luang prabang

it is common in the region to see people begging, children selling tiny handicrafts, etc. in luang prabang everyone is pretty laid back, the children and beggars accept a slight shake of the head and walk off. but there is this one awesome dude whose actions are odd and purpose is confusing. he is an enigma. 

we have seen him two days in a row, perched from a streetside cafe where we are presently sitting, eating breakfast and utilizing the free wi-fi to write these ever so important updates on my childlike existence. he is old and skinny, barefoot and bald, and wears ony a loincloth type wrap around his waist. he just walked by actually, he's weariing one of those pointy asian rice paddy cone hats today, and smoking a cigarette.

so i don't want to call him a beggar or bum, i'm not sure what to call him. here is what i have observed him do over the past few days:

he has walked up to us and held his hands out, presumably for money.

he walked across the street to another cafe and ate some food off some people's plate without hesitation or asking.

he deposited one cigarette each to two girls who were sitting at a table near us.

he came to our table with money in each hand, holding it out to us.

this is a small town, so i think he just makes laps and does his thing. i'm curious to know what that is.

chiang mai to chaing rai to chiang khong to huay xai to pak bang to luang prabang slowboat

ang and i have slowed down of late. slowed down by the heat, by age, indifference, laziness and amoebic dysentery or traveler's gut or whatever you want to call the force that twisted and contorted intestines and bowels and fevered and chilled my brain and bones.

i wonder if i have the guts for this travel any more. literally.

we started off from chiang mai in northern thailand, leaving old smashed hopes and dreams and plans behind, having formed new vague plans-going on to lao and then somewhere else, and somewhere else after that, probably. lao pdr to be specific, but it is commonly known as laos. why we didn't fly from chiang mai to luang prabang i don't really know. we went via land and sea, long bus ride to bus station to tuk tuk to another bus station to another sticky hot bumpy bus ride, to overnight in a border town--pause, good night's sleep and a simple pad thai for dinner- cross the border into lao and get on the big hot slow boat of discomfort and pain and anguish and oh lord why did i get on this boat.

before everyone got on the boat

the slow boat: two days down the mekong, stopping half way overnight. the boat is long as a church hall, maybe 12 feet wide awide, filled with primitave little church pews for seats. there is no way to sit comfortably on these benches. and i tried, over and over for the two hours we sat on the hot boat before we even departed. already full, the boat waited and waited to leave. then about fifty more people with giant backpacks board the boat and pack and shove in. we  finally take off once everyone is fully uncomfortable and sweaty. the slight breeze is nice, and the scenery is beautiful, and i don't really care because my stomach and head and back are aching.

i'm starting to get sick, i can feel it, and i don't desire would could be my consolation on this hellish boat ride--a cold beer. some british girls are getting drunk behind me and one's voice is loud and corrosive and hits the exact frequency that registers old man annoynance in my brain. my god i'm getting old, not sure if i have the guts for this kind of travel any more.

boat finally stops, eight some hours later at some town whose sole purpose is to accomodate and feed the slow boat bastards who are cursing all of lao and humanity for having been shoved on that boat.

no place to get lao currency, we get raped on the exchange rate.

i shower, shake a little of the head back stomach ache off and try to find some dinner. ang orders rice and vegetables, i order tomato soup and bread. it takes about an hour for our food  to come.  all the other customers experience a similar slow boat type of service. some of them bitch. i put my head down and dread tomorrow's combination of squirming intestines and heat and aching aching slow boat. the soup eventually comes, more onion soup with some tomatoes in it than tomato soup, but i sip it and have something warm in my belly.

 i swallow some pills and get the chills and get tangled into nots with the sheets and fever and nightmares and stomach cramps and wake up a thousand times asking "what time is it?" the power goes out and never comes back on. the fan stops, i sweat and shake and fevers break and new ones come back and what time is it? it is pitch black in the room and all I hear are the lizards outside and my own panting and sweating.

we get on the boat in the morning. a robust british girl is bitching at a local about how packed the boat is. she doesn't want to get on. we joing the group of the thirty or so people waiting at the pier and board the boat. the girl bitches a little more and calls the guy who has nothing to do with the boat service a "cunt."

we go to the back of the boat, right next to the engine. it's going to be loud but they have transplanted mini van seats here and they are soft and not made of wood. i get the chills and cover up with a blanket even though it is 100 degrees. i take southeast asian aspiran and fall asleep. i break a fever and spent the next eight hours staring blankly forward or playing tetris or reading a page or two before setting it down and trying to relax again.

and then we arrive in luang prabang. we get a room with a/c and a tv and i shower and watch hbo edited for south east asian audiences.

squiggly

today we went to the chiang mai zoo. among other cute and squiggly animals they had a pair of pandas. they are perhaps the squiggliest animals around. i felt pure joy watching those silly pandas eat their bamboo snacks. anyhow i had the idea to put this up.

