A half a century

As my 50th birthday approached this year, it made me reflect on my life. I have great friends, a great job, and I live in a great place, so there is little I would change.  Men my age are expected to have a mid-life crisis. I've had friends that bought sports cars or motorcycles as they hit age milestones.  Some of them even got depressed or had affairs.  But I am not that typical guy, so instead of having a mid-life crisis, I decided to go on a mid-life grand adventure. The problem was where to go or what to do.  I am lucky in that I have always traveled where ever I dreamed of going: Australia, India, Europe, South America.  I really could not think of something spectacular that fit my situation.  So I began to solicit suggestions from others and kept a list of the better ones. I had some great suggestions, like: Cage diving with sharks, hiking the Appalachian trail, or sky diving.  All of these were inspiring ideas, but one night my friend Krissi suggested climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Hmmm.  I added it to the list.  Over the next few weeks as I prioritized my list, it kept rising to the top.  It fit every thing I wanted to get out of my adventure: a little danger, a little travel, a little endurance training, and a lot of intrinsic cool factor.  So finally- I booked it.  Thanks Krissi, I owe you one.

I have traveled alone before, but most of my exciting international adventures have been with my significant other and best friend, Trish.  She really wanted to go on this adventure, too, but her grad school schedule and tendency for altitude sickness made her decide to pass on Kilimanjaro. Besides, she has been to Africa twice already.  But she is really cool and encouraged me to do this trip for me.  I will miss having her with me, but as Joe Banks says, "There are some doors in life you have to walk through alone".  This is one of mine.  I am approaching this trip as a sort of system reboot.  I will extract myself from my normal trappings for a while and spend time in Africa, on a mountain, freezing my tail off when tent-camping on a glacier!   Seriously , I should have a lot of time for quiet reflection during the long hours of hiking each day. Not having email and a phone will definitely take some getting used to. I think it will be good for me face a challenge of this magnitude at this stage in my life.

So there it is: I'm climbing to the highest point in Africa at 50 years old. Tomorrow I will post more about how I've been preparing for the trip.