BC - Groundhog Day

Waiting for the weather window feels a lot like Groundhog Day. The weather is generally the same every day (blue sky, sunny and windy), we eat meals daily and regularly at 09:30, 2:30 and 7:30 every day, and conversations generally revolve around the summit window, or summit day generally or the ever popular weather forecast. Somehow these conversations always degenerate into one or another toilet joke or a ‘silent but deadly‘ fart by a member of the team where the next 20-minutes are spent arguing over ‘who-dunnit‘ while the Mess Tent turns into a gas chamber.

On a daily basis we wake up at 7:20-ish to the intense heat of the morning sun on our tents and go to bed wrapped in our down jackets with our headlamps on, diving into the warm comfort of our sleeping bags armed with hot water bottles. Such is life at base camp…… It will be good to get moving again although I think that it will be quite a shock to the system.

I called my sister today and had the most refreshing conversation about hats to wear at Ascot and what dress would be most appropriate for a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham palace. While I thoroughly enjoy the boys' company, speaking to someone outside of the Everest 'bubble' about a non-Everest topic is quite refeshing..!

We're still waiting for the all allusive Weather Window and are finding all sorts of creative ways to keep entertained in the midst of our varied climate - freezing in the tents before the sun rises, sweltering as soon as the sun hits the tent, wam in the mess-tents for breakfast and lunch, winds picking up in the afternoons and then cold again in the evenings, leaving us ducking for our down jackets and headllamps to enjoy our 3-course meals....

Josh and Max are working on sparring lessons, Max also started building a patio that is worthy of a "Better Homes and Gardens" magazine feature ("Everest Base Camp Cairns and Patios"), Pete and Matt are progressively eating throgh the Luxury Barrel, Matt D is trawling through the entire box set of Oscar dvd classics and trying to find the all the rom-coms, Geordie and Pete are taking over the world in a heated battle of Risk (to the dulcet tones of military marches blaring over the background speakers), Steven is enlightening us with all sorts of rugby-initiation drinking games and and antics, Keith has gone totally AWOL (last seen in plaid flannel pjama pants and a down Millet jacket) as has discovered the "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" trilogy, Brendan is trying to teach Josh guitar (and any Jonny Cash song), Andrew is looking for his Nalgene bottle that keeps disappearing (somewhat mysteriously)...

Things We Won’t Miss about climbing Everest (initial list)

1. Getting dressed on your knees in a tent

2. Not smelling your clothes before you put them on

3. Washing in a potato pan
4. Porridge
5. Getting on your knees at night to pee
6. Dry tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth
7. Facial hair
8. 7:30am tent turning it from a meat freezer into a sauna in about 30 seconds
9. Not changing pants; not wearing pants
10. Drinking warm water out of a nalgene bottle
11. Dandruff on your legs
12. Wet wipe baths
13. Flakes in the drinking water
14. Making up excuses to go to the Russian camp to use their sauna
15. Worrying about pee-bottle spillage / overflowing at night
16. Smell of any dish made with mushrooms
17. Wondering where the dettol wipes come from and how they wash them
18. Emptying pee bottles in the morning
19. Sun burned tongue
20. Florescent green Borat-style mankinis
21. The Moraine Superhighway
22. The smell of the cork on the giant Chinese hot water thermos
23. Replacing deodrant with Merino Wool (shirt, underwear, long-johns)
24. Wearing underwear inside out, front to back, back to front... and then giving up all together
25. Stepping in yak poo and then tracking it in your tent
26. Boys pulling our each others chest hair during breakfast (you know who you are!!)
27. Forgetting toilet paper and realising it too late
28. Learning to balance precariously on the ABC toilet tent rocks
29. The conversation, "Would you "go" in your down suit"
30. Waking up drowning in drool in the 'hood' of your sleeping bag
31. The sound of the 'bell' on the propane tank for breakfast, lunch, dinner (BOTH for Tibetan time AND Nepal time)
32. Living in a different time zone (-2 hours) to our neighboring tents, 3 feet away
33. Crepe paper doubling as toilet paper
34. Waking up to your tent mate taking (trying) a pee in a bottle.
35. Not knowing whats going on in the world (what's all this about an ash cloud?!)
36. No Anchorman
37. Everyone trying to charge phones and cameras at the same time and making the generator cut out
38. Debates about Diamox
39. The "Tingiri Hilton" and the "Tingiri Diet"