                              smoke                                                                               

                                                          lucy

    

                       

wet muddy burned out buses bangkok

back into bangkok from cambodia. we get to the khao san road area during the thai new year. the thai people/foreigners like to celebrate by squirting dumping spraying water on every man woman child ladyboy that walks by.

day one we get there at night, pretty much the night before the celebration starts: some children have squirt guns, running around very cute. a few drunk white guys with big squirt guns, ha ha.

day two: hot sunny day, we get soaked almost immediately upon walking out of the guesthouse so we decide to join in the festivities. we buy two dollar squirt guns. this is what happens within thirty seconds of buying mine: i put it in my pocket and pull it out quickly like a gunslinger type cowboy. i drop the gun and the tip of it shattesr, leaving me a leaky, but still moderatly

 functionable gun. i just can't tip it downward.

we sit at a cafe for a while and spray people when they walk past. people with much larger guns spray us more. we walk around and drink beers and have bowls of icy water dumped down our backs, thrown at our faces. this goes on all day.

 and then people have the mud, every five seconds or so a thai person comes up to and happily wipes some mud on your face. cute and fun and wet and beer.

day three: the beer from last night is still in my body and wants retribution. we want to go out and get some juice or something to eat or whatever. full on squirtgun bucket of icy water party is still in full force. when you're not feeling too hot, getting doused with water every two seconds and mud rubbed on your face is not the greatest feeling. but, it is a celebration, what can you do, you just go with it. but we're a bit tired of getting  doused so we hang out at our guesthouse most of the day. luckily they have wi-fi, so we sit around, drink fruit shakes, eat, use the computer, eat, etc. 

day four: we decide to flee waterfest 2k9. we learn that thailand has declared a state of emergency in bangkok due to government protesters. i saw a news broadcast of a british journalist interviewing one of the red shirt protesters, who are following the old ousted prime ministers suggestion of starting a revolution. the guy says something about democracy and the lady says "but this isn't democratic, what you're doing isn't democratic!" to which the guy responds, "we will not surrender!"

so we are completely unaware that this is going on. everyone in our vicinity is too busy spraying me in the face and rubbing mud on my cheeks. we took a taxi to the bus station and had to take a very long way around since so many streets were closed down with soldiers standing guard. we drove past a few burnt out buses. too bad some of the ten million people spraying me in the face with water weren't near the buses.

we take a long long bus ride to chiang mai in the north. luckily for us the water fest is going on at full thwart here too.

i hear on the news that the thai government has extended the holiday due to all the turmoil.

day five: we are excited to check out a new town. we don't have any real plans but to bum around and get some plans in order. but however, still with the water. it really has gotten quite old at this point. chiang mai's old town where we're staying is in a square, surrounded by moat. luckily for us, we had the benefit of having locals douse us with buckets full of the moat water. imagine a brown dark dirty water you would never ever want in your mouth. you really can't go outside without getting completely soaked.  everywhere you go. if it is on a walk way, you are wet. on a busy road you get drive by wettings. we got caught in a traffic jam of cars and pickup trucks with barrels of water and got wet wet wet. like some sort of water torture.

finally that chapter ended. what a relief it was to go outside and not get soaked, and then soaked and then soaked. 

if you are ever going to be in bangkok for this festival, go for one day. have a ball. then run away and find a nice dry spot.

lady you want cold drink?

go to angkor wat and hop off your bike or tuk tuk for even a moment, a miniscule solitary lonely second and the instant your toe tippity toe skins the ground you'll hear the cambodian calls of commerce. they sound the way biting mosquitos feel.

lady you want cold drink? high pitched deep to high pitched squeaky. you buy from me? the ladies of cambodia all seem to have the same voice, high pitched, speaking tonally, all in the same tone, key, pitch--they all speak together to form a buzzing harmonics wherever you go. they are selling cold drinks, t-shirts, scarves, their children are selling toy flutes, and magnets, and bracelets, their sons are selling books and postcards, and postcards, and one two three four five six seven eight nine ten postcards for one dollar. they all want your business, madly desperately sadly madly. 

