While I am amazingly grateful and still kind of surprised that everything went perfectly while I hiked to the foot of Everest, my very first day of the trip was a tad bumpy. Craig and I decided to spend two days in New Delhi before heading to Nepal to get our bearings and see a little of India before trekking into mountain country.
After 17 hours of travel, we landed in New Delhi at 12:30 in the morning bleary eyed. I patted myself on the back for being such a responsible traveller and booked a cab at the legitimate taxi service inside the airport. I had almost had my luggage stolen in China by a rogue taxi driver and had learned to trust no one. With a little number in hand, Craig and I headed into the humidity to grab our cab. We found our guy, paid the porter who insisted on carrying our bags three feet and headed into the chaotic city.
Five minutes into our drive and our cabdriver pulled off the road and onto a shady strip of sidewalk. “Tourism Bureau!” he barked. “Go see!” he looked at Craig and nodded, “you too.” Really? The official tourism office of New Delhi is on a shady street and open at 1 am for consultations? Even hallucinating from exhaustion I had my doubts.
Craig, who is blessed with more common sense than I am, inferred that they were trying to get us to leave our bags so they could steal them. Now I know sweaty polar fleece in an array of pastels isn’t exactly life changing, but I wasn’t about to let some scoundrel run off with my Patagonia. So Craig stayed with the luggage as I went in and chatted with some con men who lied about the location of our hotel and tried to force us to stay in the fleabag next door. Luckily, we remembered that we had seen a Radisson Hotel right next to the airport and begged our shady cab driver to take us there.
“Too expensive!” the driver declared and sat behind the wheel. But finally we convinced him with some hard earned rupees to head back towards the airport and to drop us at the Radisson.
Yes, it was $400 a night. And I would have paid $800. It was luxurious, clean, sporting enormous beds and free of swindlers trying to steal my ergonomic backpack. So after Nepal, we went back to the Radisson and they even provided me with my 30th birthday dinner, ordered off the kids menu and eaten in bed.
My favorite picture from New Delhi. This girl was just looking out at a garden and I happened to snap her as she stood in a doorway.
My favorite thing about India was the colors. Head to toe pink and yellow - in India it looks fantastic.
A doorway redefined.
The Radisson! Oh the luxury was soooo nice before and after the mountains of Nepal.
Sometimes it’s fun to get biblical outside of the bedroom. And while I live alone in a home and don’t have pesky parents breathing down my teenage neck, it’s still fun to occasionally get frisky in an automobile. Luckily, Craig’s automobile has a rather big back seat, so one summer night after we threw a football around the Washington Monument, we decided the next sensible thing to do was take our sweaty bods and mash them together in the car.
In high school, my boyfriend and I spent a lot of time locking lips in his car while it was parked in his driveway. We would tell his parents that we were going out and well, I guess technically we were out, but we were really just outside in the quiet of the great American ride. It makes me wish there were still drive-ins.
While flexing my muscles in Craig’s back seat on that hot July night, I thought about all the headaches Toyota has had during the last year with the Prius and the Camry etc. But here I was enjoying the Camry in a very 1950s “I just got pinned and it’s homecoming,” kind of way. I thought the carmakers would feel rather proud.
The Camry may have gotten recalled, but the backseat remains fabulous.
Today at 6 p.m., Craig and I leave on our very long journey to Nepal. First we have to fly to London, then New Delhi (where we spend two nights), before we make it to Katmandu. A day there and we are on another plane to the Himalayas and Lukla airport. That makes eight plane rides in two and a half weeks. Youch. But I think I would take 15 if need be to see Everest. And even better, we are going to hike the sucker. Well, a small part of the sucker anyway.
Two people told me yesterday that they saw a TV show called “World’s scariest airports.” My friend Lauren called me and said, “guess what number one is? Starts with an L ends with an ukla!” That’s right, Lukla, where we land to go hiking was rated the number one scariest airport on earth. But everyone needs a little adventure in her life, right! And on this adventure, I am glad to have Craig there. He has never been to Asia and I’m really excited to see him enjoy the wonders of traveling.
