win, was a bonus. But there is an interesting aside to this story. Bernard had managed a podium finish in Gangneung, at number 3, but at Tongyoung, he came out the water first (me second, about a minute behind) and then punctured after 4-5km. Knowing he was probably capable of running 4-5 minutes faster than I was in that race, I still believed the race, between the two of us at any rate, was not over. I would be competing against him directly, if I meant to make the podium. So I was in a very competitive mode for this race. But he was unable to fix his puncture quickly, and so lost time and ultimately fell out of the top 10.
Although I was determined to do well, I was also determined to run my own race, and stuck closely to a heart rate, and did not deviate virtually for the duration of the race. When I finished the race, I was extremely happy to have held it together so well, and to have finished ahead of an outstanding competitor called Mr Pee, but was actually unaware that I was first. I knew I had done well, but I had no idea what my placing was. That's to what extent it was a private race, me just pushing myself as hard as I could, noticing other athletes but not focussed on them.
It was some time later that I heard that Bernard and his friend were both disqualified for drafting. I thought perhaps, due to inexperience, they had drafted without knowing that in this race, as opposed to the last, it was illegal. But I later heard from other Koreans that many people had shouted and called to them to stop, but both athletes had just ignored this. I thought this was a bit of an aberation, didn't quite know what to think of it. But later I heard a comment that Bernard wondered if I had intentionally sabotaged his race, that perhaps I had caused him to puncture. This surprised me, and in fact, annoyed me. I'm not sure if he seriously considered this, but the fact is he was thinking about it, because I heard about it. The implication was that in order to win I had to cheat, and this didn't sit well with me at all.
In a peculiar quirk of fate, later that day when I went to finally collect my bicycle in the transition area, my back wheel was completely flat. I remember seeing a lot of flat stones on the course, and I know on the very last lap I had strayed over a piece of road, riding over these stones that I had intentionally avoided. Evidently they had pierced my tyre on the final lap (of 5), but not enough to prevent me from completing the lap. As it was, I was completely unaware of it until I fetched my bike.
If the disqualification at Tongyoung was an aberation, what happened in Cheolwon was not. Bernard won the very next race, by fair means, but at Cheolwon he later indicated in his log, on beginnertriathlete.com, that he had swum on the inside of the lane ropes (Cheolwon had spanned ropes from buoy to buoy) to avoid the bottlenecks of swimmers. I was also painfully aware of the large amounts of slow swimmers hogging the passage of water, but I took a very wide route in order to avoid all of them. I believed I would have one of the fastest swims of the day, and I also thought it was very likely that my swim would be faster than Bernard's that day. One of my goals, for Cheolwon, was to have an excellent swim as I had had the year before. To hear afterwards that he had swum on the inside, was really disheartening for me to hear. I don't know whether he knew he was cheating, but where lane ropes are setup, a swimmer may not swim on the inside of them. In the Ironman, to do so invites disqualification. In any event, his doing so meant his race was completely different to everyone elses, particularly here, in terms of the swim.
Once again I was not sure whether this was just an aberation, a bad decision, but one borne out of the necessity to get around people in the way. But I was beginning to think so, feeling that a pattern was emerging, and the need to win, for him, was paramount. More important than fairness. This same attitude prevailed, I suppose, at Tongyoung, where many Koreans shouted to no avail 'NO DRAFTING' but they drafted for the duration of the race. Did they think the Koreans didn't know what they were talking about? That they knew better? Who knows? It just sat very badly with me, that this guy that I had introduced to the sport, was running amuck, arrogant because he thought he was so good, flouting the rules. I didn't like it at all. I believe he is a great athlete, but that is no license for dishonesty, to cheat, to serve a superego.
Finally, and this has prompted me to write this and post it in a public place, he made a claim to a close friend of mine that he missed a slot for Hawaii by 'just one place'. He had a very good first Ironman (the race in Korea was not a complete Ironman as the swim section was cancelled due to a typhoon), and he deserves the credit to had lifted himself from absolute rookie, to an Ironman, in a single year. I did triathlon for over a decade before I felt ready to attempt the Ironman. I did my first 3/4 Ironman in 1996 I think, in under 7 hours, and felt I had a special talent over longer distances. But to go under 10 hours over the full distance, in the first time, is truly exceptional. It was my goal, and it remains my goal to go under 10 hours, but I am happy to approach it with not just fortitude, but also patience. The lesson I learned from the Ironman is 'everything in good time', and 'believe in yourself, respect yourself, and then try...'
As I say, Bernard's performance, the result of 6 months of dedicated training in New Zealand, is remarkable for someone so inexperienced, so new to the sport. This achievement though was not enough to guarantee a place at the World Ironman Championships (another goal I have had for some years). In fact, his time was only good enough for 18th of some 186 competitors. This shows the depth of the New Zealand field. I was surprised to hear a friend relay a message Bernard had conveyed to her, saying he had missed his slot to Hawaii by one.
How it works is 2000 people compete in the World Championship, and roughly a thousand or more slots are up for grabs at some 20 qualifying events around the world. Usually 25-50 slots are allocated to each event, divided into various age groups. Ironman New Zealand had 70 slots, the most of any race. 10 went to the elite athletes, and the other 60 get divided into the 20-24 age group, 25-29, 30-34, all the way up to 60-64 and higher. This means if there are 6 groups, each allocated 10 slots, then to miss a slot by one means one has to have come in 11th. For this reason I was once again really annoyed to be aware of this unsportsmanlike attitude to the sport.
