One member of our trekking team is John Christiansen, the namesake of his grandfather, the esteemed county attourney emeritus for Beaver County. John is a freshman at Spanish Fork High and has been given generous leave of his teachers to join us for this month-long venture across the globe, provided that he lugs a ton of homework with him. Each teacher stipulated some schoolwork project to leverage the potential of this real-world learning excursion, and John is taking advantage of the full spirit of the intent. For his science class he carrying out a month-long study of cognitive capacity versus elevation and yak dung fumes. He has generated a series of challenging arithmetic and reasoning exercises that he will be administering at different stages along our hiking path. He measures the number of correct answers and the amount of time we take, and checks our O2 saturation and pulse rate. We have already taken the quiz a couple of times to establish a baseline for our optimal algebraic skill, and for some of us we’ve already got kind of a dull edge. Fractions, compass directions, “what does the slash mean?” We took our first quiz at the Bangkok airport at sea level after our first good night of sleep, and we took one this morning here in the lobby of the Yak and Yeti at about 4,300 feet. John hypothesizes that by the time we’re at the Island Peak high camp, 18,000 feet, our readings of dullness will shoot off the charts.

Yesterday afternoon we met Paulina (who is married to Dick Jackson of Marmot acclaim) who is here for a very special purpose. They have adopted a 2-year old Sherpa girl named Tashi, and she’s preparing to bring the little girl home to Colorado. Through another of Paulina’s associations here Richard and Gaye found out about other orphanages in Kathmandu, so we’ll be going to visit one of them at some point today to possibly share some of the extra school supplies we brought. It’s plain to see that today will be very busy. We can manage a little sight-seeing, but we have planned to visit the Teaching Hospital, to visit and orphanage and a school or two, and to coordinate with Pema to be ready for our early flight to Lukla in the morning. This evening we need to have our hiking baggage prepared, and Pema has given us tips (schemes really) for getting our gear within the imposed weight limites. Each of us is only allow about 45 pounds of extra gear in our bags, which is not much at all considering all we need to have. First we need to be wearing our heavier gear, like our boots and sausages. Then we stuff the bags with our lighter gear. Pema will also be perforning “bait and switch” slight of hand magic tricks to fools the scales. Considering the penalties for going over-weicht maybe we’ll have to resort to hiring a stranger off of the street to fly with us to allow for extra baggage. In any case, we’re also going to follow the principle of waiting until Namche to rent out the heavier equipment like crampons and harnesses.