Who's on First?

Front Row, left to right: Bob, Lumpy, Saskia, Troy, Walter, Peggy (Posh Spice), Larry, Tom, guide, Gill, Sam

Tuesday morning, the whole group has arrived, and we're off to meet our crew and guides. First, a bit about the hikers.

Bob is an old friend from ROC, now living in the midwest. He was an outstanding triathlete way back when, and now spends most of his days writing out alimony checks and creating graphs. Bob showed up with an altitude vs. % O2 loss chart so we would know what we were up against. Of course, it was done in 3 colors, 4 languages, and both metric and english grids. Needless to say, he's an engineer...

Saskia and Walter were newlyweds (albeit the apparently had "relations" beforehand...I was appalled) and this was their honeymoon. Surprisingly, the same thing that kathy and I did for our honeymoon...well, except for never leaving South Buffalo and all the vomiting and such. Anyhow, they were a most interesting young couple. Saskia works in a meth lab in Oakland, mixing crack cocaine, and Walter (or Wally as he really liked to be called) was a gangsta rapper from Berkley, THE home of honkey gangsta rap. He grew up in Guam, which is a suburb of Compton I believe.

Troy was our youngest hiker, and our "staff" photographer. He was originally from Indiana, but had moved to some big city in Iowa. Well, except for the fact that his navigational skills were less than stellar, so he was unknowingly residing in South Chicago. Troy took about 200 million photos on the trip, including such hot spots as inside the latrine pit at 15k. He also received awards for (a) most sentences strung together without a breath, (b) least hair on a 20-something, and (c) best face-plant at 16k. Oh, and "most IV bags in 2 hours".

Larry and Posh were a totally cute couple of mormons from Colorado. Posh spent most of her time putting on make-up, doing her hair, and spot cleaning her clothes, while Larry drank beer with the guys, looked at porno mags, and got high. He was definitely the coolest mormon guy I've ever met, (and since the only other one I know is Mitt Romney, that really didn't take a lot). He invited us to the mormon Trashfest '08 in Las Vegas next year as his guest; we are all very excited.

Tom is an old friend, both chronologically and, well, chronologically. He's done many of our "Lumpy events" with me, including the Canandaigua swim, the Russia triathlon trip, and the NRA assault rifle national shootoff. I usually bring him along for his superior ability to get me OUT of trouble. Plus, it had been a few years since I broke any of his bones, and Kilimanjaro looked like a good place to really put a hurting on him. He's really brittle nowadays.

Gill is our token "guy magnet". Everywhere she goes, guys just fall all over her...mainly because they trip on her size 11 feet. She's also done a bunch of "Lumpy events" over the years, including the Tahoe Rim Trail hike, the Bike Tour of Colorado, and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit awards (in which she was a competitor in the "women who can kick the crap out of any guy" category). We were most concerned about Gill just RUNNING up the mountain and leaving us all in her dust...which, of course, is just what she did.

Our final hiker was Sam from Colorado. Sam was a beast of a man, about 6'2" (or 8.9 meters) and 240 lbs (6,295 kilograms). Sam was a former high school football star (a la Al Bundy), and is quite the schmoozer when it comes to catholic deacons and their daughters (long story, but suffice to say even I wouldn't have told that joke to a deacon about his daughter!).

Tom was kind of the mini-me version of Sam; both bald, well muscled (well, Sam was anyways), and spent a LOT of time horizontal. See next post....

All in all, a heck of a good crew to go hike a mountain with.

Lumpy out