On another note, for many of you wonderful readers who have blogs, you know that you can back post your blogs and have them publish when you wish. Stacey and I actually never do this. We really take our “thank you a day” to mean one note a day and write our thanks on the day of publication 99.9 percent of the time.
But now I am faced with a hurdle called Mount Everest and no Wi-Fi. As much as it hurt me to do, I have had to back post my thank yous for when I am in Nepal. I am going to be camping on Everest for most of my trip, and as you can imagine, there is a lack of internet there.
In Nepal, I will still thank everyday, but it will have to be in my journal written by the light of a really ugly headlamp. When I get back to Washington, I will thank the heck out of all the amazing people I am sure to meet and blab all about Nepal. Everest here I come!
I can't wait to set foot on Mount Everest. Even if that foot is covered in leeches.
Wow wow wow, who knew a weekend of Americana could be so therapeutic. I feel like I could live off hay rides and 4000 calories a day. After two days in southeastern PA, I am basically a Mennonite. Or at least I understand a bit more about them besides just, “no technology!!!! Ahhh!!!”
Here is what my Fourth was filled with: The Kutztown Folk Festival (complete with hoedown, Irish folk dance, fiddle playing families, sheep shearing, Mennonite lecture, vintage farm equipment tour, and ox roast), Reading Phillies baseball game, good old fashioned fireworks, and roughly enough food to feed a family of five Mennonites for a week.
It was probably the most Americana-filled two days of my life. And of course the icing on the cake was that today we drove around the small towns just north of Lancaster, which are almost 100 percent Amish/Mennonite. Craig and I had a fit every time we saw plain clothes hanging on clotheslines or boys in straw hats biking by. We honestly tried to be as respectful as possible, but it was like we had never seen a horse and buggy before.
When I think about what it’s like to get an email every minute or blow out my hair every morning, I’m rather tempted to say adios technology and hello windmill. Until then, I’ll just venture to the hills every now and again and remember that there was life before the iphone.
PS – this post is dedicated to Stacey and her awesome fear of the Amish.
Craig manning the Ox roast. You know, just another Fourth of July tradition.
The most patriotic horse in America is clearly to be found at the Kutztown folk festival.
Oh that hat! But even better, the woman in the bonnet holding a club. If that's not scary enough, check out the tattoo on her arm.
Mennonites at the fair. Craig and I also listened to a lecture on the history of Mennonites for a good 15 minutes. So basically I am ready to give up J. Crew clothing and all electronics for five minutes a week.
On Saturday during the drive to West Virginia, Craig and I got into a very deep meaningful conversation about men’s underwear. That’s how we roll on the weekends – we discuss the meaning of life, nuclear disarmament and the intricacies of undies.
I can be rather picky when it comes to what’s going on in the underwear department, both for myself and for Craig. For him I like ‘em tight. Solid colored boxer briefs so snug I can barely take them off. Yes, he may have to sacrifice breathing or walking like a normal human being, but isn’t it worth it?
As we glided towards the Maryland/West Virginia border, Craig started laughing like a crazed country boy, remembering a story from his Leigh, Nebraska days. ”Are you sure you want to hear this,” he kept asking while cackling down the highway? “Are you really sure?” At this point I was frothing at the mouth, ready to drown myself in the Shenandoah River if he didn’t start talking.
“Well, when I was 15, 16 I used to wear leopard print briefs. You know, to impress the ladies. All the guys did!” All the guys did? Impress the ladies? My oh my what is going on under those overalls in small town America? “You mean Michelle?” I asked referring to his high school girlfriend. “And by all the guys, you mean the whole Leigh High School football team was roaming around in leopard print?” Craig laughed still zooming down the highway. “Well, Chad had a pair! So did Mark, but we called him Boog. And he was a bigger guy too.” By this point I’m laughing so hard I think I might asphyxiate myself from the hysterics. But Craig just keeps going. “This one night when I was 15, I got so drunk that I ended up on my front lawn in nothing but those leopards. And I could barely walk. I think I was crawling.”
As I reflect back on all the underwear I have owned in my life, I just don’t think I have anything to match the ridiculousness of Craig’s leopard briefs. But there is always next weekend.
