Valet Violence & Glacier Gusto: The Year To Mount Rainier
Dangling in a glacier crevasse maybe 100ft deep, maybe more, I wondered how long I had been in there. 30 minutes? An hour? I was cold, stuck hanging in a giant crack in a structure that had carved the Earth as we know it and not summitting the mountain I had come to climb. This was possibly the best thing that had happened to me all year.
The details of my year may differ from other people's, but the theme and tone will be all too familiar for many.
To start with, my friend code named “Pudding”, the guy who got stranded on Mt. Fuji because he didn't listen to me, burned his house down. I got the notice from my friend and roommate “G” while we were at his nephew's/my friend's funeral-wake. He had just died unexpectedly. We left the wake to go make sure pudding was safe. He had been remodeling his house and was refinishing his floors, tossing all the oily rags into a pile in his downstairs attached garage … where they spontaneously combusted. Rushing over G and I arrived at 1 in the morning after the firefighters smashed his windows and put out the fire. Pudding was safe, but worried about his cats that had run outside during the chaos. G, our other roommate D, and I, helped look for the cats. They turned up safe. Since pudding house was deemed uninhabitable we offered for him to stay with us while he got himself sorted. We were happy to help a friend in need, but it really wasn't an easy situation. The house was already full with three of us living there, and now Pudding was coming in with three special needs cats, a warehouse worth of belongings, and he himself a special needs man. On the first day of him living with us sewage shot out of our shower drain as our plumbing failed again, and the brakes on my vehicle fused together and the starter went out. A few weeks together was all we could do, it just was not sustainable. Thankfully his insurance put him up in an apartment and they eventually fixed his house up better than it was before the fire. Still, the whole scenario was a rough go.
At the time, my mind had been predominantly occupied with two recurring things: Climbing Mt. Denali, and the Kudo Headmaster Azuma's words to me a decade or so earlier. He told me when I was finally ready to stay in one spot for 6 – 8 months of the year I should open a dojo in his Kudo organization because he said we thought about the world the same way. It seemed like the time had come. Even though I had trained in the organization for a decade, been to the headquarters multiple times, fought in several of their events, trained with the headmaster numerous times and been personally asked by him to open a dojo, I had never officially joined the group. I never paid any dues or filled out any paperwork, and Headmaster Azuma Takashi had never signed anything for me recognizing rank or dojo status. We just knew each other and that was good enough. Then I started thinking “Azuma Jukucho is getting up there in years, and COVID is running around … I should get back to Japan and get him to sign some papers for me so I can open this dojo.” Then he died. Almost as soon as I realized I should hurry, he was gone. It wasn't COVID, but aggressive cancer. It took him down fast. It shook me a lot harder than I thought it would. Not just because I had no official paperwork and now that he was gone there wasn't anyone to validate me in the organization, but the world had lost a great martial artist, and a great man. Just when I thought I had a direction to go, an actual idea of stability, it evaporated without a trace. As far as the organization was concerned I was just some random guy, and if I wanted to open a dojo with them I needed to start from scratch and work my way up. Reeling from Azuma Jukucho's unexpected death I wondered what the point even was. I didn't know the new headmaster and he didn't know me, and jumping through hoops to test fro rank and worthiness wasn't going to change my actual abilities. I put the whole thing on the back burner While I sorted myself out. I kept my usual training and decided Denali would be a good thing to focus on.
My Wilderness First Responder certification would need to be renewed in a year so I decided I would take some continuing education to get the hours to count towards my renewal. The CERT team I was teaching for was conducting an “Emergency Medical Responder” certification class, so I signed up hoping to get the hours to count towards my WFR renewal, and maybe learn a thing or two. Plus, the class was massively discounted … unless you take into account the work I had to miss to attend. Top to bottom the class was a disaster. Misinformation, “teachers” that were just EMT and paramedics with no teaching experience or aptitude, ignoring current best practices, dismissing advice of subject matter experts, conflicting directions, and the class director seemed to be clinically schizophrenic or bipolar or something. Many of the students had no medical background and were frustrated that they weren't learning the poorly presented material. All of this made for an unpleasantly tense environment. If I didn't already know the material, I wouldn't have been able to pick it up there... but I DID know the material. Functionally I didn't learn a damn thing. Factoring in the work I missed, the “cheap” class cost me $4,000 and a large amount of unrecoverable time. I was angry at the waste and disappointed to be associated with that kind of amateur level operation.
