Tooves Goes Up A Mountain

Days 13-18 - Long Way Down and Kathmandu Tear-Ups

2009-05-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

The trip down was a gruelling one. We decided to condense the planned 4 day trek into 3 days, meaning a combined walking time of 27 hours. Without the thought of making it to the top and playing the game to motivate our minds, the path on the way down seemed a long, slow, never-ending battle. The first day, after resisting the temptation to climb Kala Pattar before out 9am departure time, seemed to go quite well. Energised from the acclimatisation at 5165, we practically jogged the flat parts down to Pheriche, a 6 hour trek down to 4300 metres. Causing difficulty for myself was walking down steep rocks. The impact sending shockwaves through the joints. Minds began to turn to the mind-numbingness of day jobs, banking, and personally... having to move flat the moment I got back.

Pheriche was, relatively speaking, The Ritz of Sagamartha National Park. The hotel we stayed in had amazing facilities, including sinks and sit down toilets... although the ever present need to scoop water out of a barrel and pour it into the bowl to act as the flush mechanism remained. Generally all of Pheriche got to watch this happen too, as the toilets all faced out onto the main farming land were old ladies and their children worked with pickaxes or kicked balls.... seemingly oblivious to the sight of a Westerner wiping his pasty arse. I was also surprisingly reassured when I noticed that the walls in the room were still pieces of plywood with scrawlings on them.

Will Wintercross took the time to interview me in his role with The Press Association, and during it I mentioned the 'fighting back a couple of tears' line. He really quizzed me hard on that. Thankfully nobody was interested in publishing a story about the blubby blubbery Aussie. Although in saying that, I was already feeling a full stone lighter for my efforts, and I saw things on my stomach that haven't been visible in decades. On the topic of Will, I found myself standing up for him when he grabbed his camera at the sight of the stretcher that was being prepared for James Markby. Markby's health really deteriorated throughout the day, with gastric problems reducing him to a shell of a man. Unable to push on the final stretch down the hill, he was carried in. I argued that it was Will's job to document the trip, no matter what happened, although I could undertsand why people got upset. Alarmingly, Dave Kirtley, and Breck all went down with a horrible virus meaning nothing can be held down in their stomachs.

Due to the illnesses and organisation, we got off to a late start the next day. Compounding this was some further illnesses along the day, including Joe contracting the gastric virus, and Jules' back giving in. This seemed like the longest day of the trek and thinking back too it, I can scarcely believe I was in so many different situations throughout the day. From the dried up river bed of Pheriche, down below the tree line, and into lunch, I didn't think I had any more walking left in me. Following lunch, we had the massive upward hill back to Tengboche to encounter. This seemed to fly by though, as the guaranteed good chat of Hillsy made the walking fly by. After we crested Tengboche, I got an amusing retelling of how Kirt and Miles became friends and then a rundown of the proceeding 4 years. Some of the stories are book-worthy and perhaps it was this lack of concentration that lead me to going over on my ankle. I rolled my ankle back in Khumjung 10 days earlier, walking sideways down the narrow stairs. Briefly, as I laid strewn on the floor, I thought my trip was over. Fortunately it was nothing and I was able to walk ok after about 10 minutes of stretching it out. From that point on though, I kept on straining it (and rolled it again on the way back from our acclimatisation walk in Dingboche) and it got progressively weaker. As I stood back up after a moderately heavy fall, with backpack still firmly attached, I took one step and rolled it again... getting pretty unsteady before Miles grabbed me and pulled me away from the trail edge that I'd become perilously close too. The rest of the walk, a good 4 and a half hours, was spent ignoring the pain. I was simply too tired to bother with it, and just wanted to get to where I could lie down as soon as possible. I managed to limp into Namche just as the final light extinguished, but a fair group of us weren't so lucky, particularly the wounded of DK, Joe, Markby etc who had to walk for a good hour or more in the pitch black.

The teahouse that night resembled the battle of the bulge. People were sick and injured. Jules looked like he'd seen a ghost. Everybody, to a man and woman, had the Khumbu Cough. Another guy, not on our tour, threw up in the dining hall. Spirits were low in the morning, only enlivened by the fact that this was the last undercooked pancake and over-boiled egg I'd ever have to eat. I was finding it impossible the night before to walk down stairs, but luckily the pain in my ankle had subsided enough by the morning to be able to walk on it. Not so lucky was my room-mate Cuzzer, who I was woken by during the night by him frantically trying to get our door open. A couple of seconds later I heard him throw up. Somehow, I fell straight back asleep... something more indicative of how worn out I was, because I was genuinely concerned. But the next thing I knew it was 45 minutes later and Isla had been and gone after administering a medical procedure at the door of my room without me knowing.

With some heavy strapping on my ankle, I set out for the final push, another 10 hours walking to Lukla. Steep downhill, flat, then the final 45 minutes or so uphill. After an hour or so, I realised that 'warming up my ankle' wasn't going to make the pain subside, and asked Nick to hit me up with the strongest thing he had (cue Naked Gun style joke). The rest of the day was a case of mind over matter. And I was lucky I was one of the healthy ones. One of the ill guys (I'll withhold the name) practically begged Nick for something to sort his stomach out so he could eat for the first time in 2 days. He was so exasperated by this stage that he took the procedure (quite literally a jab up the arse), and even volunteered to get it over and done with (discreetly) in the dining hall of the teahouse that we stopped at. During the afternoon, I was that knackered that I barely even flinched when my £100 sunglasses went flying off my head and onto the paved floor. Even more tired later on, I repeated this process (I kept on forgetting my sunglasses were on my head.... I'd then rip my hat off and my sunnies would go flying into the floor) a further 3 times. Each time without flinching. I knew I was damaging them, but I just didn't care.

At one point, I was stopped by a completely batshit insane Belgian guy carrying 2 huge packs weighing a total of 35kg, one strapped to the other, on his back. Louis-Philippe was going by the name of the Chocolate Sherpa and his mission was to distribute 100kg of chocolate along the trek to the Sherpa people, and to also conduct the worlds highest chocolate tasting. This is the same man that crossed the Simpson Desert alone by foot - I repeat, completely batshit insane. I radioed this through to Kirt, who after meeting him agreed with my summation, which then extended to a little bit of 2-way banter. Interrupting this was Charlie Campbell coming online to tell us that he was in Lukla with his 2 mates, San and Miguel. Being 90 minutes away, this was the last thing I wanted to hear. The next 2 hours resembled one of those montages that they play at the end of The Olympics for the distraught athletes, those injured/upset/being helped over the line by officials during the marathon and generally to the tune of 'Don't Give Up'. I was down. I was out. And so much time had passed between the last time I was in Lukla and where I was at that time, that I didn't recognise the final walk up to the town. Stumbling uphill, Butler and I saw an arch. Neither of us wanted to dare say that it could be Lukla. We walked through, a quick look to my left said 'Lukla Travel Agent'. You. Fucking. Beauty. I raised my hands in my elation. I think Butler shed a tear. It was all over. We had covered 55km and descended 2320metres in 3 days of walking that left us drained physically and mentally. My ankles and knees were shot. But we'd made it. The first group to walk that morning were already lining the streets, beers in hands and gave us a heroes welcome. After dumping our kit, we all got smashed. It only took 4 small cans of San Miguel, but we were all leathered. Lots of man-hugs were exchanged. Kirt paid me a great compliment when he pulled me aside to congratulate on my attitude during the entire 15 days. He confessed that he thought I wouldn't be able to hack it, and that I'd be one of his main problems with constant complaints and issues, but was pleasantly surprised when I ended up being the complete opposite of his prediction. Of course, I responded by telling him that I hoped he died on the plane ride home and we returned to our normal OTT mudslinging.

Coming down in 3 days gave us an extra day in Kathmandu which was warmly accepted. The shower I had, my first in 13 days, ranks as one of the best experiences of my life. We had 2 long nights out in Kathmandu, but I must admit to feeling like I was running on empty on both occasions. Although I still managed to do a couple of shots from Dane's whiskey bottle at 4:30am on the 2nd night. The other 2 days are a blur of Nepali hats, cigars, Everest beer, Rickshaw Races (Breck rounding the corner on a rickshaw like a character from Around the world in 80 days is a particularly vivid memory), lying in the sun, watching IPL, beep-beeping, being offered tiger balm, Ghurkha knives and Hash (in that order), Ian Ditchburn's shadow puppetry, 4 meals a day, tedious bartering, shirt-signing, over-zealous jobsworth airport officials, Hulk Hogan Moustaches (Blinky) and Zangeef Beards (G-Man), shots, 2 Danish girls between 40 of us, being told we all had a 'cricketers swagger' by an American, and a last supper with the guides and porters. Unfortunately all these great moments were tempered by the news that my elderly Nan was gravely ill. Feigning illness, I took a couple of hours alone to sort my thoughts out. Funnily enough, this provided a welcome jolt and stopped me getting a bit too carried away with the goings on. Looking back, I was glad I kept that to myself as I doubt that once I started talking, I don't think I would've been able to stop describing what a truly remarkable woman Nan was.

The final dinner was punctuated with some presentations. Everybody had pitched in to buy Kirt and Wes memento's of the trip (for obvious reasons), aswell as gifts for their able assistants, Cuzza and Vicks. We presented a signed bat to Nir on behalf of Peace Nepal Treks for their simply amazing work. It's a cliché so often used by travellers, but without their help, from organising government bureaucracy through to organising the porters to carry huge loads such as the wicket and a diesel-powered generator, through to simple things like telling jokes and patting you on the back, we would've had no hope of pulling the event off. Honestly I could go on forever. Blinky also received a signed bat for his tireless efforts on the website. For 3 months, to the detriment of his social life, fitness, and chagrin of his girlfriend Indre, Blinks spent upwards of 3 hours a night (on top of his dayjob) working on our website. Zooby had a crack had reading a thank you in Nepali, and somehow Wes managed to sneak in a thanks to the Drovers CC aswell.

Upon return to the UK, we found out that we'd been in every major newspaper, with a picture of my first ball making The Times. A quick google search bought up 92 different articles on gameday itself. The pictures are absolutely stunning. It seemed like a flash the time in Nepal was over, and with it, an 18 day adventure and a 12 month period that will live long in the memory. The one image that I'll have with me though is walking back to my bowling mark, flustered after being hit for 6 by Kiwi over midwicket, looking up to take a deep breath, and focussing on the summit of Mt Everest before turning around to bowl again.

Day 12 - HOLY FREAKING HELL IT'S A WORLD RECORD

2009-05-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

Woke up with the sunlight again and knew that I wasn't getting back to sleep. Desperately needing a leak, I tried to get out of my sleeping bag just as quietly as I could as not to disturb Blinky. Anybody who can disrobe from a wrapped up sleeping bag in silence needs to contact the relevant Intelligence Agencies for their country as not even the offspring of James Bond and Die Hard would be able to pull that off. I was up at the earliest sign that Blinky was awake and into my playing kit. I can't remember being this excited (or ready this early) for sport since playing for St Edwards RLFC under 7's.

The morning was a blur that offered up contrasting takes on the day. Whilst fairly nervous, I was pretty chipper on the outside, but resorted to reading a book to pass the time. Haydn had his serious face on. Dave Christie was giving weather reports (A thick morning fog had enveloped Gorak Shep), and Wes had his 'focussed' face on, only talking to us to tell us which psyche-up tune he'd just been listening too. Butler was later to provide an amusing sideshow by, instead of picking up Colgate, chose the relatively similar tube of Savlon. It wasn't until he tasted antiseptic cream that he realised the grave error.

Once the fog lifted, a glorious Himalayan day revealed that the pitch was looking fantastic. Despite predictions of weather as bad as a blizzard and temperatures down to -8, it turned out to be blazing blue sky, and around about 10 degrees. This immediately put me in a good mood. So much could've gone wrong, but the Gods were smiling on us.

Nobody was quite sure how to take the warm-ups for the match. Do we run? That question was answered when a jog around the field turned into a walk. How strictly will Haydn enforce his directives... we soon found that out when (some more pointedly than others) said hello to the opposition. He looked unimpressed. When Dave Christie and I mucked around with a local toddler who sidled up to us, mesmerised by the sight of 15 guys wearing bright pink throwing a ball around, we were told to focus on the day’s proceedings. The message was clear, Haydn wasn't taking this lightly.

Later on, just after the official team photo's, some excited locals wanted some pictures of us. The offer was refused with a promise to let it happen after the game. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but in retrospect I would've liked to have interacted a little bit more with those guys. This game was as much about the Sherpa people and their wonderful homeland as much as it was us grabbing bragging rights over our mates. Unfortunately the same guys weren't there at the end, and I can't help but feel that an opportunity to soak up the moment was lost.

Haydn called correctly and we stuck them in, hoping for a repeat of the last time we played at Sheen Park. This time around they had 3 much stronger players in their batting line-up (Dave Kirtley, Kiwi, and Simmo), and to be fair we knew we didn't quite have the bowling firepower to match those 3, but we thought if we could get the pitch to do tricks early-on, then we could perhaps get into their middle order again. Prior to the first ball, James Markby stood in front of the assembled players and read from 'The Man in The Arena', by Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

After this, following a Martin Johnson style stare-down-the-line from Haydn (honestly, I've never seen the man so serious), there was a heart-warming exchange of good-lucks with each member of Hillary. Then it was on to the pitch. I don't think I've ever been clapped on to any sporting arena before in my life. Now we had circa 200 people clapping us on to the pitch. Awesome.

Blinky was the man with the new ball in his hands. I was standing at gully unconvincingly saying to myself 'you've got to want the ball to come to you', which is generally what I do when I feel like I don't want the ball to come to me. I thought our big chance of getting DK, a completely different class of batsman, was early on. Perhaps to a nervous shot or one that keeps low on his pads. The first ball went screaming through cover-point for 4. Blinky recovered well from this and had a close LBW turned down, and then a tough chance dropped at deep square leg by Waters when Glen was facing. The way the ball travelled alarmed me. It didn't appear to look like going the distance, but the thin air meant it carried on - no higher than stomach height - all the way to the boundary and would've cleared it by some way had Waters' stomach not got in the way. And judging by the bruise on said gut, it was travelling at some pace. Next over and Glen was dropped again. This time a much easier chance at gully by G-Unit. Unfortunately it was an awkward-ish height and the nerves showed as he made a complete hash of it. He argued that he saved a couple of runs, which I suppose is technically true.

We were then on the backfoot for the next 8 overs. Mark Waters, our premier bowler, got hit for 16 off his first 3 deliveries. Even my encouragement was going wrong when, after a ball popped up into the chest of Dave Kirtley form Dave Christie, I said something along the lines of 'Hey Hey show him what you've got Curtly' - In reference to DC’s delivery resembling one of Curtly Ambrose’s thunderbolts. However the Kirtley/Curtly similarities was misconstrued as sledging Dave and I had to explain myself out loud. Which was pretty embarrassing and something I copped some barracking for from the sidelines, barracking of which I thought went a touch too far.

At the first drinks break they were 69/0 off 7 overs. Comments along the lines of 'we're going to ram 200 runs down your Tenzing throats' rung in my ears from the sidelines as Haydn told me I was coming on to bowl. With a hesitant gulp I agreed, despite it being the opposite end that I requested. And this was after seeing Kinsey (a fellow off-spinner) being taken apart as a rampant Dave Kirtley, seeing them like beachballs, made mincemeat of boundary-lengths more at home at under-12 level. Loosening up, I tried to calm myself with the fallacy of 'it's a win/win situation, everybody has been smashed'. I did breathe a sigh of relief when DK took a single off the last ball of the preceding over, meaning I had to bowl to Glen. First ball resulted in a big LBW appeal. To be honest I was more excited that I landed it where I wanted too than anything else. The next ball Glen hit a single. That didn't go to plan, now on to Dave, 45 off 33 balls. I was absolutely packing it. I was already a bit short of breath, my heart was pumping. Thankfully for me, Dave and Cuzza were both also short of breath, as Dave played a poor shot and Cuzza missed a no-ball as my 3rd delivery pitched, kept low, turned a little, Dave K played back to attempt a big swoosh to get to his 50 in style, but only saw the ball crash into his stumps. It's fair to say I was pretty happy with that and let out a mornings full of nerves in one roar. Immediately I was surrounded by a bunch of relieved Tenzingers with high fives and massive hugs. Somebody shouted 'First wicket on Everest', but again I was just happy not to make a fool of myself.

Glen was then out to one of G's 10-balls in the next over and we were back in the hunt. The runrate stopped as a clearly not 100% Simmo struggled with the pace and bounce of the wicket. Kiwi seemed a little spooked by DK's dismissal and, coupled with an obdurate desire not to be dismissed by me (of all people), treated me with probably a little bit too much respect than I deserved. Backed up by some great fielding (Blinky diving about comes to mind), we were back on top. Unfortunately this is when the sniping started again. As the boundary wasn't very far away I could clearly hear the conversations Hillary were having about smashing my face in and other OTT comments, of which I'd normally take as banter, but today (and maybe it was my fault) they seemed to have a toxic vibe. I reasoned that it was a good sign, they were resorting to that as I was bowling well. Halfway through the next over they complained loudly towards Cuzzer, the on-field umpire, that I was bowling no-balls. I suggested back to them that, perhaps, they should fuck off. To be fair to them, apparently the wicket was a no-ball. In addition to this, the rule has recently changed to state that your foot doesn't have to be grounded behind the line. But how they could question a 'line-ball' decision without full knowledge of the rules and from the sidelines really rankled me. With the tiredness and mild hypoxia creeping in, I didn't get really get over it and the next 3 balls went for 10.

It strikes me as odd that, at Amateur Sporting Events, it always seems to be the crowd that are pricklier than the players. We were threatened with expulsion from an inter-college tournament at university due to supporter behaviour, and my experience with local rugby league also supports this theory. It was true on the day too, as everybody on the pitch, particularly DK, Glen, Simmo, and Kiwi were great sports and seemed to be having fun. Although I would've preferred if Kiwi didn't start laughing at me during my equal parts ridiculous and hilarious stutter in my bowling approach.

After the drinks break I finished my 4th over, 1 of only 3 to do so during the day and the only one to complete them on-the-trot... something that I'm still pleasantly astonished by. My 4 overs returned 1/21 - I was pretty happy with this as I thought I'd helped turn the match. It wasn’t over for me though as I was asked to keep for the remaining 5 overs. 'And death it shall be...' I thought to myself, remembering how exhausting it was the day before. Keeping up to the stumps to Butler, I couldn't believe it when the first ball went straight into my gloves. I did, however, miss a tough chance off Kiwi on the 4th ball when he gloved a sweep. So nobody was more surprised than myself when, after taking the next ball cleanly, I managed to take the bails off (albeit in pretty ungamely fashion) with Simmo's foot dangling in the air. Big appeal, and the moment I saw Hillsy raising his finger in a theatrical method, I went spare. That was as probably as happy as I ever have been or ever will be. It was unbelievable, I can barely catch a cold, and on the 5th ever competitive ball that I'd kept too, I had a stumping to my name. I think I've seen a photo where I've jumped up with my legs around Butler's stomach... that's how happy I was.

That bought in the normally mild-mannered Charlie Campbell, who in between batting well took the time to have an unprovoked dig at both Butler and myself. Still ecstatic from the stumping, I simply smiled and carried on. 2 balls later, Charlie seemed unhappy that I'd made exactly the same comment about his fitness as what he'd said to me. I couldn't quite fathom what was going on. Tenzing were, probably quite rightly, copping flak for taking the game too seriously, yet Hillary (with some noted exceptions) seemed to be all over the gamesmanship side of things.

The next over Kiwi, their last star batsmen, top-edged Mark Waters. Dropping down from high in the sky, Haydn ran back, looking over his shoulders to position himself for a tough chance, one that I didn't expect him to take. A millisecond before the ball hit his hands, somebody from Hillary shouted 'DROP IT!' - just prior to Haydn completing an outstanding catch. A few words were said, and high on adrenaline from the surprise of the catch and now seriously outraged, I shouted - to nobody in particular - 'It's a charity game you bunch of c*nts' - I followed this up with a huge 'C'mon Tenzing' roar as a few more words were exchanged before calm was restored. Jules was the next man in and, to his eternal credit, made sure to apologise before taking guard.

What happened out there is hard to is hard to explain. Having to cope with much less oxygen obviously puts allot more stress on your thought process than what your used too. This inebriation makes thinking exceptionally difficult, and it really affects the decision making process, almost like being a little bit drunk. I've heard several people say since 'I just don't know what came over me' in response to a couple of things that went on. On the whole, it was still a very enjoyable day and I suppose these sorts of 'flashpoints' (if you will) were inevitable.

We restricted them to 152 in the end, quite a decent comeback when we were staring at 200+ and we were confident going into lunch. Prior to heading to our respective teahouses, I sought out a couple of Hillary guys to apologise for the outburst, and I was proud that I managed to admit fault long before an apology came our way. Despite all this, we formed a massively deserved guard of honour for Kirt as he ran onto the field on his own. An entire book can be written on the sacrifices made and effort put in and countless other thankless tasks that he undertook to get us to this point, and this was our small-way of thanking him for the experience.

Our pursuit of the target got off poorly, with Butler out for a duck in the first over. Blinky was out for 2 soon after and we had our backs against the wall. Further to this, a game of numberwang occurred in our batting line-up and Mark Water was promoted from 10 to 3. He batted stoically though and by 7 overs the game was delicately poised at 48/2. Mark was then out to a needless runout in the next over, with Simmo pulling off some amazing work behind the stumps. Wes, who looked our best batsman all day, responded by smashing an enormous 6, which would have carried on most grounds in the world, but was then out next over trying to repeat the dose. Kinsey was out caught off what was a borderline waist-high full-toss from Kiwi, the man who's wedding he'll be performing best-man duties at, and at the other end, Haydn was struggling with the pace and bounce. JC however, promoted from 9 to 7, was scoring some good runs. Haydn finally succumbed to Charlie Campbell, before the same bowler got Dave Christie, demoted from 3 to 8, out first ball with one that moved in a long way off the unpredictable surface. This bought myself to the crease (demoted form 7 to 9), with circa 70 needed off 7 overs, with 3 wickets in hand.

I walked out half-expecting to get some lip. But by this stage, the field was spread and with Simmo – not somebody who would bother with sledging a poor cricketer such as myself, let alone in a charity match- keeping and the game sprinting away from us, I didn't hear an ill word. Admiring my first shot, which I thought had gone for 4, I turned at the non-strikers end and stood and watched. The ball then pulled up inside the boundary... furious, I sprinted back for 2. The stinging in my lungs, the shortness of breath, the dizziness, and the pain in my muscles all combined to remind me why nobody else had a run a 2 all day.

With 68 needed off 30 balls, JC got out going for the much need big shot (Chris Martin's celebration in the style of Eric Cantona was a personal highlight of the day) and our last realistic hopes went. My comments to G-Man, the next man in, were that we needed 40 off the next 2 overs to stand a chance, so have a swing and enjoy it. With that he smeared a massive 6 and faint hope was restored. G was then bowled next over which sent Mike Preston in as our last salvation. I started throwing the bat at anything and lucked into a couple of boundaries, however I couldn't seem to get the strike. Mike smashed his way to 16. There were now 33 needed off 11 balls. A tall order but Mike was seeing them well so we retained very faint hope. Unfortunately he was bowled next ball going for another much needed 6 and it was all over.

By the time the bails hit the floor, I was over the fact we lost. The loss was practically inevitable form the time JC got out, and we never really looked like making the runs from the off. As I stripped off my gloves and helmet, the Hillary boys jumped for victory, and any lingering disappointment I felt was wiped away after seeing the delighted looks on both Glen and Kirt's faces. I was rapt for Glen as he was really enjoying the moment, and Kirt looked amazed that we had pulled it off. It was at this point that it dawned on me that we had the world record, and I thought back to everybody that had doubted us, and wished that they were there to see what had happened. A bunch of ordinary guys, nobody with any major qualifications or experience with this sort of thing, had pulled together, ably lead by Kirt and Wes, to achieve something pretty special, with a massive amount of money going to charity along the way. As the Hillary boys walked off the field, I must admit to having to hide a couple of tears. I'm not sure what to put it down too, partly elation that we'd finally done it, but probably more disappointment that it was now all over. 12 months of planning, muddy fitness sessions in -4 temperatures in Battersea Park, countless 3 hour long meetings at Lords, the freeze mobs, unsuccessful attempts at scaling various British mountains, country weekends, actually buying a pair of running trainers, net sessions at the oval, constantly telling people what I was up too, press launches, radio, tv, and press interviews, and investing all of my disposable income to get to this one-day, this one event, and now it had come to an end. It was fairly emotional and I finally have my answer as to why athletes cry when on the podium at the Olympics.

There were a few glum faces in Team Tenzing after the match, however I was nowhere near being one of them. I was happy with the way I'd played and delighted with the way the day turned out and the fact that we had the record in the bag. I was genuinely happy for Glen, who looked thoroughly pleased with himself and capped an excellent day for him by taking the final wicket. It was just his day. The presentations came and went, with Cuzza giving me a 'star performer' nod (but not before qualifying that with 'and it pains me to say this’) along with Mark Waters before awarding the Charlie Bathurst-Norman award (so named after the member of team Hillary who had to pull out with illness 3 weeks beforehand) to Charlie Campbell for his handy runs and 3 wickets. Dave Kirtley received the stickcricket award for most amount of sixes hit (4).

Following the formalities, most of us gathered in the teahouse that Hillary stayed in, to swig on some champagne and spend the rest of our adrenaline. After 3 sips of champagne and 3 small cans of beer, I was tripping all over the place like I was 16 years old again. And by the time Markby and I got around to singing American Pie, and mindful of an early start, I realised it was time for bed.

Stumbling back up to my sleeping quarters, I had a big satisfied smile on my face. A job well done, from everybody involved. The 30 players, the trektators, the medics, the photographers, the PR guys, the journalists, the guides, the porters, all of the Sherpa's we met along the way, our families and friends. Everybody.

Day 11 Gorak Shep - Preparations, Russell Brice and Team Announcement

2009-05-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

5am and up with the sun again. The skylight in our roof providing an annoying alarm clock. Immediately my mind turned to whether I'd be picked. The tension of the unknown was killing me.

We were to have a practice session on the pitch starting at 11am, just after Hillary's slot. Within the space of an hour there were several pieces of good news. Simmo, Joe, and Zoobs walked into camp, all looking fit and well, and received a warm welcome. They then walked back out of camp and then back in again after Wes fetched his camera. This was the closest we got to sabotaging one of Wes' shots. A pact was made to not make a noise as they walked in, but realising we'd just have to do it a third time, we shelved that idea. Adding to this was my first sign of solidity around back. I was delighted. Absolutely delighted. And not a moment too soon either.

After shovelling away some Yak Dung off the pitch, we got to work in the middle. Just as we were about to start, we had a bunch of intruders. 30 guys, all wearing one of 2 matching shirts, walked down in a group shouting out Kirt's name. At first I dismissed them as group trekkers. They were a group alright, but from Himex, the most respected Everest guiding company in the world. Himex is run by climbing legend Russell Brice, an affable Kiwi who has built a reputation as the most respected climber in the world. In tow, were the Discovery Channel, filming the third series of 'Beyond Everest', which follows the Himex crew and the clients attempting a summit of Everest each year. Whilst other guides will take on just about anybody who can strap on a crampon, Russell restricts his clients to those who have experience of summiting above 8000metres. Russell had caught wind of our record attempt and had organised a friendly rumble. He came down with all his players (Westerners vs Sherpa's), and announced that his official sponsor - The Mountain Corrupt Corporation - was sponsoring an attempt on the record for a game of cricket at Camp 2 on the Western Cwm of Everest, a full 1235 metres higher than Gorak Shep. He issued as with a formal letter challenging us to a knockout tournament. It was all in good fun, jokes were shared along the lines of 'can you let us have the world record for more than 7 days please?' - Russell handed over a bottle of whiskey to Glen and Haydn for a post-match drink, and clearly revelling in it, gave an interview to Mark for ITV. I had a good chat with a client of his by the name of Valerio (whose blog on the day, and his summit attempt, is here). From the corner of my eye I noticed that one of the Sherpa's that was with them was the centre of attention to all the guys around him, almost sensing this, Valerio introduced him as Phurba Tashi, the Himex sirdar. Phurba seemed happy to sit back and watch the commotion from a distance. In actual fact (all going well), the man will soon enter legendary status by overtaking Apa Sherpa to claim the record for most amount of Summit's of Everest, which currently sits at 18.