This is kind of what I imagine Craig looked like in that underwear. Man oh man I wish he had pictures.
So, I have this thing with West Virginia lately. I seem to have forgotten all the questionable fashion and dental hygiene that comes out of Appalachia and focused only on things like the Blue Ridge mountains, farm to table restaurants, and really cheap real estate.
A few weeks ago I went to a press breakfast put on by the West Virginia tourism office and man oh man did they sell me on the place. Of course they were also delivering an organic pancake feast, but pishposh. What a state it is! Mountains and rivers and un-yuppie-a-fied towns all within a short drive from Washington. One of the organic farmers we met with even invited us down to his farm for a hootenanny this weekend, but sadly I couldn’t fit in the four hour haul. Craig and I decided to head to the much closer northern corner and discovered Shepherdstown, the oldest town in WVA.
Shepherdstown is storybook adorable because the pile of bricks was put up in the 1700s. And it’s also surprisingly kind of hippyish. I had a vegan sandwich with vegan potato salad for lunch and then spent the afternoon explaining to Craig that hippies do shower, they just prefer to look like they don’t. It’s coooool when you’re a hippy, I explained, my 15-year-old Birkenstock wearing self goading me on.
After spending a few hours in WVA, we realized we were five minutes away from Antietum and all the ghosts roaming the once bloody battlefields, so we headed over. What’s weird about a battlefield is how peaceful it is. I mean the bloodiest campaign of the Civil War was fought at Antietum, shouldn’t there be some leftover blood and guts or just some live ammunition you have to walk around? I felt like I should have brought a Williams Sonoma picnic basket and lounged around while sipping a mint julep.
It’s a pretty part of the world out there and it made me wonder why oh why I spend my days trapped in a city. One more of those WVA press breakfasts and I’ll be blogging from a hut in the Blue Ridge mountains!
The main building of Shepherdstown. Today there was a nice hippy flea market on the front lawn which was really confusing Craig. He is from Nebraska thus does not understand hippies. I chose not to tell him that I once decided James Taylor was my spiritual husband and I opted not to wear shoes for most of 1995.
Craig on the battlefield. It's sooo peaceful there. I was tempted to meditate or take a nice nap.
My requisite ridiculous battlefield photo. In Gettysburg I chose a cannon, for Antietum I went with the classic fence pose.
One thing about working in journalism is that you receive sooooo many press releases. Some of them are ridiculous, like the almost daily memos I receive from The House of Magnets (dear magnet people, I don’t want to buy a magnetic baseball emblazoned with my face!) or the ones from Todd at Spread the News that are always trying to get me to write about hand sanitizer or a $1.99 pocket purse hook.
Those, I sadly have to delete even though I know some poor copy writer spent a long time putting all that info together. Then, every now and again, I get a press release that makes me very happy. “What a ridiculous piece of knowledge!” I’ll declare. “I would never have known about this world’s largest rubber band ball exhibit/hot celebrity currently on the Hill/Mennonite pie bake off if it hadn’t been for a press release!”
One such press release just cemented my 4th of July plans. I was sitting quietly at my desk when I received one encouraging me to attend the Kutztown Folk Festival. And from that well put together press release I learned that the festival would be a great place to spend my stars and stripes day, after all, it was going to be filled with the Pennsylvania Dutch. And what else you ask? Well here are just a few of the highlights:
“Enjoy the sounds of our strolling Sauerkraut Band”
“Our reenactment of an actual 19th century hanging has stunned audiences for years.”
“A festival tradition is the ox roast where a 1,200 pound ox is roasted on a spit over a bed of coals throughout the day.”
“Hoedowning, By the Miller Family and Sheep Sheering!”
All this a mere three hours away! Sign me up. So that’s what I did. Thanks to a press release, Craig and I will be spending our 4th of July the old fashioned way, with a fake public hanging, parades, Civil War reenactments, bald animals, and a quilting bee. I have a feeling my Independence Day Naked Thanks entry just might be my favorite one yet. Yeehah!
Here are some folks dressed up for the Kutztown Festival. I think Craig and I might have to buy some new digs for our adventure!