in angkor wat the child-selling-stuff-you-really really really don't want to buy scene is incredible.  there are many many temples in the area and outside every single one of them are are people selling things you don't want to buy. and sadly, things you do want to buy, like cold drinks and fizzy bubbly sodas because it is very steamy steamy hot.

so you just try to walk, say no thank you. "where you from?" the little girl asks, "united states" you answer, "united states, your capital is washingtion d.c., your president's name, obama, population, 300 million." all in a sing-song, low to high, high to low voice that may have been cute the first few hundred times you heard it.

they are relentless, that is the way business works here. in your face, sell sell sell. there is no good way to assure the children that you really are not interested in their product. sometimes you are lucky and they only follow you for fifty meters, dropping the price of their bracelets, one dollar, two for one dollar, five for one dollar before giving up. "ok, if you buy, you buy from me."--the sing song promise they all want you to make when you leave.

these are kids, so you can't be rude or mean. we tried a few things with varying degrees of success to avoid them. first we stopped saying we were from the u.s. we'd say a country like guatemala, which worked a few times. other times the kid just starts speaking to us in spanish. "senor, un dolar, dos flautas un  dolar." we tried a cambodian whisperer type of thing, just saying "shh" quickly, sharply a la dog whisperer, but that didn't work. we're just too white and they are humans.

and they are all cute, wearing dirty clothes, speaking meagerly and you want to explain why you won't give them money, even if it is only a dollar. ask them why they aren't in school, "happy new year" one says, when you both know their new year isn't for two more weeks. 

guilt. catholic guilt american guilt guilt guilt guilt. you are drinking a coconut shake at a restaurant and they are in the street slanging postcards. one two three four five six seven eight nine ten postcards one dollar. his sister will end up a prostitute.

i'm waiting by the bikes while ang goes into a store for a snack and an old toothless dirty skinny grandma sends her two year old shoeless dirty grandson over by me. he can't talk yet but he has his hands folded as if in prayer and just stares at me, meagerly. i can't explain to him my philosophy about giving money to street children. i have to wait until ang comes out so we can mount our bikes and ride from our guilt.

it is refreshing to see children in cambodia playing and frolicking instead of working. they are laughing and having fun and only briefly pause to ask you for candy when you pass.

guilt. according to a karmic, spiritual philosophy i learn about at a yoga center in siem reap, we are all spiritual beings and we are simply inhabitating our physical bodies, playing a role of sorts at the moment. i meditated in a room with a group staring at a bright orange and red sun like painting. it was mesmerising. 

and back to phnom penh. 

we sat in a bar for a bit, playing scrabble and drinking happy hour beers while local kids tried to sell us books and point out moves on the scrabble board that didn't make any sense, adding a "u" on the  end of some word for instance. and some old white haired white guys played jimmy buffet songs on guitars. i mentioned them in a previous post. so after they played, very loosely, informally, picking the guitars off of the walls and playing only one or two songs in their entiriety, and more or less just jamming, one of the white mustached earring clad, flourecent colors mentioning some city in florida probably on grey t-shirt wearing musicians asked us how we liked the music. yeah it was good we say, and he asks us if we are from the north east united states. we say no, the midwest, which he thinks is close enough because he has a big fat southern accent. but he asks us if we want to contribute anything to the band because they just pass the hat around and play for tips. caught off guard by this, we say, oh, we're not sure what we'll have left after we pay. which was completely true, we tend not to carry any more cash around they we need for the night. and this seemed to offend him. 

so here is my message to the white haired mustached jimmy buffet white guy playing for tips in cambodia:

1. you are in cambodia. you are soliciting tips from backpacker travelers, competing with street children selling boot legged copies of lonely planets for extra dollars.

2. if you came to cambodia to live off tips from playing the guitar in a bar at three in the afternoon, it's not going to happen.

3. like the world will suffer without one more white mustached old white guy playing margaritaville on the guitar.