All in all, it was an honour to meet Russell, Phurba, Valerio and their crew. They later hosted a couple of our guys in their stunning base camp hangout, and shared a beer and a story in confines that are normally off limits to non-Himex members.

After that, it was back to business. Joe Williams, who had earlier confessed to shedding a couple of tears after receiving some false information that the game was being played that day and that he would miss out, brushed aside any doubts about his health by banging balls out of the plateau like he was playing a real-life game of stickcricket. He made batting look easy on a pretty treacherous track that got worse the more it was used. The wicket was a synthetic rollout mesh, with small cubes of material laced together. If any of these cubes got slightly dislodged or raised, it would cause havoc with the bounce of the ball. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying that the definition of madness was trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This was madness, and something that Dave Christie was exploiting magnificently. Unlike anybody else, he wasn't trying to bowl too quickly; just hitting the same spot and letting the unpredictable pace and bounce do the rest. I'll be honest and say that I thought Dave would struggle to get into the team on ability, but he then batted even better than he bowled and on this training session alone, would've been the first on my team sheet. There were no airs nor graces about what he was doing, which I massively rated and thought would be worth its weight in gold the next day.

I, on the other hand, bowled particularly poorly. Struggling with the footing of the sandy runups and then the flimsy nature of the pitch, I shanked a couple in short and then even landed one off the wicket... something I haven't done since I was 15. I eventually settled into the bowling but it left me worried. I was happy with my batting in the tough conditions and hoped that would get me over the line in the selection meeting. All this to the backdrop of another massive avalanche, reminding us of exactly where we were.

All in all I felt ok with the breathing/fitness/energy side of things. Nothing was being done too strenuously which helped out, although I did practice wicket keeping for an over which was absolutely exhausting given the squatting and standing and moving about involved. Back for lunch and people tried to pass the time and get their mind off selection. All 15 of us were fit and healthy. 4 people were going to get a dreaded response. After seeing Haydn furrowing his brow over a piece of paper, scribbling down names, I knew decision time was imminent. A meeting was called for 4:30. After what seemed like the longest 90 minutes of my life, the meeting was canned until after dinner. I did feel for Haydn at this stage. He was about to put a line through 4 names, all with genuine claims to playing the match, but just by simple maths would not be able to play.

Word then got around that we weren't going to find out until the next morning. I, and everybody else, agreed that we wanted to find out that night, as it would give those who miss out an evening to sleep on their thoughts. In light of this, Haydn called a meeting. He started off by making a speech that traced back the events we had attended, where we had come from, how far we'd come, and went over some good memories.

The second part of the speech worried me. Flashing back to Mike Preston's house, during an open forum I expressed the opinion that I thought we were taking the match too seriously. I thought we needed to enjoy ourselves first and foremost as it was a one-off experience, and an offshoot of that enjoyment should be a good performances. This didn't go down as well as I would've liked and I must admit to feeling a little isolated as one after the other, everybody disagreed. I'm sure some people were only disagreeing as not to upset the majority, and this was confirmed later on when a couple of people said that they should've backed me up that afternoon. Haydn reeled off a list of things that he wanted from the day, most were fair enough and pretty standard sporting vernacular (play strong, have pride etc etc). What caught me was his directive not to talk to the opposition at all, and not to joke around with each other at any time. I'm sure this meant to come out as a 'stick together' vibe but it didn't really sit well with me. I pride myself in being friendly with the opposition (with the occasional exception....), and further to that, somebody who has become one of my close mates was captain of the opposing team. Now I wasn't allowed to say hello to him. In addition, I tend to find that when I take anything too seriously, particularly sport, I get too tense and inevitably freeze. Anybody who has known me for more than a couple of hours will attest that I don't take anything particularly seriously. It's just not in my nature.

In any case, I refrained from bringing up any of my objections. Remembering being pasted at Mike's, I thought that the entire team agreed with this course of action so I buttoned-up and toed the line, so to speak. And who was I to know that this wasn't the correct approach? It's all well and good with hindsight to suggest changes, and not for one minute do I think that Haydn wasn't trying his best to make this the most memorable day of 11 guys lives.

Following this, we were called one-by-one into G-Unit's room to find out whether we had made it in or not. Our worst fears were confirmed when we found out that the process was going to be filmed, which pissed me off immensely. In alphabetical order, we were called in. Having a surname starting with T, I was the 3rd last to go in. Blinky came back looking a shattered man. He was in the team, but the process of finding out really took it out of him. Butler came back in looking relieved. He was in. JC didn't come back, and G came in to grab his water bottle. It appeared as if we had our first victim. Then Dave Christie didn't come back in and we became genuinely confused. Everything was starting to take a long time, with the confusion and tension reaching fever pitch. Barely a word passed between any of us. Nobody was coming back into the dining hall anymore. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. Neil Sharland went in which meant I was next. I started shaking with anticipation and my stomach was in knots. Allot of thoughts passed through my mind. 12 months work. £4000. All the boasting to my mates. Donations. A genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience was in the hands of a couple of guys I'd met relatively recently. God what if they dropped me? I wouldn't be able to face it, the humiliation, the pain, walking back down knowing that all the effort had come to nothing. So near yet so far. WHY ARE THEY TAKING SO LONG.

Finally I was called in. In a cramped, dark room Haydn sat on one camp bed, G on the opposite bed with Wes next to him. We sat in awkward silence whilst Wes reloaded a new tape into his camera. I swear I would've killed him for the best part of £10 at that moment. Finally we got the camera's rolling. Haydn started 'So.... Tooves. You've come a long way. We've enjoyed having you on board (cut to the chase...), you've been a valuable member to the squad (where's the 'but' coming in), I mean getting stickcricket on board was a major coup (quit it with this x-factor shit IMMEDIATELY), and you really have made the effort (FUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK here comes the But) and you're also a handy cricketer, so I'm glad to say...... that you're in the team.

Paralysed by relief, I just sat there. Haydn gave me a hug but I'd switched off all emotion as a defence mechanism. G mentioned that people had questioned what I'd contributed to the team (although he had leapt to my defence) but that I wasn’t ever a definite starter. I wasn't sure what to make of that so just let it go, and really, I couldn't wait to get out of that fucking room, to get the camera out of my face and get to bed. I was spent. Haydn asked me to go back to my room as he didn't want me celebrating in front of anybody who was due to come in. I heard some boys gathered in one room and entered with Dave Christie, Kinsey, and Nick Mullineaux. For an awkward couple of minutes we exchanged chat… I was petrified of asking them whether they were in or not.

Back in the dining room, I was still none the wiser as to who was in the team, apart from Nick M who had quietly informed me of his demise. It turned out Nick, James Markby, Neil Sharland, and Joe Williams were the unlucky ones. Unfortunately Nick came in late in the game and didn't have much of a chance to impress. Markby was one who suffered from unfortunate timings, with family issues and long-planned holidays getting in the way of his attendance of many events, and whilst he put in great efforts where he could, others had more chances to contribute. Which was a shame as being one of the genuine characters, everybody on the trip loved Markby. Neil Sharland may have suffered from a strangely lax showing during the days practice session. Neil, along with brother Tom, led the trim trail sessions twice a week to whip us all into shape. With G residing in Oxford and Haydn choosing an individual route to fitness, unfortunately neither of them got to see Neil's work, which may have influenced the decision. I don't think I'd be wrong in stating that allot of us, including myself, owe allot to the Sharland Brothers for getting us into a decent enough state of health to tackle this challenge. In the corner of the dining hall, with eyes glazed over, I spotted a clearly shattered Joe Williams. Joe was one of the most popular members of the trek, brilliant company and a Middlesex colt. Unfortunately Joe was the recipient of a very tough call. Some people who had made a valid contribution had to miss out, and Joe was the unlucky man to get the tap on the shoulder. I really, really felt for the guy as I'd spent quite a bit of time with him in the leadup to the trek compared to the others. Mike Preston, in what would have to be considered the greatest gesture of any man, offered up his spot in the team to Joe. Joe politely refused and retired to bed.

What I've written above is not a case against Haydn or G-Man as to why they should've picked any of the four guys. Anybody who got dropped would've been able to make a pretty valid argument as to why it was unjust. Unfortunately, there was no right or wrong decisions... or more to the point, from Haydn's point of view, it just looked like there was wrong decisions. My thoughts turned to Glen, a nicer bloke you would struggle to find, having to tell 3 of his guys that they weren't playing and was thankful that it wasn't me having to deliver the news.

Blinky and I, absolutely ravaged after feeling like we'd been inside a spin cycle, had a quick celebratory hug before heading to bed. It hadn't sunk in yet, but I was in the team, and tomorrow - the day I'd imagined every single one of the previous 365 days of my life - was going to be a great day, win, lose, or draw.

Day 10 Laboje to Gorakshep - Don't Stop Now

2009-05-15T05:18:00.000-07:00

For the first time that I could remember, I wasn't woken up by my normal alarm. It had seemed that the antibiotics had started working. Alternatively, I just had nothing left inside me. Nothing at all. Both options were equally feasible.

I said goodbye to Zoobs and then goodbye to Joe who were both staying back to ward off Altitude Sickness. I then said goodbye to Joe again, this time for the benefit of Wes' camera. Wes decided that he had liked our brief goodbye conversation, so asked us to do it again. Repeating an off-the-cuff conversation is nigh on impossible and I ended up staring at the floor and mumbling. The 'can you do that again' request became Wes' catchcry on the mountain, and by the end of the trek, usually elicited a roll of the eyes from everybody involved. It was hard not to agree to any requests though, as Wes was living a lifelong dream in filming a documentary and his boyish enthusiasm usually outweighed any resistance you felt. And we all want to see ourselves on film.

After our 180th boiled egg and undercooked pancake, we set off on the 4-hour mission away from the cesspit of Laboje towards the match venue. Setting off down the dry riverbed, carved out the mountain by an old raging glacier, we were instructed to take a very slow pace to ensure we got to Gorak Shep. The last song I heard before I left was 'Don't Stop Now' by Crowded House. The metaphor used in the song is of a couple in a petty argument over directions home after a long day. And this was fairly apt for our situation. Irritable, tired, starved of oxygen, and possibly even bored, the morale in the group was pretty low. Personally I was in a fairly decent mood, all things considered, and was fairly successfully compartmentalising my health problems and not letting them interfere with the way I dealt with other issues or my general enjoyment of the trip or the company I was in. Another factor that had crept in was the amount of people who quite liked the idea of being in charge. Every instruction was seconded, added too, slightly altered, and then sometimes contradicted by about 4 or 5 people. Making this more frustrating was, apart form Kirt and the guides, nobody had been through any of this before, essentially reducing everybody's advice to, at best, hearsay or at worst, guessing. With everybody possessing a pretty strong stubbornness gene, once something was said, it was very rarely retracted.

All this combined made for a pretty unhappy day's walking. Some people wanted to press on, others were sure we had to stop. Some people who wanted to stop thought we were stopping too much, others not enough. Mix in the confusion caused by mild hypoxia and it was a pretty lethal mix. It wasn't as if there were any major arguments or problems, but there was a definite toxic vibe in the air. An example of this was a team photo we organised on top of a large rock with a sheer-face with a drop of about 75 foot. I was one of the last to scale the rock and made my way to the front. I was still a safe distance from the edge when i lowered myself down to sit at the front. Unfortunately I put my hands between James Markby's legs. Markby, petrified of heights, got spooked by this and started to panic, something along the lines 'Toovey, Toovey, TOOVEY!'. Assuming something was wrong, this prompted Wes to shout 'What the fuck are you doing?' - A couple of more people than joined in before I shouted at everybody to stop fucking shouting at me. Whilst this was a complete non-event and nothing was thought of it afterwards, it illustrated the sort of mental strain that low-oxygen puts you under and how simple things can get out of control. Later on, after a comical mix-up with Haydn's trekking pole that delayed us 20 minutes, I tried to lighten the mood by making a joke about tying the Dick of the Day bell to his poll as both a punishment and so he knew whenever he dropped it. This fairly innocuous joke was snapped down in an instant and I thought it best that I just didn't talk for a while.

With the last hill finally cleared, we took the chance to catch a breather before the final push. Mark Jordan asked Butler and I to practice some shots in front of a mountain for the camera. We used this opportunity to brush up on our puerile humour, pretending to be talking about cricket when really we were describing exactly what we would like to do with the cricket bat. Turns out the audio on that section of the report wasn't completely muted.

Just prior to rounding the final bend and descending to Gorak Shep, we were struck with a pretty disturbing sight. An elderly Japanese man, whom I estimated at being between 65-70 years of age, looked in big trouble. He was stumbling like he was drunk beyond belief, and the telltale purple around his extremities spelt trouble. His friends strapped an oxygen mask to him and were about to start medical treatment, but we feared that it was probably too late. If he is still alive today, I'll be pleasantly surprised. Whilst the Japanese have a genetic susceptibility to Altitude related illness (particularly of that age), this was another wake-up call. Studying Japanese very briefly as a school student gave me an insight into the massive amounts of personal pride and silent suffering that makes up allot of the Japanese psyche. I have no doubt that these two factors contributed to this fellow's state of health, and perhaps it's easier said then done, but I vowed to myself that I wouldn't let it get anywhere near that state before I called for help. My mother would've loved to have witness this epiphany, as I caused her a few stressful evenings as a youngster with my habit of waiting until the last possible minute before telling her I was feeling a bit off, generally just before the onset of a massive attack.

Around another corner and we could spot some tents dotted against a glacier. It was our first view of Base Camp. We could almost smell it now. Over a couple of more mounds, around a few rocks and out of the blue, just how Kirt had explained it in several media interviews, the flat Plateau of Gorak Shep was right below us. Arms were raised in triumph, backs were slapped, and I shouted out 'Wally World!' in reference to National Lampoon's Vacation.

We dropped our bags off, and like kids on a beach holiday instantly went down onto the pitch. In total, the plateau was about the size of North Sydney Oval. Underfoot it resembled a sand dune on a headland at any beach in Australia. Fine dry sand, big mounds of dirt, and loads of rocks. Loads and loads of rocks. Big ones, small ones, and immovable ones.

Post-Lunch we embarked upon a huge rock-clearing effort, much to the chagrin of Breck, who would've much preferred us to take it easy. Helen even went as far as strapping a pack to her head to carry a whole bunch of rocks off. Breck was not amused. The porters and locals were amazing in their help. They attacked any mounds with pick-axes and were buzzing around moving rocks off the field of play. All this commotion attracted a horde of interested onlookers, including a guy in a Newcastle Knights jersey, who was actually from Newcastle in the UK, which confused me no-end.

Looking around I couldn't believe the setting we were in. To one side was the charcoal coloured mound of Kala Pattar, a 500 metre ascent that I planned to climb for the promised awesome views of Everest. Towering up behind that was Pumori, which then lead around to another massive mountain range that acted as the border to Tibet. Directly to the other side was the sheer face of Nuptse. The intense glare of the snow and ice demanding you wear sunglasses at all times. Slightly behind Nuptse, just a small indiscreet peak, was the familiar triangular peak of Everest. In full view was the Khumbu Glacier, curling around off Everest’s South West Face. This connected to the infamous Khumbu Icefall, the most treacherous section of an Everest ascent. Whilst we were preparing the field, we were stopped in our tracks by 2 massive rumblings. Noises like any thunderstorm in Queensland could produce sounded out as 2 big avalanches crashed down the mountain at alarming speed. Yaks were constantly walking past with their docile swagger. 'Holy Freakin Jesus' I thought just as the afternoon mist closed in, 'we're about to play cricket here'. In the middle, Butler, Kiwi, and myself all admitted to feeling a bit nervous about the game. Dave Kirtley shook his head when posed with the same question.

Tempering the enthusiasm somewhat was the collapse of a Norwegian trekker in our teahouse. He had strolled in, fresh from 2 massive walks that day, one up Kala Pattar followed immediately by walking to Base Camp (4 hour round trip), and the massively overweight Scandinavian’s body caved in. He would want to buy himself a lottery ticket, as he collapsed right in front of 2 of our medics. Within seconds they had him breathing again, administered some steroids to reduce the swelling on his brain, inserted a drip to combat the dehydration and put him on oxygen for the rest of the afternoon. In light of this, Breck and Nick highly advised against anybody who was planning to be fit for the game against climbing Kala Pattar or walking to Base Camp (a further 200 metres up). Haydn then made a point of asking me whether I planned to ascend. Was this a hint that I was in the team? I had no idea.

Day 9 Dingbouche to Laboje - Sense of Humour lost

2009-05-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

With the negative thoughts occupying my mind, I didn't manage to get to sleep until well after midnight, so waking up just after 5am again to my usual alarm of 'panic, you've only got a matter of seconds before you soil yourself' really annoyed the hell out of me.

The morning was spent traversing a fairly flat piece of land. Making it easier was the fact that Breck's advice had been heeded and extra porters had been hired to carry some packs. This meant that we were now sharing 1 pack between 2, generally in half hour shifts. Walking with no pack at all was captain Haydn, who had managed to rise himself from his sickbed, unplug the IV, eat about 4 bowls of custard and get himself ready to walk. He later confessed that the previous day was one of the low-points of his life, lying helpless in bed as the entire trip flashed before his eyes. On the way Joe and Chris Martin started talking about a fantasy rugby team from within Tenzing. Wes, taking it a little seriously, was pretty unhappy with his position and had a couple of quiet words with Hillsy about what position he'd like to play in this non-existent team. I was placed at hooker. I protested that rugby hookers are generally massive and even still, they get pretty mashed up. The silence from the boys made me realise that this was probably the point.

The lunch break was a fantastic refresher. Noodle soup providing the best food of the trip, and with cheap chocolate and cold drinks for sale, none of us were particularly interested in the afternoon's climb. I was briefly in a good mood until, halfway through a conversation with Kirt, I felt my stomach all of a sudden detach from the rest of my body. Getting pretty sick of the same routine immediately after eating, I starting losing my sense of humour as I lathered myself in hand-sanitiser. A further 2 bush-poo's in the space of the next hour confirmed my mental state. I was in a terrible mood. Thankfully I was faring a little better than Simmo, who had been advised to stay back at our lunch stop (Dukla) to ward off the onset of Altitude Sickness.

The walk was punctuated by a stop at the Everest graveyard. Around an hours walk from Dukla stands several memorials to people who have lost their lives on Everest, including Scott Fischer who died in the 1996 disaster, and whom I was reading about in 'Into Thin Air' during the trek. Further down the track, I asked which was the big jagged mountain dominating the skyline. 'Pumori' was the response. Pumori, sounds familiar... and then it hit me. Pumori is the massive peak right in front of Gorakshep that I'd spent alot of time navigating on Google Earth. This got me excited, the venue was near, the match was near, 12 months of preparation were about to eventuate.

Energised by this, and with my sense of perception thrown out by the apparent closeness of the 7000m peak, I thought I could've walked the entire way to Gorakshep that day. But by the time we got to Laboje, I was ready to sit down. The constant diarrhoea had robbed me of any energy reserves, and despite drinking 8 litres of water throughout the day, I was feeling dehydrated. All this combined with tiredness made me very irritable, and the fact we were staying in, without a doubt, probably the worst settlement on the face of the earth made it a helluva lot worse.

Alot has been written about the hellishness of Laboje and it's lack of facilities. I don't think there is anything to add to any of that apart from 'I agree wholeheartedly'. The place is a godforsaken dump. We were advised the day before to double up on our water sterilisers and also our sanitation routines, particularly with washing our hands. The water again smelt of petrol and I took one look at the pillow before rendering it unusable for the evening. At one point, I tried to sit down and learn the increasinlgy popular and raucous 'dice game' that was catching like wildfire. Essentially it's a dice version of poker, with alot of bluffing and trumping. Trying my hardest to concentrate, the seemingly non-sensical rules actually made me feel a bit dizzy. Essentially being a numbers game, I thought I could cope, until the next lot of rules were wound out to me with their equally non-sensical names.... the moment Butler stated 'well here is where somebody could say Braxton to you, but then if you respond with a double calamari twist...' - 'I'll stop you right there mate, this is just way too much' - I had no energy and I think the boys sensed that I had nothing left in the tank, with Joe going as far as being briefly concerned that Altitude Sickness was setting in.

After 5 particularly horrible experience's using the toilet that evening, I practically begged the medics for the next step as Imodium just wasn't cutting it. I was put on a course of antibiotics, and after one final foray with the toilet, headed off to bed.

Day 8 Rest Day - MC Shark appears for Boom's Birthday, Steamy Mountains, Bocco, and Self-Doubt

2009-05-14T05:11:00.000-07:00

Yet again I was awoken by the Hoover Dam being opened in my intestines and I scuttled off to the makeshift bog in the very early light. I did take a moment to think of Jules and Vics who were in the room next to the toilet, both of whom were probably awoken by what they thought was the sound of gunfire followed by a tap being opened up to maximum capacity, followed by some panting and maybe even the occasional swear.

After 2 hours of dozing I strolled back for one of several encores, and didn't think anything of the 20 or so people gathered outside looking in at me as I gave them an acknowledgement wave with the hand holding the bogroll, pausing only to mumble 'have a guess what I'm about to do', before swinging the door shut. Upon assuming the squat position, I heard a loud cheer from outside. Before I had the chance to think that this was all a bit odd, the crowd launched into a rendition of happy birthday and it clicked that Kinsey, everybody's favourite aggressive chicken farmer, was celebrating his birthday. To commemorate this, the guides had baked him a cake and presented it to him as breakfast.

This sugar hit helped on the long acclimatisation walk. We were going 600 metres straight up, with everybody under strict instructions to take it very slowly. I took the opportunity to have my first non-childish chat with Dave Kirtley, either side of descending 50 metres or so to find a nice covered area to deposit some of Kinsey's birthday cake. This prompted a couple of singalongs, one was the obvious 'Ring of Fire' followed by what i thought was a stroke of puerile genius, by rewording 'Six Months in a Leaky boat' to something along the lines of 'I've just spent six days with a leaky arse' - It had in fact only been 4 days, however I granted myself some poetic license. Later on, Paola would remark that I was 'steaming up the mountain' in reference to the brisk walking pace I was setting. The look on her face when I responded with 'Steamed up in the mountain in more ways than one' was that of a girl who looked disappointingly resigned to the fact that she had chosen to spend 14 days in close proximity to 40-odd males.

Once atop the cold and windy proximes of the 4900metre hill-summit, Butler and I grew more confident with asking DK about what his brother went through after being banned for throwing. For those unfamiliar with cricket, being called for throwing (instead of bowling) is one of the most controversial and soul-destroying things that can happen to any sportsman, particularly on the world stage. There's a cheating stigma attached that never disappears and many people never recover. We were stunned at the remedial action needed. Dave said muscle memory has been calculated at doing something 2500 times, hence James stood at the bowling crease with a big bag of balls and practiced a remodelled bowling action 3000 times. This then progressed to taking the final delivery stride and bowling a further 3000 times, and so on and so on. I've always been pretty quick to judge pro sportsmen, and this story has made me reassess my willingness to throw barbs at people from the outer of the SCG in future.

For approximately an hour we hung around at 4900metres, taking photos, chatting and making Vicks Nicholson promise favours in exchange for a mars bar. I felt alright at that altitude but was worried what running around on a cricket pitch would do to my lungs. Thankfully we had another 3 days to build-up the red blood cells before game-day.

On the walk down I got involved in some banter with Bil and Prem. They constantly referred to me as 'Bocco'. I've had a few definitions to this. At first, the boys embarrassingly said it meant 'strong' - finding this unlikely, I quizzed them further. The real meaning ended up being somewhere between unmarried and gay. They couldn't understand how a man of 28 was not married. Prem then seized on this and started quizzing me about London. He eventually asked me about the ladies in London. After my answer he then clarified his question. 'No, no, how about the red light ladies, y'know...' - He was then shocked to hear that I couldn't give him a rundown of the quality/availability/price lists of callgirls throughout London. I think this was the moment that 'Unmarried' turned into 'Gay'.

After the previous nights lack of appetite, I happily managed to scoff down lunch and also a whole clove of garlic. Nick Walker had suggested swallowing an entire clove like a pill, as apparently that binds your stomach. I had an interesting time talking pigeon English to the teahouse owner trying to describe what I wanted, and then trying to describe what it was for.

Later that night we gathered for one of the highlights of the tour. A comedy night had been arranged to commemorate Kimbo's birthday. Our resident stand-up comedian Chris Martin compared the evening and kicked-off proceedings - along with G-Man - with an ode Milky Tea, the beverage that we each consumed at least 6-10 cups of per day. The night required everybody to get up and tell a joke. The jokes told ranged from Riotous (Mark Waters), Hilarious (George Powell), Confused (James Markby), Ordinary (JC), and Tasteless (myself).

The highlights of the night include Chris' crack about 'wiping your arse' with the religious shroud placed around Kimbo's neck, The Sharland Brothers massively under-rated acappella rendition of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' with rewritten lyrics, but the highlight of the night and possibly the entire trip was the emergence of MC Shark and Base Camp 1 into the cut-throat world of hip-hop. Jules and Milo provided beats whilst Joe 'Mountain Jew' Williams spat out some sick rhymes. Check the video out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3aV2zaZI48 This was yet another night that I could've taken or left prior to the event, but turned out to be a storming evening.

Souring the day somewhat was the amount of downtime we had, or more to the point, what the downtime did to my mental state. It was the first time that our attentions really started turning towards the game. People started chatting about what it was going to be like and, more to the point, who was going to play. I began to think about the different characters within the 15 of us in Tenzing and who were the likely starters. Obviously captain, vice-captain, and Wes were certainties. Blinky, due to his tireless work on the website, was going to be another definite. That left 11 of us to go into 7 spots. I began agonising over whether I had contributed enough in the lead-up to the trip. Kinsey and Mike had hosted days at their houses, Dave Christie had organised and managed huge discounts and orders for kit, JC had nailed down the flights from Qatar. I had organised the stickcricket game, pulling in over 3million hits, but had worried whether this had been lost along the way or whether it would be considered as a nice extra, rather than an actual contribution. Adding into this mix is a torturous record as a youngster in just missing out on sports teams. I had to watch from the sidelines whilst my rugby league team played in 2 grand finals, one because the coach decided I wasn't good enough to ruin his and his son's chances of under 12 premiership glory, and another due to emergency surgery a fortnight beforehand. I was constantly missing out on school cricket teams, generally being told on the day that I wasn't required after travelling hundreds of miles, during a run into the semi-finals of a state-wide knockout comp. It's funny how memories as old and as seemingly irrelevant as those come back when you're grappling with self-doubt, twisting your mind into thinking that there's a curse and getting you into a bad frame of mind. This negative outlook, of course, was exacerbated by the stomach illness and the lack of sleep, but you don't realise that at the time whilst an overly-active imagination spirals out of control.

Day 7 Tengboche to Dingboche - Gruelling Slogs and Bush Poo's

2009-05-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

We set off on to Dingboche early on as we had allot of distance to cover. The walk covered a good 10 miles or so, but with only 200 metres elevation in total. Annoyingly we initially had to descend 300 metres, and even more annoyingly I had to do it with the sound of the bell clanging in my ear as I'd been awarded the Dick of the Day the previous evening for my water-sterilising lunacy. I didn't have far too look for the next recipient though, as at our next water-stop Chris Martin straddled the water supply so it looked like he was pissing, before turning around and unzipping his trousers. If it weren't for the pained screams of everybody, he would've pissed directly into the water we were filling our bottles with.

Thankfully this water was clean, as plenty of the guys had drunk from the water given to us the day before. The water itself was fine, it was just the unwashed kerosene bottles that it was poured form that caused the issue, particularly with Wes, who was really struggling, and probably didn't appreciate people singing 'the sweet taste of kerosene' lyric from Revelry by Kings of Leon over and over again.

At lunch an aussie guy, trekking on his own, stopped in to have a chat with us. Again he said we were the talk of the town up there and to expect a crowd on match day. It was 10 minutes after this conversation that I felt the rush in my bowels that nobody wants too, particularly in this part of the world. After the evacuating process behind a rock, I followed Kirt's instructions to light the toilet paper that I'd used. Unfortunately this then caught onto an adjoining bush and I had to stamp out the small blaze, kicking up some faeces in a Dennis the menace style prank-victim fashion. Another hour passed and I'd twice repeated the process.

This day was all-round dull day. No scenery to look at, and very little chat from some exhausted trekkers. The only talk of note came form the pretty ordinary 'bell' puns that were made towards me, which was a welcome relief from the constant recitals in my head of My Doorbell and Ring My Bell that were sending me mental.