Having read Into Thin Air, and having heard Broukeev's explanation for acting as guide without oxygen, I agree with Krakauer that his book was not about a blame game, but was simply an honest attempt to uncover what really happened, and also to hold everyone accountable for what happened. He admits that he needed also to exorcise his own experience, laying down the facts honestly and without judgement, including his own culpability on that mountain.
This account is somewhat different. Ironman does share the goal (with high altitude mountaineering) of attempting to defy the odds to an extent, to be courageous, but one also hopes, to be sporting and fair if it is possible, even in extreme conditions. Be Fair, Play Fair. This is why Woodall and 'O Dowd are an embarassment to that year, '96, because it was one rule for them, it was about their selfish ambitions, their glorification, and to hell with etiquette and everyone else.
Maybe morality does not belong on a mountain, but if one can help someone, if one can be true to oneself about the facts and reasons behind actions, I think one ought to try, and face a disapproving audience if not.
In that sense I thought it was necessary to mention Bernard by name. This certainly isn't a forum frequented by Ironman officials or only triathletes, but it nevertheless presents some kind of audience. I will also bring his attention to what I have mentioned here. Some, most I think, he already knows, from me directly, but if not, here it is. At the very least, it will provide an incentive for him, and others possibly, who are out there, whether in sport or not, to continue to race (or live) well, but to not continue to put himself, unfairly, above other competitors. Sport is after all analogous to our lives, but hopefully better than our lives in the sense that we see definite results for all our efforts, are rewarded, we have comaraderie, attention and support and importantly, fair play. This is how, certainly in the arena, we can all be winners, all be enriched.
The Law of Precedent
Precedent. noun
1 {C} an action, situation or decision which has already happened and which can be used as a reason why a similar action or decision should be performed or taken:
- There are several precedents for promoting people who don't have formal qualifications.
This word has been driving me crazy. Tried to remember it last night, agonised for about an hour, then amazingly came across it while reading Into Thin Air, then forgot it again.
This was a legal term an ex-girlfriend of mine suggested I use to renegotiate my contract in Korea. Obviously in a professional environment that would have had some effect, but as it was, the negotiations were actually just distrustful demands, top down. Glad I'm not there any more.
The precedent idea didn't work where I worked because they simply ducked and dived and switched positions so much to render such an idea nonsensical, and you can't negotiate an educated position with people who aren't interested in education or being intelligent.
Fact is, how they run their business is nonsensical. Somehow though, they are still in business, which just goes to show, starting a business, even if you do almost everything wrong, might still work based on the basic fact that it is there. So that is an encouraging insight to take away from working there.
40 Days, 40 Nights is on the box now. Quite interesting. About abstinence for 40 days and nights. Wonder if I should try that. It means abstinence from any sexual activity, including masturbation, any kind of fondling, pornography etc.
Outside
Even higher...
Today was all indoors for me. Some sleep, some webcrawling. Plenty of reading. I'm a bit anti-movie at the moment. Think I need to steer clear until Star Wars, otherwise I might have developed a resistance to the silver screen, almost like becoming resistant to antibiotics.
Did manage to finally sleep at 5pm, after being awake since 7am yesterday.
Have started reading another book about Superstring Theory, which basically comes from the angle of reconciling General Relativity (an explanation for the large things in the universse, planets, systems, galaxies), with Quantum Mechanics (which is a study of nanoscopic building blocks, atoms, neutrons, quarks, strings etc). My own view of the universe is that I believe it is pointless trying to find the absolute minimum building block, because I believe it expands infinitely in terms of increasing and decreasing size, in the same way that time has no end, the now is simply eternal.
I suspect that energy is the basic component of everything, which is another way of saying everything is made up of nothing. It is just arrangements of energy, vibrations, patterns. That may seem inconsistent with reality, when one touches a table it feels solid, one's hand does not pass through it as would through magnetic fields. But the strength of these forces differ, from light, to wind, to gravity (which is a force drawing ourselves ever downward, invisible but neverthless real) and so on until we go from invisible forces (analogous to invisible light or waves) to visible, gaseous, liquid, and solid.
It seems to me that people have a terrible flaw in their thinking in that their need to understand intellectually gives them a snapshot, serial thinking pattern. Consider having to render a day. a 3 year old would draw a picture of the sun. A 4 or 5 year old might add a smile. The picture, a yellow circle with perhaps a few radiating squiggles does suggest the nuclear explosion, but only just. It does not explain the sheer reality, size, or nature of it, nor does it suggest that it moves from one horizon to the next, its light changing, the temperature increasing then decreasing.
The pattern, and the changes in the pattern, the exceptions. My point is we people take a snapshot when we consider a thing, and are not able to see the process, how it is related to a scheme of things. This comes from the extent to which we have divorced ourselves from our world, nature and each other, and come to believe we are separate, individuals and disconnected, which is a dot in a paragraph, on a page, in a Biblical Epic that suggests otherwise, that all things work and influence everything else. Weather is a good analogy to show how systems do not work in isolation, but spring up and swirl in relation to our systems, spinning out new highs and lows. Clouds or raindrops may think of themselves as independent, but they are just small parts of intricate systems, in a single moment. Perhaps our snapshot approach is based on our snapshot existence, or what we belive to be an impermanent materialising before being vanquished.
