Apparently there is a cold bug going around all of Miami, so inevitably I caught the damn thing. I'm taken a bazillion vitamins and meds to fight this thing because I CANNOT leave with this in my system. Recovering from a bug at altitude is a climber's worst nightmare. The body is already struggling to acclimate - add a bug on top of that and it makes life pretty difficult. Hopefully this thing is gone pretty soon. Luckily I'll also have a few days in Kathmandu to recover a bit before we start trekking. Packing is pretty much done, just finishing the final tweaks and making sure my bags don't weigh a million pounds. Another hard thing is to figure what books and entertainment to bring. I might just get a kindle or something, that way I don't have to schlepp some huge bag of books. We'll see. Some exciting news though: I am participating in a study about cognition and high altitude climbing, something that's always interested me. I finally got the interest of some scientists who are as interested as I am about how my memory training scores will be affected as I go higher up the mountain. Cool!
I can't believe it's finally here. Can't wait to get out there and meet the mountain. My training has been pretty heavy up until about 2 weeks ago. I've slowed down since then to try and pack on some last minute pounds, which has always been an issue, but I am definitely ready for this beast of a mountain. Coming off of my memory championship win I am definitely in the zone mentally; which is 80% of the battle when climbing the mountain. So that's a positive :)
Until my next note....