大象传媒

Home and Dry

• Kay
• 19 Oct 06, 03:06 PM

Well, it has been a while, and I apologise for that. Whilst most of the team arrived back in the UK 10 days ago, Mike, Denny, Mac and myself stayed out in Nepal. We were joined by two other XE people, Monty and Blanche, and trekked up the Khumbu valley to check out tea houses for the expedition next year. More about that later. In the meantime, a few words about being back in the UK.

Having been away for 7 weeks, it was nice to get home to familiar things. It sounds silly but it was so good to get in my own shower, wash (and style!) my hair, and wear different clothes. My flatmate made me roast dinner with champ, and it was heaven. We arrived back on Sunday, so it was straight into the office on Monday to face a mountain of post, emails and telephone messages, despite the lovely Blanche covering for me whilst I was away. Yesterday, we had an Xtreme Everest main meeting and reviewed the expedition with all of the XE team, including those who went on our first Cho Oyu expedition in 2005.

This morning, Denny and I went to Oxford to undergo MRI spectroscopy of our hearts, brains and legs. This was a repeat of the same scans we underwent before we went to altitude, and is part of a pilot study that Andrew Murray, Damian Tyler, and Yaso Emmanuel are conducting, in preparation for Everest next year.

Whilst we were away, we had a theft from our offices that included Mike's bike, a number of computers and my portable hard drive. I am so annoyed! You work really hard to raise funds to make the expedition work, and then this happens. It is not as though my portable hard drive has any great resale value, yet its loss is a huge inconvenience, and an expense to replace.

On a lighter note, I have lost 5kgs and all my clothes fit better!