I have talked with Richard and Gaye about the experience in Nepal with the concern that all of the activity will be really stressful. Traveling so far to get there, dealing with the extreme time zone shift, and getting into the country of Nepal will definitely be a shock to the system, no way to avoid that. It’s going to be a bit of work keeping track of documents, equipment, and people too. We have a pretty good feeling that we’re logistically prepared though (except for the fact that I still have no passport). Gaye assures me that once we get up above Lukla and the jitters wear off we’ll set out on a very conservative pace. We’ll have two young teenagers with us, so we plan to hold way back on the daily pace. We’ll get a little routine going, and we’ll soon find that we only have a little light physical exertion, and that mentally we’ll be free to let the stress clear out that we brought with us.

Today was a great day for shopping for a lot of minor yet very significant gear for the trek in Nepal. Of course I’m very fortunate that Richard already has pretty deep pile (literally) of hiking gear, so a lot of the major items are covered: trekking clothes, sleeping bags, day packs, bottles, tents, and so on. Pema was randomly reiterating all the time that I’ll definitely need some thermal underwear, and it sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. I imagine he literally froze his behind off at some point. Fortunately I have had the great experience in the past to gear up for US Army field exercises, and I grew to love some of the cold weather specialties they provided. The keyword for then and for today’s shopping spree was “polypro” or polypropylene. This amazing engineered material has found countless applications, from the Tic Tacs lids to polymer banknotes in Australia. Amazingly it is one of the most common components in cold weather and water wicking gear. Just about everything I bought today had a substantial content of this plastic material.

Let’s contemplate the near-term function of this blog and the content on the website. I filled out some of the primary interests on the menu of the main page and I’ve been blogging a couple of times a day about how our group is preparing for and upcoming Nepal trip and I’ve been catching up on a few stories from my time with Pema. I’ll be bringing a clunker laptop with me on the trail and with all the down time I anticipate I’ll be blogging feverishly. I’ll upload the text from any cyber cafes along the way to the office here and they’ll post for me. There should be a lot of material, especially compared to now where I just stare at a brick wall for my inspiration. Pema assures me that despite all I’ve learned about trekking in Nepal and about the Sherpa people, the experience in person will be a great surprise and will be overwhelming.

Pema is back with us this evening, and he’s making the year’s last dash down to Snow College to see his daughter Nawang. Of course Mingma is taking her last opportunity for a while to jab at her to not even think about wandering off into Christianity. As drove them the six hours to Zion National Park in southern Utah last month Mingma displayed super-human motor mouth powers as she sat in the back seat with her daughter. She must have been speaking in her native Sherpa language, and I failed to discern even the slightest pause for a breath the entire duration. I asked Pema later what topic had engaged her so adamantly, and he mumbled with brevity it was about religion. He must have been a little overloaded by all of the verbiage too, but at least he could zone out with his prayer beads. I had to actually stay alert. He went on to say that the Buddhist history and teachings have great depth and explaining them is no casual affair. Apparently Mingma was catching her daughter up on centuries of enlightenment in her brief (captive) company.