Here is the Ox Roast master at the festival! Even though I gave up meat, yet again, I feel like it would be a crime not to partake in this odd feast.
Soooo I seem to post a lot about hair removal – tweezers, laser and now my beloved epilady! With all the excitement of having gotten laser hair removal, I seem to have forgotten about the divine little machine that saved me from being a gorilla in a bikini for years.
The epilady is like a little handheld electric shaver, but instead of just cutting your hair, little spinning tweezers of death pull it out from the roots. It’s like getting a very slow wax and is perfect for people who count activities like waterboarding and medieval torture as hobbies. So why use the spinning machine of despair? Because it can pull out even the shortest hairs and you don’t have to endure the horrid in-betweeny phase while in a bikini.
I have done some strange things with the epilady and have bought three in my life, all on different continents. I have evened out my weird hairline with it, removed my one and only thigh hair, and even tried it on Craig’s arm the other day to see if he could endure the pain (massive failure). And then of course there were all the times it saved me from being weird crotch stubble girl. Even though I now have the skin of a trained seal, I can’t get rid of my handy epilady. It’s so broken that I have to turn it on with a paperclip, but I don’t care. We’ve been through girl warfare together, and I will always keep it close to my heart…err armpit.
Ahh, the litte machine that saved me from being a human/ape. Or at least helped me yank the rogue knee hair when I forgot to shave. It's painful, yet amazing! Kind of like all cosmetic products for women.
As I fly over the friendly skies from Naples back to Washington, I’m kind of regretting the pact Craig and I made while observing our less than perfect washboard abs on the beach. We swore up and down that we are going to embark on “The Spartacus Workout” three days a week as part of our crazy-person six days our of seven workout. Craig found this Spartacus situation in Men’s Health and it is actually the really over the top regime done by the actors in the Starz show Spartacus: Blood and Sand.
My thirtieth birthday is 63 days away and one thing I really want when I hit the big 3-0 is a body I love. After running two marathons in the last six months, I’m pretty happy with having accomplished that, but now I am ready for that six-pack I can stop a bullet with. Or at least just bare by the pool.
THIS PART OF POST WRITTEN AFTER HAVING LANDED, GONE STRAIGHT TO GYM AND DONE SPARTACUS WORKOUT.
Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. But good pain. The kind that might give me thighs that Lance Armstrong would approve of. I think I just sweated out all the toxins in my body and my nine layers of beach-inspired bronzer. The hardest part of the workout is jumping in the air between lunges. Who knew jumping was so painful? If I survive this Spartacus training, I think I will wear that leather loincloth after all.
These three actors are all doing the Spartacus workout to get buff for their show, aptly named "Spartacus." While I don't need my bicep to be the size of my head, I will happily take a six-pack.
What a wonderful day. We are still in Naples and though it is 104 degrees, we’re in heaven. Our hotel is on the beach, we went for a really sweaty run in the sand, and we have taken on a “clothing optional” motto in life. We have also discovered a new love for disclosing embarrassing things about ourselves and playing top five ____ about you. Our first idea? Let’s pick the top five jobs you would suck at. Here is what Craig chose for me. 1) Night Watchman (I love to sleep) 2) Logger (I disagree. I think I would make a hell of a logger) 3) Whale Watcher (I never see animals. Like even at the zoo I miss them) 4) Parole officer (Everyone deserves a second chance!) 5) Person who does wake-up calls (I’m always late).
Following the “this is what you’re bad at” game, we decided to confess our embarrassing stories. One of Craig’s just happened to be that his sophomore year of college, he wanted to get a tattoo of a football with wings. Yes, WINGS. It was after he won the national football championship with Nebraska and wanted to remember that moment forever. And then to really class it up, he wanted to put a big red N underneath. Ah, my boyfriend could have a flying football on his arm. Would I still love him? Probably. Let’s be honest, if it was on his face, I would probably still adore him. Ahh, l’amour!
This could have been on Craig's arm. Oh, except the football would have had WINGS.
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The Camry may have gotten recalled, but the backseat remains fabulous. 