Belief in interconnectivity, assumes, I feel, an intelligent, eternal universe, of which we are a part, but nevertheless, woven into its fabric, an evolved, intransigent, evolving intelligence. Life is the outer reach of the universe, where universal laws come to fruition and expression. We can express our individuality, but that merely shows the personality (pattern) of the energy coursing through us, expressing just another tune at an incrementally different pitch to someone else, all the way along a spectrum.
Its raining outside, and miserable, so good to be inside, exploring.
Dhaulaghiri rises opposite Annapurna. Both these mountains, and the stories surrounding them, captured my imagination even when I was at school. Everest is not an easy mountain to climb, but with perserance and luck, it can be done. That is not true of this mountain and Annapurna. To get to the top here, requires mountaineering skill and mastery.
Cold Killer
This is Annapurna, in the Karakoram Himalayas. This monster is more than 26 000 feet high, and while Everest's Killing Rate is 1 out of every 4 (ie of those who summit), Anna's is 1 out of 2.
I Can See Clearly Now
We never got to see Kili looking like this. It was always obstructed by cloud. I do remember riding in the bus, after we landed in Moshe, and for a second a fragment of sky opened up, and I saw this pyramid sticking out impossibly high above us. Since Kili's summit is very flat, I must have been hallucinating.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Must Read
1. Into the Wild - John Krakauer
2. Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein
3. Lives of the Monster Dogs - Kirsten Bakis
Reviewed by Kevin Lauderdale
In New York City, in 2008, dogs arrive. These dogs, with prosthetic hands and artificial voice boxes, walking upright and dressing in the height of fashion (circa 1890), through their charm and money, quickly become the town's favorite celebrities. It may sound like a children's novel, but it's anything but. Kirsten Bakis' LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS is violent, literate, and hypnotic.
4. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell
5. Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell
6. Simplicity - Bill Jensen
7. A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
8. Humboldt's Gift - Saul Bellow
9. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't - Jim Collins
10. Where I Was From - Joan Didion
2. Ideas and Opinions - Albert Einstein
3. Lives of the Monster Dogs - Kirsten Bakis
Reviewed by Kevin Lauderdale
In New York City, in 2008, dogs arrive. These dogs, with prosthetic hands and artificial voice boxes, walking upright and dressing in the height of fashion (circa 1890), through their charm and money, quickly become the town's favorite celebrities. It may sound like a children's novel, but it's anything but. Kirsten Bakis' LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS is violent, literate, and hypnotic.
4. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell
5. Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell
6. Simplicity - Bill Jensen
7. A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
8. Humboldt's Gift - Saul Bellow
9. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't - Jim Collins
10. Where I Was From - Joan Didion
What is fascinating to me is I have been completely captivated by Into Thin Air (to the extent that sometime this morning I even sent an email to Cathy 'o Dowd reproaching her and Woodall for being so selfish, and for putting up such a heroic charade to the home crowd, during the '96 ascent) is that Krakauer has also covered the very interesting story of Christopher McCandless. This story caught my attention one day at Kang's when I was paging through an English textbook, and read a few short paragraphs in a general interest section, covering McCandless' rejection of materialism, and his journey to purge himself. I identified with this search for meaning, and it is obviously thrilling to discover that Krakauer chose this as a project. This book is at the top of the list of Must Reads.
I gobbled this book up in about 24 hours, reading through the night after being incredinly tired and sleep deprived. That fact that I was captivated until 6am shows the calibre of the account, and the quality of the writer. I feel I can really learn from his worjhorse approach: setting a wordscale and a timeline (deadline) and then breaking it down into daily quotas. I also realise that I need to read more rivetting writing to understand what can be done, and then study the writers I admire. I particularly admire Krakauers style, because it is factually accurate, honest, but it is also immediate - he is not an academic, he is actually a courageous adventurer who also writes, which I feel is an important distinction that sets him apart from a host of nerdy and pathetic creatures whose prose may be brilliant, but their lives lacklustre. A good writer must have lived well, or experienced the extraordinary, to be worth attention. Writing should be the result of life, not the source of it, but that does not preclude writing that leads to inspiration, writing that is the source of an idea for a next adventure.
Interview with Jon Krakauer
The immediacy of Into Thin Air is such that you feel you are actually with the Mt. Everest expedition as they struggle towards the summit and encounter disaster upon the harrowing descent. Into the Wild, the haunting and tragic story of Chris McCandless' idealistic attempt to live life as a modern day Thoreau, is more than the search to unravel the mystery of his eventual starvation in the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless' story became an obsession for the author and his gripping book causes readers to look inward, to reflect upon our own existence and question the manner in which we lead our lives. Bold Type recently caught up with Krakauer to talk about how he's dealing with incredible success and tragedy.
Bold Type: How did you start writing, what was your formal training?