As for the work I missed, on top of my typical nonsense I had been helping at G's valet company. He was a manager and said they could use the help, I could use the money to climb Denali. It was supposed to be easy work, but working nights on the downtown streets showed the CERT agency was a microcosm of the entire city's operation: a dumpster fire. I had taken to calling it “The city of holes: sinkholes, potholes, bullet-holes, and assholes.” The city seemed like it was in a free fall. I witnessed crime and violence on a daily basis. It was tense, but the money was disproportionately good and I was free to run off for any amount of time as needed. I thought it would be convenient for long training and things like climbing Denali or martial arts events. That's why I didn't think anything of getting an invite from my buddy, Kudo Colorado Branch Chief J.D. Alexander, to come help test a Kyokushin dojo in Chicago that wanted to join the Kudo organization. Sounded like a blast. About a month before the event I was training at an MMA gym and somebody crunched my neck and back. I knew something was up because I felt a tearing and my neck and back felt like they were full of water balloons and gravel It didn't hurt though. I left eh morning training and went to work. Around mid day it started to hurt, and by evening my neck and back where so swollen I was having difficulty functioning. I went running up the stairwell of the parking garage to the third floor, as per the usual. However, when I got there I couldn't breath, my chest hurt, my vision was pin holing, and my left arm felt asleep. All my training indicated this likely a heart attack. I continued to stagger breathless until my legs gave out. I lost consciousness, crumpled in a parking garage stair well... I came to a couple minutes later. I stumbled out of the garage and my coworkers said “you look like shit!”. I grunted and shuffled to the alley on the side of our building were I was parked. In case this was somehow blood sugar related I ate a banana and a meal bar and then passed out stretched on the hood of the vehicle I drove. About a half hour later I got up and wasn't feeling as bad, but I was convinced I had a heart attack. I decided this was it, it was time to break the seal. I was going to the hospital.
… or at least the quick-check. I didn't have insurance and the event was over, so I figured that would be good enough. I walked in, and the receptionist looked like I was going to give THEM a heart attack from the answers I gave to their questions. “You think you had a heart attack!?” “You've never been to a doctor!?” and so on. When I was finally seen by the “real” doctor and not one of their many interviewing decoys, I was relieved to see they where an Indian woman. A culture known for taking their studies seriously, and a woman from the culture would likely have a chip on her shoulder with something to prove meaning she would have worked even harder to get to where she is. I felt a comforting sensation at someone around me finally doing their job. “you think you had a heart attack?” Yes. I described the symptoms. “Sounds like it. Can you describe another time you've been in pain, so I can see what you're used to?” I described some things from my life. “No wonder you don't seem bothered, you're very used to much worse.” No, I am bothered. That's why I'm here. I've never been to the doctor. I'm hoping it's just the swelling from my recent training incident that's putting pressure on a nerve mimicking the symptoms of a heart attack instead of actually being one, but I can't know without some tests.” Sound's like that's it. “ What's it? “The nerve thing. I don't think you had a heart attack.” Based on what? You haven't given me any tests. “You seem fine now.” NOW. I wasn't earlier. “now you're good though.” What if there is residual damage? Could you at least run an x-ray and see if I've got a displaced vertebra or something? I will pay. “Naa. You should be fine. I think it's the nerve thing you said.” And then I was shooed out of the office, without a single test. So much for someone actually doing their job. I broke the seal for nothing! If I just wanted to be reassured by my own words I could have talked in a mirror for free! I spent a couple weeks taking it easier before heading out to help with the Chicago Kudo test.
A few days before I took off I found out that the test wasn't actually in Chicago, but North Buffalo Grove. Then J.D. Suggested I take the test as well. He said if I ever wanted to officially join and open a dojo I may as well. He was right. I wasn't sure how my body would hold, but I wasn't going to back down. I worked a full shift and then left in the middle of the night to arrive in North Buffalo grove by noon. I showed up at the Kyokushin dojo “Ballistic Budo Club” to find the owner/head teacher and J.D. With some of his students. We first ran through parts of a class, then took turns teaching the class, myself included since I was now in this test even though I had little notice, no sleep, and was likely injured. Just another day. We learned, we fought, we drilled, we fought. J.D. Reminded everyone that no one in the dojo was a spring chicken and we needed to look after each other and our health. I reminded him of an event we were at where I wrecked everyone, and he said “That was 10 years ago!” … Point taken. The dojo owner and I each had a technical gauntlet and then 9 fights with various rules. At one point in time we fought each other, only elbows, knees, throws, and take downs. During which we clinched up and he stiff armed me. I couldn't get anything in because his arms were locked out, so I figured if I bated him with a knee to the solar plexus he would bend his arms to defend and then I would get my throw. I threw the knee slowly so he would react, but he never defended. The knee crunched into his sternum and crumpled him. I just wanted the throw! For the rest of my fights I was basically worthless coming off of whatever had happened to me earlier. I would categorize my performance as poor, but it was good enough to pass. J.D. Reminded me that because headquarters hadn't authorized him to confirm “new black belts” all he could do was give me rank right below and sing off on the recommendation and then I would have to test in Japan with one of their higher ups. Even though the creator of the style recognized me as a 2nd degree black belt a decade earlier, without paperwork I was a nobody. I was given something like 1 year to test in Japan, except their borders were closed due to COVID. Komatsu sensei, who was a fan of mine, was actually moving to New York to set up a USA headquarters, so I could test there … except he'd been stuck in Tokyo for 2 years because of COVID, so who knew if the logistics of my properly joining would ever work out.
After the tests we did the expected Japanese fighting arts thing and had a celebratory party. The dojo itself was incredible: weight room lobby, dressing rooms, stand up room, grappling room, and it shared a wall with a bakery that doubled as a Russian nightclub, and a wall with a sushi place! If it were my place I would never get anything done! I left around 1 in the morning to drive back and immediately clock in for work. I still needed money for Denali!
