Ten Zingers Please

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

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

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

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

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

... 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....

... 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