Jon Krakauer: I never studied writing. but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer. Because of my climbing, I went to Alaska for the first time in 1974 to the Arrigetch Peaks in the Brooks Range and made three ascents of unclimbed peaks. The American Alpine Club has a journal, The American Alpine Journal, they publish every year which is a compendium of notable ascents around the world, and they invited me to write an article about these climbs. That was the first article I ever wrote. Three years later I was paid for the first time to write an article when I climbed the Devil's Thumb, and wrote about that for a now-defunct British magazine called Mountain. Then a friend and climbing partner, my writing mentor David Roberts, quit a teaching job at Hampshire College, where I had gone, to become an editor at Horizon. After a year he left Horizon to freelance, and said it's a great racket. He told me how to go about the protocol of writing query letters and convinced me to try freelancing. I dabbled in it for a couple of years and in 1983 quit my carpentry job and went for it and I've been writing ever since.
BT: How did you make the move from nature writing to mainstream magazines?
JK: I knew that you couldn't make a living simply writing about the outdoors, so I made an effort from the beginning of my freelance career to write about other subjects. Since I had been a carpenter, I felt like I could bullshit my way writing about architecture for Architectural Digest. I had been a commercial fisherman, so I had queried Smithsonian about a commercial fishery in Alaska, and they went for it. I queried Rolling Stone early on about firewalking, walking on hot coals, and agreed to write it on spec. I tried writing for local Seattle magazines and found that it was just as difficult to get published locally as it was nationally and the local magazines paid literally ten percent as much, so I said fuck the local stuff. I was setting quotas that I would write ten query letters a week, and I definitely worked hard, but I got lucky. Because I wanted to pay the rent, I didn't have any grandiose ambitions of being an artiste; I wanted to pay the fucking bills, so I worked really hard. I realized that what I wrote for Rolling Stone had to be pretty different from Smithsonian, and I gave them whatever they wanted, I wanted to sell the article. It was useful, as a writer, to try out different voices and it was also smart, as a businessman.
BT: What are some of the other subjects you've written about that have captured your interest?
JK: The problem is that none of them have captured my interest as much as the outdoor pieces. The pieces I've written for Outside magazine are definitely my best work, and they're virtually all about the outdoors. That's why in Eiger Dreams, most of those were originally published in Outside or Smithsonian. It's hard for me to think about pieces that really stuck in my mind that weren't about the outdoors.
BT: How did you find the transition from short pieces for magazines to the extended narratives of a book?
JK: It was extremely satisfying. I really enjoy researching, and for almost every piece, I research enough to write a book. Almost every magazine piece I've ever written, I felt like I haven't done it justice, like it was just a gloss. So to write a book, and to spend a year or two and tell a story right is really satisfying and after doing that it's hard to go back and write magazine articles.
BT: What are you working on now?
JK: I'm six weeks overdue on a piece for National Geographic about going to the heart of Antarctica, to a place called Queen Maud Land, where I climbed with Alex Lowe, who's probably the best climber in the world.
BT: Most people who have read Into Thin Air would be shocked to hear that you've gone climbing again since returning from Everest.
JK: Well, I came back from Everest with serious doubts about the whole business of climbing, but it's real important to me. I'd give up writing before I gave up climbing. I had this invitation to climb with the best, and to go to this amazing place with these beautiful, huge fins of granite sticking out of the ice that had never been climbed before. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I took it. I committed with a little anxiety, and when I went I had greater anxiety, but it ended up being one of the best trips I've ever done. It was uneventful, the climbing was the kind of climbing I know how to do--technical, steep, vertical and overhanging granite. There was nothing higher than 11,000 feet.
BT: Were you fearful of climbing again after Everest?
JK: It wasn't like, 'Am I afraid of this?' It was more like, "Is this right? Is it too selfish?" I won't go back to Everest, I'm afraid of that.
BT: Is there an altitude ceiling you've set for yourself--a height you won't climb above again?
JK: Well, probably 23,000 or 24,000 feet. Below that you can acclimatize so it's really not so dangerous. Above that, everything changes.
BT: What was the reaction by your family and friends to the news that you were going climbing again after Everest?
JK: They understood. But my wife, and she didn't tell me this until I got back, it was harder for her in some ways than it was when I went to Everest. On Everest I could call her on the satellite phone, in Antarctica there's no communications at all for six weeks. And it seemed to be escalating: first Everest, then Antarctica, which in her mind was worse because it was more remote.
BT: How would you explain to a layperson what it is about climbing that is so appealing, that is worth the tremendous risk?
JK: It fascinates me because it matters. Unlike most of life, what you do really matters and you can't afford to fuck up. Your actions have real consequences. You have to pay attention and focus, and that's very satisfying. It forces you to pay great attention and you lose yourself in the task at hand. Without the risk, that wouldn't happen, so the risk is an essential part of climbing, and that's hard for some people to grasp. You can't justify the risk when things go wrong and people die. The greater the risk, the greater the reward in most aspects of life, and in climbing that's certainly true, too. It's very physical, you use your mind and your body. It's like full-body chess, and it gets you to beautiful, beautiful places.
BT: What are some other activities you enjoy and pursue, besides writing and climbing?
JK: I love being outdoors, being in the mountains and the desert, and my wife enjoys that too. That's one of the things that sustain our relationship. I snowboard, I read and I write. I'm not gregarious. I don't really have many friends, because I'm away a lot, and I feel like when I'm home I want to spend time with my wife. I'm just not social to begin with, so I'm entirely happy being alone for long periods of time.