4. maybe if you would have set down a hat or box for tips, and not asked like a douche, we may have put ten or twelve cents in it.

we also tend to buy cold drinks from those who are queietest and calmest.

linda

back back back, a few days, maybe a week, who knows. traveling time is different from normal time. every memory has to be cross-referenced with a calendar, and even then it's difficult to pin down dates, times, days, months, years--they just aren't important, for the most part.

still though, you just try to find things to do in order to fill the time between when you wake and scratch your eyes until you let your head hit the pillow again, same as anywhere. but when traveling you don't feel guilty about sitting around in bed for an extra hour, especially when your room has a television, and it seems like a good idea to keep watching some made for tv movie starring the guy from powder about turning some local girl into a pop star...i guess travel time is just like unemployed time, but without the guilt.

anyhow, back back back, to kinabalu, up the mountain, no halfway up, no better start at the bottom. i must talk about the perfect little attractive american family playing monopoly, and that starts at the bottom, kinabalu park.

while traveling, anywhere there is a sort of gringo trail, you are bound to run into and rerun into people doing the same exact thing as you. maybe they are a day off, maybe they are going up when you are coming down, maybe you converse and maybe you don't. 

so at the restaurant at kinabalu park, where i ate a delicious egg enveloped club sandwich (not a monte cristo type sandwich, but the whole sandwich was dipped in egg batter and then fried, (try it on your own, it is great)), we first saw the perfect family, alerted to their presence by the over-zealous chatty mother marveling to another restaurant patron about the fantastic coincidence of running into each other again. 

by the by, ang has written about this woman as well, check out her blog if you haven't already: http://whereintheworldisang.blogspot.com/

so this woman, who we came to call linda, for ang had a dream about her the following night, was very fit, and from a distance looked rather young. up close you saw thetruth, the pock marked face lift skin,( the chest looked the same, buoyant and created under false pretenses), and the hair long straight, and certainly dyed a teenage black. and the kids, well dressed and handsome, the boy has hair that swoops across his forehead, the daughter is long and tall, the dad just for men gray haired handsome and undoubtedly wealthy. they are all smiley and white toothed. 

had we never seen them again they would have just been a passing memory or a picturesque abc family television show type family that is odd to see in real life.

but halfway up the mountain, catching my breath, thinking happy thoughts about white terry cloth towels and warm water, there is the happy smiling family occupying a table playing monopoly. smiling smiling hair perfect, all put together, warm showered and soft towel dried monopoly playing family. 

then at dinner time the lodge is full to the brim with climbers queued up for buffet dinner, and there are twice as many people as there are chairs and tables. they have long finished dinner but will not relinquish the table. but maybe that's the army boot camp chow hall hurry up and eat mentality of mine.

the next morning: 3 something a.m. we get to a point on the mountain where it's neccessary to hold onto a rope and side step around a crag. this is in pitch black and you can only sense the descent below you, that if you were to let go of the rope the howling wind would lift and drop you into a deep deep abyss. at this point there was a line of people and headlamps, as you could only go one at a time. enter linda and the chilluns.

they were far too important to wait behind the line, so the jump shoved their way in front of thirty or forty people up to the rope, right in front of me. 

i climbed behind them, enjoying the hidden danger of the climb, and lindas freak-out mid mountain. i know the kids were scared, and linda was also, yelling "guide! guide! (guides are compulsory for climbing mt. kinabalu) please take care of my children!" and "hold on to the rope with both hands! don't let go!"

half way across this tricky piece of climbing, the trio stopped. the children were terrified, the mother was terrified. they didn't know  what to do. "it's not safe!" "what should we do?" "it's not safe here either mom?" "where should we go?" "we should go back!"

i had to climb around them as they sat frozen on the mountain and i felt a little bit vindicated. i felt bad for the kids a little bit, it was a bit scary on the dark, wind howling mountain, but their real fear was of their mother. old men and women and kids much younger than them had made their way to the summit. but when your parent figure freaks out on a mountain, there is a good chance of getting psyched out.

i told this story to the couple who was staying in our dorm with us. they also had noticed this perfect little family, and they had their own story, of the mother yelling at the children (presumably before the aforementioned incident), telling them to go back on their own if they can't make it up, that she, linda, was going up alone if necessary. 

a victory of sorts, for the little people, the peasants of the world, the non-abc perfect family picture. 

boardwalk going down to baltic.

cambodia

the viewpoint of a tuk-tuk passenger

we fly in to phnom penh and take a tuk-tuk into town. 

now, i've been to a few places in my lifetime, i've seen my fair share of busy dirty smelly hectic third world type cities, but phnom penh in cambodia is crazy. sitting in the back of this tuk-tuk i was watching, wide-eyed and child like, in amazement at the amount of motorcycles weaving in and out, drivers never flinching, infants and toddlers on the backs of the seats, unaware that if they were in the u.s. they'd be sequestered in the back of a minivan watching finding nemo and sitting in a carseat until they turned 30.  and our own driver speeding up slowing down, squeezing in places where he shouldn't fit, horn honking and stop sign ignoring and yes, it is awesome. 

