the good, the bad, and the rad

Most of the Cayambe ascent bound my stomach and mind and heart and spirit in contradiction.  My stomach, full of empty, cried for food, while my mind knew contentment would be less volatile in esophagus eruptions.  My heart, pounding to the beat of reggae-tone dance groove sped up 300% gulped after the thin oxygen being gathered by my warrior lungs.  My heart called for a nap, yet knew it was no option, for my spirit had made a commitment.  A commitment to not give in to the false limits a body puts on itself or the structured pain fed by self indulgence...(though I did fall asleep for a couple minutes during a time of rest)...a commitment to summit and thank God for the ability to do so.  It's not all glory my friends...oh no.  The feeling that chunks of breakfast could be gurgling up at any moment for hours at a time and wondering if your brain has shrunk and began bobbling around in the skull, smashing the side with every heavy step, doesn't exactly jive naturally with pushing your body to climb to a higher altitude where the symptoms could potentially become worse.

I suppose I could put this all a little more simply.  In the moment, uncomfortable.  Timelessly, awesome.  And of course I climbed the 18,900 ft glacier peak in Adidas Sambas.  What else?

Something I try to be conscious about when serving others who are less financially endowed than me, is this...

We are all equally gifted with the time of this moment.  Time is no longer money my friends.  It was awesome to rediscover the breaking of that lie and share it with the group and watch how that thought helped break down cultural and financial barriers between our group and those we served.  Invisible, imaginary walls are broken through what God has blessed us all with, this day.

This past weekend I visited Javier in Guayaquil.  Shout out!  It was amazing to stay as a guest in his home and see the city and beach as much as could be seen in a short 2.5 days.  We did some body surfing in the beautiful ocean with fairly warm waves for such a cloudy day.  I came to Ecuador knowing I would be doing hard work, serving at a church and climbing mountains, but visiting Guayaquil was a luxury reward to the maximum... Hanging at the beach, eating shrimp and lobster and other local delicacies with no time restraint or required appointments.  Mission work with wine.  Gracias Malbec.

The bus ride back to Quito was again about 9 hours.  I mostly just napped and watched the passing scenery out the windows, wishing I knew how to ask more substantial conversation questions to my neighbor than "what is your name?" and "how old are you?".  Someday.  The transformation of plant life from sea level to the highlands of Quito is amazing to watch.  The ecological diversity in this country in just a few miles is beautiful.  They have tropic beaches, to rainforests, to mountain glaciers all within a relatively short distance.  

Yesterday was my first day on the job, filming for the next Summit Adventure video.  We climbed Guagua Pinchincha.  This time it was snowing, which produced some incredibly epic shots of people coming over rock crests with an immeasurable foggy abyss below, and snow making visibility more of a challenge.  My hands became extremely cold.  Painfully chilled/numb.  Don't ask me why I didn't take my snow-soaked gloves off, seriously don't ask.  

I'm thrilled with the footage attained but had a scare.  My camera stopped working because of condensation from the wet snow.  I wasn't too worried though, because I thought it would just work after it completely dried out.  The next morning it still read "remove tape" and had a condensation warning.  Thank God it started smiling again, ready for more adventure right before we left for the service project.  Also, after the climb yesterday, on our drive back down from the mountain, a "tourista" bus had wedged itself across the only exit road.  It had slid back in the mud after apparently hitting a truck into the ditch, and lodged diagonally from mud wall to wall across the 1.5 lane country road.  It was completely empty, pretty erie since the fog was moving in again and we only had about an hour of daylight left.  Corinna, Matt and Bryce huddled for some fast actin' decision making.  Within about 15 minutes we'd unloaded all our bags from the vehicles, left all our extra food with the driver (because they'd be staying the night there) and began our climb up the front of the tour bus, up the right mirror, onto the grassy embankment and over the barbed-wire fence.  Cows welcomed our arrival to their territory.

We made it to the little town nearby in about 40 minutes where another mini bus had been sent to pick us up.  Everyone handled the adventure in stride, a true test of character...I'm thinking Summit Adventure should keep that one going for future courses.

Tomorrow it's back up to Cayambe for me, but this time with my GL2 video camera to hopefully (weather permitting) get some astounding shots of participants ascending to the summit with 360 degrees of make-you-pee-your-pants marvelous.

  

I finished reading Vagabonding by Rolf Pottson the bus trip back to Quito from Guayaquil.  It was a great encouragement in the way I want to live practically, physically and financially.  Please consider this quote referring to philosophers and religious leaders advice on money and living life to the full...

"Despite several millennium of such warnings, however, there is still an overwhelming social compulsion - an insanity of consensus if you will -  to get rich from life rather than live richly, to do well in the world instead of live well."

Something else I want to broadcast is a poem I just recently read.  Click the link.

"The Vision"

Smiles for miles,

Colin