Denali was looking tough. The permits were backlogged big time because of COVID. I needed to go with a team to stand a chance of getting one. The teams wanted others teams to sign off on applicant's skills, but all my things had been suspiciously solo. While I thought about the looming deadline for climbing permits I also thought about the big approaching Kudo tournament. The All USA Tournament was coming, and it would act as a qualifier for the once-every-4-years world tournament. If I entered and had a decent showing, it would take the place of needing to go to Japan and test. Perfect!
Then catastrophe. While training at the MMA gym for my upcoming challenges, I had my jaw and teeth shattered. We were running agility drills and a former UFC fighter who outweighed me by 40 lbs rammed his head at full sprint into the side of my jaw while it was relaxed and my head was turned, less than 2 weeks before the USA Kudo tournament, preventing my entry or travel. It broke clean through and took some teeth with it. I went to 3 medical plazas and 14 dental practices without being seen. One receptionist said “I think you would know if you had a broken jaw and teeth. You would be in way more pain.” Lady, if I had money for every time someone said “I think you would know if you had 'x', you would be in way more pain” and it turned out I had it, I would have so much money I wouldn't have to worry about the fact I don't have insurance or money. Finally, a trauma dentist was able to see me on day 3 confirming the damage. He said “This is a one in a billion chance break, if you had been looking anywhere else, or your speeds had been different... if anything had been different, you would be fine. You might be the most unlucky man I have ever seen!” So I'm told. I wound up going 5 days with a broken jaw and teeth without treatment before the “emergency” surgeon could see me. I didn't have insurance so I had to stay awake while he dug the shards out that had been lodged in the break in my jaw...the anesthetic didn't work. I was to be on liquids only for 8 weeks. At my first checkup he said I had healed in 3 and a half weeks what normally takes 8, so I was granted to the go-ahead to resume chewing, but only on the side with bone. It turned out the impact hadn't just broken my jaw clean through, but killed all the bone around the break which had now been dissolved, with new bone presumably forming in it's place in the future. In the meantime, I functionally only had a right half to my jaw bone.
I would be down for way longer than Denali permit clearance, meaning I would miss the cutoff. I would miss the All USA Kudo Tournament. I had also been trying to finish my search and rescue SARTECH II certification. I had passed the written test, but the field test got postponed due to COVID and now I would miss that as well. Hell, for 8 weeks I was supposed to miss solid food!
During the recovery which was supposed to take several months, I wasn't supposed to be working but I needed the money. Unfortunately for me, the city had really gotten bad, and now as I healed I was fragile. The city was a stressful powder keg. I was on non-stop alert.
On top of the usual violence and crimes of downtown, the drug bums had become physically aggressive, empowered with the knowledge the city would do nothing to them. I regularly crossed paths with bums smoking meth and spice before their tirades. In front of a bunch of high-school kids in town for a convention a couple of cracked out shirtless bums had a knockdown drag out boxing fight in the snow. The valet guys were easy targets since they were the only people consistently in the same spot besides the bums. Valet guys were held up, threatened, and challenged regularly. Cars were stolen in broad daylight from private lots, or had their windows smashed out. A bum ran up and threw a bloody rag in one of the managers faces before declaring his intention to smash his face in. A bum regular and certified schizophrenic with multiple violated restraining orders, including one's with G and Myself on them, and 33 arrests in the past 3 years, ran up and said he would mace and stab us. Later that night he maced the manager and probably would have killed him if all of us hadn't showed up. He came back the next day and one of the valet boys was ready for him: he maced the crazy guy first, hit him with a sandwich board, and then beat his head open with a flashlight. Even after all that it still took 6 cops to restrain the bum. The crackhead was arrested but only got 60 days in jail because of a “plea”. The system was a failure. The day this guy was released he was back shouting at little girls and saying he was going to kill us. The cops just told us to do whatever we had to, kill the bums if we must, because they weren't allowed to do anything and the city was failing. Not the kind of look you want in front of a 120+ year old steakhouse on the national historic registry that people come from other countries to eat.
In a single day we had beer bottles and brass knuckles thrown at us, a 75 year old man try to fist fight us, a drug runner threaten to shoots us, and 5 people were shot in a quarter mile radius of where we were, and then another guy was shot in the street right as I was trying to leave work, which clogged the road I was trying to use. All for 2 dollars per hour, plus tips. The company did begrudgingly boost everyone to minimum wage because everyone was going to quit, and they were cooking their books, but it still wasn't enough. We were literally stepping over bums sprawled in the road to get into vehicles. A guy overdosed while he was driving in the middle of the street. Bums were pooping the crowded streets in broad daylight, on the side walk and in flower beds. As machete wielding gangs of bums roamed the streets we were expected to keep the premises clean and clear because the nicest places in town were too cheep to spring for security. I'm not opposed to fighting knife wielding crackheads, but I want to get paid for it and be appropriately dressed. For that not to be my job I had to do it too many times. I had to pull a belligerent bum out of the restaurant which started a curfufel amongst the bums. He was killed later that night, supposedly by a car. I don't know if that's actually what got him, but while on the job I saw a different guy get hit by a car so hard he flipped up in the air and his shoe went flying. Dead instantly. On a day off I went with G downtown to do a photo shoot at 3pm on a Tuesday. A guy got shot in his car and pulled over in front of us, spilling out of his car in a pool of his own blood, pleading with EMS on his phone to save him. Pretty sure he died. Once on the job I saw a tough looking biker fall down. I went to check on him and he said he was diabetic, and drank too much, and now suddenly was paralyzed. He said this had never happened before, and burst into tears. The night was cold and if I left him out there the cold would have killed him, if nothing else got to him first. I carried this large man up a flight of stairs in the husk of the mall so he would be safer and warm. I called 911 and was on hold for 13 minutes before I even spoke to someone! No clue what happened to him. The CERT red cross police medical trainer radioed the cops directly that he was getting attacked by violent dogs outside his house and was locked out. He reported multiple shots fired and in present danger. The police showed up 48 minutes later. “When lives are on the line, and every second counts, help is just minutes away.” The city agencies had just undergone a massive restructure, but everywhere I looked, all I saw was failure. This was a state with a 6 billion dollar SURPLUS? Feel free to fix anything! The only consistent message seemed to be that no one was coming to help. The cops didn't' even seem to come to my side of town anymore unless it was a major FBI raid. Not that you might want them there. It seemed like they were just as likely to get you as any other gang, and not just by being beaten and shot. One of the valet coworkers was driving and a high speed cop chase caused a stolen truck to slam into him, just a block from where we worked. The wreck scene was something an action movie wouldn't even try to do because it was so unbelievable. Ejected engine blocks, a flipping truck whittling down to practically nothing while taking out trees and everything else in it's path. How my coworker didn't die no one knows.