at night it took me a while to get the cadence of the traffic, and crossing a busy street took me about five minutes. i've learned you just have to walk in a nearly straight line, and just have faith the motos and cars that are ignoring lanes and painted stripes on the concrete will avoid you.

and then walking around, and more motos. and no, i don't need a ride--everyone has a moto and everyone wants to give you a ride.

they use the u.s. dollar here for the most part. happy hour specials abound, and i appreciate the good ol' usa currency when one dollar gets you a beer. the beer is anchor on draught. it's cold and wet and good.

sometimes you wish your imagination didn't work.

we went to the killing fields and genocide museum today. ominous. learned about the khmer rouge, and death and the feeling that brutality and killing leaves behind after only thirty years. looked at cracked skulls and mass graves and wondered how such life hating ideologies can ever come to run governments and countries and people. but really, it's been happening for ages and still is.

now ang and i are sitting in a bar, drinking happy hour beers, playing scrabble (i just beat the pubs' previous high scrabble score with a 315, below my average mind you, and the board doesn't have its q. the place has filled up with old white guys. two are playing jimmy buffet type songs on guitar a pink, sleeveless shirt clad tone deaf chain smoking blonde woman is singing along. it's great.

mt. kinabalu

view from the bottom

woke up this morning in kota kinabalu. my legs are quite sore as i roll out of bed and i remember, oh yeah, i spent the last two days climbing a mountain. and the views from the top are only a nice reminder of the journey involved. 

we spent the night before the climb at kinabalu park so we could get acclimated to the elevation and take our time in the morning. the day before we caught a micro bus from kota kinabalu that we shared with two smelly hippy types from who knows where. they seemed a bit too old to be hippies, one was round with grayish short hair, the other skinny and bearded with his long hair pulled into a stubby pony tail on the top of his skull. the latter wore those pants you often see travelers' wearing, the local type of pant presumably, that is usually red, cottony, and fastens without a fixed waistline so the crotch hangs down way past the knees. the ride took three hours because the driver decided to stop at two junkyards for over an hour. not sure what type of maintenance the bus needed. but we went up and around twisty, squiggly roads up up up to the park and I closed the window as the air became cool and I began to slide back and forth on what was, in kota kinabalu a hot, sticky seat.

porters putting me to shame

we started the hike up the mountain around 9:30 in the morning. the first day would take us six kilometers to a lodge where we would spend the night.  we would go from about 1,500 meters up to over 3,000 in a matter of hours. in my bag i carried some warmer clothing, water, some snacks, and a bulky, humorous, and difficult to fit in my bag box lunch that was included in the cost of our hostel. in a three compartment plastic case, the lunch contained the following: three complete crustless white bread sandwiches, two sandwiches of one slice of cheese, one with a slice of meat, ham, turkey possibly... the other compartments contained, respectively, two hard boiled eggs, and a piece of fried chicken. to wash it all down was a can of 100 plus, an isotonic vitamin enhanced beverage that is all over the place in malaysia. one of the guys we climbed with aptly described it as glorified sprite.  and i suppose i should mention, that along with myself and ang were two british guys, dave and tom, that we met and shared a guide with. our compulsory guide was an awesome lady named lula.

better to imagine this going up, in the dark

so climbing climbing climbing, upward and upward. the first few kilometers go by ok. through some green forests, over rocky pathways, up rocky steps. the gray rocks and green and brown of the trees give way to tan, muddy rocks, and the clear air to hazy clouds. but i'm still feeling pretty good. i'm taking my time, step at a time. here and there i'd trek quickly up a few stairs only to feel the thin air stifle me, sending a sharp pain to my temples--slower, slowly, deep breath in, ok, the headache fades, only the burn in the quads remains, but that's no big deal. 

every km or so there's a shelter and a place to sit down to eat hardboiled eggs, crustless sandwiches, fried chicken, etc. 

then you hike up and up and marvel at the porters who are going much faster than you and carrying boxes and bags that look very heavy on their heads and shoulders. by the way, this trek, which takes us (and most humans) two days, bottom to top to bottom, is scaled in its entirety by racers in under three hours. 