BT: But you're so charming at your slide shows... have you just gotten used to speaking to large groups of people?
JK: I've learned how to speak publicly, but I hate it and it's really hard for me. It's really, really anxiety-inducing and difficult. I would pay a lot of money not to have to do this book tour.
BT: Who are some of the writers you admire most?
JK: There are so many. I've always loved Updike. My favorite Updike novel, not one of his best known, is called A Month of Sundays. I've always liked Joan Didion, E. Annie Proulx, Charles Bowden, David Roberts, Lorrie Moore. I probably read a lot more fiction than non-fiction, I'm not sure why. I just read this pretty cool novel, sort of weird, but it works--The Lives of the Monster Dogs. It sounds so preposterous but it's brilliant.
BT: Did you bring any novels with you to Everest?
JK: I brought Infinite Jest, because I really like David Foster Wallace, but it proved impossible to read at base camp. My brain just wasn't up to it. Runners brought old copies of Time and Newsweek to base camp, but I had no desire to read the news; I was just completely focused on the climb.
BT: How were you able to take such detailed notes and remember so many facts throughout this harrowing experience?
JK: Well, my memory proved unreliable, but as a journalist, I'm disciplined. I take the reporting side of writing more seriously than the writing side. I think it really is a lot of work to get things right, so I trained myself. I filled nine notebooks. I had a big notebook that I wrote in every morning and night in the mess tent, recording what I observed. And I had these little reporter's notebooks I took up the mountain, and every time I stopped to rest or take drink of water, as a matter of discipline I'd take it out of my breast pocket and write. I had one of those space pens that writes well below zero, and they work. I sort of take notes the way photographers take photos. You just sort of scattershot, record everything, because you never know what's going to prove invaluable when you get back down. And I don't worry about how the story's going and try to fit it in, I try to just record it, because if you're prejudiced and you're looking for a certain quote or something, you're going to miss the stuff that's going to prove to be important. The only time I didn't take notes was on summit day. I tried at 27,600 feet when I got to "The Balcony" at 5:30am, but they're basically illegible, and they make no sense because my brain wasn't working. I didn't start taking notes again until 6am on May 11th when Stuart Hutchinson woke me up. So there's a period there, the most important period, where I took no notes. I've reconstructed that from many, many interviews of all of the people who were up there, and as you know, I got stuff wrong. You can't trust your memory, it was a matter of cross-referencing and corroborating. And even now, astute readers will find that the timeline doesn't add up precisely. Everyone who was up there agrees that time is the slipperiest thing.
BT: What was the writing process like when you got back? The thing that strikes me is, of course this is an incredibly powerful story, but it's the immediacy of your writing that I find so incredibly impressive.
JK: I got back and told The New York Times and NPR that I was definitely not going to write a book, no fucking way. I had to write the article for Outside, and then I was going to put Everest out of my mind. So I wrote the article, and after it went to press I learned the huge mistake I made about Andy Harris. And that was the first time I though that maybe I should write the book. The article was 18,000 words, and I still hadn't done the story justice. So writing this book became all I could think about; I was obsessing about it. Even after the article was done, I was calling people and interviewing them. That's how I discovered the Andy Harris mistake--the article was done, but I compulsively called Martin Adams because I hadn't talked to him yet. Once I decided to write it, I decided to write it quickly because I was going to Antarctica in December and I didn't want it hanging over my head. People counseled me not to write it, but in the end I'm glad that I did. I think it does have a certain immediacy and an honesty that it would have lacked had I waited three years. Once I decided to write the book I did some more research and began writing it the second week in September, and from then until December when I left for South Africa to fly to Antarctica, I was writing between 14 and 20 hours a day, every day, seven days a week. It was just a fever.
BT: Did you find the act of writing cathartic?
JK: Well, I think I will eventually. It wasn't at the time, it was just hard and very painful. It's not the way I usually write. I write long hours, but I'm really slow and I suffer writer's block. I work on a single sentence sometimes for two or three days. I didn't have that luxury this time, but that was good. I couldn't fuck around with it too much, it was just 'get it down and get it down fast.' I had 80 or 90 days of writing and there were about 88,000 words in the book, so there was sort of like this quota. I knew I had to do about a thousand words a day, and I was a basket case by the end.
BT: Why do you think this tragedy captured the public imagination the way it did?
JK: Because it's Everest, and there's all this mystique surrounding Everest. The media was drawn to it like flies to shit. And the media was primed because of all of the Web sites and Sandy Pittman, this very colorful figure who had been written about by The Wall Street Journal and others before she even went. So when this happened there was me and Sandy along, both journalists, it was primed for the feeding frenzy. I'm not surprised that it hit big, I'm surprised that the interest seems to be sustained. I worried that people would be sick of this whole thing and wouldn't be interested in the book, but that's not been the case.
BT: What do you think about the way the media covered this story?
JK: Short form media is reductionist by nature. Television especially, but magazines, too, including mine, distilled it down to "Here's the good guys, here's the bad guys." And TV tried to say, "Here's this tragedy that didn't have to happen," and "Who's to blame?" It's so much more complicated than that. Rob Hall, for instance, fucked up big time, and he died, and one of his guides and two of his clients died. But I don't blame Rob, and I sort of understand his mistakes, and a lot of them were rooted in altruistic, generous motives, but the end was tragic.