After 7 long hours of trekking we arrived in Dingboche. As I was one of the first I got granted a single room, which I passed on to Wes who was feeling ill. He didn't want the room so I ended giving it to Marcus as penance for my first night's snoring and sleep-talking that disturbed him throughout our only night rooming together.

About 20 minutes after I arrived, Breck and Glen walked in sharing an extra bag between them, and following them was Haydn, Team Tenzing's captain, looking a shadow of a man. Haydn had confessed to me at an earlier stop that he really struggled with hydration, as he never normally drank water (It's normally Pepsi Max), and he also shunned breakfast every day. This combination came back to haunt him as the medics inserted an IV line and his participation in the rest of the trip came into serious doubt.

At rest-stop previously mentioned, Breck had said that we need to look into hiring extra porter's to carry our bags. Not a single other trekker was carrying their packs, whilst we were trying to set a world record after trekking under a massive disadvantage. Lumbered with a heavy, awkward pack, I tended to agree with him.

That night was a battle to do even basic tasks such as eating and talking. Everybody looked miserable and we headed to bed looking forward to a rest day.

Day 6 Khumjung to Tengboche - I can't wait 30 minutes

2009-05-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

The lovely feel of a fresh pair of jocks and socks adorned my skin as we set off for another day's walking. Immodium mixed cement in my stomach as Kirt described the day's walk as 'tough'. This adjective bounced around my head as my chewed my way through the dry grey yoke of an over-boiled egg, as not only had Kirt taken on the unkempt look of a Nepali, but had also picked up their habit of massively understating distances, times, and difficulty.

What then caught my attention was Jen saying she couldn’t drink her water just yet as she hadn't waited the 30 minutes for the steriliser's to kick in. This concerned me. I had just been dropping in my tablets and drinking straight away. Upon further inspection of the instructions, you are indeed instructed to wait 30 minutes before the steriliser’s take effect. What further concerned me was Cuzzer's previous statement that this year had been a bad year for Giardia. Giardia is the bacterial offshoot of faeces. All water on the mountain is taken from glacial streams. This would have to be the purest form of water in the world, were it not for the animal and human faeces travelling through it. Giardia, in short, is bad news. It results in horrible vomiting and diarrhoea as your body tries to eradicate the bug as quickly as possible. This is generally uncontrollable and not easily maintained or gotten over. As my stomach was getting progressively worse, and as I had been drinking unsterilised water for 4 days, I began to think - with a fair degree of certainty - that it probably wasn't the change of diet that had caused my stomach to fall out of me with alarming regularity, but more to do with a horrible infectious bug that was going to take a long time to eradicate.

The first 2 hours were spent going downhill, which isn't as easy as it sounds. The impact of 16kgs on your back sends shockwaves through the joints. I was almost looking forward to the uphill section. To pass the time, I got to know our medics Nick and Breck a bit better with 2 hours of solid chat, interspersed by listening to Kirt's chat on the radio explaining the difference between jam and marmalade. I knew I'd get along fine with Nick Walker when he radioed through to the group behind that a big pack of Yaks were causing a disturbance, not through indifference to their master, but because I'd raped one of them.

After grassing Butler up over his failure to well the Dick of the Day bell (see: 'ww2' comment from Day 5), we commenced the uphill slog of 600 metres. Essentially you can repeat the uphill slog from Day 2, but just add in some pretty good chat between Chris, Hillsy, Breck, and to a lesser extent (thank you for that evaluation Chris) myself. On the way up, some American girls stopped us. Without a hint of irony, they launched into a full description of how we were wasting our time even attempting the game. They thought that after one ball we'd collapse, that we would be playing in blizzards, and that we were stupid to even think we could do this. So caught up in their own importance and struggles at GorakShep, they ignored me thanking them for the Alex Ferguson style motivational talk (my exact words) and walked on.

Nicks Valuable Trekking Tip: Always open your pack of wine gums away from the crowd of people.

Slopping into Tengboche around mid-afternoon, I was greeted by Mike Preston. 'Tooves you're rooming with me mate... but I'm afraid to say we've got a pretty ordinary view from our window' - A quick draw of the curtains revealed the first proper view of Mt Everest for the trip. Walking outside, I had a bit of a moment as I gazed up. I'll spare you the boring details for fear of sounding like a travel-wanker (‘you only know the feeling if you've been there’ etc etc... the sort of thing a surfer would bore you to tears with), but I stood and stared with smile on my face for a good 20 minutes as the others in our group filed up the mountain.

Watching everybody come in, I did think to myself that, yet again, I was at the front of the pack and doing pretty well with the whole walking-at-altitude thing. Until I found out that, before I'd got there, Mike Preston had found time to get himself a room, head to the bakery for a snack, and do a load of washing. With promises of good food from the bakery, we sat inside and played cards whilst the Kirtley's fell asleep in their chairs. Having been in shared accommodation for 6 days plus, the twitches on Joe, Cuzza, Chris, and myself were evident as we played with an FHM pack of cards.

An afternoon of playing knockabout cricket in front of the monastery ensued... highlights including having to run a 7 after hitting it down the hill, Dharma's spectacular one-hander in the outfield, Butler's child-like petulance when he learnt that he couldn't just bat whenever he wanted too, and some pretty amusing sledging of Dave Kirtley. I was quite proud of my 'Couldn't we afford the good Kirtley?', however Butler's 'Don't worry, I'm not the best player in my family either' probably trumped it.

Tengboche, at 3900m, started to see the facilities get a little more basic. There was no power until 6pm, outside toilets, and it was much colder. That night we sat down to our normal meal of garlic soup, friend bread, and spuds to listen to a pretty serious talk from the medics about the coming days. They'd spoken with a Danish guy with extensive mountaineering experience, whom was properly acclimatised, but still came down with HACE, a very serious form of altitude sickness involving swelling of the brain. Further to this, two Japanese trekkers had very recently died. Whilst the Japanese have a genetic makeup meaning their bodies are more susceptible to the affects of Altitude sickness, the message was plain and clear. Take it slow, drink at least 4 litres of water and eat plenty.

Day 5 Rest Day - Thunderbirds, Haka's, Fluro tights, and Stop Bitching

2009-05-08T04:44:00.000-07:00

I woke at 5am jusssssssst in the nick of time to save my underpants and my sleeping bag from being completely and thoroughly soiled. Thankfully nobody was up at this hour, as they would've got quite a surprise to see me gingerly striding off to the makeshift toilet, wearing trainers, socks, jocks and nothing else except for a bogroll and the key to my door hanging from my right hand.

I was now officially on the bad side of sick and forced some porridge (which tasted like wood shavings... Kiwi tried dissolving instant coffee in his to disguise the poor taste) down me whilst people organised themselves into Walking to school Attending/Walking 5 hours for acclimatisation/Walking wounded. I loaded myself up on Imodium and walked down to watch from outside the school walls with Dave Kirtley, who looked equally as solemn as I was not to be involved. Cheering me up a little was the sight of Neil cresting the hill with his brother. Alongside them was Ian, our Makem medic, and it was he that a few of us set-off to Kunde hospital with.

What proceeded was one of the best experiences of the trip. The Doctor (whose name I've embarrassingly forgotten to note down) at Kunde hospital was one of the most intensely interesting men I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. He talked us through his immaculately-kept hospital whilst Ian gasped at the wide range of skills he had. 'You just don't get generalists with such a wide range of specialist skills like this in the UK' was the exact comment. He showed us through the x-ray chamber, the overnight ward, the medical supplies, and the birthing ward. Helen quizzed him further on the birthing procedure and he responded that all the local women were very strict and reliable with their checkups, some of which would walk the 3 hours uphill from Namche and other surrounding areas whilst up too 8 months pregnant to see that they were getting the right treatment. This goes to show in equal parts the power of the maternal instinct, the determination of the Sherpa women, and most of all the esteem with which the hospital and it's facilities and staff were held in it's catchment area. The doctors themselves (3 of them) all lived around 3 hours walk away. They worked 6 days a week each, and stayed onsite. For all this effort, they awarded themselves no more than the average Nepali wage. Not the average wage for a doctor, but the average overall wage. The hospital had survived for over 60 years on a grand total of £50,000 worth of donations. Bear in mind that he could quite easily upsticks to the UK (he speaks perfect English) and in 6-8 weeks of applying could be earning much more than £50k per year on his own. These donations are mainly funded by The Hillary Foundation in Canada, however he was quite proud of his various worldwide connections and donations of medicines and equipment that he has procured. He stated that he had received no help from the Nepali government, and that without the help from Hillary and the various foundations he had set-up and that were set-up in his honour, it would be impossible for the only hospital from within a catchment area approximately the size of Greater London to continue existing. Walking from the school that Hillary also setup to listen to the stories of the hospital, it was pretty easy to see why he is so revered in this part of the world.

Breck later told me a story of the guy we passed being carried down the path to Lukla on a stretcher the day before. Turns out he had come form Kunde hospital and had a perforated ulcer. Apparently in this state a gentle breeze against your stomach is complete agony. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy had passed out from the pain as he bumped up and down on the rocky paths. All this certainly put my slight stomach issue into perspective and snapped me out of my (frankly embarrassing) blue funk that I'd whipped myself into.

Following this we had an acclimatisation walk of 400 metres up, almost completely vertical. Without packs on though it felt pretty easy, with Chris (generic superhero) and Joe (thunderbird) providing a visual treat in their fancy dress costumes. What these tight uniforms bought to attention was the sheer size of Chris Martin's balls. At first, he was pretty proud of them until everybody really started to inspect them closer and ask specific questions about where they hung, average weight etc etc. I could only describe them as 2 cricket balls in a stocking hanging from a clothesline. They were enough to turn Vicks Nicholson a bright shade of impressed pink when he politely gave her a surprise look on the final night in Lukla. Everybody seemed in good spirits at this point, although the altitude was starting to take affect when Butler asked 'Were there Jews involved in World War 2?' - Being a good friend I kept this very much under wraps and didn't stop everybody in what they doing to announce this faux-pas loudly. That was just be ridicule.

We returned to the teahouse to find out that a picture of BJ, cricket-bat strapped to his back like a true adventurer, gazing away at the summit of Mt Everest, had made the front page of The Independent. What was about to make bigger news, however, was our Karaoke contest. Fought between 3 evenly matched teams, we combined talent, commitment, and stage presence and ignored them all in favour of shouting and a bit of jumping. To be honest I could've taken or left the Karaoke due to tiredness but it turned out to be absolutely brilliant. Tenzing, Hillary, and the Trektators all performed 3 songs each, with the medics doing an outstanding job as Simon Cowell (Breck), Randy Jackson (Nick, who decided against blacking up), Sharon Osbourne (Isla), and Louis Walsh (Ian). Ian was simply outstanding the whole evening. As was Mike Preston, whose genuinely scary haka went down pretty well. Although it was lucky it was dark as I would've offended alot of people if they could see my complete hash of the movements. Even more offensive were the 6 pairs of bright fluorescent lycra tights that Markby had thought to pack. These were donned by a chosen few as I led the boys in a rousing rendition of Livin' On A Prayer, right down to cock-rock voices and hordes of screaming girls begging me to take them backstage... although I would've preferred a better description than 'the little one' from Isla. In the end the Trektators won due to Zooby and Brooksie being able to hold a tune... which was completely against the spirit if you ask me.

Day 4 Namche to Khumjung - Neil goes down, Singing Lessons, and Horrible, Horrible Gas

2009-05-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Day 4 dawned with a relatively short walk ahead of us followed by a day and a half of rest. We geared up over a breakfast of eggs, our third gas-inducing breakfast in a row, and I learnt that Neil Sharland had actually pulled up pretty ill, and was struggling with a lack of appetite and general lethargy. News from the other camp was that Russell, Glen, and Blade had been the first to get amongst the runs on tour (geddit?), however Jamo trumped them all with his explosiveness off both the front and back foot.

We convened at the bottom of the stairs for the first Tenzing-Hillary challenge of the tour. A 'Porter Race' was taking place between Mike Preston and Dave Kirtley. It was pretty big of these guys to step up too this challenge as it wasn't in the initial plans and not everybody agreed with it. The night before we had been confronted with an issue from Mark Jordan that he wasn't getting any footage for the first news report. Tensions flared as there appeared to be a misalignment between what Mark's editor was looking for from the trip and what was actually happening. Picturing footage of people 'trekking at Everest', it seemed they were expecting us to drop like flies with altitude sickness to the backdrop of jagged snow-covered mountains. The first few days provided nothing but a bunch of relatively fit guys walking up tree-covered paths, and Mark was getting worried that he didn't have a story. Unfortunately this wasn't put forward in the best of manners nor at the best of times, eliciting what I thought was an over-reaction from the Tenzing guys to a guy who, when it boils down to it, was just trying to do his job (whether you agree - and I don't - with the questionable motives or not).

As a result, the 2 lads stepped bravely into the breach to race up a set of stairs (hard enough on it's own) with full Porters packs strapped to their heads, in order to satisfy the needs of the news channel we'd signed a contract with. Like clichéd Westerners on tours, we'd marvelled at the amount of weight the Porters were able to carry up the hill, many of them carrying huge loads of circa 30kg stacked into baskets that were strapped around their foreheads. I asked Dharma how long they could expect to do this for, expecting a response of 5 or 10 years before their bodies give way. 'For life' was the matter-of-fact response. The result of the race is still one that's up for debate. Mike was the clear leader before a stray elbow from Dave Kirtley knocked Mike's strap off. Mike crossed the line first but without his pack. Hillary claimed this made it ineligible. Counter-claim was made of misconduct, and I slipped off to buy a water bottle before the arguing bored me to death.

During the purchase of the water bottle, I got chatting to the lady tending the store. After mentioning we were off the Khumjung, she told me that she used to go to school there. 'What, you walked there every day?' - 'Yes. I go every schoolday for 10 years. At first it take over 2 hours. At the end 1 and a half' - This of course was the distance one-way. We had a good chat about the school and the fact that Sir Edmund Hillary built it and that we were visiting the school next day to teach the kids cricket and to donate some cricket equipment. She thought that was fantastic and thanked me for helping out the local community.

Energised and full of anticipation as to what lay ahead with the schools visit, I rejoined the bickering crowd to find both teams cheering mindlessly, with Wes pouring over video footage of the finish and declaring, unsurprisingly, that Mike was the winner. As we prepared to head off, it was announced that Kirt was to be given the first special award of the trip. Having unzipped his trouser-legs and left them at our lunchstop the previous day, Kirt was awarded a cowbell to wear for his stupidity, which he then left at the next stop. For this, he then had to strap the giant cowbell to his rucksack for the day, and the Dick of the Day award was born.

We set-off in groups that were mixed up between the 2 teams for the first time. Unfortunately I wound up behind Kirt and the gentle clanging of the bell sent me nuts within minutes. How anybody finds wind-charms nice to listen to is beyond my comprehension. It's just unmetred clanging of metal that's about as relaxing as a car-mechanics. Walking up, straight-up, a hill, I realised this climb was going to be much harder than I gave it credit for. 500 metres straight up in the space of about 90 minutes. This took an early toll with Mark Jordan getting his story as we suffered our first mountain casualty. To everybody's surprise, Neil Sharland - one of the fittest guys on the trip - had his vision blur over and Isla, one of the medics, couldn't find his radial pulse. He was laid down on a stretcher, a drip inserted, and it was decided he should stay back in Namche for another night. This process was, predictably, played out on ITV news that night. The sight of Neil's fresh-face in pain followed by his torso being exposed on the 6pm news led to a spate of calls to the switchboard to check on his health, as housewives across London wished him well.

Following this break I started struggling back up the hill, before one of the porters gave me some pretty simple walking advice - take small strides and keep your steps as straight as possible - and this assisted a great deal. Before long Kiwi and I were annoying anybody in-between us by shouting out Simpsons Trivia Questions and I was pretty pleased as to how I was faring compared to the rest of the group.

Once at morning tea we were treated to our first views of Everest, although by the time I got around too it, the small part of the summit that could be seen was virtually obscured by cloud. What followed was a gentle, uneventful, descent. So uneventful that Haydn and I didn't realise that we'd been lost, as we found our way to the teahouse before realising that we'd come a completely different way to everybody else. Lunch followed - at which point I decided to stop keeping a food count as we got given essentially the same thing for every single meal - before a bakery trip and some cricket in the town square with the locals. During the knockabout, I marked out the length of a pitch (22 yards) and ran a mock two. The run itself was fine but once I stopped I felt a bit dizzy and it took time to catch my breath.

Over dinner it was announced that Neil was recovering and should be back with us the following day. It was then also announced that a decision had been made to only take 12 people to the school the next day. My heart immediately sank. It was then mentioned that it would be weighted towards Tenzing and people who were out playing with the kids. My hopes raised. They were then dashed as the final name was read out. I was already feeling pretty ordinary with a stomach issue and general tiredness and this announcement compounded it and sent me into my shell. I became fairly ponderous as my guts churned and I contemplated how gutted I actually was to miss out on such an opportunity. At this stage George stood up and said he'd just about got to everybody bar 1 or 2 people and put their photo up on the website. One of those people was me and it further exacerbated the persecution complex that I'd got myself into.

A mixture of that disappointment and not feeling 100% health-wise meant I stood back for alot of the rehearsals for the following evenings Karaoke contest. To be fair it was probably beneficial, as is generally the case with 15 alpha males, everybody wanted to be in control, resulting in a lot of talking and instructing and very little listening. I still managed to suggest a team shout-a-long to Living on a Prayer as one of our songs, and an off-the-cuff remark to Blinky and Mike to perform a pre-contest Haka turned into Mike giving us a quick rendition. This made us all genuinely scared and soon the idea caught on and this was to be our 3rd 'song' for the evening.

Throughout the rehearsals, Wes noted that I wasn't myself, and also that my stomach was producing far too much wind (and that of which stunk like really bad meat or really good cheese). Hilariously, I then had to explain to ALL FOUR doctors - who were in a room at once - that my farting was so bad and so frequent that I had to see a doctor. Breck diagnosed early-stage diarrhoea and suggested I had some medication on hand.

Day 3 Phakding to Namche Bazaar - Steep, Steep Inclines

2009-05-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

The morning dawned to a crisp temperature, fresh dew, and the sound of a dozen Nepalese men violently clearing their throats. The sound of phlegm being cleared from the throat and lungs was to be the theme tune of the entire trip. Men, Women, Children, and even the occasional Yak had a thing for a good hock. And not just a casual spit, a completely thorough clearout of the lungs and throat.

I was quite happy that the 'soft tissue injury' that Breck had diagnosed the night before (Doctor talk for 'there's nothing wrong with you') in my right shoulder had cleared up enough for me to carry my bag. G-Unit was also kind enough to lend his considerable strength to tightening my straps on my rucksack around my waist, chest and back - and this combined with my now 'broken-in' shoulders meant that the load was a little easier. Again we set off in Hillary/Tenzing split groups.

The first half of the day, save for Markby upsetting just about everybody present by going for a naked swim in the glacial river that doubtlessly used to be sacred to the locals, went by in a fairly pedestrian manner. 3 hours of flat walking that took us into the official entrance of Sagamartha National Park. Kirt had to fly out to Nepal a few weeks previous to sort out entrance permissions to the national park, and the subsequent release of the details of those conversations has since seen an official of the national park relieved of his duties after it transpired he wasn't going to let us in. A press release was issued that day mentioning the issue, and it caused a fair stir in the Nepali newspapers of the day, however being 10 days walk from the local paper shop combined with Kirt manfully shielding us from the issue meant we were blissfully unaware that there was even a problem in the first place. Incidentally, inside the national park office was an impressive papier-mache 3D model of the entire park and the mountains it contained. This really kicked home how far we had to go, both in distance and altitude, and how far Everest towered over Base Camp and Gorak Shep.

This was all a predecessor to our first big challenge, the 800metre incline to Namche. Crossing one of the many Indiana Jones style bridges was the connecting point to the massive hill we had to ascend. This was our first real test of what altitude can do to you and by far our hardest physical test of the trip so far, and in hindsight maybe of the entire trip. My unacclimitised lungs stung with every intake of thin air, sweat literally poured down my forehead and several times I had to stop to flush suncream that had dripped with sweat into my eye to stop the intense stinging. On the plus side, the squats and leg work that the Sharlands had torturously put us through during the winter was paying off as my legs felt fine. So much so that I passed Neil Sharland himself on the final uphill stretch. After a stop of about 15 minutes (incidentally, we were all so tired that none of us realised we all had our backs towards our first view of Everest) that I thought was going to refresh the legs, we set off again, only to realise that starting up is the hardest point. None of us knows exactly why but we thought that getting your heart-rate back up seemed to be pretty painful, but after 10 minutes, once the heart rate settled, things became a little easier.

Finally, after 2 and a half hours of toil and just as the calorie counter attached to Nick Walker ticked past 7,000, we hit Namche Bazaar. Namche was by far away the best town we stayed in on the way up, and justified it's status as the capital city for Sherpa's. We were directed to our hotel, again Hillary and Tenzing were split into different hotels, and I thought the third flight of stairs was going to finish me off. As I walked downstairs to have a shower (my final shower for the next 13 days), I saw Butler refusing to climb anymore stairs and begging Sambu to get him a room on the ground floor.

That evening a few of us gathered to test out some Yak Steak and sup on a well-deserved lager. Only 1 was consumed though as I started to feel a bit tipsy as I drained the can. Further enhancing the dizziness was running up a set of stairs with Chris. We both stopped at the top to catch our breath and remarked at how tough the game was going to be, bearing in mind it was a further 1700metres up.

Day 2 Lukla to Phakding - Yeti Airways, Heavy Packs, and Common Accents

2009-05-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

Blinks and I awoke to our 4am wake-up call too tired to appreciate what exactly was about to start happening. We had both woken a little earlier on in the night, Blinky woken from my snoring and me from the pillow that Blinky slammed into me. Dressed in my zip-off shorts, ankle-high hiking boots, grey socks, matched with my obscenely white legs, I trudged to the bus looking quite a bit like a German schoolboy.

The flights were split into Hillary and Tenzing with trektators and medics allocated to each, and it was decided for ease then the first day would be split the same. Amusingly, Yeti Airways was taking us the short 25-minute hop from Kathmandu to Lukla, form where our trek would begin. Through the primitive security checks, which involved not much more than adorning each bag with a sticker that said 'security checked', we headed out to our plane. Nervous jokes were exchanged before they made way for proper nerves as the air stewardess handed out cotton wool and a boiled sweet. I'm not generally a nervous flier, but I was absolutely sh1tting myself as we sat on the tarmac. So much so that I readied the airsickness bag as I started shaking pretty noticeably.

Putting away down the runway like some students Volkswagen, we finally got airborne and my nerves subsided enough to take in the view. I'd received a tip to sit on the left-hand side of the plane which was a masterstroke, as for 25 minutes I was treated to some amazing scenery, with various snow-capped Himalayan peaks jutting into the sky, most of them resembling sharp pieces of dripping ice in a deep-freeze turned upside-down. The pilots pointed out Everest to us just before we descended into Lukla. When I say 'descended', I mean the mountain rose to meet the plane at the worlds hairiest airport. 18 people died on a similar flight last October trying to land on the sloped runway pincered in by mountains and valleys, but thankfully we had every passenger down safely.

Lukla itself was where it started to hit home what was about to happen. We were carrying our packs through the small village, with huge peaks basically on 4 sides of us. The air was noticeably thinner than what I'd ever been used too, and I really started to worry that I'd overpacked. I didn't know it at the time, but these were 3 pretty common themes throughout the entire trip for everybody involved.

Once we setout, I found the going fairly easy, which was pretty fortunate considering the first couple of hours was a 300 metre descent. Throughout the afternoon, I had to keep reminding myself to look up at the mountains instead of down at the ground as I walked. When I looked up I noticed a massively imposing summit. One that I couldn't imagine anything ever being any bigger than. Nir told me the mountain I was looking at peaked at around 5700 metres. This worried me. I tried to imagine where 5100metres would be on that mountain and thought to myself that was how high we were going. And then we were going to play up there. The few small inclines we'd faced had me puffing already.

Nick, one of our medics, reckoned that we'd be burning 4500 calories a day minimum, which is about double the normal daily intake. With this in mind, I set about lightening my chocolate load and trekked the last 90 minutes with Wes' documentary camera in my hand. Wes showed me how to take a few shots, which I duly did. At first I was pretty nervous with the expensive equipment in my hands, but after an hour I fancied myself as a budding Steven Spielberg. What i didn't realise was this was about the last time I'd see any camera on the trek. The 2 camera's we had were uninterested in me and Mark Jordan from ITN was a virtual stranger to me the entire trek. He did take a great liking to Butler due to his Essex accent (he was worried the ITV viewers wouldn't take to the large portion of privately educated accents on the trip), and also to Breck for his Aussie twang, Amusingly, far from being 'common', Breck went to King's College (possibly the most exclusive school in Australia) and has a degree from Cambridge.

We hit the first teahouse that we were to stay in and I was pleasantly surprised with how modern it was. I was told to expect accommodation to be similar to the village hall we all slept in at Kinsey's weekend. Far from this, we had separate twin rooms with ensuites that flushed, a communal shower-type-device, and a pleasant enough dining hall for everybody to sit and eat/play cards/do their journals etc. I have stayed in worse hostels in major European cities.

Petrified of being late in the mornings, I tried getting myself into a routine of packing and getting my clothes ready for the next day before joining everybody for dinner. I managed to avoid joining a fair smattering of us who enjoyed a pint and then an evening in the Public Bar's of Phakding and took myself off for the first full-nights sleep I'd had since the Wednesday night in London.

Food Count - Omelette sandwich for breakfast. Fried Bread, Vege's, Spuds, and a slice of unidentified processed meat for Lunch. Swimming Pool of Garlic Soup and Chicken Neck and Vege’s for Dinner. After advice from Kirt, I braved the chicken.

Day 1 - Lords, Flights and not much sleep

2009-04-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

I was too excited to sit in traffic, particularly peak-hour traffic as we crawled along the banks of the Thames and past the running-route we'd used several times in the preceding 6 months to get fit for our trip of a lifetime.

Truth be told, none of us really knew what to expect from the mountain, let alone if any of the fitness would be enough, or even of any of use, as soon as we hit altitude. It was probably this fear of the unknown, and some good old-fashioned child-like excitement, that meant neither Blinky nor I could sit still as we inched ever closer to Heathrow.

Earlier on we'd gathered at Lords for send-off Press Conference. It was all a very slick affair, with everybody in playing kit. Mountaineering legend Rebecca Stephens gave a speech in support, and Vicks read a statement from The Queen wishing us well. We posed, we pandered, and Kiwi pretended to catch any ball that Michael Vaughan hit in the nearby nets.

In the haste of the morning before Hillary jetted off, I was handed some important documentation pertaining to the IT equipment visa's and filming permissions etc for Tenzing's equipment. Turns out it was actually for both teams and whilst I blissfully bopped away to my overly-loud ipod on the 253, my phone buzzed with urgent calls from Kirt and Glen to get back to Lords ASAP.

Some furious packing ensued once I'd gone home via the camping store (a quick note, has anybody managed to walk out of a camping/outdoor store with change from £50?). Following some head-scratching, some worry, a fair dollop of swearing, and some manipulation of my bag and the items inside it, and some helpful lightening of the chocolate load from my flatmate Jules, I managed to stretch it beyond its limitations and creak the zipper shut.

At Heathrow, the physical evidence of the logistics behind the trip was on show. Countless Bags and boxes full of kit dominated the entry to Terminal 3. Branded fleeces, beanies etc through to medical, IT, and filming kit, and of course a couple of big bags full of cricket kit were all checked-in at the Qatar airways desk. What ensued over the next 10 hours was an all-over annoying experience. The girl behind me gave an out-loud stream of conscious 5-hour long monologue on everything she was seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, smelling, tasting, thinking, looking forward too, not looking forward too, expecting, and not-expecting on her all-inclusive holiday to Sri Lanka. What also was plainly obvious is that check-in counters don't really take any notice of who's sitting where. I was allocated an exit row seat, and all 6 foot 18 of Mike Preston was squeezed into normal window seat. Having fought with my conscious I swapped with the big fella in the knowledge that at one-stage, our version of the bionic man was likely going to have to carry me up the mountain.

