A Rubber Chicken on Top of the World

My friend Michael Frank made it to the top of Everest this summer. Michael has the distinction, in a claim which has been documented and seems to be holding up under scrutiny, of being the first human being to bring a rubber chicken to the top of Mount Everest. Here's a description of the summit attempt. I climbed Mount Adams and Mount Ranier, and spent a fairly miserable night in a snow cave after getting stuck in a storm at ~14K feet just below Liberty Cap on Rainier, with Michael many years ago during my very brief alpine climbing career. Michael's tolerance for epic levels of human suffering is way higher than mine will ever be.

A Bad Day

This was not the best day in my rowing career. My friend John and I entered a 13 mile 'open water' Sound Rowers race on Lake Sammamish. We had high expectations, previously having been in a world masters champion quad and also getting 3rd in the world masters double. We were planning to set a course record for that race that would be around for a while. Unfortunately we were concentrating a little too much on going fast and not qute enough on, well, um, not hitting anything. We broadsided a fishing boat ten strokes after crossing the starting line.

I wrote up a little description of the whole incident for our club newsletter. There's a probably more interesting article in the same issue about two lunatics from our club who are getting ready to row across the Atlantic. Now that's just crazy.

Opening Day 2005

This is our Lake Washington boat about to win the mixed 8x race at Opening Day. I'm in the 5 seat (5th from the bow). This was a fast boat, with 5 of the crew having previously won masters world championships (including Rachel and BJ in the stern pair, and John, myself, and Bryl in the next three seats). One of the other three boats in our race hung in there for a while (the other two finished way back), but by the end we were all alone.