BT: What do you hope that people come away with after reading this book?
JK: I wanted more than anything else to show the complexities and ambiguities of this tragedy. That's it's not simple, and it's not easy to assign blame, and it's rooted not in greed and the crassness of thrill-seeking or trophy hunting, but it's much deeper and more profound. The motives for people who climb Everest are, in some ways, noble, as misguided as they often are. It's wanting to reach beyond yourself. There's also a lot of hubris there and selfishness. I wanted it to be a very fair, sympathetic, even-handed portrait of the characters involved. I just wanted to tell the story in its full complexity. That's what I'm always trying to do in my writing and that's why I'm always frustrated by magazine articles. There's always a lot of gray area in life, and in most journalism you're forced to boil it down to the black and white and the gray just gets leeched away. In a book you have the luxury of developing characters and showing that people are both good and bad, and they do good things and they fuck up.
BT: What were your thoughts when you heard about the deaths on Everest this year?
JK: I got sick to my stomach, I couldn't believe it was happening all over again. It brought back way too many memories.
BT: Is it a case of people not learning any lessons from last year?
JK: Oh, absolutely. Everest self-selects for very determined people and because it's Everest, people take all kinds of chances they wouldn't take on other mountains. That's why this tragedy will be repeated again and again. It's called "the death zone" for a very good reason, it's just like playing Russian roulette.
BT: What would Chris McCandless have done had he been with you on the Everest expedition?
JK: He would have run so far from Everest. He was an adventurer, but he thought wealth was corrupting and evil, and people spending $65,000 to climb Everest, he would have thought that was obscene. Chris was a guy who didn't appreciate the gray areas and ambiguities and he would have been quick to form strong opinions about us, and he would have castigated all of us. I can just imagine what he would have said (laughs).
BT: You still seem to have this incredibly strong connection to Chris. What is it about his story that keeps you obsessed several years later?
JK: I identify with him a lot, and it's a sad story. I went back to the bus for the third time last September. I've become quite good friends with his family, we have sort of this weird bond. His parents came to the slide show I gave in Baltimore a few days ago, and it was the first time they'd seen many of these slides and it must have been very hard for them. Several people came up to them and told them how much they admired Chris, it was really touching. It's so weird to me that I never knew Chris; I've written this book about him and his parents have thanked me for explaining aspects of him that they never knew, but I never met the guy. At the readings in Atlanta and Nashville, people came up to me who'd gone to college with Chris at Emory and knew him, and it was really eerie.
Copied from:
www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/ 0697/krakauer/interview.html
Friday, April 08, 2005
The Desert of The Real
I am reading Into Thin Air, an account of the ascent in 1996, of Everest. I believe during those weeks in May a record number of climbers died on a single day, or something.
Jon Krakauer's account is rivetting. But one also realises what happens when you have dreams and ideas and then you approach the reality. When the reality is a mountain, it's amazing how dreams and delusions persist. Arguably, those who awaken, live. Perhaps this is the point of doing difficult things - to come to a point of realisation. Perhaps life is so dull that we slip into boredom, and some need to be shaken along the core of our spine to find ourselves alive once more.
Books and movies pretend that life is a coherent whole, but it isn't. When people die, or things go wrong, we usually find a reason or a rationale, or just some statement (everthing happens for a reason). In truth, things happen, randomly, haphazardly. It may be sentimental, it may be useful to find reasons, to believe in a design.
I know when I climbed Kili, I simply felt miserable on the summet. Cold, tired, exhausted, and eager, desperately eager to get the hell down. This is the reality. Obviously the lower reaches of the mountain were magical, but mountains themselves, beyond about 20 000 feet, are not places for men. Maybe they are places our dreams take us, but no one, nothing, certainly, belongs there.
Krakauer talks of noticing a large plastic wrapped shape beside the path, while walking on the Khumbu Icefall. It tuened out to be a sherpa, the body of a man that had been left lying not far from basecamp for around 3 years. A few days later he found the lower half of a body, much older, also beside the path. And soon after a sherpa at Camp 2 developed an edema, a pulmonary edema (where blood amd fluid leaks out of vessels and fills the lungs). He recounts a gory tale of a doctor who spends 40 hours pumping oxygen into the sherpas lungs, sucking blood out of tubes, giving mouth to mouth despite blood and vomit. The man was later airlifted to Kathmandu and deteriorated over a period of weeks, until he died.
What makes these high mountains so tricky, are those occasions when one has to make a calculated, or strategic decision. It's the sort of decision that requires precise thinking. Imagine you are driving a car, and you're low on petrol. You carefully assess how many kilometres you've done, how mnay you can still do, and you watch out for road signs. You're alert, because if you run out of gas there's this simple reality: the car will stop and you will be stuck. On a mountain, it's not easy to be that lucid. It's very easy to go into a half asleep Determination Mode, and why not, most of the time that's necessary, to have steely resolve, to continue on. But sometimes, time checks need to be made, to resolve the mind must also bring in pragmatism, chances of success, reality must face off against positivity and dreams. One must decide, in effect, to turn back, to give in, to withdraw. This, and other matters pertaining to ego, and time, and effectiveness, are not clearcut on a mountain, and once at a certain altitude, the Void, the brain is simply not operating crisply. In fact, set patterns rule, and set patterns do not, often, make sense. A set pattern may be just a repetitious: 'ten steps then rest, ten steps then rest,' or a mantra like 'keep going, almost there'. These become nonsensical when one is able to compute a timeframe, when one is aware of prospects. Few who summit after 4pm, say, have survived. If it is 5pm, and you;re saying to yourself, "keep going, you can do it," then you have to realise this person is also saying, "You can do it, and then you can die. Doing this equals a decision to die." But you just don't know to think that at extreme altitude, and that's what makes lives so easy to lose. When death finally beckons it comes to those who can only offer lives of sleepy resignation in ferociously adverse conditions. Those who die on these mountains are often trapped in weak wintry daydreams far from the desert of the real.