A bum was found dead at the dump though, and they traced it to him sleeping in the dumpster and getting killed while it was being emptied. This shoe-less man turned out to be a cook across the street, the restaurant violating any number of health ordinances with no consequences. The shady place across the street from our restaurant was hiring violent crackheads to work in their restaurant. One of them dumped some trash on our restaurant's sidewalk and pulled a gun on one of our guys. He was the least gross person to work there. This was a separate place from the one that hired the shoes-less bum. I guess not even the lowest grade gig workers, poorly paid and with no give-a-shits, that everyone seemed to exclusively employ was bad enough for this place. They were going for the high score. I wouldn't eat their food with someone else's mouth.
Half our own customers weren't any better. I had to remove belligerent “guests” numerous times. Once a fat “lady” built like the blob threw her shoes at the hostess, and the hostess threw them back. It took both G and me to block her as she screamed and pulled on the door like she was going to rip the whole damn wall off. It was potentially a bad look since I look how I do and this “woman” had much darker skin and it was Juneteenth, but I wound up not needing to choke her out. But I was ready. On more that one occasion the valet staff was sprayed with drive by BBs. We were glad it was just BBs! With all the guns and knives I took to saying “Any day you leave with the same number of holes you showed up with is a good day.” ALL THIS for minimum wage. I needed out. Not just the job, the whole area was unhealthy. The state had banned abortions and inflation was out of control. Fuel at the time was double the cost what it was the year prior. Of course you also needed to watch out for the street racers taking over intersections in their Challengers and Chargers, or the pay scooters on the side walks that people kept crashing around, or the city buses driven like there was a speed bomb on board. At the gas station at the end of my street a car burst into flames and took a couple of pumps out of commission. A couple days later the Starbucks a couple streets over was robbed by a team of people with shotguns before 6am. Business in town, including Starbucks, were closing down over fear of crimes both from regular criminals and violent bums. I couldn't even safely jog in my own neighborhood anymore. There's been stabbings and assaults at the house across the street from me, people getting robbed at gunpoint in their own driveway, and a crazy guy snuck in the house of someone down the street, allegedly to “charge his phone”. More than once I have had to fight a large aggressive pit bull in the street for my life wearing nothing but short shorts and converse all-stars. I'm 2 wins 0 losses to that beast, but it's not a sustainable record. Even if I had to put it down, the negligent scumbag owners would likely just shoot me.
While I contemplated how to escape this mess I continued my regular gigs. While teaching a disaster preparedness class I tossed out some jokes about my prior life experience. After class one of the woman on the team asked “are those stories actually true?” I said they were, and she of course didn't believe me. I referred her to my blog. The next time I saw her she said “I read your blog! Would it be alright if I wrote a screenplay based on it?” I told her I didn't care. Once a year for the passed 8 years someone had stumbled across me, convinced I could make them some money. Failed podcasts, multiple TV shows, movies, a couple of different survival schools and dojos … I was burned out. I told her to go nuts and just give me royalties if they ever came around, but I wasn't going to put in any effort until actual money started coming in. I had been burned too many times. We did come up with a couple shows, one based on the blog and the other a reality comedy show, and she said she shopped them around. My “not doing anything” was already frustratingly too much, and I even wound up with an Instagram, exactly what a guy with no phone doesn't want. It was fine though, I had been getting back into modeling and acting. While I was looking for something productive to do I did some modeling shoots, including a commercial shoot for a company, Nutrisense, that needed fitness models in Chicago for it's re-brand, among others. Even though that gig was for a fitness company, they kept asking me to tone down the flexing and extreme exercise because they wanted their people to look attainable for regular people so the product would appeal to regular people. Still, it's decent work when you can get it. The gigs were fun, were much more conducive to healing than working on the streets of a violent city, and they paid decent which would help in reaching my goals.