On to Kathmandu after a horrific stopover in Doha (I'd rather set my eyeballs on fire than ever go there again, luckily we had the Tenzing Bible to keep us entertained), we emerged weary and confused to our first sighting of Nepal in the early-evening. Strangely enough, it was exactly how I'd pictured it. The sights of poverty and dilapidation on the streets, the colours, the smells and the haze were exactly how I'd imagined it. Looking at the nonchalant cows wandering busy roads, manic driving, and iimpossibly overcrowded buses and cars, and the seemingly impromptu markets on the sides of the streets offering haircuts, 2nd-hand shirts, and corn, it reminded me of a more densely populated and shamble Morocco. It was definitely a shock to some of the boys who hadn't been to a third-world country before, and there plenty of gasps and laughs at the wild lane-changing, horn-heavy, safety-last precautions of the driving. I wouldn't be surprised if the learn-to-drive handbook in Nepal suggested 14 different ways of avoiding an accident, none of which mention slowing down. A particular favourite was the father nursing his infant child on the front of his motorbike, the child pretending to be driving with his hands on the handlebars.

Zombie-like, we turned up at the sister hotel of where we had initially booked (our booking... for 54 people and extra cargo... had somehow gone missing). For the first time we got to meet some of the guides for our trip. Nir, Prem, Prakash were all-present, and had made up a banner for us that they drove with on front of the van through the streets of Kathmandu. For about 40 minutes I agonised over what to take on the trek with me. After some pretty expert packing, I had all my stuff ready for the next morning. The worry of knocking off the task of packing my rucksack had now gone, but in it's place the worry of the trek grew larger. I'd budgeted for closer to 10-12 kg and was actually carrying closer to 17.

Next up on the list was the money exchange, which involved a cabride in the dark into the main tourist districts. As we setoff, I mentioned to my cab-mates Blinks and Breck that this was going to be an experience. And it didn't let us down. Think Back to the Future 2 and you're about halfway there. There were 2 very frightening experiences, one of which had my flinched in the crash position as a car on the opposite side of the road pulled out onto the opposite lane to overtake... unbeknownst to him our cabbie didn't have his headlights on so didn't see him until the last minute. With a minimum of fuss, order was restored and I required a change of underpants.

Armed with over 20,000 Rupee, we headed back for a soothing, Glycerine-Infused beer (Because of the lack of refrigeration in this part of the world, Beer generally comes with a whole lot of Glycerine added to preserve it longer in the hot conditions. Whilst not affecting the taste too much, it gives you a wicked headache the next day if you consume too many), and sat down to our first local meal.

Food Watch: Tarka Dahl and Vege Curry. Nobody touched the Chicken on offer.

Tenzing Bible

2009-04-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Tenzing
Notable talent with willow or leather is seeping from the pores of every Zinger from day one. It is our right and honour to control and harness these skills for the joy of others.

Squad of players representing Tenzing Norgay

Format = Name, nickname, marital status, best feature and personal details, favourite song, quote and a little extra info from G-man and Tooves.

Haydn Andrew Main ("Spaniard")
29yrs, Virgo, single, chest (of a lion), My Dick (by Mickey Avalon, as played in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay), "Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" (An Ideal Husband)
Right arm medium bowler
RH bat
Captain Haydn 'THE MAN' Main has the character sub-zero from Mortal Combat designed in his likeness for his ice cold demeanour and because he rips people heads off with their spine still attached. A scholar and warrior poet he has studied the art of War by SUN TZU, the Wisden back catalogue and Phil 'the cat' Tufnell's autobiography to increase his knowledge.

Nicholas Edward Mullineux (Mulleineuaeruur)
28yrs, Gemini, Married, Able to look down on almost everyone, House of the rising sun. Nil illegitimi carborundum
Nick’s world tour culminated in Jamaica, when to show who’s boss, approached the head Yardy and ripped his heart out with his bare hands before writing ‘This is my turf’ in his victims blood. A breeding pedigree that’s a perfect amalgamation of the world’s fiercest tribes, Nick will pulverise the opposition, umpires, and tea-ladies before others have had the time to strap on a boot.

James Carrington (JC)
29 yrs, Cancer, single, little ears, High Way to Hell – AC/DC,
‘Sunny side up please’
Maladroit saviour and devastating all rounder James 'JC' Carrington will lure you in with his charm and likeable demeanour much like an Andrex puppy. But on the field of play, once you lower your guard; like the puppy he will crap all over your new rug or metaphorical face. His unlimited skills come from his heritage as a descendent of Jonny Bravo, Don Bradman and Jane Fonda who are his ancestors.

Chris Beale (Blinky)
29 yrs, Libra, single, Eyes or my massively ripped arms, Fans - Kings of Leon,'… yeah so I spent last summer working on a farm looking after disabled animals…It was a pretty rewarding experience…'
Lethal pace-man Christopher 'BLINKY' Beale is so nick named because a batsman once blinked during a delivery from Chris and woke up drinking his teeth through an oxygen mask. His resting heart rate is 1bpm and his capacity for furious competition is exponential. So respected in his native land Richie Macaw cleans his toilet and Jonah Takalua is a representation of his school days.

Mike Preston (Big Mike)
32 yrs, Taurus, depends who's asking, firm handshake, Victoria (Exponents) - university anthem, 'Whatever it Takes'
International Kiwi rower and Dolph Lungdren's stunt double Mike 'DOLPH' Preston works in London and still lives in New Zealand! He cycles and swims the journey each morning followed by eating a killer whale and a small kitten. A secret weapon so devastating he is on the FBI’s ten most wanted list and is probably a KGB spy.

James Butler -
Erm, JB? WK, RH Bat, Bowl R Arm wheel of fortune.
· 33, Pisces, Married
· Nepalese looking eyes, they are going to ensure I get the "local" treatment when up on the mountain. When in Hong Kong recently, a hotel attendant asked whereabouts I was from in China - upon being told London, she motioned towards my eyes quizzically, saying "must be half". Fact.
· "Love me s@xy" - Jackie Moon. "I don't know if you heard me, but I did over a thousand" - R.Burgundy
Ebeneezer geezer James 'JB MA* C***' Butler is so full of testosterone he makes Chuck Norris look like a hobo and has keepers hands so fluid they make a Wolverine purr. His strike rate is 602 and the world stops turning when he bowls spin or the Earth will come of its axis. Ray Winstone based his ill-tempered volatile character in Scum after meeting JB on the tube in his early days.

Joe Williams; 23;
Scorpio (star signs are pointless); single; best feature 'inability to stop drinking large amounts of lager
Ludacris - I've got hoes; "Work smart not hard"
With willow we have Joseph 'MIGTY JOE' Williams named after Jesus’ earth Father who as the Tenzing bible remembers; was a keen opening bat, destroyer of bowlers and producer of hail Mary's much like our junior member!!

Mark Christopher Waters / Warts
34, Aquarius, Married - Father of two little girls, Mediterranean Complexion and the fact I now have pubic hair after a summer shaving incident, Paranoid Android – Radiohead,
“If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea”. “Madam, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.” / “Shut up and sit down you big, bald F*ck….”
Right arm medium/fast, seam-up/in-swing
RH Bat
Herts league opening bowler Mark 'RAPID WATERS' Waters, looks like wild fire on his run up with his auburn moulet a blur in his run up to line and length precision. He will have your off stump quivering and have batsmen wearing their jock straps on backwards to catch their excrement. A family man and gentleman off the field. Anything he doesn’t know about cricket or the karma sutra or both together isn’t worth knowing.

Neil Richard John Sharland (Sharlene)
27, Taurus, single, one goliath toe. (Rocky every time!)
Every time you hit him, it's gotta feel like he tried kissing the express train. Yeah! Let's start building some hurtin' bombs!
Brothers Sharland have become notorious trim trail alumni but there can be only one Neil 'WOLFMAN' Sharland. His arms/guns when flexed conduct electricity which causes lightening and thunder from the skies. Neil does not know but he is the offspring of a one night stand between Ulrika Johnson and Shadow on the set of Gladiators. His undefeated pugal fighting champion Father gave him his fearsome eyes, lethal power and 15 inch dong. His fine Mother gave him blonde hair, loose morals and a love of balls.

Gareth David Oliver Lewis (G-MAN)
27 yrs, Leo, single, massive head.
Voodoo people, The Prodigy,
Your "best"! Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. You can’t fail if you don’t give up.
‘Right arm medium swing bowler. RH bat.
Super Athlete Gareth ‘The Unit’ Lewis would be compared with the greats of human sport were it not for the fact that he is actually a Cybernetic Organism here to fight both crime and Team Hillary in equal parts. With an onboard computer more powerful than the one million dollar man himself owns, he can predict swing, seam, pitch, and which member of the opposite team/sex has shat/moistened their pants before it actually happens.

Jonathan Roland Vasey Hill, (HOG)
Leo, single, big thighs and karate skills. Hog, 28 yrs, Crab, single, best feature - my imitation of a labrador on crack, fave song - sultans of swing, fave quote 'I was taking shrapnel in Kehsan, when you were crapping in your hands and rubbing it in your face.' Also “I've had a hell of a day and even worse week. And all I want to do is get some fucking sleep.
Right chuck mixalot (with tripe) RH bat (also with tripe).
Pain is such an alien sense/emotion to The Hog that he has been known to rip out one of his own ribs and eat it (with no sauce) if his meal isn’t served quick enough. Powerful, ferocious, and with a mean streak that makes Mike Tyson look like Graham Norton, even The Hogs own mother has to beg before being allowed to wish him a happy birthday. Hog has slept with so many women he makes Charlie Sheen look like a frigid Neanderthal. The majority of children under 10 are hoglets and now wears a condom at all times so not to put the gene pool in disarray.

James Markby aka Markby 29,
Fish, In relationship, Red hot chilli peppers.
The ‘Boy from Ipanema’ has it all. Speed to burn, power-hitting, deft touches, and a singing voice so smooth it can bring a lady to her knees and soothe a wailing wildebeest (or is that the other way around?). Markby’s effort-ball is so fierce that opposing batsmen have looked into hiring US Marshall’s for protection.

Kinsey Hern aka Boom Boom
27, Aries, Single, Proportion, 500 miles, "I was out walking my rat and I seem to have got lost" Apples and chickens may not seem like the background of a street fighter but Kinsey 'BOOM BOOM' Hern lives for the cricket square. Ross Kemp on gangs finished an episode on Lyonshall but was banned in 84 countries for brutality, torture and barbarism. The inventor of fight club and leader of Lyonshall gang is also a member of Farmers Union and holds the record of most headed chicken (4).

Gareth Wesley (Wes, Weslos, Lagtime, Slumdog Millionaire) 29,
Single, Groomed hair, Numb/Encore, 'you wanna see me kick some ass? I know fucking Karate'Right Arm Fast, RH Bat aggressive
The Rowing Machine had to change its name after Wes threatened to sue. It’s rumoured that upon sighting this so called ‘machine’ in the resting position, Wes went so wild with rage that the earth opened up beneath him and it took him 3 days to dig his way back out from the Earth’s core. Specialises in bouncers so sharp that batsmen often volunteer to stand behind their own stumps.

Nick Toovey (Deuce Bigalo)
28, Aquarius, Surpisingly Single, All-round Awesomeness, Dirty Pop *NSync, 'All I've got is these damn Nepalese coins'
Ex-Aussie rules under 15 Australian captain Nicholas 'MUSCLES' Toovey eats sleeps and walks cricket and sledging. He answers the phone with a pun and an insult to his Grandmother just to keep his wits guillotine sharp. He will make you feel so insecure and useless, your testicles with shrivel and die.

Name - David ChristieAKA - 'Dave' - (these Australians have quite the way with creating nicknames).
Age - 37 - young at heartStarsign - Sagittarian - love of outdoors!!Marital Status - married (in light of the fact that our baby is due not long after our return I am a lucky man to have such an 'understanding' wife)best feature - team playerfave song - Dreams - Van Halen - gets the heart pumping!fave quote - 'retaliate first' - Jack Dwyer (Aussie Rules legend)
Australian Wildlife Park owner Dave Christie is such an efficient killer of his prey that he once dressed up as a convincing stingray and killed his main rival. Relentless, merciless, and possessing of an unwillingness to give up that puts The Black Knight to shame; DC has been known to inject himself with living tissue just in case the need arises to grow a spare limb.

Nepal

Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia and is the world's youngest republic. It is bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India. With an area of 147,181 square kilometers and a population of approximately 30 million, Nepal is the world's 93rd largest country by land mass and the 41st most populous country. Kathmandu is the nation's capital and the country's largest metropolitan city.

In 1947, he took part in an unsuccessful summit attempt of Everest. An Englishman named Earl Denman, Ange Dawa Sherpa, and Tenzing entered Tibet illegally to attempt the mountain; the attempt ended when a strong storm at 22,000 ft (6,700 m) pounded them. Denman admitted defeat and all three turned around and safely returned.
In 1952, he took part in two Swiss expeditions led by Raymond Lambert, the first serious attempts to climb Everest from the southern (Nepali) side, during which he and Lambert reached the then-record height of 28,215 ft (8,599 m).
In 1953, he took part in John Hunt's expedition, his own seventh expedition to Everest, in which he and Hillary became the first to reach the summit. Afterwards he was met with great adulation in India and Nepal.

Tenzing once said he thought Edmundo Hillary was bit of a jerk off and that any team named after him would most probably be of a similar disposition.

MAKE NEPALESE MATES USING THE LOCAL LINGO

Namaste
Hello
Toilet kaha cha
Where is the toilet
namitho
Not tasty
Trekking dherai gahro cha
Trekking is very hard
Momo khanne? Huncha.
Shall we eat momos (dumplings)? Yes, let’s eat
Kasto Cha?
How are you?
(Malai) Thik Cha
I am fine
Maaph garnuhos
Excuse me/ pardon me/ sorry
Kati ho?
How much?
Malai _kasi man parcha.
I like goat.
Amarillo jane baato kun ho?
Which is the road to Amarillo?
Mero Naam Neville Cheesman, Malai bum wee chahindaina
My name is Neville Cheesman, I don't need bum wee.

Kit List

2009-04-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've been asked a few times what I'm taking with me. Here was what was suggested

Breathable Waterproofs – top and bottoms
Down Jacket or similar – insulating
Fleeces – insulating layers
Base layers/thermals
Beany hat/cap
Gloves. Suggest Icebreaker woollen glove liners, as well as over ski glove type
Sunglasses – these need to be polarised, or CAT 3 lenses minimum - well worth investing in.
Sleeping bag (suitable for down to -9oC and above)
Decent walking boots (these need to have been worn in)
Trekking socks
Travel towel
Good, supportive Rucksack – you should have walked with this to ensure that it is comfortable and suits your back
Water bottle/camel back
Water sterilisers
High factor sun screen
High Factor lip screen
Durable light weight and breathable trousers/ shorts
T-shirts – avoid cotton. You want breathable fabrics which wick away sweat and minimise odour. Icebreaker is best. (Try to avoid cotton with all trekking clothing)
Torch (Head torches are ideal)
Basic first aid kit (including antiseptic handwash)
Trekking Poles – (optional)
Sleeping mat (optional)

Vaccinations:
You should have had the following, these are mandatory. If you contract the below illnesses and your vaccines are not up to date, your insurance will be invalid. We will not be responsible for any medical costs incurred by you. It looks a lot, but it is likely that you will be covered on these from previous travels and vaccination updates.
Diphtheria
Tetanus
Polio
Tuberculosis
Hep A
Typhoid
Meningitis

In addition – there is a very slight risk of illness and these vaccines are available. Not imperative though:
Hep B, and Rabies

Additional medical supplies we recommend. This info was all in your doctors letter which was circulated:
- Acetazolomide, or ‘Diamox’- help protect against altitude sickness. Need to be given these by GP.
- Antibiotic called ‘Metronidazole’. Ideal for Giardia. Symptoms of this can be severe and debilitating. Recommend dose of 400 mg 3 times daily, for 5 days.
- General Infections – ‘Ciproflaxin’. This is broad spectrum antibiotic, covering chest, sinus, urinary and wound infections.

Other:
Immodium
Ibuprofen / preferred painkillers
Rehydration sachets (ideal to drink 2 per day, irrespective of illness etc)
Vitamin C dissolvable tablets. These will add something to taste of sterilised water, and provide additional nutrients. (Berocca or similar)
Anticeptic cream- Savlon
Zivorax
Moisturising lotion (post sunburn, wind burn etc)
Additional blister plasters

I have got all of the above apart from a sleeping mat (we will be provided thin mattress-type-devices in the teahouses that we stay), and the 2 'suggested' vaccines. This has all come out of my own pocket, apart form a Balaclava and Ski Gloves which I've borrowed off Matt Drummond. In addition to this, we have:

Cricket Shirt and Trousers
Polo Shirt
Tracky Bottoms
Ipod
Solar-Powered Charger
Nokia Handset (Free!)
Travel journal
Bed-Bug resistant sheet to put on top of mattress.
Chocolate
Beef Jerky

Intangible but essential:

Banter
Easy-Going attitude
Constant remembering of where we are and what we're achieving
Smile
Determination

In short, I can't wait

Stick Cricket

2009-04-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Avid fans of my blog (Fans probably shouldn't be plural), will be able to recall me announcing that I managed to snare us out very own computer game. I was tapping away at a highly addictive game called stickcricket and I thought it would be great to see our own names in there. Inspired, and perhaps a tiny bit drunk, I emailed the guys expecting to hear nothing back. The very next morning I arrived at work, and Paul Collins from sticksports had got back to me. He loved our idea and was massively keen to get onboard.

What has resulted is a seriously awesome game. Sticksports gets over 6 million hits a month in high-season, and our version of the game has been hit 2 million times alone! You can't buy this sort of promotion, particularly at a direct target-market, and Paul have it to us for free, which is just phenomenal. The background looks stunning and, I've been lead to believe, is a fair reflection of what to expect at the venue

I'd suggest having a hit. You can change the batting order so that I come in early. You can also smack the opposition off the mountain. Or you choose the disturbingly popular option of not doing anything whilst a bouncer smacks into my face, knocking me out.

The First Final

2009-04-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

I quite like the relevance of my subject title. Generally the phrase 'The First Final' evokes memories of getting down to the SCG in late Jan to watch Australia inevitably beat a tired touring team in the first of a best-of-three finals series. This reference, however, has been stolen from Long Way Down. At the last border crossing into South Africa, Ewan remarks that its the first of the 'final' acts they would commit on their 3 month journey. Our version of this was the final expedition meeting.

I must admit that lately I've been playing a mental montage in my head of differing memories since The Everest test turned my life upside-down this time last year. I've definitely come a long way since I could barely walk up the stairs at The Amuse Bouche at our original meeting.

It was with a touch of sadness that I headed off for Lords for our final pre-trip get-together. Whilst part of me is jumping out of my skin to get on the plane, there is significant portion of me that doesn't want this trip to end. We had to fill out a little media pack for Captive Minds last week, and it on my biggest fear was the post-trip depression that will no doubt occur once I get back and it all sinks in that it's all over. Then again, my sadness could have been due to the fact that after dinner at Jim and Emma's place the previous night, I hadn't managed to get to sleep until 2am. Not too much of an issue really, but when Butler call's you before 9am to appease one of his many neurotic meltdowns about the trip (this time about immunisations), it did get on my nerves a little. Conversation as such:

*phone rings*
Me: urgghhhhhhhh
Butler: Hello Mate, I wanted to talk to you about jabs
Me: urgghhmmmmumph
Butler: Do you think it's too late to get all the recommended jabs that are on our to-do list?
Me (furious): ummmm ask your doctor mate
Butler: Yeah I have. Which ones did you have?
Me (annoyed): All the ones on the to-do list
Butler: When did you have them?
Me (massively upset): When the to-do list said to have them
Butler: Right, ok. Well I'm being charged £150 by this travel clinic and they told me exactly what I need and that it will be ok. What do you think?
Me (incredulous): Well help me help you. What answer do you want? Do you want my actual advice, the official advice, or do you want me to tell you want to hear?
Butler: Well a combo of the 3 ideally
*phone line cuts off*

Further infuriating me was the fact that I forgot to bring along Vicks and G's passport, so had to go via work to pick them up. Then I realised that getting the tube was going to be risky for lateness. So I ordered a cab. I don't remember asking him to take me via every speed hump in London but I was almost ready to lose my breakfast. I then wound up at the wrong gate. When i finally arrived at midday, it turned out that the meeting wasn't going to start until 12:30.

The meeting itself had it's ups and downs. It was like any standard meeting for me. I concentrated for 15 minutes and then started entertaining myself by making as many stupid comments as I possibly could. Particularly following Alex's medical advice to 'swallow it down' and following Butlers excellent question of 'What's a long-drop?'

Announced was the snaring of a Title Sponsor, with Nokia Maps coming on board, and also some sadder news that Charlie B-N had to withdraw from the trip at the last minute due to a long-standing illness. A couple of weeks back, I spent a 15 minute train-ride contemplating the horrors of having to make that decision after carelessly rolling my ankle, and the mindset wasn't pleasant. Everybody on the trip feels for him massively and there will be an apt tribute to BN during the game. 2 other sponsors come on board, Bulldog - a grooming company (!) and Mumm, a champagne partner... The champagne is obviously for post-match celebrations however I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to be drinking it. We were then subjected to a harrowing Medical presentation. Breck described that it was either a headache or death, and if it's neither than it's most likely a mile-long tapeworm bursting from your arse like a party-popper.

Following the marathon meeting, we headed down to the indoor nets. These would have to be the premier indoor facilities in the world. With the pitches graded from fast-to-slow, we were allocated the faster pitches. With brand new pink balls. Forgetting this, I nominated myself to have a hit early on. What proceeded was a confidence-shattering lesson in pain and swearing. Ignoring the sledging form my own team-mate who was stood behind me (thanks Wes), I proceeded to play and miss at just about everything from Waters, Neil, Butler and various others. Joe Williams was heard to remark that if even he could make the ball do hoops, then I was certainly going to struggle. Add to that the spitting nature of the fast pitches that aided even Chris Martin in bowling throat kissers, and I was in for 15 minutes of pain. Thankfully Waters was just too good for me, and I avoided most of his deliveries through sheer ineptness rather than good judgement. Neil is a touch slower so I fancied my chances. Except he hit me. The 3rd time was flush on my inside leg. Sharp intake of breath. Throbbing thigh. Don't show it hurts. Exhale. Deny that it hurts to a genuinely concerned Wes and face up. Throw kitchen sink at next ball. Miss. Regather myself. C'mon it'll stop hurting soon. And it did. And just as it did, another one flush in the same spot. Agony. Resist the urge to vomit. Scream.

What followed was a tantrum that 10 minutes later I was very embarrassed by, but at the time with the adrenaline pumping I thought was appropriate. I swore loudly and repeatedly, threw the bat down and got down on my haunches. What resulted was a bruise that is still quite spectacularly changing colour a week later and an apology and request to be punished in some way for my petulance to Haydn.

To ease the pain we had a genuinely awesome feed at an old Thai haunt of mine (not that kind of Thai haunt) that was attended by all and sundry. Some say Hillsy should have been there. Others have just revoked his Tenzing license. Some Jaeger-Bombs and some Snakebites later, and some impressive dance moves from that c*nt Neil Sharland and I was ready for bed. Until it emerged that the safe place I'd left my cloakroom ticket had since escaped my mind. Had it not been for Mike Prestons wife Helen pointing out the inner-pocket of my jeans, I would still be at Finchley Road making chitchat with a Russian speaking broken English.

The final meeting had passed. The trip edging ever closer.

Oh Errol

2009-03-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

Shameless plug time.

Possibly my favourite discovery* of the last 12 months on the interwebz has been the hilarious combination of humour and rugby league (which was previously an oxymoron save for Matt Johns or the beady eyes of his brother bundling out of the cubicles at The Church) of the girls who write for http://www.oherrol.com/ - In a creepy mod-penpal sorta way, I contacted them to tell them how great I thought they were and asked them if they'd plug the trip. This then got put to one side as they have since scored gigs at MMM, 2DAY, and Cricket Australia. However now, 2 weeks out from departure, our fair trip is hitting the Internet in a 3-way domination of print, tele, and internet in Oz.

If you haven't been on to their site, I'd highly recommend it, even... or more appropriately ESPECIALLY... if you're not a sports fan. I've always bemoaned that as a nation we take our sports just a teensy bit too seriously, and save for Roy and HG there has been a massive lack of exposure of the fun side of sport. I'm sure Glen, who recently so kindly referred to me as a blog-hog, will appreciate the constant displays from hotaussiefootyplayersshirtless.com.au - did you see what I did there? I made a gay joke. Because Guys don't normally like other guys... y'see? And what I did was.... oh forget it. I'm sure you'll all giggle on Saturday when Wes predictably says 'and here's a pink shirt for Toovey'.

I've digressed; in short, go to their site(s). All of hilarious, intelligent, and fun rolled into one, with a name that takes it's cue from the seminal Australian Crawl song of the same name... which is enough to make me dance in my pants on it's own.

*All actual credit must go to Blake Solly for finding this. But he's too busy suspending miners-sons with no teeth or reluctantly approving alleged d*******-v******-p******* Gr** f****** B**d's contract to be able to read these anymore so I probably could have gotten away with it.

A word from my Mother

2009-03-23T13:32:00.001-07:00

I recently read the Steve Waugh autobiography and found the chapter written by his wife to be intriguing. This is what inspired me to ask my mother, whom those who have seen the news report will know has had some fairly strong opinions on the trip, to jot down her thoughts on what we are trying to achieve. Here they are:

Now that I’m a five minute Australian television celebrity I thought that I would really extend myself and add a note to Nick’s Blog. When first hearing of the Mt. Everest base camp journey I felt, as I’m sure most parents involved did, that this was an unsafe thing to do, while at the same time asking myself “why”? I now see that with the planning, training, research and organising that has been done over many months in preparation for this trek by all involved that they have given themselves every chance of achieving their goals. While each person has a personal reason for attempting this climb, I feel that the goal to raise a substantial amount of money which will be donated to the people of Nepal is by far goal number one. Will I as a parent be glad when this trek is over? Yes I will.
I would like to wish everyone involved in attempting this climb good luck and good health and a safe return to home base.
Margaret Toovey.

Cornwall

2009-03-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

The Friday after the send-off party dawned far too early, far too bright, and far too drunk for a day at work followed by a 5 hour trip to Cornwall. In order to ease the pain, some lunchtime pints were consumed, which only served to delay me at work, henceforth delaying the car leaving, in turn making people furious at me.

Vics Nicholson had kindly organised a weekend to test out equipment, and do some heavy exercise at the Estate of her friend Claire's parents. None of this really dawned on me until I got actually got there. We were staying inside the grounds of a 10,000 acre estate in Cornwall, a place called Bocconoc House, an amazing 18th-century stately home. The fields have been the scenes of several films (including The Three Musketeers), and included a deer park, a cricket field, a huge lake, a church, a graveyard, and facilities for plenty of guests. It was once the home of William Pitt (the younger). His second stint as Prime Minister was during the Battle of Trafalgar, and can claim Pitt St in Sydney as being named after him. He bequeathed the estate to The Fortescue's , whom have kept in the family ever since.

I'm glad I didn't know any of this information prior to arriving, or else I may have made a nasty pre-judgement. And if this had of happened, anything other than 'lovely, accommodating, and down-to-earth' would've been far form the truth. The Fortescue's blew us all away with their generosity and laid-back attitude to having 12 complete strangers in their 20's stay at their estate free of charge. All weekend we were treated embarrassingly well, and you could see all of us desperately trying to repay the favour by conducting menial tasks such as washing-up or rubbish-removal.

Despite Vic's directions, we actually managed to find the house circa 1am Saturday morning. Mindful of a massive hangover and an early start for a pre-breakfast jog, I was keen to get to bed. And that's exactly what I did, 5 hours later. Swept up in the excitement of it all, we conveniently forgot our exercise commitments and committed to drinking red wine in the massive dining quarters... which was handy as it washed away the odd combination of sausage and mars bar. In my tired state, I lumped a large ladle (Alliteration!) of what appeared to be gravy over my sausage, mash, and peas. Turns out it was the chocolate sauce being prepared to go over the ice-cream dessert.

10am and I thought my luck had changed when I awoke to Vics making demands of me in my bed. Turns out the demands were actually just to get up and go for a run. Thinking everybody was in on this, I dusted myself off and gingerly emerged to the meeting point. But only 5 of us made it out of bed. 45 minutes worth of trotting later and I was virtually on the cusp of ending it all. Luckily a crockpot full of porridge and serving dish full of bacon baps eased the pain. Following this we awoke the living-dead before following Vics, in her new guise as Colleen McRae, on a fraught drive through the backlanes of Cornwall to find the beach.

