Februrary 16th, 2002 - The motley crew did Little Si again today and gave my ego a swift kick to the head! All these folks that have done this climb before are in such better shape than I am!!! But we made pretty good time getting to the top . . . we did the hike in about 45 minutes (with the exception of Rambo and Ramboette aka John & Kris who started 10 minutes behind us and beat us). GREAT workout. We're talking about doing Mount Si next weekend . . . I hope they don't keep that kind of pace there, or they'll be pulling me out on a stretcher. Speaking of stretchers, there was an ESAR (Explorer Search and Rescue) group doing their course III on Little Si. today. Man did THAT bring back memories! For those of you who don't know, I was in Search and Rescue between the ages of 14 and 18 . . . what a blast! And what a dedicated group of individuals! Glad to know they're still out there should I ever need them! Anyway both pictures I took today are up on my pictures page . . . check it out if you have time. As I'm getting to know everyone I'll start including names too. What a concept!
February 15th, 2002 - EXCITING NEWS!!! My friend Dr. Shawna Scully just put me over the $3500.00 mark with her donation of $150.00!!! Thanks Dr. Scully!!! Now on to the winners circle!!! I'll be hiking Litlte Si. with the group tomorrow, and I think I'm going to drag Teri along with me for good measure! Thanks again everyone for all your continuing support!!! Our list serve is now up to 17 members!! Very cool stuff!
February 14th, 2002 - Happy Valentines day everyone! Well, being the geek that I am, I've set up a list server at home and have created a mailing list for all my fellow climbers to subscribe to. Paul at ALAW sent out the note to everyone today and we've already had 5 people subscribe . . . I'm sure that will increase over the next few days. Should be a cool way to communicate with everyone.
February 13th, 2002 -
We had our kick-off meeting last night at REI. I got to meet Lou Whittaker!!! (Click on the picture to the left to see a larger image) AWESOME!! What a thrill it was to meet the man, the myth, the legend . . . I mean this guy has climbed every mountain of significance in the WORLD. Including being the 1st American to do the north face of Everest! His brother and twin, Jim was the 1st American EVER to stand on top of Everest. He's got some GREAT stories, and even some good snowboarding jokes: "What do you call a snowboarder without a girlfriend? . . . .homeless" AWESOME! I also had the pleasure of meeting Mike Brown from KIRO radio . . . you may remember way back on January 2nd in my Journal I wrote that it was he that got me started on this whole adventure. GREAT guy! It was a pleasure Mike if you're reading this. It was also Mike's birthday last night, so happy birthday Mike! It was a GREAT time last night, and I even won a goodie bag provided by one of the climb sponsors, Kavu. We did what's called a "climbers lotto" where you buy raffle tickets for a dollar, then Lou draws one name out of the bag, and that person wins the whole shootin' match to put towards their climb. One lucky climber walked away with $195.00 last night!! Nice work!! My training has sucked this week. I've been sick, so I haven't made it to the gym yet. I'm going to get there this afternoon though . . . equipped with my brand spankin new MP3 player, the Rio Volt SP-250. Pretty cool little device. Burn your MP3's or WMA's onto a CD and carry along up to 20 hours worth of music. I put nearly 200 songs on a CD last night for my workout today. Oh, and it also has a built in FM tuner, so I can tune into the TV broadcasts at the gym, should I choose to do so. Anyway, thanks again everyone for your support!February 11th, 2002 - I received my FIRST on-line donation from my friend Ali Scheps in Boston!!! Thanks Ali!! You rock!! For the rest of you, if you're interested, you can make a donation through the ALAW web site in my name, or another climbers (why you'd want to do THAT, I don't know) just click here. Thanks everyone!!
February 7th, 2002 - I'm less than $100.00 away from commitments for my fund raising! I sent out another letter today to my co-workers here at Adobe and encouraged them to make a contribution if they hadn't already. And they came through! Thanks guys! I knew I could count on you!! You may have noticed that I changed the layout of this page . . . Rather than making you scroll all the way to the bottom for the latest information, I've put the old stuff at the bottom, and the new right here at the top where you can get to it! This is probably sounding redundant, but I was in the gym a couple more times this week, and going to try and get there this afternoon too. I started back to school at the University of Phoenix on Monday, so that's been taking up a fair amount of time as well . . . Lots going on! Thanks everyone for your support! Keep those checks coming in!