It was too late for Denali permits, and the Kudo tournament passed as well. Because of my jaw I had not yet been cleared to slam my bones into other people's bones, so there wasn't any use for me to head to Japan or Taiwan. Due to “Big Virus” Japan's borders were still closed anyway. With some research I found a company doing a week long skills seminar/climb on Mount Rainier in Washington state. It had spots open. The company also goes up Denali and by doing the seminar and getting them to sign off on me I could back door my way onto one of their Denali climbs. If I didn't like the cut of their jib I could take their certificate to a different company. Progress!
Surprising no one, things didn't go well right from the start. In order to register for the climb and seminar you needed to be a member of their website. Wen I tried to sign up it said my email was already registered. When I tried to login it said my password was wrong and needed changed. When attempting to change the password it said no account with that email was on file. When attempting to create a new account it said my email was already registered … and so on, in a viscous loop of unproductivity. After much customer service intervention I was finally able to apply. However, one does not simply just pay money and register, but submits an application with climbing history, experience, current exercise routines, injury history, and so on. I had a field day on the part asking if I had ever had a broken bone, dislocation, or concussion. Somehow even after my response I was accepted. Now all I needed to trouble myself with was incidental logistics like how to actually get to Rainier.
Flying to Seattle would be easy, but getting from the airport to Mt. Rainier might not be. The mountain lies about 3 hours away by car, but public transport doesn't go there,and since I had no phone or credit card, renting a car was a functional no-go. I knew there was a message board on the climbing company website for ride shares and a lot of climbers seem to be couch surfing car pooling bums like myself, so I thought I'd give it a shot … except my account couldn't access the ride share message board. Customer service logged in as me, and emailed me step by step screenshots on how to access the board. I told them to actually look at the screenshots they sent me: no ride share message board. They confirmed it was not there, but only on my account, and they didn't know why. While their IT sorted that out I went to rent my gear. Their gear rental sister company had a website like the climbing main company, and just like them I got stuck in a log-in-loop, unable to do anything. I finally got my gear rented, and I was told I would need to pick it up the day before to the program started. I didn't want to get there too early or late and miss connecting with the gear shop or the start of the program, but my flight would depend on the ride I hitched. A week before go time and still no ride. The ride share message board turned out to be a bust, but I got put in touch with a guy called “Kevin” who had made a living schlepping people from the airport to the mountain for a super reasonable rate … and he took cash. Now that the ride was taken care of, I got my plane ticket.
I started to buy the cheapest plane ticket, but it didn't include checked bags, carry ons, or seat choices. Deciding I was an adult who could get the “not cheapest” ticket I started to book the “better” one for an extra hundred-ish dollars, only to discover that it STILL didn't have any of the things. It only unlocked the ability to pay for those things. By paying the additional money I would then be granted the permission to choose my seats on my 4 flights at an extra $35 per seat. Quite the scam United Airlines, but you can count me out. I bought the cheapest ticket, resolved to make due.
The day before I flew out I got an email from the climbing company:
“Currently, there is a section of the climb from approximately 12,600’ to 13,100’, that we do not feel is safe for guided climbing. There is a possibility that new snow accumulations or the glacier’s movement could improve the route, but at this time, there are no viable route options to the upper mountain, and we are not expecting to reach the summit.”
Without summitting I genuinely didn't know if this little excursion was going to get me what I needed in order to qualify for a Denali team, which was the whole point of my going. Even if I got some kind of certificate but didn't summit would a different company care if I didn't get along well with this one? If t was just going to be a week of dry-runs and drills, what was the point of my going all that way? I could do mock stuff much closer, cheaper, and without 6 months of lead time. I was concerned, but already literally geared up to go, so I went.
I left for the airport at 3:30 in the morning. Upon my arrival at security I immediately tested positive for explosive residue. I was escorted to the VIP room for a more thorough search and questioning. The guy in charge of my more thorough exam kept saying “Man! You are in great shape!” Which I guess is not the worst thing someone can say to you in that situation. He asked me what I did to be in shape, and after some prodding I eventually said “Martial Arts”. He said “oh, you think you could take us, then?” I gave a diplomatic non-answer to change the topic of discussion, but yeah, random out of shape TSA guys didn't stand a chance. Besides, I wanted to know why I kept getting flagged. I had no clue, and the guys didn't either. They said the grunts aren't told what the readout actually says, and only their top expert knew. Whatever it was, they must have decided it wasn't worth anyone's time because they let me go. I got to the terminal, ordered a drink from a kiosk and the girl dropped it. I wasn't bothered by any of this though, I was just happy to be back on the road. I boarded my first crappy flight without issue.