The Beach. In March. In England. All the hardy soles stepped off for a swim. I followed in slowly, but after going numb from being in only knee deep in the 5 degree water, I refused to go any further. Jules then threatened to throw me in, so taking the dignified option, I jumped in, squealed like a girl, and ran back out again before my body had the time to completely shutdown in hypothermic shock. Later on in the afternoon, Vics finally dropped her pants in front of me. I must say I’ve been surprised it took this long.

After this I needed a sleep, and a good deep one at that. Thankfully, the boys put the Rugby on, and no sooner had I seen 15 grown man jumping on each other for no conceivable reason had I nodded off. Refreshed, we were all served a roast dinner that could only be described as magnificent, with Wes taking the opportunity to thank our hosts... taking the time to point out that yet again this trip is throwing up experiences I would never otherwise have had.... and Mr Fortescue was very kind in his praising of our endeavour.

Again, another relaxing night of casual boozing followed. The sight of 12, mostly privately-educated white kids, stuffed on roast pheasant. wearing tweed caps raided from Mr Fortescue's vastly impressive collection, smoking cigars and drinking Port under the watchful eye of a portrait of one of England’s most revered Prime Ministers, tunefully singing along to 'In The Ghetto', was probably the most inappropriate, yet hilarious, experiences of my life. The jaunt provided an excellent opportunity to get to know our photographer from the telegraph, Will Wintercross. Will was massively entertaining and his remorseless attempts to impress the girls on Friday night, coupled with his 'picking off the natives' comments are memories that will stick with me for a long time. Not to mention my all-round Man of the Match for the weekend, Jules Staveley. Jules, for one reason or another, has been a guy that I haven't managed to get to know too well over the course of the last 12 months, so it was great to get to know him a little better and hear some of his renowned banter and penchant for hats, dogs, and the elderly.

3 consecutive days of heavy boozing (we are just ruddy bloody lads, us lot! Always boozing. Mental!) rendered most of the planned exercise redundant, however a weekend of RnR was very much welcomed from a group of people who have collectively worked their arses off in recent months. It was great to even see Wes let his perfectly-groomed-hair down. Not all was wasted though, as Vics managed to organise some press coverage. How the team shot in front of a stately home will go down with the public whom we are asking for donations from remains to be seen. What also remains to be seen is what names get printed in the paper. Vics, in incredibly neat handwriting, handed a list with our names. This conversation followed:

Photographer: Ok I'll read them. Ben German
Vics: No, Jarman
Photographer: Oh ok, Glen Lewis
Vics: No, Lowis
Photographer: Oh ok, Nicholas Too. tooo
Vics: Toovey
Photographer: Fine. Ted Williams
Vics: No, Joe Williams
Photogrpaher: Oh I see. Very well I'll put that up on the website shortly.

As he didn't take a note of the changes, the names given too us will be massively interesting.

Sent Off

2009-03-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sending Off and cricket are usually only mentioned in the same light when something ugly occurs after a wicket. Usually involving somebody in a baggy green cap. Also usually containing several references to the promiscuity of the other player’s mother. And usually involving Shane Warne.

Thursday night, however, changed all this. And whilst some may argue that there was a fair amount of ugliness towards the backend of the evening (and I'd like to take the chance to apologise to Cuzza for forcing him into doing a shot that resulted in an impressively controlled regurgitation), an otherwise impressive event was put on @ 24:London in Soho.

Whilst probably having the least representation form my friends group there (particularly grating after snaring the top spot at the Launch party), I must give credit to the performance of my mate Mick and his girlfriend, whom had only flown from Oz fairly recently, and who didn't baulk at the charge of £5 per beer. Nor did he get annoyed by the Barstaff completely misunderstanding the meaning of 'discretionary'. Pr1cks. Also putting in a fine performance for the evening was my friend Vanessa, who kept us all guessing by oscillating through 4 or 5 different moods throughout the evening. The part where she lost her handbag briefly was my definitely my favourite. Definitely no tears, nor barging through the crowd in a huff.

Helpful Hint: Don't eat dough balls smeared in garlic butter 20 minutes before going out

Prior to the night I was jumping out of my skin, and the good times didn't let me down. I would only hazard a guess in saying that Living On A Prayer, amongst many other cock-rock classics, have never been played in such a venue prior to last Thursday night. Brushing aside my fury that none of the tracks I suggested (Time to Pretend and Let Me Clear My Throat) got played, I made an executive and drink-fuelled decision that, since the soundtrack to my uni days was being belted out, I may as well dust-off the Jackabonie.

Jackabonie: (noun/adjective) An act of a forceful extension of the arm from the elbow, delivered with a weak wrist to illicit a snapping motion, performed in time with a massive drumbeat. Naturally at home during 80's rock. Always followed by collective gasps of 'oh that's awesome'

After wowing the crowds with several Floyd Mayweather-style combo's, I decided to let the mere mortals take the attention. Alex '£500' Rayner was particularly animated, played to the soundtrack of BJ roaring primitively at passing girls. Several incidents come to mind, including foolishly questioning the behaviour of Butler's dog to his wife Nicky, asking Van where she had left her handbag, standing next to Mike Preston, and (judging by several injuries the next morning) attempting some dance moves that may have been beyond my capabilities and/or Motor Neurone capacity.

Comedy and Comedic Dimensions

2009-03-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

Wedged somewhere in between the cocktail party, the news report, the Dulwich Day, and some other miscellaneous training we managed to sneak in a small comedy night. So small in fact that we sold out the Comedy Club in Piccadilly, London's Premier Venue, and snared a line-up worthy entertaining the queen... or at the very least, a mid-level-ranking cousin of the Queen.

Beforehand, I had to race to the doctors for a general health check. Visiting a nurse in the UK is a frustrating experience to begin with, but when you're anxious to get back out the door in 5 minutes flat, challenges such as the passive aggressive indifference of receptionist really does manage to get on your tits. As if to rub salt into the wounds, I had my height and weight confirmed. 171.5 cms.

Me: How high is that then nurse?
Nurse: Errrr that's just over 5 foot 7.
Me: Sorry?
Nurse: 5 foot 7
Me: Are you sure? I've always said 5 foot 9

Wasting a further 5 minutes that I didn't have, we both checked the imperial measurement. The sad news is, I'm definitely 5 foot 7. That really is small. Next up was my weight. 79kg. Not bad I thought, considering I'm now in fairly decent shape. Which didn't really set me up well for the next comment 'according to the BMI, that puts you just under the Obese category' - Apparently my ideal weight is 67.5 kilo's. Who weighs this much? 12 kilo would be akin to losing a leg. Who devised the BMI? Bronte the anorexia-suffering regular on A Current Affair? Outraged, I questioned if Johnny Wilkinson, tipping the scales at approx 90kg, would be considered obese, bearing in mind his body fat totals around 6%. Apparently he would be. Ridiculous.

Now in a foul mood after being branded short and fat, and incredibly late, I needed the comedy to cheer me up. And so after checking the time at every single tube stop on the way in to town, an awesome night's entertainment unfolded. With my Jules (My Flatmate... before you ask who the female was) and I scoring awesome seats despite walking in late. Russell Howard was trying out some new, and very good, material. Jarred Christmas was as loud and foul-mouthed as ever... and had me in stitches with his microphone twirl after a bad pun. Benny Boot was awkwardly hilarious, maintaining a heroin-chic that I actually confused for him being smashed early in his set. Lloyd Langford was superb, and confirmed my theory that jokes are funnier when you tell them in a Welsh accent. Our very own Chris Martin came on to rapturous applause from his home crowd. I still managed to laugh despite having already seen the same material delivered in the same location wearing the same clothing on youtube. His mate Carl Donnelly was superb before Matt Grantham did his best Dave Hughes impression (except he was funny) before Jack Whitehall wrapped up the night that had people making comparisons to Russell Brand, the major difference being that Jack actually managed to throw in a couple of gags (several very funny ones) instead of relying on tight jeans, appearances in The Sun, and a wacky hairstyle that he dries from the back. The sooner Brand takes up smack again and overdoses the better.

I broke with a recent tradition and managed to sink some beers on a school night. 4 pints in total, with no food on board, rendered me absolutely legless by the end of the night. So drunk that I made the fatal mistake of visiting Perfect Fried Chicken @12:30am. It definitely is fried, but that's where the similarities between the food and the store-name finish. Of course, this dinner nor the late bedtime after watching an hours worth of women's cricket (enough to put any exictable male to sleep) came back to haunt me the next day on the half hour run followed by a nets session. Yet again I showed stunning form with the bat that had the locals discussing a possible contract with Surrey, such was my fierce striking of the ball.

Sacrifices

2009-03-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

This trip has been full of sacrifices. Recently I've realised that I've been a pretty poor friend to alot of people I know for the last few months, contacting them only when I'm asking for donations, swept up in the excitement of the brilliance of the whole thing and the wonderment of meeting 50 or more excellent people. That neglect is generally easily repaired, particularly imbibed with fluent alcohol.

As this is now my 7th year of living away from home, I'm used to missing out on the occasional function, hence I'm fluent in the language of sacrifice. Birthday's swing by and Christmases come and go that, whilst not ideal, can be reasoned away with 'another one is only 12 months away'. In addition, It always seems strange to hear of stories of children in my direct family whom I've never met, along with finding it strange to know that cousins that I grew up with and regularly babysat don't recognise me anymore.

Whilst there is always time to rekindle those situations, there are events that can't be reenacted. For example, A couple of years back, one of my best mates announced a wedding a matter of minutes after I'd locked in a flight to leave the country 3 days before the said event a couple of years back, which caused alot of fraught issues and profuse, honest, yet strangely hollow apologies.

Another one of these came about last weekend, although this time it was slightly out of my control. There was finally a wedding in my family. A wedding that my brother Phil, in a state of neurosis that many of my colleagues on this trip would argue that I've also inherited, failed to tell me about in ample time. To be fair, he only had 2 weeks notice himself as he and his partner Nathan emulated their own version of Sex and The City and arranged the wedding of the century in 9 days flat... not nearly enough time for this intrepid traveller to make it New Zealand and back.

Phil and Nathan have already been a massive help to me on this trip, so having to miss their wedding has made me even more determined to make this a success. No doubt they both would have not made it this far down in the blog as it hasn't yet mentioned Kylie Minogue nor Patsy and Eddie, but Im sure they know I'm proud of them for taking the plunge and, if given more than 8 days notice in a furiously apologetic phone call 3 weeks before a massive world record attempt, I may have been able to make it.

Mum and Me on Channel 3

2009-03-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

Throughout my formative years, one thing that will always stick with me is my Father responding to Ray Dineen, the veneerable regional newsreader, each evening with a fond farewell as he wrapped up the days headlines. 'Gooooonight Ray' came the response to Mr Dineens 'from all of us at NBN News, have a good night'. Dad's response was as predictable, and by no means less-regular, then his next request for his youngest son... a chubby smart-alec... to fetch him a post-news cup of tea... even in 40 degree weather. He is a man of habit.

Disappointingly then, the following report on his grown-up youngest son, went out on one of the few days my Father has been out of Australia in his 65 years... click HERE FOR THE REPORT

My good mate Adam has since become a reporter of note on said Regional channel, and after some logistics that General Patten would have dipped his lid too, he managed to get a report together about our fair trip, with Miles doing a commendable job interviewing myself and Kirt before Adam interviewed my mother. Mum, to her eternal credit, agreed to conduct the interview despite originally saying no and clearly bricking it beforehand, carrying out the interview with aplomb. Further to this, Adam couldn't make the actual interview, and Mum had to pretend that Dad was Adam whilst she answered questions being asked from the speaker function of a mobile phone. Dad, doing a bang-up job as a fill-in sound man for his favourite news programme, thankfully took to his stand-in roll with great maturity and never did it cross his mind to smirk, nor pull faces whilst Mum spoke.

After viewing the footage, I think you'd agree that Mum absolutely stole the show. What I would like to address is the following....

a) I, 100% hand on my heart, cannot hear the apparent english accent that everybody claims I have. You'll just have to trust me on that one.

b) Yes, I'm aware that my head bobbles around like a combination of Rob Sitch doing an impression of Gareth Evans, a jackinabox, and a fired up Peter Garrett when I talk.

c) talking of drastic head movement whilst speaking, my friend Suki remarked that she would have picked a better outfit if she was going to be on tele. This was sprung on me at the last minute, and it was after work. And I wear terrible clothes to work. The shirts were 2 for £30.

d) I look tired because I was tired. Simples.

This report ended up going out on all of Sky News. Mum and Dad were actually out of the country when it went to air. Mum thought this would spare her blushes... little did she know that Sky News picked up the report and played it every half hour on the following day. Something she was not expecting after getting in from New Zealand....

Cocktails and tales of a cock

2009-03-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

I never ever thought I'd have a cocktail party thrown in my honour. Except of course, a party thrown by the family and friends of the appellant after a favourable decision ruling me not eligible for parole for a minimum of 15 years (with good behaviour).

In a display of how my involvement of this trek can make people forget how much of an annoying prick I really am, an old friend from university (whom I'd seen once in 10 years) along with her flatmates very kindly put on a cocktail party to raise funds for the trek. Blown away, I donned the 'clothes that I save for good' and headed for their abode in West London.

Awaiting me were a series of wading pools full of pre-mixed cocktails. ... dwarfing the 3 Budvar's that i'd bought along and intended on supping throughout the course of the 4 hours before my final train left... and a projector to display my hugely impressive picture display upon. Despite some feeble protestations about 'a jog and a cricket net' I had to do the next day, I was forcefed pina-colada, a champagne-type-cocktail, and some other concoction that looked a little bit liquified strawberry rollup - 2 hours later and it was suggested I take down a pint of a clear substance that they termed 'water' before giving a rundown of the pictures Id chosen to project on to the wall. Luckily enough, they were all of me, and funnily enough being obnoxiously drunk massively increases my ability to talk about myself.

After my informative lecture that involved me enthrallingly fumbling around a bit with google earth, we all sort of passed-out a bit. Luckily enough I definitely didn't wake up with a throbbing head, and definitely not still in my 'good clothes', on Cath's couch at about 6am. Thankfully, I hadn't drunk that much, and didn't desperately need a glass of water so much that I may have woken people up clattering into walls after losing my balance in a pathetic attempt to get to the kitchen sink. Because that would have just been embarrassing.

3 hours later and I was picked up in Butlers toy-car for a trip to Dulwich. My comment of 'I really don't want to do this today' was met with a typical response.... 'Don't spill that shit in my car you grubby Aussie c**t'. The Lucozade provided a warm security blanket as we weaved our way through South London.

Driving down a slope that I've only ever previously experienced on Space Mountain, we managed to arrive, stone dead last, to the modest castle that the Preston's call home. Averting from the 'jog and a net' theory that I'd thought the day would be, the day was actually setup as 'run 2 mile with rucksacks full of cricket kit to an indoor net at Dulwich college where we'll play another game of Breathless Cricket'.... Only half-joking, I asked if anybody wanted to drive the cricket kit the entire journey. A bit more seriously, I asked again as we gathered ourselves in the front room. Pretty-much not joking anymore, I suggested it wasn't too late for everybody to pull out of the 'jogging with rucksacks on' whilst we posed for a photo out the front. As we gathered on the stairs, I looked up... right up.... the hill to our right and remarked 'Mike, I hope it's left out of the front gate'. In his inimitable 'Mike possibly the nicest bloke in the world Preston' way, he replied 'ahhhh sorry Tooves, ut's right it the gate aye bro' (kiwi stereotype may be exaggerated). In a final desperate plea, I refused to carry a rucksack... in the hope that the workers united would never be defeated. Unfortunately the lads were about as loyal as that defector in Billy Elliot (ya know, that scene where they throw rocks at the bus carrying in the rebel workers). We were running. With rucksacks on. Up a hill steeper than a bill for a mobile-phone-based internet function that's been accidentally activated on an overseas trip.

After stopping only thrice to catch my breath and to prevent my calves from exploding, the run flattened out, and the fermented coconut milk topped-out at the opening of my oesophagus. Following this, I was fine all afternoon. I definitely didn't mutter repeatedly under my breath as we were subjected to 40 metre sprints after each and every delivery in the nets, and especially not in reaction to helpful comments like 'faster' and 'c'mon boys hurry it up'. Once I stopped picturing the horrifically graphic deaths of my teammates, I began to actually enjoy the session and even managed to push Blinky all the way in the sprints. Something that I've been quietly proud of. Quiet until now Blinky you one-paced draught-horse.

Thankfully my batting was somewhat superb and faultless in technique, application, and concentration, avoiding the need to completely regret not wearing a thigh-pad. Even if I did get hit in the thigh, I would have dealt with it in an adult and mature way and by no-means would I have sworn, pretended it didn't hurt, and then told Butler to take his smirking fat face out of the f*cking nets before I wrapped the bat around his f*cking head.

Bruised and sore, I took my dehydrated and cramping body on the walk back to Mike's. I needed comfort and plenty of it. Delighted to find a bathroom that was bigger than my flat, I parked myself under the sub-zero shower head and danced around like Michael Jackson on hot coals as the icicles pinged into my shoulders. The Partners-Preston made up for this by slaughtering 4 or 5 cows, pigs, a flock of Kinsey's chickens, and (somehow) 2 dodo's for the Tenzing feast and served them up for our enjoyment. Rotund and raring to go, we went about a team meeting that uncovered a fair deal of passion for the trek, the trip, and for gameday. We even managed to go further in depth about the opposition than my initial suggestion of holding up flash-cards of each of Team Hillary's faces and shouting out the word 'Homo' for each picture.

The week had begun

Following in the steps of Australia's own Sir Edmund Hillary

2009-03-04T04:51:00.000-08:00

It would be fair to say my interest in mountain climbing was piqued in my formative university days. I made friends with a man who told me a tale. A tale of goals. A tale of hardship. A tale of pushing your body to the limits in adverse conditions. A tale of commitmment to a cause and seeing your ambition become a reailty. A tale of climbing. But unfortunately for our protaganist, a tale of eventual disappointment.

The story begins with our hero enjoying an evening at the onsite university public house. Casually nursing his discounted bundaberg rum with coke, he was perusing the available females with the following cirterion; a) are they attractive? and b) have I massively annoyed them on a previous outing to this club? Generally this would rule out (roughly) 90-95% of the population of the USQ club in Toowoomba. For our hero was not only the quickest draw in the west, but also even quicker about forgetting about his recent kill. Whilst many females dreamt of marriage with our lothario, he took the chance to sneak out before Tony Mackenize had the chance to beat the living sh1t out of him.

Despite the odds stacked against him, quick-draw mcgraw spotted his next target. Things went well. One thing lead. To another. It seemed the familiar story would pan out. Until the femme fatale produced a rabbit from atop her cranium-wear. 'Shall we climb a peak? It will be the most amazing of climaxes should we reach the top'

Taking this as a verbal contract, our hero agreed. And up the mountain they climbed. One by one the steps were produced. Our hero, not made out for sports, began to tire early-on. The promise of milk and honey however, was enough for our crusader to channel the spirit of Sir Ed and Tenzing Norgay on that fateful 1953 day, and carry on to the summit. Groans were heard, falls were plentiful, but the oppotunity of releasing this pent up aggression once atop carried our intrepid trekker to the top of the peak.

What followed is a travesty of human relationships. 'I hath completed your task, m'lady' came the man. 'So you have' was the softly spoken reply. ''tis time for my reward, is it not?' - 'but the reward is all around you, look at this view and the enchanting sunset.... my fair man, I have shown you the greatest beauty of all. 'No chance at all then?' came the response above the faint sounds of a zipper being redone....

And in one cruel, confidence-shattering shake of the head, our hero realised he had been, as they say, 'had'. With this, our hero let out an audible swear, before retreating to his home.

From this day, the sense of adventure has been passed on. My appetite whetted for a climb with the promise of glory at the end. Let us pray that mine ends up in better shape.

Back to the howling old owl in the woods, hunting the hornyback toad

2009-02-24T10:10:00.000-08:00

Well thats what happens when you haven't exercised in a while

My reaction to that comment was much like Peter Griffin's when he'd heard that Lois gave up the opportunity of a million dollars as not to complicate their love (stunned silence whilst imagining a graphic death by gunshot, constructing a bonfire, covering the body in petrol, and burning it). It came as a reaction to my gait appearing a little ginger as I walked to get the milk from the kitchen at work. 'Oh what's wrong with you' came the idle chit-chat from the anonymous back-office staff member, 'Oh I've had a big weekend training, very stiff and sore today' came the I'm-faking-joviality-to-avoid-the-coffee-making-induced-awkwardness-of-me-not-caring-who-you-are reply. And that's what lead to the above comment. I twitched a little, imagined her painful and fiery death, and responded 'y--ye---- yeah, yeah that sounds, that sounds about right... yeah'..

I resisted telling her, that, actually... you f*cking little busy-body, this is what my f*cking week involved. On Monday, I ran the 3km Lap around Chelsea and Albert Bridge. Not only that, I did it three f*cking times. And that's not all, I also did the 4 x 400m sprints. And to top it off, there was 5 laps of the 3 sets of stairs on the Pagoda. And the only people to keep me company were Kiwi, Charlie Campbell, Glen, and JC. And those guys can f*cking RUN. Chuck in another 5km on Tuesday, you b*tch, and then an hour long nets session straight after. Thursday, I threw myself at the mercy of The Sharlands at the Trim Trail at a cold and wet Battersea Park... but you'd have no f*cking clue what that even begins to entail.... as you stir your frankly ridiculous cup of herbal tea... would you??? And then there was the weekend in Oxford... well.........

In all fairness to her, to look at me you wouldn't automatically think 'World Record Attemptee' (not to be confused with world record amputee) for anything other than 'most people simultaneously annoyed at ANZ Stadium during a Bronco's match'... and especially not for a sporting record... at altitude. It was with this in mind that Team Tenzing headed to Vice-Captain G-Units country pad in Sunningwell for a weekend of the fitness freak holding the whip hand. On the trip up I was mentioning I desperately needed a nap, the same direct side-effect of nervousness that affected me on the way to the Brecon's a couple of weeks back. The village was everything I expected it to be, and I could quite easily see G retiring there in his fifties as the sole policeman, solving baffling crimes on a weekly basis whilst nursing an ale, smoking a cigar, and wearing almost head-to-toe tweed, pausing long enough only for a fleeting love interest back-story. I watch too many TV programmes aimed at my parents demographic.

The best weather of the year (clear blue skies, temperatures in double figures.... all these things are relative) kindly greeted us upon our arrival. The 6-mile run, however, didn't greet us as so much punch us right in the face. Or more to the point, repeatedly dig me in the lower back. Hills, Marshes, Muddy Patches, Fence Jumping... all confirming my theory that fitness fanatics are not in tune with evolution. We have moved forward through horses, carts, automobiles, and now planes to negotiate this sort of cr*p. So why THE F*CK am I doing this? Oh, the Everest trip. Ok fair enough, but why the fricken bejeeesus would somebody want to do this off their own back? Do people really think this makes them feel good? What is this type of person's problem? Running is ridiculous. Get a freakin Mini-Cab. The 6 miler was interspersed around some dips and press-ups in Dogging-Central, a wheelbarrow race that I couldn't take part in as my partner for the day was coming from London via Dorset, and also several breaks. Several breaks for the others, that is, as they waited for Mark and I to pant our respective ways back up with the group. I must thank She-Unit (Laura) for keeping my spirits high on this run with her encouraging shouts, random high-fives, clicking of heels, and general cocker-spaniel-like enthusiasm. It seems allot easier with a smile on your face. To finish off, we partook in some hill sprints. 4 of them for me personally but more for some of the other idiots. These were about 100metres long up a deceptively steep hill, with around half of it at full pace. Follow this link here for a video of G making it look pretty easy back before 3-peaks.

I'd like to talk about what happened in the afternoon, however Wes has put a suppression order on us, lest Hillary find out. What I will say, is that the afternoon gave us probably the best insight as to what we'll go through during the actual match. We were constantly moving, feeling a little claustrophobic, having to make decisions whilst exhausted, and learning to keep our cool. During the course of the afternoon, we covered at least 10km in shuttle sprints, however the sprinting was mere 'moving forward' towards the end. This was also the scene of my first loss of sense of humour for the trip. Thankfully it wasn't over something as petty as say, a score in an inconsequential game we were playing. I'll relay the actual words said, and the thought process in italics afterwards. To set the scene, we were all completely dog-tired...

Kinsey - Tooves you're on 8 (I think he's on 8, man I'm tired)
Me - How the f*ck can I be on 8, I was on that 4 f*cking ----- ago (this pr1ck is trying to do me over so he can win. man I'm real tired)
Kinsey - Sorry, I think you're on 9 then (bit of an over-reaction... I could use a rest)
Me - Are you even f*cking counting? (get back to your f*cking apples.... wow I'm really REALLY tired)
Kinsey - Tooves I'm doing my best to run and count, give me a break (what was he actually on... I need to catch my breath)
Me - Well if you think about it, I'm on at least f*cking 12 (is he serious, is he f*cking serious??? deeep breath deeeeeep breaths)
Kinsey - Shall we call it 10 (He's got a bat in his hands)
Me - Oh F*ck me, alright then

At the end of non-stop afternoon, interrupted only by a completely village performance from the reporter at BBC Oxford, it emerged that we'd burnt 2200 calories in that session alone, NOT including the 6 mile cross country and hill sprints that preceded our Area-51 shrouded in mystique I-Think-The-Cop-Is-Actually-The-Murderer mystery of an afternoon's activities.

By this stage, my back was a mess. I could barely move but was happy with the days activities and the joyous shower that awaited. Dinner followed at Fawlty Towers. More mature conversation ensued, just prior to my pilau-rice flavoured ice cream dessert. I ordered Mango. She bought out Pistachio and Saffron flavour. I shit you not, that is an actual flavour. The waitress’s advice.... 'either eat it or flick it'.... 'no chance of my money back then??'

Butler and I safely secured ourselves in our individual sleeping bags, before sleeping next to each other on the worlds smallest double bed. No touching took place. I was awoken at one stage to Butler offering me like-for-like replacements on the CV's he'd sent me earlier in the week. Dreams about work are always the best.

Sunday dawned to a horrible limp and a very grumpy Toovey as I lumped Maple Syrup on my porridge, the garlic draw, the bench, the bowl, and the floor of G's kitchen. Even some puns about being hungry for sausage did nothing for me as I packed my bag and dealt with the agony in my back in preparation for a 6 hour hike through the Chilterns. Wes mentioned he could tell I was struggling because I wasn't talking. In fact, it wasn't nearly as caring as that... more along the lines of... 'Maaaaate, I can't wait for about the 5th day on this trek when you're knackered... at least you'll be quiet' - The trek was tougher than I gave it credit for, up and down several hills and we covered nigh on 25-30km... With G perhaps not taking too kindly to our ribbing about him leading us to 2 pubs for lunch, both of which were closed. As fate would have it, we stumbled across an Indian buffet at around the 17km mark. The glorious Balti, Massala, and Sag Aloo dishes piling the calories back on. Again, Rambling proved to be truly a great form of bonding. The spare time, clear environment, and problem solving lend themselves to great team-work, particularly when everybody bands together against the map holder who has just got you lost.

4 and a half hours later and the estimated 45 minute journey home was complete. Completely seized up, I am now planning on spending my 3rd night in a row sleeping on the floor. Because that's what I get for not exercising and then pushing it too hard.....

Rambling is the new Trainspotting

2009-02-09T05:14:00.000-08:00

Rambling, not just for OAP's anymore.

It was looking likely that the massive amounts of effort that Dave Kirtley had put into the weekend of hiking in the Brecon Breacons was going to go to waste. The UK's freak weather last week bought the country to a standstill (I can't bring myself to say 'frozen'...) on Monday. Snow fell again on Friday, and with news that Wales wasn't letting anybody in, I had planned on a rare weekend at home. Some of the group pulled out due to the weather, but inspired by Glen's Clark-Griswald style determination to get to Wales, Butler and I agreed on a testosterone-fuelled verdict of 'f*ck it, lets do it'.