It's interesting to read what is happening on the world's highest mountain these days. It can cost $65 000 per person to climb it, and $5 000 to get a helicopter for an airlift. 1 person died for every 4 who reach the summit. Death basically begins the minute you reach Base Camp. I know the day I reached the moony camp beneath the last scree slope on Kili, I developed a cold, suddenly, and headaches, and my body just wass filled with air, I was burping and farting and falling apart. At even higher altitudes, the body simply slowly starts to die, as it is starved of oxygen, and basically just slows down. What aggravates this condition is lack of sleep, and usually diarhea. Add to that the fact that it is permanently icy cold, and the lack of oxygen reduces everyone's intellectual and physical capacity - it's a very tough environment. And this is the environment where one has to balance, climb upward, on slippery ice, through blinding white blizzards or the dark.
It is interesting to read a personal account of the people who attempted Everest in 1996. The characters who come, some rich, some ardent, some in love, some in their fifties, all kooks in some way, coming to the mountain for a dose of reality. The mountain is merely there, massive, its glacier groaning, pushing 12 storey chunks of ice at about 3 metres a day. Ladders have toi be strung over crevassing. These crevassing change, growing or disappearing, over time. The climb itself, is incredibly arduous, not merely in and of itself, but given the slow drowning reality of being without sufficient oxygen. Krakauer tells a story of being faced with incredibly incompetent people, people who could not even attach crampons to their boots, assembling below the Hillary Step, each one having to inch their way up, while precious time ticked by, and a storm was drifting up from the valley.
He mentions the Taiwanese, whose leader was triumphant on Mount MacKinley, despite memebers of his team either dead or near death and having to be rescued by helicopter - the leader of this team was on Everest in 1996, and when one person needs to be rescued, everyone else has to risk their lives to help that person.
The South Africans were there too, headed by Woodall, who had apparently lied to, controlled and alienated most of his team, threatening to kill or maim if he didn't have his way. These characters all come together, with the professionals, and the natives, and face the mountain.
I won't give the book away, but the author himself describes the sleep deprived misery of the summit, of spending only 5 minutes there, and of passing those ascending, unaware of the storm brewing below, or of the lateness of the day. The desert of the real is when you pass alongside someone on an icy path, who is on the way to where you have been; like the summit of the world, a place that was just cold and hard. And while your head is busy with thoughts, and your heart knows that words are useless against a mindset, and determination, there is a sense of knowing, almost longing, because as you pass by, you know you are heading down to life, and this person beside you, up to an almost certain death.
This what the mountain does, in the dizzy heights. Words cease, and deeds bring about the extinguishing, or the manifestation of a dream.
The Ironman this year, also asked the same question: Are you a bullshitter, or are you for real?
Wouldn't it be good to answer that question while having a picnic, or going for a walk. I wonder why we have to put our bodies on line, but I suppose if we are not careful with our dreams, we take ourselves into harms way until we learn to love our lives, and see the reality of breathing, eating, sleeping, in the rich milieu that is the grand kaleidoscope of life. The lesson of the mountain is perhaps this: Life, being alive, is spectacular however simple it may seem.
Jon Krakauer's account is rivetting. But one also realises what happens when you have dreams and ideas and then you approach the reality. When the reality is a mountain, it's amazing how dreams and delusions persist. Arguably, those who awaken, live. Perhaps this is the point of doing difficult things - to come to a point of realisation. Perhaps life is so dull that we slip into boredom, and some need to be shaken along the core of our spine to find ourselves alive once more.
Books and movies pretend that life is a coherent whole, but it isn't. When people die, or things go wrong, we usually find a reason or a rationale, or just some statement (everthing happens for a reason). In truth, things happen, randomly, haphazardly. It may be sentimental, it may be useful to find reasons, to believe in a design.
I know when I climbed Kili, I simply felt miserable on the summet. Cold, tired, exhausted, and eager, desperately eager to get the hell down. This is the reality. Obviously the lower reaches of the mountain were magical, but mountains themselves, beyond about 20 000 feet, are not places for men. Maybe they are places our dreams take us, but no one, nothing, certainly, belongs there.
Krakauer talks of noticing a large plastic wrapped shape beside the path, while walking on the Khumbu Icefall. It tuened out to be a sherpa, the body of a man that had been left lying not far from basecamp for around 3 years. A few days later he found the lower half of a body, much older, also beside the path. And soon after a sherpa at Camp 2 developed an edema, a pulmonary edema (where blood amd fluid leaks out of vessels and fills the lungs). He recounts a gory tale of a doctor who spends 40 hours pumping oxygen into the sherpas lungs, sucking blood out of tubes, giving mouth to mouth despite blood and vomit. The man was later airlifted to Kathmandu and deteriorated over a period of weeks, until he died.
