The Beaver has landed.

When you go to sleep the night before a triathlon, regardless of the distance, you don’t sleep. One of the tenets of endurance sports is to get good sleep TWO nights before your race because you will not, I guarantee you, sleep the night before. I approached last night the same way. I KNEW I wasn’t going to get any sleep and being a veteran of the Insomniatic Wars, was okay with that. But then a funny thing happened. I fell asleep. Hard. Got the nightly call from nature right on schedule and…fell right back asleep. Where were the monkeys of the mind who bounce from limb to limb? Were THEY asleep? Drugged? Engrossed in “Breaking Bad”? And then, I woke up a full hour before my alarm was to go off and I was REFRESHED. To quote Lincoln: “WTF?”
Even my ride got there early. My storytelling friend Alina was my chauffer to PDX and she greeted me with a modern collection of Bollywood hits on the car radio. Perfect.

Then it began to well inside me. That eerie, whirling, amorphous sense of panic. Something was wrong and I couldn’t define it. In the 90s I traveled quite a bit. Even lived in London for over a year. It all started in 1990 when a college buddy of mine, Flicka, moved to a little village in Southern Greece and invited me to come over.
That turned into a 5-month adventure that changed my life.

Then, in November 1995, Flicka and his wife were killed in a horrific accident. He lived his life as though he would die any day. And he DID. It happened while my girlfriend and I were living in London and after their deaths, things changed. Depression took over. Grief took hold. It appears, consumes, goes away, comes back strong, and there is no schedule. None. And grief is 100% personal. And after a trip later in 1996 to London, I stopped traveling. Just…stopped. I haven’t been out of the country since. Nearly 23 years.

So. This morning. Just hours from departure, my heart starts to race, my head is filled with helium and Alina gently says “Breathe deeply. It’s going to be alright.” She immediately recognized it for what it was. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.” What caused this reaction? Remnants of which I’m feeling at a low level as I write this and have since I had it eight hours ago. Is it fear of the unknown? Or is it something far worse. That I associate travel with tragedy. All I know is my subconscious has been DRIVING me through this entire process. Even as my conscious self would be solidly on the fence these last few months about this trip, my subconscious would bubble up and say “Hey. Buddy. If you’re going to go to India, you gotta get those
shots by next Monday.” So I’d make an appointment. “David. You need to get your eVisa to get into India.” So I got my eVisa. Every necessary step of the way was met before deadline. So it feels as though my physical body is playing catch up with my spiritual/emotional one. IT has known all along that I’ve wanted to do this trip and is propelling me forward to make it come true. Maybe its the two or three states of being coming in line together…something that hasn’t happened in awhile. No wonder I’m a bit wonky.

So the melding has begun. And I’m tired. I left my phone on the Alaska flight from PDX to SFO and got back to the gate right before the door shut. That would have been disastrous (and a sign of the times of reliance on the Rectangle of Dependence). I’m now at the Emirates Lounge in SFO and it is simply incredible. I’ll write later how I got here. No, I’m not all of a sudden a part of the Royal Family. Soon we board for a 14 hour flight to Dubai.

So friends, remember. When the stress level rises….B-R-E-A-T-H-E…In through the nose, and out through the mouth.

I’ve come to realize through the years that writing is cathartic to me. It makes my head feel better when something needs to get out of it. There’s been no shortage of rumination over the past few days, weeks and months, all leading up to 11:35 Tuesday morning when I take off for San Francisco and the first leg of my tour.

Have you ever existed between the seemingly opposite feelings of tremendous fear and unbridled confidence? Two realities that are so opposing of one another yet here I am, hopping between both of them. It’s like jumping in a hot bath only to leap out and plunge into a cold one. Exhilarating, both, but at some time the adrenaline has got to stop and give the carrier a break. I don’t expect that for awhile. In fact, I laugh HA HA at the thought of getting any sleep tonight. I’m in the final throes of packing, estimating what I’ll need and what I’ll want, and weighting the importance of each.

It’s off to REI to find a hat big enough for this dome of mine. At the moment, an old Cycle Oregon cap is leading, but I’d rather get something that covers more skin. Currently the cap looks like a yarmulke on King Kong. That won’t help in Mumbai, where temperatures are supposed to hit 90 when I’m there.

So this little splurge of words has helped, but there are more fighting at the gate.

I’ve never blogged before. This is completely new to me. When I was abroad for five months in 1990, I religiously wrote in my journal regardless of where I was. As the weeks and months wore on, my scribbling became less and less legible. Picture a combination of Sanskrit and Court Reporter. That’s me. So it’s with GREAT pleasure that I’m taking a laptop with me on my next trip so I can throw down descriptions and stories and actually be able to read the results (and you will, too). I suffer greatly from fingerrhea so I apologize for any verbosity in the coming weeks. I’m not going to spend too much time editing (sorry, Mom), so please forgive the odd redundancy or the incorrect ‘there’ (shudder) and know that I’m doing my best at the time of writing. It’s been awhile since I’ve done much (thanks, texting!) so I’m excited about that. Add to that that I’m able to share with my friends stories from the road…well, it’s pretty great and I’m pretty grateful. I will fly to Mumbai, India on Tuesday, March 19th and return a bit later. If you’ve read the first blog installment you know why I’m doing this. Added in to the equation is physical ability. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m getting older (and now I’m even older…and now I’m even older), so any endurance event, even if it’s walking through a foreign city, must be given its respect. I hope my body stands up to the test, for it’s going to be the MCAT of journeys, I feel (and now I’m even older).

