From mountaintops...

I celebrated my 30th birthday in grand style.. by rewarding myself with a ten-day vacation in a whole other continent with a girlfriend. And reminded myself that I'm still young, healthy, strong, and loving life by climbing up Egypt's highest peak, Mount Katherine.

And, boy, was I hurting up there! By the last bit of the ascent, I could barely keep up with my 61 year-old guide who probably weighed 95 pounds soaking wet and whose soles were about to fall off his ancient shoes.

The view was absolutely gorgeous. No green, but the variation of stone, terrain colors, lava rock, made it all awesome when looking from the top. This self-pic is just beyond cool. I didn't expect to capture so much detail. 

The one time in my life I truly really really screamed

Just to remind you all that, while I tend to be a more serious and reserved person, I do have a sense of adventure and a healthy dose of spunk.

My philosophy in travel lately has been to do things instead of regretting that I didn't do them later. When I found myself in the birthplace of the bungy (note, Americans, it's spelt "bungy" not "bungee") in Queenstown, New Zealand, I knew I had to do the jump even though just before ever going to NZ I had been adamant that any sort of jumping- off a bridge, out of a plane, off a ski ramp- is something I would never get myself into. My verdict? Outrageously expensive for an extremely short split second, but, damn, it sure comes with some awesome bragging rights. And I will never ever ever do it again.

where am I?

Last fall, I had a short stint playing with the local ultimate frisbee team, the Soi Dawgz. Finding them was difficult- their webpage was under construction. Their advertised email was non-existent. It took a brain fart for me to think to look them up on Facebook. Bingo.

Armed with a vague map and vague directions, directions that said "hope on a motocycle taxi and say you want to go to the Big Field" I went in search of pick-up ultimate.

I try to go by the map. And walk to it. It was a grid map. Walk a straight line. How hard can that be? After the third windy intersection, I gave up. I was utterly lost. I called the contact I had. And she had no idea where I was.

I wander to another fork, each side with a field clearing. Left: empty. Probably not it. Right: empty but a gaggle of people in the lot by it. Cool. I'm there. I walk up and realise the people milling about were men finishing their badminton practice. I work up the courage to ask the group if they knew where the frisbee field was. With perfect English, one man says he thinks he knows the general area they would be in and offers me a ride.

By now, alarm bells should be going off. But they're not. And I'm sweaty, lost, tired. Probably against all logic, I took him up on his offer. As the car cruises around each drive methodically in search of the right field, I finally ask "What is this place?"

"It's an Army base"

Huh? How-?