The flights flights themselves DID bother me. They started bad and got worse from there. My second flight put me in the extreme back seat, maybe the smallest on the plane and unable to recline, sharing a wall with the toilet as well as all of it's sounds and smells. I was sat behind a screeching toddler-baby their oblivious/selfish parents. They should have an infant section on the plane, the way they used to treat indoor smokers, or better yet “infant friendly planes”. i.e. the only flights infants would be allowed on. These are the same people that can't be trusted to take action when their spawn acts up in a movie theater, what could you possibly expect from them on a plane? I thought about the layout of the plane in general. I was fascinated by the construction and design of the aircraft, as I am with most things, mostly because it seemed like it wasn't deliberately engineered or used by their creators. It seemed less like someone “designed” the plane and more like someone say a picture of a plane and said “ yeah, I could make one of those.”. Like seemingly everything else I wondered if anyone had bothered to test this plane before release. The in-flight TV screen was actual television stations, and with few exceptions none of the channels could be viewed while actually flying. I suppose it was for the best since the control buttons were located on top of the armrest, where an arm would go, and by resting your arm on the arm rest you hit all the buttons simultaneously: brightness, volume, channel, etc., rendering either the TV or the arm rest unusable. The tray table had no indentation for cups, and rested at an angle on top of my knees and thighs. In a cramped vehicle known to unexpectedly jostle, with flimsy cups that don't have lids on an angled slick surface, you'd think you'd go with the tray table that presents a little more stability for your drink. Plus, by using the tray table with the cup-shaped indentation you're using less materials for fabrication, when compounded over the thousands you would produce there would be some money savings for the company. Then again, the airlines reminded me more of an amateur's failing business that cared only to squeeze the last few drops of money from whoever they could before completely going under. I couldn't even get decent service when I tried to pay for it. Even first class looked tattered and cramped. Over the decades planes had become the Indian buses of the skies. Recently there has been talk of building planes with stadium seating to try and cram more people into the space where heads, luggage, and air goes. There is also a budget airline talking about removing seats entirely and forcing passengers to stand the whole flight. Why would companies increase their scope when they can't even handle what they have? Rhetorical question of course, the answer is executive greed like it usually is. Here's hoping for their speedy decline so something more productive can be made in it's place.
Finally after much time on the flea market plane I landed in Seattle. I picked up my surprisingly intact luggage and met my ride “Kevin”. 67 years old, great sense of humor and a ton of stories, if you've got to be trapped in a care with a guy you could do a lot worse than him. I arrived in the Ashford base camp, checked in, and grabbed my rental gear. Then I grabbed some food and a drink, and took a two hour nap. I had been working on a couple hours sleep and had been awake since 3 in the morning, so I wasn't at my sharpest. After getting refreshed I spent hours cramming all the rented nonsense into my bag, and then went to bed at 9 to battle jet lag and to make sure I was up in time for the briefing.
I was up at 5 for my morning exercises and a shower. I ate breakfast at the cafe that was on site, then met the group at 8. We had our briefing, which included finding out Queen Elizabeth had died, did a gear check, reviewed knots and hitches, formally met each other, did an intro to crevasse rescue, and finished at 5 in the evening. During the day we talked about eh email we had received regarding no summit. It seemed since then a new route had been made. It was apparently more physically demanding, but was untested by the guides. The guides said we would use it if possible, and they said a summit attempt seemed likely. During the day I was only really caught off guard by one thing: how HOT it was! It was so hot! The sleeping bag I brought was for minus 40, and I could just sleep in a T-shirt! The guides said that the area had just been hit with a weird heat wave, and it was messing everything up. It also wasn't doing anything to help the wildfire we could see down the way.
After 5 we were dismissed to repack our gear per their preferred packing system, and discard into storage anything we wouldn't need for the Mt. Rainier climb. I had to do that AND switch rooms. Due to a scheduling conflict the first night I was there I stayed in a giant party honeymoon style room, and the second night's room was a little more my usual speed with just enough space for two children's beds. Thankfully it was just me in there, so I had the space to sort my gear, and then crawl into one of the two comically tiny beds.
I got up at 5 for morning exercises, which included the suspended splits between my doll beds, and then breakfast at the cafe. Since it was autumn I ordered the pumpkin spice late as is the custom of the region, and the group met at 8. The two main guides, a couple of assistant guides, and the 11 participants piled into a bus and we were chauffeured to “paradise”, the park on Mt. Rainier where we would begin our climb. After an acclimating somewhat challenging ruck most of us arrived at camp Muir at 4 in the afternoon. A dating couple already started accumulating injuries and fell about an hour behind. In camp, the head guide looked at me astonished and said “You climbed up here in JEANS!?” Of course. The group didn't really know each other yet, so these things surprised people. At the guide's request, the rest of the time on the mountain I wore my rented climbing pants, which I found an old used tissue in the pocket of, courtesy the previous renter. Gross. Once at camp we took some time and settled into the little bunkhouse shack we would be using as a base. It had 3 levels of cubby bunks, but mine was so short I could just barely even sit up. It reminded me of an old time Japanese capsule hotel. I made sure to get a bottom bunk so I could get up early and disturb the least number of people. We had dinner at 5:30, followed by our debrief for the day, and brief for the next morning. With our couple hours of free time that night to decompress we started to get to know one another. The group was surprisingly eclectic. There was the head guide who reminded me of the actor “T.J.Miller” and the second in command who seemed ultra committed to the art of climbing. There were people from many walks of life from all over the USA. There was a woman who was a dentist from Colorado, a woman who was a veterinarian from Kansas, a man from South Carolina who was an Orthopedic Surgeon, there was a rural Alaskan who now lived in Seattle, there was a Chicago based business man, there were regular couples, married people, and Nash. There was even a guy from Mexico. As the days went on we learned even more about each other. We officially went to bed the first night at 8, but I had a hard time sleeping … it was so hot! I had massively misjudged how cold it would be. Plus, the bunkhouse was a symphony of snores and moans.