I plan on staying in the Mumbai area for a couple of weeks before heading north to Nepal. After a few days in Kathmandu, I’ll make my way to Pokhara where the jumping off point to the Annapurna Circuit is. Eighteen days of trekking follows, at a ridiculous altitude. But I have my altitude sickness pills, great boots, all the gear and from I hear, the Circuit is “simply” a long, uphill, magnificent slog. Well, until you get to Thorang-La. Then shit gets real. At 17,000+ feet. I’ve given myself a long time to complete this, anticipating days where I’m just too beat to walk or where I don’t reach my goal and must stop earlier. I have dreamed all my life of getting to the Himalayas. I find it hard to believe that within weeks they’ll be within reach.

Once I’ve finished the Annapurna Circuit, it’s back to Pokhara for a little rest before dipping south into India. I’ll get to Delhi somehow and then it’s off to the Taj Mahal. After that, depending on timing, it’s back to Mumbai and my flight home. One on hand, two months is a long time. On the other, it’s most certainly not. I expect a combination of speeds – several combinations, really – as nature and flow mess with the clock.

Thanks to everyone who’s signed up to get updates on this here blog. I hope I make it worth your time!

One night in college, years ago, I was talking with one of my best friends. We’ll call him Griller. Griller and I would often engage in deep, meaningful, brain-altering discussions about that all-encompassing subject: LIFE. We would come up with concepts we could ruminate on through the evening and later, if we remembered, during new discussions with each other or with our broader circle of friends. The concept that Griller touched upon this night was the Letter Concept. He said: “So, David…you have to write your parents. See, when you write your parents, you’re telling them about what’s happening in your life. And you know they won’t throw them away. So later, years later, when they’re cleaning out things or after they’ve died, you’ll get all those letters back. And they will tell the story of YOUR LIFE.”

Mind…blown.

Recently, my Mother has been going through things in her house. In addition to paring down heirlooms and historical familial items, my Mom has given each of my three siblings and me a box of mementos she saved. Report cards, drawings, newspaper clippings (my favorite: “Williams Hurls No-Hitter”) and letters, among many other wonderful things.

Recently I removed the withered rubber band around a pile of letters she had given me and three stood out from the stack. They were typewritten and old. The paper was tender and the typing erratic. Corrections where haphazard and the syntax rough. I shouldn’t be too hard on the author, I suppose. I mean, I was only seven. I had imagined traveling to this far away land and was writing back home, as every good son does.

“Dear Mother,” it begins. “I got to Bombay a week a go today.” I go on, inquiring about life in my hometown of Corvallis, Oregon but more importantly, listing off the nationalities of people I had seen in my travels to that magical Indian city. “I saw some people from Laos, Nepal, China, Afghanistan, Thailand, Burma, Ryuku Is, Ceylon, Qatar…” It goes on…and on. I was a huge stamp collector back then and a lover of all things geographical. Maps, flags, borders, foliage of the country, bodies of water in or around the land mass, did the country have an active volcano? What kind of wild animals roamed its savannah? Was there a desert?

As a kid I had no idea how fortunate I was. My family and I would fly every other year for vacation to our ancestral state of Kentucky and, once I got over my predictable bout of air sicknesses (those bags work), I would settle into my seat and gaze out the window. “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” the voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “Welcome to Eastern Airlines Flight 324 to Louisville, Kentucky. We will be cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet…”

Mind…blown.

35,000 feet! That’s just 6,000 feet higher than Mt. Everest! As we cruised over the vastness of the west and the prairies of middle America, I would imagine skimming the top of the Himalaya, amazed at how high those mythical mountains of Asia slammed into the sky.

When I mentioned all of the signs pointing to India to a friend of mine, he reminded me of a video I had edited 30 years ago – “Exploring the Himalayas, Nepal and Kashmir”. He was also the filmmaker who shot all the footage. When I told him I was thinking of traveling to India he said “Well, Dave, if you go to India, you have to go to the Himalayas.” And he was right.

I have been a part of Team In Training, the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, for over a decade. I have had the supreme pleasure of meeting dozens upon dozens of magnanimous people looking to improve their lives while raising money to improve the lives of others. One of those people was Jodi Cullen. Jodi and I were teammates years ago and she stood out as someone full of life and a possessor of a whipsmart wit and very little fear. A few years ago, Jodi was diagnosed with a very rare form of breast cancer. She underwent surgery, chemo and radiation and the cancer went away. She promptly sold all her stuff and dedicated her life to travel and the pursuit of inspiring OTHERS to do the same. But as she was preparing to expand her horizon (and others’), the cancer came back. To her brain this time. In the summer of 2018, her friends threw her a party to celebrate all things Jodi. As a guest, there was only one requirement: You had to fill out a nametag with your name and the name of the place you wanted to travel to next. I have a friend who lives in Mumbai (Bombay), so I thought “why not?” and wrote down my intention. It was a wonderful summer day full of laughter and love and the last time I saw Jodi. She died two months later.

So, spurred on by a boy’s letter, reminded of a young man’s dream and inspired by a friend who lived out her final days inspiring her friends to accomplish the big dreams they created for themselves, I will be traveling to India and Nepal in the coming weeks. Please join me as I embark upon my trip to the roof of the world.