What makes these high mountains so tricky, are those occasions when one has to make a calculated, or strategic decision. It's the sort of decision that requires precise thinking. Imagine you are driving a car, and you're low on petrol. You carefully assess how many kilometres you've done, how mnay you can still do, and you watch out for road signs. You're alert, because if you run out of gas there's this simple reality: the car will stop and you will be stuck. On a mountain, it's not easy to be that lucid. It's very easy to go into a half asleep Determination Mode, and why not, most of the time that's necessary, to have steely resolve, to continue on. But sometimes, time checks need to be made, to resolve the mind must also bring in pragmatism, chances of success, reality must face off against positivity and dreams. One must decide, in effect, to turn back, to give in, to withdraw. This, and other matters pertaining to ego, and time, and effectiveness, are not clearcut on a mountain, and once at a certain altitude, the Void, the brain is simply not operating crisply. In fact, set patterns rule, and set patterns do not, often, make sense. A set pattern may be just a repetitious: 'ten steps then rest, ten steps then rest,' or a mantra like 'keep going, almost there'. These become nonsensical when one is able to compute a timeframe, when one is aware of prospects. Few who summit after 4pm, say, have survived. If it is 5pm, and you;re saying to yourself, "keep going, you can do it," then you have to realise this person is also saying, "You can do it, and then you can die. Doing this equals a decision to die." But you just don't know to think that at extreme altitude, and that's what makes lives so easy to lose. When death finally beckons it comes to those who can only offer lives of sleepy resignation in ferociously adverse conditions. Those who die on these mountains are often trapped in weak wintry daydreams far from the desert of the real.
It's interesting to read what is happening on the world's highest mountain these days. It can cost $65 000 per person to climb it, and $5 000 to get a helicopter for an airlift. 1 person died for every 4 who reach the summit. Death basically begins the minute you reach Base Camp. I know the day I reached the moony camp beneath the last scree slope on Kili, I developed a cold, suddenly, and headaches, and my body just wass filled with air, I was burping and farting and falling apart. At even higher altitudes, the body simply slowly starts to die, as it is starved of oxygen, and basically just slows down. What aggravates this condition is lack of sleep, and usually diarhea. Add to that the fact that it is permanently icy cold, and the lack of oxygen reduces everyone's intellectual and physical capacity - it's a very tough environment. And this is the environment where one has to balance, climb upward, on slippery ice, through blinding white blizzards or the dark.
It is interesting to read a personal account of the people who attempted Everest in 1996. The characters who come, some rich, some ardent, some in love, some in their fifties, all kooks in some way, coming to the mountain for a dose of reality. The mountain is merely there, massive, its glacier groaning, pushing 12 storey chunks of ice at about 3 metres a day. Ladders have toi be strung over crevassing. These crevassing change, growing or disappearing, over time. The climb itself, is incredibly arduous, not merely in and of itself, but given the slow drowning reality of being without sufficient oxygen. Krakauer tells a story of being faced with incredibly incompetent people, people who could not even attach crampons to their boots, assembling below the Hillary Step, each one having to inch their way up, while precious time ticked by, and a storm was drifting up from the valley.
He mentions the Taiwanese, whose leader was triumphant on Mount MacKinley, despite memebers of his team either dead or near death and having to be rescued by helicopter - the leader of this team was on Everest in 1996, and when one person needs to be rescued, everyone else has to risk their lives to help that person.
The South Africans were there too, headed by Woodall, who had apparently lied to, controlled and alienated most of his team, threatening to kill or maim if he didn't have his way. These characters all come together, with the professionals, and the natives, and face the mountain.
I won't give the book away, but the author himself describes the sleep deprived misery of the summit, of spending only 5 minutes there, and of passing those ascending, unaware of the storm brewing below, or of the lateness of the day. The desert of the real is when you pass alongside someone on an icy path, who is on the way to where you have been; like the summit of the world, a place that was just cold and hard. And while your head is busy with thoughts, and your heart knows that words are useless against a mindset, and determination, there is a sense of knowing, almost longing, because as you pass by, you know you are heading down to life, and this person beside you, up to an almost certain death.
This what the mountain does, in the dizzy heights. Words cease, and deeds bring about the extinguishing, or the manifestation of a dream.
The Ironman this year, also asked the same question: Are you a bullshitter, or are you for real?
Wouldn't it be good to answer that question while having a picnic, or going for a walk. I wonder why we have to put our bodies on line, but I suppose if we are not careful with our dreams, we take ourselves into harms way until we learn to love our lives, and see the reality of breathing, eating, sleeping, in the rich milieu that is the grand kaleidoscope of life. The lesson of the mountain is perhaps this: Life, being alive, is spectacular however simple it may seem.
New Books
I bought these books today. Decided against buying a book on Christopher Reeve and Einstein, both biographies. Want to buy a book by the recent Pulitzer prizewinner who died? What was his name? Saul Beller or something?
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Gangnam
Caught a bus to Gangnam (literally means 'river south') and then a cab to the Pacific Tower Building in Daechi Dong.
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