so after about four and half hours, through green forest, cloud forest, muddy rocky slippery stones and steps we made it to laban rata, the lodging halfway up. we are greeted inside by warmth and complimentary  coffee, tea, and biscuits.  weary climbers are sitting here and there, feeling good, sipping tea, eating biscuits--a perfect little attractive american family, all smiling, is playing a game of monopoly and all is well in the world.  but more about that family later) and our guide, lula, sets down a couple of plump white softy heavenly towels--oh so heavenly, with a delicate and beauitful tiny bar of soap on top, and instantly one can't help but to think of a nice warm shower and some clean clothes. oh we've made it! it was a long hike and now we can have a nice hot shower... but no, lula's towels were not for us, but rather for dave and tom. we got only a key. our dorm was still a few hundred meters up.

so after a few cups of complimentary coffee and tea ang and i, still sweaty and soiled and ready to sit down head up to our cabin. and it is not a few more steps up, it is many more steps up, and over rocks and streams and up more rock. this isn't too bad of a walk normally, but having glimpsed the heavenly white of that towel and then finding it, and the warm shower you're ready for isn't for you, as well as the fact that you have to climb back down for dinner and then back up to go to sleep, well i wanted to punch all of humanity in the face. 

we made it to our dorm. and it wasn't the heated, soft white towel land we had hoped for. no, it is not bad at all, it is a quaint wood and tin dorm room with four beds. but by this time, high up on the mountain, it is getting windy with rain falling sideways sporadically, and the toilet and shower are outside, and they look very very cold. but i hate to be sweaty and sit around in my own dirty greasy sweatiness (see previous blog about greasy bus ride) so i resolved myself to shower regardless of the facilites. i girded up my loins ( i have no idea what that means but that's what i did) and headed to the shower, without a towel mind you, i didn't bring one. i didn't want to carry it. but the sun came out, i took it as a sign and i headed in, and staring down at me is a lonely, solitary metal pipe. i turn the knob--ice. i inadvertantly say 'mama cita,' because that is what you say when you head into an icy abyss, loins girded, desperately, oh so desperatley wanting to bathe. i bathed, and unfortunately for my story of loin girded manhood, the water actually warmed up a bit. i shivered tremendously when i got out still wet, but i was clean.

me pretty much owning the mountain/world

after a buffet dinner of noodles, rice, and miniature hot dogs, the staples of buffets in kinabalu whether they be lunch, breakfast, or dinner, we went to bed around seven p.m., setting the alarm for 2:30 a.m. we slept relatively well in our tin shack halfway up the mountain, even if it was unheated and sans soft white towel hot showers.

lying in bed, just lying because i was too tired to hold a book in front of my face, there was a bit of trepidation about the early morning hike. it was quiet, oh so quiet inside our tin cabin halfway up the mountain, the only noise being the creaking of the wooden bunks we were sleeping on. but outside, the wind roared mightily and the rain fell sideways and quickly, and with a purpose, but our tin cabin stood stalwart, deflecting the thunderous rain pellets and accepting the wind, amplifying its roar with it's thin metallic skin. under its protection I waited for sleep, worrying if I brought enough warm clothing for the rapidly approaching early early morning hike, because outside of my blanketed wooden bunk in tin cabin cocoon, it sounded cold. it sounded cold the way early morning darkness feels lonely

the warm place we didn't stay at

but we were up at 2:30, bundled up as much as possible. but getting outside it wasn't too bad. we start our upward trek in the blackness, our headlamps our only light. at first its stairs, then some rocks, then up a steep grade holding onto a rope. the air is getting thinner and thinner, the slope steeper. a queue forms from all the climbers at the steeper points. we get to a point where you can't see anything around you save for the rock face in front you. here we held on to a rope and scurried sideways around a ledge. i was glad the darkness didn't allow me to see what was below (although in daylight on the way back it wasn't too bad).  so up up up. then more up. after a point the rope is just a guide, and there is no need to hold on. it is incredibly steep and still dark, just one step  at a time, step, step, step. at this point you can't see much but you can sense your height and the surround black sky and ominous rock formations. up ahead and behind are trails of headlamps, slowly moving up and up.

nearing six a.m. and the sun starts to peak out bright red from behind the mountain. the summit is now in sight and it is cold. windy and cold. my nylon pants flap like a flag in in the wind. it is cold and the goings is slow. just step, step, step.

by six we were at the top, after a short scurry we were freezing and taking pictures with all the other successful climbers. and then we went back down.

down down down, down stairs and rocks and sheer mountain backside. my legs were jelly like. 

now, a few days later my legs seem even more sore.