After several fishtails in Butler's impractical BMW along the M4 followed by a startled cry of 'whoooaaaaa put THAT in your blog' as the backend kicked about, we embarked upon childish arguments over the choice of radio station (I categorically will not listen to football talk-back), and mother-jokes before the Severn Bridge hit our eyeline. Carrying on the National Lampoons theme to the day, Butler and I then proceeded to do 3 loops of the same diversion, wasting half an hour as we managed to miss the same turnoff due to a combination of poor signage, obstruction from a lorry, and Butler distracting himself with a loving retelling of an amusing scene from Max and Paddy. 30 minutes later, after re-entering England from Wales for the 3rd time, we pulled up at a set of lights next to a van marked 'motorway association'. I must admit, I was surprised to see Butler's head leaning across me, but not nearly as surprised as to hear him abuse the startled motorways assistant with choice language. The poor fella was no doubt just on his way home, possibly to pick up a takeaway and some Brains whilst Tom Jones warbled in the background.

Saturday dawned in the home dressing rooms of Cardiff Cricket Club to 4 guys shivering and myself probably a bit too warm, if anything, in my awesome sleeping bag. £200 well spent. I'd clearly gone all out on this though as everybody else seemed to outdo me for trekking kit. So much so that I resorted to borrowing Jamo's waterproof trousers. Not such a bad thing normally, however Jamo is 6"8. My lack of prep flustered me and I began to get nervous as I contemplated the 16km long, 886-metre snow-covered ascent of Pen Y Fan. Never one to keep thoughts to myself, I was called all of the following on the car trip to Brecon after mentioning that I was nervous: fag, poof, gay, wanker, girl, fag, homo, and finally, fag. My fear was genuine and something that I can't describe. I put it down to a lack of mental preparation. I hadn't actually thought about what I was about to embark upon until minutes before the hike, and having recently developed my mothers love of military precision in planning, my lack of thought irked me, so much so that I thought at one stage my massive fry-up breakfast might test Cuzza's waterproofs next to me.

I have a strange reaction to nervousness. I fall asleep. Mark Waugh would often have the same reaction and be spotted nodding off just before going into bat. I've been told that it means I must be cool under pressure. I'd argue that it's escapism in it's purist form. It was a godsend on Saturday either way, as the overwhelming tiredness calmed me down and I grabbed about 3 or 4 minutes nap as B*witched blared out of BJ's speakers.

5 minutes into the trek and I realised that it was going to be tough. A combo of a lack of sleep the night before and the harsh cold air had left my chest a little tight. I was puffing and beading a little sweat. It's never entirely difficult to tell whenever I'm doing anything tough. I'm quiet. And there was a distinct lack of chat for the first 5 minutes. I then took solace in the fact that Blinky and Butler both had a puff on. It was only 15 minutes in that we realised we were all drastically overdressed. Sure we were walking through snow, but the reflection of the sun at ground level, combined with trudging the legs through snow meant the beanies, gloves and overcoats had to come off. After this we all relaxed into walk and it actually became quite good fun. We encountered a challenging steep cliff-face to begin with, the calf-deep snow exacerbating the angle, however it's clear we have all been doing the appropriate leg-work as it was taken on with gusto. 6 months ago, this would've been energy-sapping. Now, it merely whetted our appetite. Everybody seemed to get stronger and enthusiasm grew. Not even the freezing cold winds could dampen our spirits as we made mince-meat of the snow-laden track. Unfortunately the weather on the summit closed in like the sandstorm from The Mummy, preventing a final attack on the summit.

Coming down the mountain is close to the best fun I've had since I was a kid. Everybody was in great spirits, and to prove it we all carried on like dogs that had just been let off the lead in parklands. Kirt and Butler bounded downhill like cocker spaniels, BJ tumbled down the slope purely for our amusement, Glen slid down on his stomach like a toboggan, and the snowball fights reached The Guns of Navarone proportions. At one stage I slipped over on the ice, normally something to send me into a rage. However I slid 50-odd metres downhill, akin to a massive waterslide, reducing me to fits of laughter and completely juxtaposing my irrational fear of a few hours beforehand.

After punching Butler in the face 3 times for a 'banter incident', we headed off to watch three 40 minute halves of the best organised social-networking occasion on earth, prior to an injection of health food. It's fair to say that when you put a group of guys into proximity of alcohol and curry, the conversation flirts between serious political discussions, foreign trade, world famine, and the current economic crisis. I can categorically say that, at no stage whatsoever, did the conversation touch upon controversial and puerile jokes, bodily functions, immature banter regarding sexuality and sexual prowess, and/or genitalia. It just didn't happen. And we would never swear. Particularly at volumes that would make us glad we didn't have any identifiable Everest Test branding.

Back at the Rugby Club, we entertained the thought of talking to some of the awkward looking girls who were attending a 21st birthday party. However after one particular potato-fed brick-outhouse gentleman approached us and said something (of which I had no chance of understanding), we decided our safety should be paramount. This seemed smart as this particular fellow looked like he had been in at least 6-8 fights in the preceding 48 hours, with BJ mentioning that, somehow, he managed to have 4 black eyes.

Sunday dawned to a hangover and a smell in the room that only 5 curry and beer laden gents can produce. Another fry-up (I must give feedback over questionable choice of the 3 meals) was consumed before we embarked on a relatively pedestrian 11km stroll through the lowlands of the Brecon's. A highlight occurring in the way of stuffing Dave Kirtley's bag full of rocks, followed by several puns for the next 30 minutes as he struggled with his strangely awkward pack. By this stage he hadn't clicked, even though we'd managed to convince him that his favourite Oasis song should be Rock n Roll Star instead of his original choice of She's Electric. Dave managed to get us back though, and he delivered in spades. Our 11km walk turned a little awry after some impromptu wrong turns. After crossing a river that filled all of our shoes with water no warmer than 2 degrees, we tramped around for a further 8km. Expressions were fraught, senses of humour were put away, and patience was lost as we searched for the way out. Luckily we found our way out at about 4pm, around an hour before it got dark, which would have sent everything really haywire. Curry was particularly furious, as he didn't have waterproofs. It didn't take long, however, before his moniker of 'Map-c*nts' to describe BJ and Dave K caught on.

All in all it was another excellent weekend. Kinsey pointed out this was yet another chapter in my 'things I never would have done' list. Snow in London to me normally means staying indoors and watching repeats of Top Gear. Nowadays I see it as a chance to get some valuable climbing experience. This was probably my favourite of the weekends so far as it was the most similar to what we might experience up the hill, with Glen and Blinks displaying how well they are doing by hauling 12kg of sand on their backs all the way up Pan Y Fan. The banter on the trip was superb, and we have several very funny guys. BJ in particular stopped me in my tracks several times with well-delivered gags. The camaraderie in the group is growing at an exponential rate, with butler summing it up perfectly with his comment 'you know what, there isn't a person in that entire crew that I'd want to avoid'. And we both almost stayed in London.

Super Breathable Fibre....

2009-02-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

... read a section on the specs of my brand new Asics that I picked up in the Jan sales. To be honest it wasn't something I really paid attention too at the time, I was more interested in correcting the quite horrifying overpronator running style that was played back to me after the shop assistant had recorded me on the treadmill.... that and obtaining the promised 20% discount. 'At £85 these'd wanna be able to blow me' I said to the advisor who barely stopped during his loving retelling of the sales spiel of his above-average priced shoes. Which is probably why I missed the part about 'keeping your feet cool'.

Fast forward 3 weeks to yesterday (Sunday!?!) morning at 7:45am and I was cleaning enough English mud from my trainers to send an Australian customs official into hyperventilation in anticipation of probably only my 3rd ever solo run. However I wasn't particularly dreading this one, as previously mentioned, this whole 'training regularly' thing has done wonders for my confidence, that coupled with knowing that the motivation of getting to my mates place (a 4 mile trot to Canary Wharf) in time for the cricket should be enough to see me through.

My major injury concern at the moment - and this will come as a surprise to those who I went to uni with who have an obsession with my right knee - is my left calf. It cramps up despite being well hydrated, twitches and tenses annoyingly whilst Im trying to get to sleep, strains when I'm charging up the stairs at the tube, and felt like somebody had drilled a whole in the bottom of it after Kinsey's Its a Knockout/Pikey Gladiators/Mudman Herefordshire Hot Pot Weekend. And sure, this was a little niggle as I set out, but it was a mere mosquito bite compared to the searing pain in my feet.

Barely over a mile in I was waiting to cross Homerton High street, and I'm sure I saw a smirk on the face of the driver of one the passing cars as he assessed the agony on my face. However taking into account that I thought I was just a pussy, throw in a keenness to never to see a repeat of my horror bleep-test result last weekend, and a healthy dollop of fear of stopping on the backstreets of Hackney, I forged on. As I navigated the few lingering crack addicts, it felt like each step was a fire-walking exercise gone wrong. My ipod packed in 3 minutes through the first song, so I could almost hear my feet screaming at me 'What the f*ck is happening here?!?!? What happened to all the f*cking lie-ins?!?!?'

Approaching Victoria Park about 2 miles in, I couldn't take it any longer and had to stop. A couple of well-placed swear-words (mostly starting with 'c') and I set off again. Each step producing grunts in the following formation 'nothing, very quiet, quiet, mid-level, loud, loud, loud, louder, louder, louder still, chewbacca, chewbacca extreme, mid-level, quiet...' - My grunts diminishing along with the feeling in my feet.

The oddness of my feet going numb and the possible dangers attached to this were quickly dismissed as all I could think of was the painless bliss I was in. Another mile down the road, with the HSBC building in sight, I'd regained my composure and hit a nice groove, allowing me to take in my surroundings and also ponder why I couldn't feel my feet. Drawing a blank, I forged on and seconds later the answer literally fell onto my nose. A solitary snow flake. Followed by a few more of its dandruffy friends. Had I checked the weather forecast? Nope. Turns out it was minus 1 and the super breathable fibre of my shoes were showing a major downside.

Another chapter to add to the 'things I would never have done' list. Up before the sun of a Sunday, of my own accord, and running in the snow.

Amazing Donation - Must Read

2009-01-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share the following with you all:

I received a donation for £20 today from Geoffrey Stroud, a person whose name I didn't recognise. I sent him a thank you note, and assuming it was off the back of the press launch, asked him where had heard of the trip.

It turns out that Geoffrey is my mothers, sisters, husbands, mothers, cousins, son. He lives in Aberdeen, hasn't ever actually met anybody from my family, but still corresponds with them on a regular basis. Despite that, he still found the time to donate his hard earned cash to our cause, which is incredibly touching.

It turns out Geoff has done a bit of climbing in his days and is friends with Doug Scott, the first Brit to scale Everest. Not only that, his wife's nephew is Jon Batty, who plays for Surrey, who happen to be our cricket partner.

Just goes to show how far reaching this trek can be and how it can appeal to people well outside of our friends base. I'll be sure to be picking Geoff's brains in the near future about what to expect on the mountain, and would like to publicly thank him for such an amazing gesture.

Press Launch

2009-01-29T05:38:00.000-08:00

'Our luck is bound to run out sometime soon' is what Richie Benaud would say if The Everest Test was currently in bat. Yet again, on a day where we staged an outdoor event in winter, the sun shone on a glorious chilly day in London. With Trafalgar square bathed in sunshine, all the boys jumped through the appropriate hoops for the media to document our every move.

Credit must go to Alex and Marcus from our PR company Captive Minds who staged a wonderful event. Booking out Traflagar Sqaure for the day, we laid out the Flicx wicket that we'll be taking up with us, got the Lords Taverner's to park a couple of their buses next to the fountains, invited anybody with a camera, and got to work. There was some frayed nerves early-on, with everybody wanting to get this right, resulting in some disagreements and some tense words. In the end, I was glad it was Kinsey who was asked to bowl, as I felt like jelly just standing in the slips, and wouldn't have backed myself to land it on the strip. It makes me wonder what must go through players minds during a World Cup final or the like.

We staged another freeze in the middle, where some craaaazzzzyyyyy uni students invaded the pitch. Something that they'll no doubt retell whilst sharing a joint between 30 of them in their uni dorm, simultaneously wondering who the f*ck that fella wearing the beret in the poster on the wall is.

We then staged a couple of overs, much to the bemusement of the gathered tourists. Charlie B-N let the moment get to him somewhat by tentatively missing the first couple before blasting one through cover... and only a lucky bounce averted a PR-disaster when the ball stuck in the wheels of a pram. A few balls later and a flick off his legs sailed wide of the bus (a smashed window would have been horrible publicity), and straight into the fountain... which was a shot replayed again and again on the various news reports that day.

Meanwhile, Kirt was charming anybody with a microphone, conducting interviews (click the name to watch) with the BBC, ITV, Capital Radio, and countless newspapers. Mark Butcher and Chris Adams turned up as part of the Lords Taverners. During some friendly banter about The Ashes, Butcher informed me that Australia were now 'shit' without their superstars. I resisted the urge to comment about his horrible slips catching record and laughed along. Also there was former England bowler James Kirtley, now part of our kit sponsor MKK when he isn't playing for Sussex and brother of Hillary member Dave and cousin of Kirt. It was a day that couldn't have gone better, despite alot of us feeling a bit surplus to demands, it was still a wonderful event to witness and a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. Personally I ended up with an interview with news ltd here - Whilst the trip got a wide range of publicity from The Guardian, The Times, The Sun, Evening Standard, Metro, and several others. I quite like the list of regional Australian papers that we were in, simply due to some of the inspired names. My fave is probably the Myall Coast Nota, whilst Dave Christie enjoys the understated Liverpool Champion. Enjoy:

Cooma Monaro Express, Summit Sun, St Marys Star, Hills News, The Stock and Land, Nambucca Guardian News, Flinders News, Adelaide Independent Weekly, North West Star, Myall Coast Nota, St George & Sutherland Shire Leader, Penrith City Star, South Western Rural Advertiser, Fairfield Champion, Blacktown Sun, The Irrigator, Parramatta Sun, Bendigo Advertiser, Liverpool Champion, The Canberra Times, Camden Advertiser. Wollondilly Advertiser, Ballarat Courier, Moree Champion, The Northern News, Macarthur Advertiser, Goondiwindi Argus

With any luck, this will help us in our pursuit of a title sponsor. So far, we have had several companies donate product, but no real cash to speak of. Of our £250,000 target, we currently sit at about £75k. If you know anybody who wants to get involved on a corporate level, send them our way!

You can't plant me in your penthouse, I'm going back to my plough

2009-01-26T05:03:00.000-08:00

I couldn't imagine that 12 months ago, let alone 7 years ago when I was still living in my parents place in Gosford as a chubby dependant, that I would spend a weekend on a farm near the Welsh Borders, competing in 7 pretty difficult events with 25 people, only one of which I've known for longer than 9 months, as part of training for an attempt on a World Record. Throw in the fact I was wearing a shirt and beanie provided by a bodybuilding powder as part of a sponsorship package, coupled with the fact that I skipped our annual work conference (free booze, hotel room, and northern girls with loose morals) and it's clear to see how much of an effect this upcoming trek is having on my life.

Keeping with the inimitable quirky-british nature of this expedition, Kinsey Boom Hern generously organised a weekend at his farm in Lyonshall, Herefordshire. He had organised 7 events (listed below). Most of which were a mystery too us until seconds before the actual event.
Arriving at 11pm on Friday night, we were briefed on the days events and each of the 23 contestants (Zooby pulled out with illness) were split into 6 different seeding groups according to fitness. I was in Group 4, just above the girls. For the purposes of the team events, we were then split into 4 vertical teams, with a representative from each ranking. We then had the task of picking a 'fantasy team', where we had to pick ourselves plus a trekker from each other seeding group. Surprisingly, I had 5 votes. Unsurprisingly, they were from 4 people who'd never really seen me train before. The other 2 options being the absent Dave Christie, the better-credentialed Miles, and the unknown quantity of Joe Williams. I plumped for a dream team of Kiwi, Blinky, Nick Mullineux, Myself, Mark Waters, and Helen. You were ranked 1-23 as to where you finished in the individual events, with 23 points being awarded to 1st place and 1 point to last. The team events were ranked in lots of 5 points, with 25 points going to each team member in the first place team, 20 in the second etc etc

We all expected the night sleeping on the floor of the village hall in the middle of winter to be bitterly cold. It was with this in mind that we collected approx £12 to feed into the heating machine as I dressed in my fleece and beanie before snuggling up in my super-sleeping-bag that withstands temperatures of minus 15 (costing a bargain basement price of £199). 30 minutes later and the hall was hotter than the sun. Combine that with Joe Williams expertly combining his nose and ar*e in boisterous symphony, and little sleep was obtained.

Kinsey turned up with breakfast long before the Rooster crowed to mark the beginning of an arduous day. He began by taking us on a light 1-mile jog to show us some of the route of the 5-mile 'finisher'. My fuzzy head quickly perked up when he mentioned that we'd be crossing 3 brooks during the run, and as he pointed up the final hill we'd be running up, I almost saw my porridge again. It was then off to the cavernous chicken shed for the first event of the day.

Bleep Test: Nobody can work out what went wrong here. Was it the early morning? Was it the enclosure of the shed? Did we mis-measure the 20 yards? Were the bleeps faster together on this version? Was the smell of chicken sh1t too overpowering? Was it too close to the fairly demanding trim trail of Thursday night? Whatever it was, everybody struggled. And nobody more than myself. I missed the first bleep as the pace took me by surprise and was playing catchup immediately; despite finding I had absolutely nothing to give. I really can't explain it but I dropped out second at 8.3 - horrible and something that I was hoping to write off as a one-off. I'd spoken to G-Unit earlier in the morning and said that I'd felt great at the previous trim trail and quietly tipped myself to put in an eye-catcher so I really was expecting better things from myself.

Cave Man: Something that was inspired by both the worlds strongest man and the highland games. A big, awkward rock was to be thrown as far as possible. With Kinsey suggesting throwing it over the back of your head as the only technique to use. This again was to prove embarrassing for myself, mostly due to the fact I aint built for this sort of sh1te, and only further darkened my mood. Hillsy managed to pull me out of the depression by doing his best impression of Wile-E-Coyote. Despite his best efforts, he threw the rock straight in the air. As it turned to fall directly back on his head, Hillsy tried to scramble away, only for his feet to fail to find grip on the slippery grass. He jumped away at the critical moment to riotous laughter from everybody.

Michelin Man: Unfortunately, this event wasn't the marshmallow eating contest I'd hoped it too be. This involved rolling massive tractor tyres (which stood taller than me) around 4 posts set out in a square on a sloping field. This was the first team event and was conducted as a relay. Another priceless moment occurred when Paola dropped the tyre. Rushing to her aid, Neil Sharland executed a dramatic yet highly unnecessary and ineffective baseball style powerslide in order to get to the affected area quickly before watching the others, all still on their feet, get the tyre upright again. I managed to drop the tyre twice. The first time I managed to pick it up quickly and cleanly, the second time it was evident that I'd used all my energy on the first one as I couldn't make it budge. Our team of Kiwi, BJ, Alex, Mark W, Simmo, and myself were pipped at the post by a mere second.

The Rome wasn't built in a day cheap labour task: What do you do when you have 23 eager guests and a pile of heavy rocks that needs moving? You organise a game to see who can move the most. Another team effort, this proved to be my favourite of the day and the only event were I felt strong, confident, and made a valid contribution to the point of maybe even exceeding myself. But then again, so did the entire team, with BJ emulating Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me with his superhuman strength and Alex impressing just about everybody with her not only her rock carrying capacity, but also the war wound she picked up on her finger. We were the undisputed winners of this task. As we celebrated, G-Unit remonstrated loudly and surprisingly seriously with Kinsey over the rules of the task, whilst the rest of the group searched long and hard for the sense of humour that he'd clearly misplaced. The freezing cold rocks saw our hands go completely numb after the 10 minute timeframe was up. Something Kiwi and I didn't consider before a celebratory high-five reduced us both to cries of pain.

Scarecrow: Back to the chicken sheds and we found 3 mighty bails of hay waiting for us. These stood slightly taller than myself and slightly wider than my wingspan. Attempting a farmer joe style gag whilst we waited, I picked a bit of straw and stuck it in my mouth and did a bit of southern-boy shtick. Turns out Hayfever isn't just an arbitrary name and not long later I was sneezing uncontrollably and struggling to breathe as my windpipe closed up. I did manage to negotiate the stupidly awkward hay bail through a slalom course (just avoiding a very expensive heater on the way) all the way down to the end of shed (the size of a medium aircraft hanger) and then back again. After this I had to adjourn outside in order to stay alive, hence missed Blinky's reported throwing of toys from pram over the condition of his bail. I did, however, manage to catch a glimpse of G-Unit 'on the throne'. The less said, the better.

Tug-of-war: The mammoth day was starting to come to a close. 5 crazily tiring events and the ensuing jogging and walking between the locations saw us all turn up the penultimate event all a bit weary. Not much to report from this one, apart from Hillsy impersonating Bambi on Ice, ruining his teams chances and causing G-Unit to produce more steam from his ears than the Lucas Heights smokestacks in yet another Looney Tunes impression.

As the sun started to creep behind the hills, we all started limbering up for the blue-ribband event. The 5-mile finisher had dominated the chat all weekend. Alot of Kinsey's farm is dominated by Orchards. Orchards have to grow on sloped land. Kinsey has orchards in abundance. There were alot of hills. 5 in total to add to the 3 brooks, marshy land, and countless amounts of fences that we had to jump. And everybody was fairly certain that Kinsey had measured the 5-miles using the expert country method of guessing. It was more like 6 mile. I'll spare you the horrific details but I managed to get lost twice and managed to avoid Joe's fertilisation of the field during the 75 minutes it took me to get around. Towards the end, I'd developed a Cliff Young shuffle that, on reflection, was probably slower than walking pace. There was some mutterings about cruelty but I think the following from Kirt sums it up: 'Dude, that was seriously tougher than doing the Cardiff Half marathon in full cricket pads'

After a brief but euphoric shower where I managed to clean out approx 2 tonne of mud, animal faeces, and grass from my body, we headed to the local for some warmth, a sit-down, a quiz, a big steak, and 10 refreshing beverages whilst Milo took over the brass section for the evening. Some excellent chat ensued and 2 stories, both on the same topic, standout form the others. Unfortunately they can't be printed but I urge everybody to ask Miles about his recreation of the 'private garden scene' from the film Notting Hill.

It was after the quiz that it emerged that, aided by some strong email replies, I'd managed to top my group. Not only that, I'd come 2nd in the Fantasy league and pinched myself £50 to my charity total. Some inspired picks of Nick M and Blinky helping me to a podium finish. Later on, the pest that dominates 3/4 of my life came out to play when I unplugged Kirt's air-mattress whilst he slept on it.

All in all the weekend was a stunning success. Kinsey's organisation was second-to-none, as was his and his parents hospitality, not to mention that of JC's lovely sister and brother-in-law who bookended the car trips to-and-fro. Despite a couple of slips of the tongue and some interesting graffiti on the pub blackboard, everybody was on pristine behaviour.

Nets

2009-01-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

With all the focus on trekking and altitude and world records and that little takker Mt Everest, sometimes it's easy to let the main point fo the trip, cricket, slip by.

After a solid workout in the Shadows of a giant Pink Floyd Album Cover on Saturday morning, we made our way to the home of cricket (I can't find the clip, but every time I say or hear this all I can think of is Graham and The Colonel pondering whether if you wanted to address a letter to Cricket, do you mail it to Lords... Dear Cricket, c/o Lords, St Johns Wood, London). Whilst we are on the subject of tangents, In my opinion, Battersea Power Station should have an inflatable pig in-between the 2 southern smoke-stacks at all times.

With a crew getting to near 50, it's still a slightly awkward experience meeting up with everybody from the expedition. I am now confident deciphering who is who for around 75% of the people who are on board. But with various new members, medics, people who haven't turned up before, and maybe somebody you've fleetingly met once over a beer and part-recognise. They're the worst ones. Generally people who are around for the first time will introduce themselves. The guys and girls who are on the periphery are in that state of limbo where they aren't sure whether people remember them or not. It generally leads to a bit of nervous chit-chat about 'how they're doing' and a consensus to call each other 'mate'. I read somewhere yesterday that the longer somebody drags out the 'mate' is inversely indicative of how much of an idea they have of who you are. eg 'hey maaaaaaaaaaate' is polite-talk for 'I've got no freakin clue who you are but I'm sure I'm supposed too'. I decided to forget all this and endeavoured to introduce myself to anybody who I was unsure of. Turns out the first guy who copped this was Woodsy, who I definitely had met (a couple of times...), so I've since dumped this method.

Back to the cricket. Kiwi got me to pad up to go in first at the pristine indoor nets. Butler, the James May of cricket knowledge and fresh from a 20 minute rant about the cost of passport photo's, rambled something to me about the grade of Astroturf that the nets are made out of. Apparently it breathes or breeds or something. In any case the deck acts like a good firm turf wicket does. Which was definitely on Kiwi's mind as he juggled a hard ball from hand to hand and requested I wear a helmet. Thinking he was looking after my safety, I wandered down to the stumps casually with helmet atop. He wasn't looking after me, he just wanted to try to kill me without feeling guilty. The next 20 minutes was a test of bravery as neither he, Blinky, or G-Unit landed a ball in my half of the pitch. Unlike Blinks and G though, Kiwi can direct his quick bouncers. And generally he directs them at your head. I swerved one, got hit on the wrist with another, and fended one away from my eyes at the last minute with only one hand on the bat. At one stage, he followed through with the Clint-Eastwood death-stare. I couldn't work out whether he was serious or not. To make sure, I decided to tell him to get f*cked and f*ck off back to his bowling mark, but just before I opened my mouth he broke into a smile and all was good.

Bowling wise my offie-pies came out alright. In 20 deliveries, I had G-Unit at about 10-60. The sequence going in '6 over mid-wicket, out, 6 over mid wicket, out, repeat sequence' - I then switched nets to see if I could recast my spell over Kiwi. His first shot, a nonchalant reverse sweep against a tired delivery, was clear evidence that the stranglehold had loosened to a mere soft breeze against the back of his neck.

The meeting that followed was a quick recap of what had happened and what was to happen. There was an alarming spiral in costs for all sorts of medical checkups, inoculations, and tests. Not least of all one for 'Sudden Death Syndrome'. Wow. They really ran out of names for that one. They'll soon be naming diseases like episodes of Friends... 'that one with the really nasty rash that sort of makes you a bit sick and you can't eat solid food and yeah there is a bit of it going around Syndrome' sounds nasty. Kirt and Curry recalled their nasty experience in Nepal over Christmas, amongst other things. I quite like Mark's retelling of the day found here - mainly because he, and only he, liked my bowling.

Tonight we have another nets session. But not before Chris the megalomaniac Beale drags us on a 7km run through South London's murder mile and back. He has decided to give us a break halfway through in way of a trim trail. It is still yet to be decided whether he will be allowed up the mountain.

Coming up this weekend is the Fantasy Farm Fitness Challenge. A mixture of Glastonbury, It's a Knockout, and Illegal Immigrant Labour designed to test, challenge, and save Kinsey's parents a bit of cash.

Player Profiles

2009-01-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

Some great news recently, with the guys at Stickcricket really buying into what we are doing and coming on board in a big way. Any office-bound cricket fan will tell you how addictive this game is. They get 3 million visits a month during peak season apparently. I'm generally one of those visitors and had the brainwave to spam them with an email as to what we were up too. Within a few hours they had emailed back offering to not only programme a game with Team's Tenzing and Hillary facing off, but also promote our blogs and also put up an offer of prizemoney to the team who hits the most sixes in an over. Needless to say we are all pretty blown away by their generosity and enthusiasm. We are meeting up with them this week to confirm it all. We're gonna be on a freakin computer game!!!!

In other news, we had another expedition meeting on Saturday. This probably wasn't as enthusiastic as the last one, which was understandable as last time we were on the back of the high from the freeze mobs. This time it was after back-to-back Trim Trail and Net Sessions. And there was no coffee. It was also painfully pointed out to me that the honours board in the dinky little lecture hall that we were in at the back of the Lords Museum was actually just a replica of the actual board in the dressing rooms. I may, or may not, have wondered aloud about the dubious placement of something that I may, or may not, have thought was the actual honours board.