I got up at 6 and did my morning exercises in a T-shirt. The wildfire had grown larger and was not only visible from camp and lighting up the horizon, it was smoking everything up, even up where we were. It was around this time I noticed my two cameras were acting weird, but since they were built for the environment I thought they would be fine. They were not. They both broke all together before the end of the day. My main camera and backup camera were now useless. Typical. At the morning briefing we were told the “new route” to the summit had shifted catastrophically. If it had been 18 hours earlier and we were trying it, maybe, but it was unusable now. The head guides were going to spend the day scouting the “last chance” route. It had been called in a few days prior, but it wasn't looking good. While they were out hopefully finding a way to the summit the participants would spend the day with the assistant guides working on skills: Ice ax traversal, arresting falls – both yours and teammate's, different walking techniques for climbing various unstable surfaces, and general cramponing. The hardest part of the day was dealing with the heat from the sun, which felt like it was only a few feet from us thanks to all the snow and ice. When we returned from our drills camp Muir was now packed with day hikers. The place had transformed into a true tourist stop. By evening the smoke from the wildfire had obscured everything and made it's way up to our camp in full. As we watched and listened to rock slides we wondered if we would wind up evacuating. The guides said the smoke and wildfires were worse than they had ever seen. They returned late that night and were very concerned. The glacier was shifting faster than ever and routes were changing during the course of the same day. Record heat and increased heats were shortening the climbing season. They confirmed there was no route with an acceptable level of risk, and likely no climbing companies would be going up for the rest of the year. It wasn't looking like we would be making a summit bid, and the weather seemed to be turning so we spent the night holed up in our bunkhouse swapping stories. As we went around sharing, the group became more and more confused and amused with mine until the evening became “Story Time With Nash”. We called it bedtime at 9.
The next day when I got up at 6 for my morning exercises there were extreme winds and some precipitation. It was dark, cold, and rain, but “If it ain't rainin' you ain't trainin' !” I pushed through, somewhat relieved it may stop being so crazy hot! We had a full day of glacier climbing. We trekked around practicing rope traversal - both fixed line and free, we did ice climbing which I loved. We also practiced crevasse rescue. What if you or a teammate falls into one of these glacial cracks that can be hundreds of feet deep? How do you stop the fall? How do you quickly engineer a system to haul them out? We took turns being belayed into t a crevasse so our teammates could practice getting us out. Of course in a real situation some one wouldn't be gently lowered in, they would fall, and the teammate they were roped to would need to stop it or get sucked into the gaping maw themselves. The head guide loved to mess with the second in command, who I happened to be roped to, and was likely 50 pounds heavier than. The head guide came over to me grinning and said “Hey, instead of lowering you in there … would you JUMP?” I said Hell yeah! “I Knew you would!” Now to prove his technique the little head guide would actually have to stop someone who not just fell in, but jumped in. I thought it was awesome and hilarious. I jumped in, but only wound up falling 8 or 10 feet. Got him! The joke may have ultimately been on me though, because they left me dangling in there for at least an hour. I was in there the longest by a large margin. I passed the time writing my name in the ice and snow of the crevasse. To cap off the adventure for the day we walked across a triple ladder spanning a crevasse. Traveling over a gap that is deep enough to not see the bottom on a shaky bouncy bridge made of 3 ladders taped together. Fun! When we got back to the bunkhouse that night, one of the girls said that it was her 28th birthday. The guides snuck off and found a candy bar, put a tiny candle in it, and gave it to her. She was the youngest of the group at 28, the oldest was 47. During our revelry the guy who kept falling behind made it back, and now his toes and feet were extremely bloody. He MIGHT not have been correctly conditioned for the excursion. As we started to wind down for the night some people started playing on the climbing board that was mounted to the bunks. Before long they had invented a crazy birthday obstacle climb. I never spent much time on gym climbing boards and didn't know the official techniques. I DO know how to move my body though. The head guide asked if I could do a muscle-up over it and I said probably. The challenge was thrown down, and I did a muscle up over the whole thing. “Forget climbing, Nash can just throw himself up a cliff!”. I do what I can. We called off the birthday climbing party challenge at 9 to go to bed.
The next morning's 6am morning exercise weather was pretty great and I hung out with some people on the mountain during my training. Immediately following though some rain blew in and we were forced into the bunkhouse to wait it out. By this time it was official: There was no way we were summitting. We decided we would at least try SOMETHING. We found a ridge peak we were pretty sure no one had bothered to go before and decided we would do an exploratory trek to it. We name it “Wootang Bute”, partly in honor of the guide's recently deceased friend and coworker. We couldn't make ti to this goal either, due to hazardous scree and precarious rocks. To try and salvage what we could we formed exploratory student guided teams across an unknown crevasse field of the glacier. I was selected as the leader of my group, but part way through our expedition all teams were ordered to bail due to a spontaneous white out. We couldn't' see a couple feet in front of us in an area with massive unknown crevasses on a rapidly shifting glacier. Since we were flying blind we had to jump between GPS way-points to retrace our steps to make it out. Just another in a long line of constant natural obstacle blocking our goals. We spent the remainder of the work day doing climbing skills drills in the freezing cold in the white out. Once we made it back to the bunkhouse for our final night we unwound with a long stream of nonsense. Since it was our final night and we weren't going to summit, the group decided now was the only good time to drink the “Rainier Beer” they had brought. I was challenged by Juan, my new Chicago buddy, to arm wrestle a few times, and I won every time! Birthday girl made a suspended swing from a ceiling beam and some climbing slings. I was challenged to do a slow flip up and over the climbing board, in a kind of pike-slow giant-type move. I won again! We hung out until 9:30 cracking joke and having fun, and then we went to bed.