Announced was the fact that newly appointed South African captain of England, Andrew Strauss, has thrown his weight behind Team Tenzing. In true English spirit, Andrew said, 'Ja, Ahhh think it's moerse lekker that my boeke's are climbing the big mountain eh. That reminds me of the massive hills near the gamepark that I grew up on. Long live the three lions. Also best of luck to that team I captain' .... or something along those lines (it turns out the three lions he referred too were his childhood pets, not the english logo). Jokes aside it was a very nice surprise to hear his statement read out, along with Alistair Cook throwing his weight behind Hillary. If you take a look at that pic, it's amazing to see how big Cook actually is. Wes is no small-fry, yet he dwarfs him. Talking of Wes, he and I had what could only be described as an entertaining and hard-fought draw in the chat-war during the meeting. I got the early upper-hand with a couple of choice comments however he pounced on a mistake of mine and punished me accordingly with an incisive comment towards the end of the meeting. The crowd left satisfied.

Back to Stickcricket. I got everybody to describe their bowling to me to send it to the guys so we can set the online game up as accurate as possible. Here are some of the highlights:

Wes: I obviously get my skills upped... i.e. my batting is a 9.5 out ten and fielding a Herchelle Gibbs esque 9. Bowling can be an 0.5
G-Unit: slow medium swing bowler with barely legal dislocated shoulder 'Jean Claude Van Damme drunk in kickboxer' roundhouse action. C'est unpredictable. dark brown hair, blue eyes, size 11 feet, 1 massive swede, eight fingers and two thumbs up
Blinky: "An aggressive bowler who loves to steam in, bend the back and drop it short to intimidate batsmen. "Probably should have added... before returning to his mark and abusing the umpire for calling a wide". I could also add, remonstrates with umpire for 10 minutes despite already atrocious over-rate, storms back to mark before running in like a petulant child and hurling the ball as fast as possible, generally somewhere near the pitch, in a fit of rage.
Butler: Gas
Mike Preston: Is "awesome" a batting style?
Joe Williams: It is critical that the local air traffic unit is contacted whenever and wherever I bowl due to the trajectory of my loopy pies.
Haydn: My bowling has been nicknamed by Wes as "The Windmill"
Dave Christie: you miss I hit…… I have a mounted ball at home from a trophy – a hat-trick in the Under 12’s - my most valued possession.”
Hillsy: Right arm concoction with frantic shining to get swing plus unparalleled effort equals full, juicy, mostly-off-side slowness that somehow takes wickets

It could be an interesting game.

Making Huge News

2009-01-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

Managed to get my first real publicity nailed down today (click here for the link). I spent a good deal of last night looking up news agencies in Australia that I could spam with news of the trip. Several people got the info, and surprisingly it wasn't the local press who were first out of the gate. Pleasingly, I had an email from Nic MacBean at the ABC waiting for me in the morning. For those unaware, the ABC is the Aussie equivalent of the BBC, however slightly less prominent. I must say I was glad it wasn't a Radio Interview as a combination of nerves and caffeine had me rambling a little, however I managed to stay 'on-message' for the most part.
Nic seemed very impressed with the trip and is keen to keep up-to-date with the goings-on, which is a good sign. He also mentioned that it’s blatantly clear that we are having a great time even in the lead up to the trek. Although Wes seems to think I've inadvertently managed to offend our newest team member Dave, who unbeknownst to me, is also an Aussie. I am still considering my approach to this as I was quite enjoying being the only Australian about. If you have ever been to London, you'll know that the word 'Aussie' is very rarely used in it's singular form. Your garden variety Aussie in London doesn't tend to travel in packs numbering below 12, generally with a healthy smattering of Wallabies Jersey's.
In any case Nic did quite a good article on our humble trip, and I think you can see both his and my enthusiasm for what we're trying to achieve.
Amusingly, my complete lack of a sense of timing in both cricket and social settings has come to back to haunt me again. Not only was the story published during a cricket match, but it was also on the same day journo's nationwide could finally publish the Matt Hayden Obituaries that they'd been sitting on all summer. Hence the Story list reads:

Matt Hayden Retires

Australia Win

Other cricket scores

Fat bloke gets in way over his head on Everest...

Happy Days

Wasting Away

2009-01-13T10:17:00.000-08:00

Each Minute I sit in this room, I get weaker...

I heard this line for about the 30th occasion last Thursday afternoon but never before has it held so much resonance. I'd really slacked off the fitness over Christmas. Particularly when you define Christmas as beginning on the date of your Christmas Party. What's even more concerning is that said party was on the 12th. I had vowed to make it back up with a strict regime beginning in January, along with every other half-arsed buffoon who buys trainers and a 12-month gym pass to ease that gluttonous guilt.

As if to spite me, I caught the mother of all colds just after New Years that really laid me low. It was one of those ones where even groaning took up too much energy. I was wasting away before my very eyes during the time where I had planned to 'cram-ercise' my way to strength and fitness. I was surviving on chicken soup and flat-lemonade alone. It was on the 6th day of not leaving the flat that I heard the above quote and it stung me into action. By sitting in that room, I was losing strength and time. It was time to change. That, combined with not wanting to go to the doctors to get a medical certificate, saw me ignore what my body was telling me and get into the office. This went surprisingly well, and I theorised that waging war on your own body was the only way to get it to comply with your wishes.

Ignoring the obvious flaw in logic of waging war against something that isn't a separate entity to myself, I decided that the next battle should take place in Battersea Park. Glen led the trim trail with some vigour and maybe it was my lack of recent conditioning, perhaps it was my illness, or perhaps it was the minus 4 temperatures, but I resisted the urge to vomit on at least half-a-dozen occasions. I felt headpsins that I hadn't experienced since an ill-advised encounter with a nitrous-oxide balloon at Glastonbury a few years ago, and my legs felt like they were going to explode.

Needless to say, the illness convincingly won that battle and I was laid low again for a couple of days. Nothing describes my perilous state of health better than the fact that it took me all day to watch a 20/20 match on Sunday. I woke at 8:30 to watch it live, fell asleep after 15 overs, watched the replay at 2pm but fell asleep after 30 overs, and then set my timer to watch the last 10 overs during the 6pm replay. And they say Kids have a short attention span…

Needless to say I'm looking a little more like Marlon Brando at the moment than Martin Sheen. Then again he did have a heart attack whilst making that film due to overwork and stress, so I’m confused.

The Horror

Knowing Me, Knowing Yule

2008-12-30T03:27:00.000-08:00

Today is possibly the lowest I've ever felt to be a combination of Australian and a cricket fan. I could cope with losing to India in India. It's tough there. I could cope with Kevin Pietersen and his horrific skunk haircut parading the Ashes past my work in 2005, and I could even cope with Simon Jones taking 2 wickets in an over at Trent Bridge after I drunkenly announced to the crowd that we would set a first innings lead (we followed-on approx. 60 minutes later). I can cope with losing a meaningless one-day tournament to New Zealand.

But today I witnessed something that I would never ever wish on my worst enemy. I saw South Africans celebrate. Since post-isolation I've revelled in seeing the confused looks on their smug little faces after each heartbreaking loss, which only deepens the hurt that I'm feeling today. The worst part of it is, and it pains me to admit this, they are better than us. I feel so gross and awful. I think I might go mutilate myself.

On to brighter notes. We have now officially changed charities. In short, Sport Relief were causing Wes and Kirt 'ball-aches' (in their own words) and were proving impossible to deal with. Although they put up many small barriers for us to deal with, the most galling would have to be their refusal to allow us to donate a portion of the donations to The Himalayan Trust... who if we're honest is the charity we felt more affiliation with... but the final straw was their scandalous use of the gift aid - Kirt has now officially cut ties with them. The money already donated has been passed on to Sport Relief. This doesn't bother us as the actually distribution of the cash by Sport Relief is still an excellent operation. It was more the attitudes of the back office staff that so annoyed us.In their place steps up the enthusiastic Lords Taverners. Here is the summation from the official blog:

It is with a certain sense of pride that The Everest Test can announce The Lord’s Taverners as our new charity.The Taverners have a huge history and a great deal of pedigree in both the sporting and charity world. They have been led over the years by other members of the Royal Family, two Oscar winners (Sir John Mills and Sir Tim Rice), legends of comedy (including Eric Morecambe), former England cricket captains and even a former Australian Prime Minister (Sir Robert Menzies) as well as being supported by men such as Lord Coe, Sir Michael Parkinson and Sir Bobby Robson.
They formed in 1950, and in 1988 they created the Young Lord’s Taverners who have Alastair Cook as their current President, while past Presidents include Will Carling, Mark Ramprakash and Andrew Flintoff.
Their current Commercial Chairman, John Ayling has already sat in on one of our meetings and is giving us a 10 minute talk at our January get together. I would like to take this opportunity to thank John for all he has done for us so far and say how much we look forward to working with him and the Taverners during the coming months.We have parted company with Sport Relief on good terms and they take with them our best wishes along with around £4000 which we have managed to raise for them.

My new fundraising page can be found here: http://www.justgiving.com/nicktoovey - I'm just shy of 30% of my target so far. Think of your donation as a Christmas present to me.

Freeze Mob Film...

2008-12-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

Yuletide and Noel to you all.

Milo has posted the edited version of the freezemobs from a few weeks back.

you can watch it by clicking here

Burying Bad News

2008-12-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

Any election campaign is full of wonderful intentions. Promises are made, targets are set and goals are described as 'challenging, yet achievable'. Every breath a politician draws back on is documented in some form of media during this time, hence they are easily recalled if the broken promise isn't properly buried under big news. I'm starting to find out that I shouldn't be making promises that I can't keep. Such as the foolish 'I'll buy the beers at the rugby' offer or any other commitment that I've made on this blog. It’s much harder to for me to deny and/or bury my broken promises such as Jo Moore's infamous 9/11 email, or any president sneaking in pardon's for friends or laws beneficial to their doners in the minutes before vacating office.

WOW THAT DRUG ADDLED PIECE OF MAN MEAT BEN COUSINS IS BACK PLAYING AFL AGAIN i haven't been to a trim trail in 6 weeks AND HOW ABOUT THAT MADOFF FELLA WITH HIS EEEEEEEVIL PYRAMID STYLE SCHEME neither have I been to the gym WHA???? STANFORD MAY PULL OUT OF HIS CRICKET FUNDING I was out all night on Friday night after only promising to have '2 or 3' drinks at my Christmas party DID YOU JUST SAY THAT KATIE, 20, FROM BIRMINGHAM TOOK TIME OUT FROM POSING TOPLESS TO GIVE HER OPINION ON THE BRITISH MILITARY ON PAGE 3? WOW, SHE REALLY IS MORE THAN JUST AN EASILY CO-ERCED SLAPPER WHO MISTAKENLY THOUGHT SHE'D GAIN RESPECT FROM GUYS BY GETTING HER BAPS OUT IN A NATIONAL RAG.

It really has been a couple of weeks of unspectacular action from my end. Although a daily commitment to working on the 'core area', as boring fitness instructors refer to my gut as, has already paid dividends. It did wind up in a humorous situation last Thursday, however. I was nearing the end of the session in my loungeroom and had built up quite a sweat, hence had taken off my shirt. The last few reps of this routine generally see's me struggling a bit, hence I was panting loudly. It was at the final point that I let out a loud 'argghhhhhhh' and collapsed back on to the floor. AT THIS VERY MOMENT, my flatmate opened the door to find me post-grunt, shirtless, panting and sweaty all over. The horrified expression on her face meant only one thing. She thought she had caught the tail end of me furiously 'banishing a white russian from my kremlin'. Needless to say it took us both a few seconds to regain our composure before a barely-believable explanation was offered.

Time to run. I have cricket to watch. Death to all Jarpies.

London is Freezing and other poor puns...

2008-12-07T03:47:00.000-08:00

I woke with a fright yesterday morning at 5am and knew instinctively that I wasn't getting back to sleep. Whether it was the genius who put the central-heating system behind a paper thin wall that had loudly kicked into action, or the previous nights kebab that was well and truly knocking on the door, or the massive dehydration and stonking big headache from 16-pint Friday, I just knew I wasn't getting anymore sleep. Not at least until I got out of my work trousers.

This inauspicious start was hardly a precursor to what was to come. If the alco-binge on Friday was almost a direct result of the malaise expressed in my last blog (nothing like a depressant to get rid of the blues...), yesterday was the best antidote possible to rekindle my spirit and enthusiasm for training, our trek, cricket, and life in general.

It was to be action-packed, exercise-heavy, and concentration-sapping day. So my choice to turn up feeling like Paul Gascoigne after an FA Cup final was an interesting one. The first section involved a freeze mob. Organised by Kirt and Dave K, we went to Parliament Square, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Sqaure. At each location we had our trektators wrap up in sleeping bags, before our 2 umpires Curry and Bung Shoulder

marked out our 'pitch'. On walked the 'fielders' to raucous rounds of applause from the trekkies, myself placed at first slip. On followed the batsmen, with Dave marking out a guard on the concrete and all the fielders shouting encouragement to Wes, our 'bowler'. By this stage we had the attention of all the people around.. as you'd expect when 30 people turn up wearing cricket whites and 'trekking' gear such as goggles, harnesses, beanies, and scarves. With ball in hand Wes would pretend to bowl, Dave would play forward, and Joe (your archetypical short-leg) would dive forward and 'catch' the chance... although the ball was in his hands the entire time... but lets leave that as our little secret. In unison, we would all jump into a massive appeal, Curry would raise his hand to begin giving him out, and then we all froze in that position without making a sound for 3 minutes. After 3 minutes, Dave would 'walk' as if given out and all the fielders would jump into spontaneous celebrations.

The first one at Parliament Sqaure went ok but there wasn't many people directly around us, probably because you aren't actually allowed onto Parliament Square itself (a technicality in the law that is vigorously enforced to prevent the permanent protesters taking over, similar to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy). It was a good practice though and got us in the mood for more. The coup de grac was definitely Buckingham Palace. It took some excellent determination, quick thinking, and a touch of arrogance from Wes to get us past the Police... the conversation going something like

Rozzer: It's not going to happen mate
Wes: It'll only be 3 minutes
Rozzer: I can't let you do it I'm afraid
Wes: But it's for charity, it won't take long
Rozzer: Which Charity?
Wes: .... ermmmm... The Prince's Trust....

From the moment the freeze occurred, we had tourists swarming in and around us, all curious at first before they got into the spirit of it and started taking pictures, mock appealing with us, high-fiving a perfectly still Wes, and even going as far as molesting my backside as I stood perfectly still. By the end of it there were so many people in and around us that we couldn't see each other, but it did provide some hilarious shocks when we sprung back into life again. We were thwarted in Trafalgar Square somewhat by the giant Christmas Tree, however the stunt there managed to get us onto cricinfo

All of this was quite a good rush and great fun. I can now see why actors and musicians get addicted to performing on stage. The ability to get people intrigued as to what you are doing is invigorating. Funnily enough, it's exceedingly difficult and also tiring and a bit painful to hold one pose, particularly a full-blooded appeal, for 3 minutes. Then again, in the state I was in, spelling my name was also an issue. There are some photo's attached (with thanks to Zooby) and there will be a video coming soon. I've seen the unedited footage and it looks brilliant.

Following these stunts we headed to the home of cricket for a full expedition meeting. Loads of great stuff came out of this as we sipped on coffee's overlooking the nursery ground. Amongst them, a possible change of charity was floated, Blinky showed us his skills with the interweb that could see us being able to send back daily video updates from the

mountain and also be 'tracked' online, and a kit sponsor was announced in MKK - run by former England cricketer James Kirtley (Dave's brother and Kirt's cousin). The designs look sensational, and will see us kitted out in training kit, polo's, and coloured match kit. Tenzing's gear will be navy trousers and a fetching pink top with navy piping, similar to the Middlesex 20/20 kit. Although judging from what Graham Napier had to say about conditions at GorakShep, we will need some base layers underneath and some thick jumpers on top. Present at the meeting was a member of the Lords Taverners, who as an organisation seem very impressed with what we are doing and are keen to get on board. I can assure them that, with their reputation and impressive alumni, the feeling is more than mutual.

Hammered home was the need for fitness. Kiwi reminded everybody of his fitness sessions, as did the Terminator, which was a stark reminder of what was concerning my massively hungover brain. There was a bleep test coming. As I was trying to avoid making excuses, I had hidden my hangover from everybody. But when somebody said 'we've forgotten the bleep test CD, so we won't be doing it today' I 'fessed up that

I was horribly hungover and celebrated by doing a lap up and down of the nets at Lords without any pants on.

To my horror, Kirt had remembered he had it stored on his laptop and I almost died. Much to Butler's delight, I started puffing during the warm-up. I had wondered what he'd be like in this environment. Petrified would be a word to describe him in the meeting when asked to introduce himself. Obnoxious would be the word during the warm-up. As I took in the deep breaths I could hear comments such as 'Your Mum puffs like that when I'm with her' etc etc. Several insults were exchanged before he trumped me with 'bleep, bleep, bleep' and the horror that I was about to encounter shut me up. It started OK, but my lack of sleep and recent exercise, combined with sweating pure Peroni, saw me conk out at 9.3... which is similar to what I achieved in June. I'm willing to argue that this points to me being fitter. But I am now under no illusions, it's time to get back off the beer and into the gym or the trim trails (coincidentally I'm watching Run, Fat Boy, Run as I type this).

Further illustrating the point was the ensuing 2 hour net session. Conducting a bleep test prior to this was a stroke of genius as it will give us a good insight into how we play with the oxygen reduced by 34%. It also displayed that, whilst we whooped Hillary in our only matchup so far, they have some quality to fill the void. Dave Kirtley, as you'd expect from somebody captaining Cardiff CC, was a different class and Kiwi doesn't hit the ball so much as murder the fricken thing. We were all genuinely scared and I found myself quickly running to the side of the pitch post-delivery as he is especially good at hitting the ball straight back at you. By some stroke of luck however, I did manage to make him my bunny, getting him out twice and also seeing him survive a french cut. How this was possible considering I'm incapable of swinging the ball and bowl at a speed regularly described as 'backwards', I'll never know. I did feel for Mark, who was bowling directly after me (and, incidentally, is much better than me) as Kiwi would take out his frustrations on him and marmalised several of his deliveries. It was like watching footage of the Iraq war, for the balls took on the form of ballistic missiles once they'd hit nothing but the middle of his bat. Amusingly, the Kirtley name doesn't guarantee that everybody has cricketing talent. Kirt, whilst improving, still has trouble getting the ball down the other end. Genealogy is an interesting thing.

An excellent day was capped off with a couple of brews and a warm glow was felt on the way home. A massive thanks to Kirt and Dave for organising the freeze and to Lords for donating their venues for the day, particularly the impressive indoor nets. An invigorating day was just the tonic and has refocussed my wandering and blue-funked mind. Long may it last.

Time goes by. So Quickly.

2008-12-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

Great. It took me 10 seconds to come up with the above title and now I have 'hung up' by Madonna in my head. Everything was going well until recently, and it feels like only a few weeks ago when everything was going swimmingly.

The last month has seen as a massive downturn in everything, basically in my life, but especially in my preparation for the trip. The company I work for (Ogre pty ltd) has completely and utterly shat itself in the wake of the doom and gloom. Not helping has been my so-far cruisy demeanour and performance this year. All this = I'm in a lot of trouble and have had to scupper any outside interests for a while, lest the axe of doom find thy cranium. As a result, I've only been to the gym 3 times since my last trim trail, which was 4 weeks ago.

I'm trying to paint out like this is everybody's fault but mine. But I've also managed to pull 3 all-nighters since then, and in-turn missing 3 trim trails. To make it up to the boys one afternoon, I turned up to the pub 5 hours after retiring to bed to meet the Everest boys to watch a game of social-networking witnessed by 15 rugby players form both Australia and England. There I had promised to buy beers for all Team Tenzing members up until Australia's first try. That didn't happen until the 65th minute. Luckily only Neil qualified for what I now see as a foolish promise. The beer purchasing was alright. Watching 80 minutes of rugby union was a ridiculous thing to put myself through and I never want to have to be punished like that again.

Since then we have had a couple of dropouts due to illness and work-commitments. Stepping up to the plate is a guy that I've played cricket with sporadically for the last 5 years, James Butler. Below is the email I constructed to introduce him to the team.

I have know James for 5 years now, and when he hasn't been serving suspensions
as part of a lengthy list of on-field misdemeanours, has been my cricket club captain. You'll soon notice we share a common love of regular swearing, quoting The Office, and mother jokes.
James bit my hand off for a chance to join Team Tenzing, and I'm sure will prove to be the absolutely ideal Tenzingite. James always shows unbridled enthusiasm for
anything he's involved in (and this has already transferred to The Everest Test), thrives in a team environment, has a great sense of humour, is generous with his time, and obviously captaining the 1st team at Harlow would show that he can commit to events outside of work. You would also assume that he has more than a fair cricket ability, however this is stifled somewhat by ridiculous shot selection and 'eccentric' running between the wickets. He has shown time and again that he is willing to donate his time to mentoring young players and even menial tasks such as general club admin, not lest of these fielding the endless questions as to why he continues to pick such a talentless, hungover grub as myself in the first team despite a distinct lack of wickets, runs, fielding ability, or friends

Other things to occur. Well, we are playing on THE F*CKING OVAL during the fifth F*CKING ASHES TEST (lunchbreak) next year. I swear when I see Charles B-N (who basically swangled this single-handedly) I am going to drop to my knees (fill in the rest yourself). And after we have played on The Oval, I am going to send the video and pictures to every single f*cking school teacher of mine who ever said 'why do you keep writing fantasy stories about you playing cricket against the English in front of a packed house, it's NEVER going to happen' - And I am going to include personal diatribes against every single one of them. Even Sister Annette is going to going to hear about it. Let's see what she has to say in her hilarious Irish accent then. I am then going to ask them to revisit every single piece of creative writing that I did and remark it, based upon me fulfilling that dream. And don't think you'll get off lightly either Miss Saraceno.

On top of that we will have bi-weekly net sessions at the indoor nets at The Oval. Think that sounds salubrious? Think again. Essentially it's a multipurpose gym marked out with plastic stumps with a couple of surly second-teamer's wearing the 20/20 kit looking upset that they never made the big time.

We have a massive event on Saturday that involves some Freeze's (click here for an example) where we intend to hold an lbw appeal pose for 3 minutes and record the reactions of passers-by. Somebody suggested a Flash Mob, but ever since the 'incident' where I mistook Flash Mob for meaning showing my genitals to an entire Mob, I have been banned by court order not to take part in one ever again. After that it's off to Lords for a meeting, followed by the hellishness of a bleep-test, and then a net session. I assume my legs will be wobblier than Steve Harmison's when he boards that plane this evening after the whole day is done.

Finally, it has been my role to organise the Christmas Cards. Without doubt, the gayest part of organising the trip fell to me. Unbelievable. So expect one of those if you're family, friend, foe, or somebody whom I think might have a compatible kidney.

Broadening the Exercise Horizons

2008-10-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

Following on from Blinky's blog yesterday about leisurely jogging in hail, I ended up with a similar experience yesterday. After pushing myself to just about as far as I could go physically and mentally last weekend, a workout in the gym - which last week used to spook me, really was quite easy, bordering on boring. The overall dryness, stillness, and warmness of Fitness First on Fetter Lane sent my brain into 'wandering' mode.

During my 15 minutes on the rower, I became bored enough to look around the gym at the talent, watch a bit of the replay of the cricket, and get very annoyed at the music they play and the repeated use of a combination of midgets and/or kids dancing as Michael Jackson in dance-music video's. Does nobody else realise the connotations of a small boy doing the thriller dance? Also, isn't that copyrighted? Can you copyright a dance move?

Anyhow I digress, proving that most battles are won in the mind, I (ahem) stroked my way to a record distance in 15 minutes on the rower. This was achieved despite rowing one-handed on quite a few separate occasions as I tried to wipe the sweat that had painfully seeped into the raw skin on my face that still hasn't recovered from the major windburn. So perhaps I've unlocked the key to great performance, it isn't in a skin-tight shirt or the bottom of a lucozade bottle, it's thinking something is easy. I'm available for £5,000 per pop if you need me for an after-dinner speech.

I fear all this is about the be shaken up though. It's back to the trim trail on Saturday. The Sharlands have had to wait 3 weeks before they get their hands back on me. And this one will be done in arctic conditions. Awesome.

As an aside to last week, a new Westfield has been opened up in Shepherds Bush. If you lined up all it's escalator's you'd be able to get to the top of Ben Nevis whilst reading a paper and being brushed past by teenagers looking to get off with one another. Infuriating.

Yowsers! A Tale of 3 peaks

2008-10-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

The challenges are beginning to heat up. The brave men of Team Tenzing, with a combination of bravado, naivety, dedication, and a fair degree of foolhardiness took on the 3 peaks challenge over the weekend. This involves scaling the highest mountain peaks in Scotland, England, and Wales within a 24 hour time period. In total, it's 42km of ascent and descent interspersed with 475km of road travel. On paper, this is a very challenging yet very achievable target. However, we were about to learn some very valuable lessons.

The goals set out when this idea was originally floated by the demonic fitness bastard that possesses three quarters of G-Unit's brain was to get a) vital mountaineering experience, b) great exercise, c) team bonding, d) finishing a goal to be proud of. These were all to be achieved, but maybe not in the way we intended.

My preparation was not the best. Whilst 10 days or so living it up in European party-havens Prague and Barcelona (mostly good times....) was good for the spirit and soul, it was fairly detrimental to health and fitness. So as I embarked upon my 4th flight in the space of 10 days, I was a mixture of nervousness, anticipation, excitement, and shitting myself. Adding to this mixture of emotions was the unfavourable weather report and a complete void in experience of these sort of activities.

As we set out straight from the flight out of Glasgow in a tightly-packed minibus circa midnight Friday, I managed to nick an hours sleep before an horrific car accident up ahead delayed our progress. Our bus driver Craig, a dance-music loving Scouser, seemed to revel in telling us that we were doomed. In hindsight, he had some good points. It was now 2 and a half months since the end of climbing season, the weather report predicted high-winds, rain, subzero temperatures, and snow at the summit. In short, he said we weren't going to make it and were stupid for trying. With some dismissive and stubborn language, we decided to forge on with the backdrop of a guy being cut free from an overturned car.

At the base of the mountain, at around 4am and as we all squeezed into our specialist clothing, Gareth gave his final talk. It went something along the lines of 'bad weather, big challenge, it's dark, are we all still up for this?' - with only a hint of hesitation everybody responded positively and we set out. For one of the first times in my life, I was one of the better prepared guys in terms of equipment, and was feeling relatively good. Resplendent in ultra-expensive hiking gear (worth a total of £500+), I attached my glow sticks, checked my headlamp and whistle, tightened my boots, took an energy gel, overcame the urge to regurgitate the energy gel, took a deep breath and set off.

The hiking itself went better than expected. My baselayers and microfleece kept me warm enough to ditch my beanie and gloves, and the outerjacket was waterproof and wind-resistant. I certainly had it better than Joe, who had stepped in some quicksand and was wearing trainers, and Mark, who had raided the bottom drawers of any friend he knew. (As an aside, I can't recommend my boots enough). We started off with some friendly banter and a couple of games to keep us occupied, and at any spare moment I displayed to anybody in my vicinity how catchy the song Great DJ by The Ting Tings is. It was the last song I had heard, and now it was the only song that anybody would hear for entire climb of Ben Nevis as I sung the chorus over and over and over again.

The General set a great pace at the front, perhaps forgetting the other guys lack of equipment. I was generally just behind him, and was so chuffed at how I was going that I even had time to throw in a few token Kiwi sheep-shagger jokes towards Blinky when we passed a few wild Ram. Just I was beginning to feel comfortable we rounded a corner and bang. The wind hit us. The chat stopped. The only thing that could be concentrated on was trying to forget about the rain that was flying horizontally directly into our face. The only thing that could be heard, above the howling of the wind, was Hillsy's bag flap that sounded like a chopper. I shouted this out to Hillsy who replied, only half-joking, with 'I wish it was'. We were now 2 hours into the walk. Everybody was wet, cold, tired (my 1 hour was the only sleep the entire group could muster), and hungry.

We rounded another corner which provided some relief as the wind was now behind us and did a great job of pushing us up the mountain. JC tempered this somewhat with 'you realise we'll have to walk back into that soon'. Another turn and the summit was in site. But only if you arched your neck up. Another turn and the weather got nasty again. At least, it got relatively nasty, the wind and rain was again behind us. G called us all together. He looked worried. We had briefly taken a wrong turn. Turning up the correct path was going to mean walking into these huge winds up a narrow path, with a steep fall on one side. He suggested we turned back. Hillsy suggested a vote. Joe mentioned he couldn't feel his legs. Mark said something similar. Of the 11 of us, only 3 or 4 of us stuck our hands up to continue. Reflecting my fresh nature and the awesome quality of my gear, I was one of those who wanted to carry-on. Blinky and G then briefly mentioned the very real dangers before G called it upon himself to turn everybody around in the name of responsibility.

I'll be honest and say I was fucking disappointed and almost a bit let down by the guys who hadn't bought along the proper kit. My legs still had plenty of walking in them and I thought we'd fallen at the first sign of difficulty. That was, until I turned back around into that headwind. Jesus it was ridiculous. I have never experienced anything like it. A small hill that was descended in 5 mins took about 20 to get back up. I was now at the back of the pack, as the wind made progressing my meagre 75kg frame even one measly step a near-impossibility. The below-freezing conditions combined with the wind gave me the worst ice-cream-style headache you could imagine. The only solace from that pain was the fact it went numb in about 60 seconds. The driving rain into my face meant I couldn't see anything but my feet. This hike was about to be turned up a notch.

As that wind started to appear to die off, all the boys started screaming encouragement. That was the worst of it I thought as we rounded a corner. And as if to spite me, the wind picked up again. Jesus fucking christ get me out of this fucking place. This was ridiculous. It was still pitch black. It was freezing. It was wet. And I was struggling to stay upright as the sidewind knocked me off balance with every attempt to move forward. This wasn't the Glastonbury-style wet-weather jolly I planned it to be. My breathing was beginning to get frantic as I struggled to get a proper breath in. I will now never, ever tease my dog with a hairdryer into his face. It's a fucking awful feeling having your breath taken away by the wind. We went into a little ditch and again the wind softened a little. But still not enough to stop knocking me sideways. Somebody behind me (JC, maybe?) took it upon themselves to hold onto me and my bag to keep me walking straight. My headlamp kept on getting blown down onto my face, which was a double whammy of lost light and covering my eyes. You've been through the worst of it, distract yourself. fuck. how do i distract myself. And then the Ting Ting's came flooding back as it was the forefront of my subconscious. In hindisght, a mindreader would have had a good laugh at my thought patterns. Imagine all the girls ah-ah-ahhh-ah-FUCKKKKKKKK ok c'mon you're still alive battle through it. Imagine all the boys ah-ah-ah SHITTTTTTT I don't know how much longer I can do this. And the strings e-e-e-e-eee-ee-e man i just want to be warm. And the drums. the drums. the drums. I think the worst of it is over.

Man was I upset at myself for thinking that last thought. Again, the wind gods heard me. And by god, did they want to ram their point home. They picked up to by far the worst of the night. Weather reports would later place the gusts at approx 90mph. Ninety. Miles. Per Hour. I was repeatedly blown sideways, as were a few others. I remember Blinky screaming to grab hold of each other. I also remember somebody desperately clinging to me as I almost hurtled off to my right. Moving forward was now secondary to staying upright. Every bit of energy I had was focussed on staying up as the wind edged me further and further off balance. what's going to happen next? what the fuck is going to happen next? was running through my mind. I contemplated crying at the sheer helplessness of the situation, and for a split second, I was devoid of all thought and presence of mind. I've since pondered that perhaps that is what it's like to completely lose consciousness. Ironically, it was the strength of the next gust that snapped me out of it as it threw me 3 or 4 steps to the right. Keep moving forward. It's the only way home.

As the wild winds continued, I began crabbing sideways, unable to face front as the speed of the wind hitting the back of my throat prompted a gag reflex. At this stage I remember the gharish bright yellow hi-vis jacket of Hillsy, in typical Lieutenant Dan against the Hurricane style, start shouting 'c'mon, it's only fucking weather... take it on boys... TAKE IT ON... Tooves, fucking swear at it... SWEAR AT IT!!!' - and funnily enough from this point it got easier. We rounded another bend and the wind started dying down. Although I didn't dare think that we are through the worst of it again.

The rest of the walk was a surreal experience that I can't actively recollect. I do remember slipping a couple of times, as a combination of exhaustion and slippery rocks took hold. The first fall I took, in hindsight, was fairly dangerous. It was close the edge of the cliff and I had completely lost control.

Back at the van, we were met by a visibly relieved Laura, with everybody keen to retell adrenaline-fueled stories of the hellish experience we had just been through. Her and Craig told us that the winds had hit them hard at ground level too, and at one stage Craig thought the van was about to topple over. We convened in the cafe of Morrison's in Fort William for what was a Clayton's meeting. Everybody knew we were about to abort the rest of the trip. The options were put forward. The combination of possible injuries, no sleep, soaking wet clothing, and the clincher... weather reports of winds of approx 80mph on Scaffel Pike sealed the deal. The attempt was off. Gareth summed it up well by saying although we didn't achieve our goal, we definitely achieved all our objectives. Along with it came another lesson, mother nature is not to be taken lightly. We could have very easily been chewed up and spat out like a baseballer's tobacco.

The disappointment of missing out on completing even a single peak began to dissipate once the adrenaline wore off and the injuries kicked in and the realisation of the bullet we had just dodged sunk in. Weather reports came in stating readings of 150mph on the summit of Ben Nevis. If it hadn't been for the clear thinking and leadership of Gareth, I'm sure there would have been several casualties, if not fatalities. Further to this, a controversy has erupted about a race in and around the Scaffel Pike area. It was a great idea to pull out of that one. G-Dawg has posted this video from the aforementioned race. This is as close as you could get the conditions. Just increase the wind by 70mph and take away the light and add 800 odd metres of altitude.

As for now, I'm going to enjoy some home comforts for a couple of days that I wished for on the hellish trip up the mountain and ensuing 15 hour drive back to London. For example, a heater, some take-away thai food, a couple of beers, and the entire Beatles back-catalogue on random before getting back into the exercise tomorrow. Yesterday still feels like a bit of a dream. Or more accurately, a nightmare. Despite the obvious negatives, there were some outstanding positives. The way everybody looked out for each other was superb. Our determination was admirable, and the bonding value was immeasurable. Not to mention the humour that will garnered from seeing how much the stories get elaborated over time. I have a feeling it will be exponentially related to time passed and pints consumed and quality of girl that is attempting to be pulled.

Trying Harrrrrr-darrrrr

2008-10-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

I'm currently sitting on the couch in my jim jams staring out at some inclement weather with a sense of relief that it didn't hit yesterday morning. After an initial amount of confusion that saw me turn up 30 minutes late, I joined the now infamous 'Trim Trail' that the Brothers Sharland set out. From what I can ascertain so far, Tom and Neil are guys that both lean towards the quiet side, but their silence conceals a fierce inner competitiveness (particularly with each other) that drives them on to almost T800 levels of determination. I'm fairly sure that during these groups of exercises, Tom is actually picturing shooting a different policeman with every groan that eventuates from his tortuous routines. And I'm certain Neil performs eye surgery on himself.

The Trim Trail involves any exercise you have ever seen on any sports-movie training montage. Hill Runs, Shuttle Runs, chin-ups, sit-ups, and all other manner of exercises that stretch muscles that I wasn't even sure I had. It sort of reminds me of my junior rugby league days, just without the only member of the extended Ella family never to excel at sport ruining my self-confidence in front of my mates simply because I wasn't as quick as his future-reserve-grader-son. The hill runs were ok, and I even resisted the natural temptation to tell Zoobs to f*ck off with his camera (and I'm glad I didn't, he's only doing his job), the chin-ups were not so ok... although I managed a total of about 10 with a helping hand from Neil. However the real humour began after the million or so variations of push-ups and sit-ups. A course was set out that involved 3 hurdles that doubled in size. First one easy, second one difficult, third one fucking impossible for somebody of my height and (lack of) natural athletic ability. After 10 laps and 2 spectacular stumbles that would've had the euthaniser at Aintree reaching for the rifle and big white screen in glee, I was glad to see the back of them. Until the next exercise was announced, which involved jumping back and forth over said hurdles 10 times (pictured above is Tom making mince-meat of the first one, with Kirt looking tired in the background). Wanting to get it out of the way, I jumped in about fourth and after an hilarious stack on my first attempt at the third hurdle, one of the Sharlands (I couldn't differentiate between them by this stage) took pity on me and excused me from the last set.

As I mopped up the blood off my knees, I reasoned that I shouldn't be too hard on myself, as the other boys had a distinct height advantage. That was until Kirt took to the beams in extremely impressive fashion. Kirt is actually shorter than me but possesses a spring in his legs that, in another life, could've seen him take the US by storm as the next Spud Webb.

This hit a couple of points home, firstly despite me thinking that exercise is impossible for me, it isn't. And also, the mountain isn't going to lower itself for me for having shorter legs than the others, nor is the oxygen going to increase just for me during the game just because I don't possess any natural fitness or athletic ability. As if to further illustrate the point, I was flicking through the Steve Waugh autobiography today to see what he said on fitness, motivation, and overcoming obstacles. For those that don't know, Steve has a fearsome reputation in the cricketing world for mental strength and achieving the impossible. You could list several instances, Bouncing Viv Richards in the full knowledge that the retribution would see his life put at real risk, scoring a century in each innings batting with a broken hand in '97, telling Ambrose to get the f*ck back to his bowling mark (at real risk), scoring 150 on one leg (at real risk), surviving Allan Donald trying to kill him (at obvious risk), and telling Herschelle how he'd just stuffed up (at no real risk, the Saffir's will never win anything meaningful).

One section that has stood out, however, is the following. In 1991 he was dropped from the Australian team (in favour of his twin brother) and riddled with injury. A fitness guru was employed who demanded logbooks of his daily gym activities.... 'which was exactly the influence I needed. There were plenty of days when I'd get to 17 or 18 leg raises and think 'that's enough - no one will know I haven't done 20'. But something told me these were the little battles that needed to be won for the bigger picture to become clear. The only person I needed to impress was myself.'

The 'That'll do' attitude that has plagued me for a long time, and whilst I've recently made progress in amending that approach, it's plainly obvious that I'm still lagging behind the other guys in fitness. The one thing that scares the living shit of me is making it on the pitch at Gorakshep but costing us the record by having to pull out with poor fitness. I'm sure that will be enough motivation in the future.

On the topic of achieving long-term goals, I accepted an invitation from my mate Jonah Abraham last night to meet his 2 single flatmates, with the event taking the form of a screening of The Fall followed by a Q&A with the intriguing, and intensely interesting director Tarseem Singh.

Listening to him talk about his labour of love and commitment to doing things correctly, and in a way that he could be proud of, and in a way that he believed in hammered home the age-old point of not giving a fuck of how other people judge your achievements, as long as you can be proud of your own work.

Which is something that I'm sure the sound-director of channel 9 could take a lesson from, particularly after forgetting to feed a bit crowd noise over the top of the pre-record of The Living End's pre-match 'live' set, but especially after hitting 'play' before they'd even got on stage. Another golden moment in the long list of 42nd street never starting, parachutists hitting the roof, the cast of Neighbours singing the national anthem (jealous Lawson, Dav?), The South Queensland Crushers legends parade and team song, and Billy Idol almost getting electrocuted. So Kirt and Wes, if you're ever tempted to take a cheap option, just google search 'Rugby League pre-match Entertainment'

Ten Zingers Please

2008-09-29T10:06:00.001-07:00

I almost let this slide but after my loyal following of Sean Moran asked me when the next update would be, I decided that I couldn't let me loyal fan down.
Quite a bit has happened in the last few weeks. The Official Site has gone live, and I don't think I'm alone when I say that it has made me moist. There is loads of good info on there in regards to the altitude, the people taking part, some awesome photo's of the pitch and the trekking route, the risks, the event (obviously), the legacy, and most important of all... the charity. Funnily enough, the organisers Kirt (the short one) and Wes (the not short one) forgot to invite me to the official photo session outside London Town Hall. At the time I was sure it was an innocent oversite, but combined with Haydn's inability to include my emails on team correspondance, I'm starting to wonder if there is a conspiracy against me. This all came to a head when, during a recent meeting where I was controversially overlooked as team fuhrer, I kicked my chair over, told them all to go and get f*cked, stole some of the donated money before running off swearing to never contact them again. Unfortunately I am niether quick nor strong of mind, and they caught me within metres of setting off and convinced me to stay on within seconds.

Apart from that Dean Jones-like reaction from myself, Saturday was an excellent day which featured the first full-expedition meeting for a long time, involving the naming of a couple of sponsors (Qatar Airways and Gray-Nicholls) along with some very exicting prospects which I'm sure Kirt would definitely not like me talking about just yet. The captains were announced, with fitness freak PC Gareth Plod backing up Haydn (whose blog I highly recommend) as Tenzing's Hierachy. Against us will be a team headed by Jules, who is supporting none other than my old beardo mate Glen, who doubtlessly earned his position, and definitely doesn't have to worry about having the complete puss rupped out his kiwi accent every time he talks.

Following this, the first square-off between Tenzing and Hillary took place. Kirt is keen to hammer home that the match on the mountain WILL be a competitive one and not just a jolly. Words that were obviously still ringing in Haydn's ears as he made us do 10 back-to-back 20 metre sprints as way of a warm-up. It was at this precise moment that I really wished I hadn't chosen 4am as a bedtime. Although, the stinging in my chest, cramps in my calves, and inability to breathe at least gave me a tester of what I'm up for at 5000m+

The game itself was a bigger fizzer than the third Matrix film. In short, we treated them like a plump christmas turkey and gave them a good old fashioned stuffing. Glen's favourite short film is called 'Bogwash', and in this case, we were definitely Rocco and he was the eager yet naive asian girl who wasn't really sure what she had taken on. After G-Plod and I opened the attack, they were 5/18 after 6 overs and the game was as good as dead. One of the wickets included my old-teammate Glen, whom I kindly informed on the way in that I was going to kill him with the next delivery... even though he was the non-striker. Unfortunately my next sledge got misunderstood and Kirt thought I was being polite when I asked if he was sure he didn't want to bat with a helmet against Blinky - Kirt politely declined and Haydn banished me to the boundary as pennance. Maybe next time I'll just stick with puerile questioning of players sexuality and repeated swearing.

I was certain that we would see Blinky completely lose it after he was called for a wide whilst walking back to his mark, but the need to impress his new captain saw him contain that unrequited anger that he normally shows whilst playing for me that usually results in a post-match apology to opposition players and thier mothers/umpires/spectators/passers-by/the archbishop of canterbury/women in general.

The game turned into a whitewash, with Hillary giving us a fright before we knocked off their total of 95 with only 10 wickets spare. I contributed a solid 0 off 0 deliveries after several retirements. This was as good as I could hope for after turbo-drinking 3 cups of Pimms safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't be going in at 6 before I was told with about 30 seconds spare that I was going in at 6.

Not only on the field was it a whitewash, but I must say we defeated Hillary in the after-match function too. We had them covered in every department from skirt-chasing, through to alcohol consumption and even fashions. If Hillary are going to compete on April 21, I'm afraid they'll require a Cleveland Indians style recovery.

Not all went swimmingly for myself. After the exertions of Saturday, I woke up on Sunday with my back feeling like it had been trampled on and a sore shoulder. Although that may have had more to do with passing out across 2 bean bags and the floorboards at Blinky and Glen's place.

Extreme Dude

2008-08-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Geeez-sus I'm f*cking boring. It occurred to me during an email detailing my previous weekend. Went to the gym, watched war doco's, ate healthy food despite the lure of the various curry menu's on top of my fridge, and went to the gym again. I even deliberately ignored calls because I knew the lure of a beer would be too much. At least that's what I'm telling the courts, what really happened was that I spent the weekend lying low and not answering the phone as a matter of life and death - at least it was a matter of life and death for my mate. But I don't mind, he is far more important than me.

But I reason that this amount of Boring-ness will pay off once we get to the mountain in Everest and I join the extreme sports crowd. I know I'll only be walking and then playing cricket, but at that height, playing chess is extreme.

Which is a strange motivation as joining the Extreme Sports crowd is something that I have never, ever wanted to do. I was once in Morocco with a bunch of surfers. Surfers, individually, are generally nice guys with a relaxed take on the world. Surfers en masse are, without doubt, the most BORING bunch of people you will ever find. They are limited to 3 words 1) adjective of choice is 'Epic', 2) Emotion of choice is 'Stoked' and any form of elation/celebration is displayed by giving the devils horns and making the 'yeeewwwwwwwwwww' noise. And their only topic of conversation is boring personal surfing anecdotes. For example, 'That reminds me of this time when I was at this secret spot that only the locals knew about*, man I was stoked they took me there, and it was perfect left-handers and I just pulled into this epppppic barrel and I looked at the blue wall and I was just like ... yewwwwwwwwwwww' - This behaviour is not exclusive to surfing. You can interchange BMX/Rollerblading/Basejumping/anywhere-it's-appropriate-to-take-crystal-meth-and-call-everybody-dude and it will fit nicely. Butting in with a boring personal anecdote of my own that relates to an off-break I sent down in the 'right areas' will be an interesting addition next time around.

As for proper news, things are hotting up. We got a mention on cricinfo (that's me to the left of Brett Lee) this week, and Gray Nicolls have agreed to supply us with some cricket kit, which will be in-turn donated to the local schools in Nepal. With any luck we could see some of those kids representing their country one day. We also have a major meeting coming up where fundraising mechanisms will be announced and so will the team captains. To be honest, I have no idea who these captains will be (always assumed it would be Wes and Kirt), but it should be an interesting decision and lead to whole lot of homo-erotic cliché’s about 'getting behind him' and 'full backing' and 'whole lot of men under me' etc etc

*No surfer will ever admit to surfing anywhere other than a local secret spot

The Long and Arduous Moving Walkway

2008-08-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

Walking up an escalator this morning hurt. And not for the normal reasons of having to think of new excuses to avoid the unwashed students asking for just 5 minutes of my time with their infuriating cheeriness and wacky leg-warmers and good causes and.... other things that make me sound like Mr Scrooge. I've recently upped the ante with the leg weights during my boring visits to the gym. So not only are the people in the gym subject to unexpected bouts of flatulence as I strain ever sinew, so are the commuters behind me as I struggle valiantly to lift my legs up the stairs the following morning.
And so begins what may be a tedious 8 months of healthy living and constant exercise. And sticking true to my Kenny Bania character, I revel in telling everybody that I'm not drinking, not eating skin or sauce on chicken, and talking about the amount of reps I'm doing. I reason that I'm a pest no matter what the situation, so at least health & fitness is a valid topic to annoy people about, and if I didn't have the motivation, then I wouldn't go to the gym and end up having to wash myself with a rag on a stick after taking up a Marlon Brando style attitude towards my own body.
The first tests of my endurance will be coming soon, in the form of a 10k fun run and a 3 peaks challenge. I'm seriously thinking of starting litigation over this whole 'fun run' thing though. Whoever thinks running is, in any of it's incarnations, a form of 'fun' really needs to experience a few of life’s finer points. Such as midget-tossing or strip-bars.
The 3 peaks challenge will be a nice little taster for trekking. This will involve scaling Ben Nevis (1344m), Scafell Pike (978m), and Snowdon (1085m). And yes, I deliberately chose the most foreboding pictures for dramatic effect. Whilst this sounds fairly achievable individually, I must stress that we are doing all 3 in the space of a weekend. Which equates to 14 hours trekking and 450 miles driving. Without the undoubted help of unleashing the awesome power of apples.
Then again I could scrap all that and take the route suggested by my mate Luke, which involves threatening the Sherpa's, getting them to make a bamboo throne, sit on said throne, and have them carry me the entire way up whilst I whip them with the fervour of a hungry arctic explorer hurrying along their huskies. Both options have their merits.
On the fame front, I'm currently being outdone by Glen. Prick. I'll beat his crappy south london paper. Just you wait. But never fear, I won't let jealousy get in the way, especially from some weird looking, girly-voiced beardo who so often lets his captain down with poor shot selection and an inability to land the ball in the other half of the pitch when he is bowling.

Of Heaven and Hell

2008-08-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

The elusive fourth blog post. My mate Dom predicted a while back that I would go the way of many other well-intentioned blogs and abandon the idea after realising that nobody was interested and it was merely a pointless self-serving exercise that makes me think that people are laughing with me when really they are commiserating my certain failure. But if I gave up every time somebody started to get sick of me, I would've walked straight back out of my first day at school the moment I realised that my impassioned wailing wasn't drawing attention anymore. But I stayed there. I wet myself. But I stayed there. And I plan on staying here too. Just like my Irish mates taught me too.

In an effort to start getting serious about my health for this thing, the 2 weeks leading up to last weekend signalled my first ever attempt to abstain from alcohol for a set period of time. I've always giggled at the irony of Priests sprouting abstinence as the gate to heaven, when to me denying yourself something you really, really, really want is my idea of hell. But far from being the hellish experience of withdrawal and temptation that I'd predicted, I breezed through it and even managed to dodge the vodka grenades that the lovely guys at work had dropped into my lemonade. Who said you couldn't have fun with drink-spiking?

I know 2 weeks is only a baby commitment, but I also had an adult commitment to go and get myself obnoxiously drunk at both a farewell on Friday, where I attempted to spike both Kate and Laura's drinks, and an after-cricket-final-lets-get-as-drunk-as-humanly-possible-because-we-lost event. But, and even with the mature questioning of my sexuality from Jim and his mate Phil still ringing in my ears, I've since vowed to stay off the drink completely until the 29th of August.

I definitely feel better for it already, although like a true ex-addict who replaces the sharp prick of a shared needle with the quick fixes of a rambling evangelical or bottomless cups of coffee, I've taken to drinking far too much soft drink. So I no longer have it in the house. What's the next addiction? Probably Porn. Or Gambling. You have to buy into the whole addict lifestyle if you want to blog about it.

So now it's back to the gym properly. I opened my Gym bag yesterday and thought I'd smelt the Apocalypse, which indicates it was either a very long time since I've opened that bag or a very long time since I've washed my gym kit. I'd say a combination of the two is closer to the mark. I'm back to the gym tonight. And considering my arms are still stiff after having swung a light cricket bat on no more than 17 occasions on Sunday, it may be 2 or 3 weeks before I'm able to type again. Which would no doubt please Dom, as there is only one thing he likes more than talking about his family link to the Blue Wiggle, and that's recalling how he knew something that has just happened was going to happen long before it ever did.

Mother of all things good

2008-07-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

The trip in general has been the brainchildren of 3 guys - Kirt, Wes, and Charlie. Kirt claims to have had the idea whilst saving burning children from a monastery by carrying them on his shoulders bare-foot across broken glass... or something like that... I tend to tune out whenever somebody enters into travel anecdote territory. But I must say, when I retrieved the application form attached to Glen's email from my deleted items (I have an automatic rule setup for his emails), I was impressed.
I was sold firstly on the fact that the sport being played was cricket, and not some activity that was designed to keep sportsman fit such as walking, cycling, or Aussie Rules. Secondly was the uniqueness of the location. I've always been sold on Quirkiness... real quirkiness, not Phoebe from Friends wacky sitcom quirkiness... and this is something nobody has ever done properly before. The PCA did something similar ** last year, however not to this extent, nor was it an actual game of cricket. Upon mentioning this, my mother's first point was 'but you've never done anything like that before'. Upon taking a few moments to rack my brain, it did become apparent that I had never, ever played cricket on Mt Everest before.
Add this to the great causes benefiting from this and it makes the trip something to be genuinely proud of. A fact that inspired some heated words towards the Executive Producer of Cricket AM the other morning. Thirdly was the ol' chestnut, meeting new people. Fourth was the fact that there is a payment plan. And for somebody with all the self-control of a chimp during mating season, the payment plan was the deal-breaker.
Since that cold morning in April I've witnessed what could only be described as outstanding organisation, planning, and enthusiasm from the guys. To coin a phrase, these guys know their shit and it's be an educational experience watching how their plans are unfolding. There have been loads of exciting developments as to sponsors and people willing to get on board, which is a direct result of the effort these guys have almost solely put in. More of which will be revealed later....

** The PCA did raise £35k for their benevolent fund, which is obviously a great effort and nothing to be sneezed at.

You Is Well Fit

2008-07-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

... the most dominant response I seem to get when mentioning this to people is... you? Everest??? do you mean... the mountain? In fact, my mate Justin has stated that I'll need a Yak and 3 Sherpa's just to walk up the stairs at Kathmandu airport. Then again, some say he just has a serious case of short-man syndrome who should watch his words lest Mugabe's henchman get an anonymous tip as to his current whereabouts.

Last November, I did a fair impression of somebody who was in shape. If you were to view a time-lapse since then though you would swear somebody has taken a bike-pump to cheeks and stomach. The only physical activity I've partaken in of late is the occasional 4 over allocation in a game of Twenty20 cricket where the hardest I run is during the hilarious 20 stutter-steps I take before bowling after getting the yips in my run-up earlier in the year.

So I'm about as fit as Rick Waller (left) and have endeavoured to take on arguably the hardest trek in the world. It's probably not the worst decision ever made - Craig McLachlan doing stand-up takes that title - but it's one that has raised a few eyebrows, particularly with my mother. Then again, anything that involves any of her boys out of her direct sight generally meets with her disapproval. The initial application asked for a 'moderate' level of fitness. However our fitness advisor is a former British Marine and I've already spent a Tuesday evening undertaking a bleep test. Greg Ritchie would be disgusted with all this if anybody was willing to give him the time of day, let alone ask his opinion on anything nowadays.

I've taken advice from a friend of mine Pia, who trekked to Base Camp a few years ago with her Dad (Australia's answer to Sir Ranulph Fiennes), and she claims that smokers and people who are overweight are more likely to make the trek as they are used to the pressure on their lungs. So in summary, my Curry-Diet is simply a dedicated regime of creamy sauce, oil, salt, and fried onions in order to make it to the top. Alls I need to do now is prevent myself from spluttering like a 13 year old behind the bike sheds at school every time I take a drag and I'll be crowned alongside Ian Thorpe as one of Australia's greatest athletes.

Pia has claimed that she didn't train allot prior to the expedition and that she was given the equivalent of Nepalese Speed to get her through, however she has a habit of massively understating any achievement so I'm not sure what to believe. One thing is for sure, if you're my mother reading this, I definitely won't be touching any drugs.

There Ain't No Mountain High Enough....

2008-07-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

... that will stop me from getting out to poor shot selection and have my bowling (allegedly)spanked around more than Max Mosely in a strange (alleged) Nazi-Themed orgy.

Anyway, let's get the introductions out of the way, my name is Nick, I'm a 27-year-old ex-pat Aussie living in London, and I have been accepted to partake in The Everest Test. For those that don't know, of which there are plenty, I've managed to stumble across a pretty amazing expedition involving trekking to Base Camp of Mt Everest, playing a game of cricket at Gorak Shep, hopefully getting my name in a book sponsored by a beer company, and come back down rich and famous and ready to be photographed with an angry look on my face in-between Abi Titmus and Rebecca Loos. I assume the fame will arise since the game itself, if completed, will officially be the highest game of sport ever played. I don't want to go on about life changing experiences etc as that all seems obvious... and maybe even a little cliché. For all the info you need on the who, why, where, what, and when of the trip, it can currently be found at http://www.atestabovetherest.com/

If you can't be bothered with that, you should know that this isn't just for personal gratification/a chance to bore the hell out of everyone who isn't there with self-righteous personal anecdotes... A fundraising goal of £250,000 (£Shitloads in the old scale) has been set, which will be split between Comic Relief (The UK equivalent of Red Nose Day in Oz), and The Himalayan Trust

Each participant has been set a minimum goal of £1500 (please take into account the unfavourable exchange rate whilst donating). Once the official donation method is decided, I'll be sure to pass it on. There are several fundraising initiatives that are in the pipeline before the trek kicks-off during April 2009, with the jewel in the crown taking the shape of a sports auction and gala dinner in Feb/March next year.

There are some obvious logistical requirements to undertake a trip such as this, with the main question marks hanging over my fitness and ability to commit to a long-term goal. The fact that I was 20 minutes late to the first meeting and struggled to walk up a set of stairs sounded some fairly ominous warnings... And the result from my first-ever bleep test further enhanced those fears. Adding to that was the fact that Wes seemed to take an almost sadistic delight in keeping his handicam trained on me throughout the entire ordeal. Whilst not completely embarrassing myself, 9-6 is not a result to be entirely proud of and needs some work. On the commitment front, I have already proved myself a valuable team member during the boat-races on our first pub crawl (clad entirely in cricket whites), so maybe things are on the up.

So there is a hell of a lot to achieve between now and 'go-time', which you will be kept up to date with diligently over the next 9 months. As you'll find out, there is no subject I love talking about more than myself.

Tooves