For our final day on the mountain we had great weather. Before we rucked down we decided to test whether or not you could make an effective dead-man anchor out of a candy bar. We tried 2, a Kirkland protein bar and a Twix. The Kirkland bar withstood 5 people pulling on it and took a 9 to 1 mechanical advantage to pull out of the snow! The Twix didn't' do as well: one lady with a 5 to 1 mechanical advantage pulled it out. Still, something to think about. I ate both bars after they flew out. No waste! As a final to-do we all climbed up to “Muir Peak” for funsies. Afterwords we packed up and rucked down. The head guide thought it would be funny if I climbed down in my jeans, so I did. They actually were very breathable, which is why I wore them on the way up. It only took maybe 3 or 4 hours to get down, but the snowfields were extremely rough on my old man scar tissue knees. Plus, the lower we got the hotter it got and by the time we were all the way down to paradise I was actually pretty sweaty. We all jumped on the bus at Paradise and went back to base at Ashford. James, the orthopedic surgeon from South Carolina, had booked a room at the inn just to shower, and he let me use it! What a gentleman. I had a freshly clean body, clean socks, clean shirt, clean underwear …. same jeans. We all met at the base camp restaurant around 3pm for our final debrief over pizza and beers. The guides said our group got more training than any other seminar they had done. At least that's something. We all had a really nice meal, and I thought we would party through the night but pretty much everyone left for the airport right at 4! That meant that if I was going to hitch a ride with somebody I needed to go too. James was kind enough to offer me a ride with him to the airport and I took it. When we got to the airport James went to see if he could check in since his flight was that night. At the recommendation of the climbing company my flight wasn't until the following morning.
I talked to customer service to see if I could get on an earlier flight, willing to pay for it. It turns out I couldn't get through the gate more than 12 hours early per their computer system, and I couldn't pay to get on an earlier flight because I initially bought the cheapest ticket. Because I didn't spend enough before, they weren't letting me spend anything now! I hadn't paid for the privilege of giving them more money. I was so angry. James and I said our “see ya later”s and he went through he check pint. For the next 12 hours I hunkered down in the airport lobby of international arrivals with my fellow immigrants until they would let me through security at 5am. I had plenty of time to think about the course, the training, and the people I'd met. I thought about James, the orthopedic surgeon. He had been my bunk mate at camp Muir, where he constantly was giving me snacks and such. He had let me use his hotel room to bath. He let me hitch a ride to the airport, where we drove together for hours. This guy was a surgeon, medical director at multiple places in several different states simultaneously, a pilot and plane owner, a scuba diver, photographer, and a speculative real estate investor in the Caribbean. More than any of that though, he was just a really great guy. On our drive to the airport I asked why he had been so nice to me and he said that he genuinely thought I was such a cool guy that meeting me had enriched his life, but this man had done the same for me and more. This was a man with more wealth and success than most people would dare dream to obtain, but more importantly he was a genuine family man. I talked to his wife on speakerphone on the ride to the airport. He told me stories of different people he had secretly helped. James said I inspired him with how I've lived my life, but I found this man himself to be inspiring. Until that point, everyone I'd met with a measure of success like that had been a selfish greedy jerk. This man had shown me that someone could attain a life some would call lavish and still be the nicest guy you ever met. He had shown me it was really possible, not just theoretical. Meeting this man made me strive to be a better man. In my own way. I would strive so the next time our paths crossed I could live up to the expectation. In the meantime, I would be stuck in the airport, reading and writing.
5Am came and I was allowed through security. I found a cozy nook on the floor and took a nap for a couple of hours. When I woke up I took a walk and ran into Juan! He was eating at a table in the concourse. Turns out he couldn't get a flight out he previous day either, so he just got a hotel and hung out. We chatted until his flight, and then I went back to reading and writing until mine. Boarding my crappy flights to return to Gotham City I started planning. With the course finished I could use it as leverage to finally get on a Denali climb. When I got back I emailed the company, and they said that even thought they had signed off on my skills, I hadn't summited Rainier and so would need a “big summit day” on my resume to prove that I was physically up to the task before I could be accepted to Denali. They said the least expensive option was to pay to climb Rainier again, and hope I made it. I don't think so! Not only would that set me back a full year or two but I don't have the money and time to be continuously going out and for one reason or another having guides and companies pulling the plug. I sent an email to the top explaining the situation and wondering if the “big summit day” needed to be with their company or not. Did my Kilimanjaro, or Aconcagua summits count? I had certificates. I had blasted up Mt. Fuji several times in a variety of situations. I knew I was up to the task. If this was just a company trying to milk me for every penny, they could forget it. After some days I got a response. The honcho reviewed my resume, and spoke to the head guide on my recent week long Mt. Rainier seminar. They said they would love to have me on a Denali expedition. Since there was ample time I could have my pick of the dates, and they said they looked forward to receiving my confirmation paperwork.
Great! Now I just needed to work out the logistics and money....
-NASH