We recently watched the film Lawrence of Arabia as part of our ongoing movie research. The film starts with the death of Lawrence as he’s zooming through the English country side on his motorcycle. According to Wikipedia: “A dip in the road obstructed his view of two boys on their bicycles; he swerved to avoid them, lost control and was thrown over the handlebars of his motorcycle. He died six days later.”
The article goes on to reference an interesting neurosurgery article by Nicholas Maartens (and others):
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Following up on our Big Sur trekking adventure, we decided to try another outing, this time down south to the Golden Trout Wilderness. This time it was just Michael, Anjel and I (Christine was unable to make it). Michael had found a great trail review on someone’s blog that described a 26 mile loop that sounded like it would make a perfect Memorial day weekend trip. 3 days (a planned 10-10-6 mile breakdown) would be challenging, but looked like an amazing trip.
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In preparation for our time in Mongolia, we’ve listened to the audio book of “Genghis Khan: Emperor of All Men
” by Harold Lamb and have almost finished reading “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
” by Jack Weatherford. Both are great books, though I would recommend Weatherford’s over Lamb’s. That may be due in part to the fact that Lamb’s was the audio book and the narrator was not the greatest in my opinion. Also, Mongol names often sound very foreign and at times it became difficult to remember who was who without seeing the names written down – but that may just be me.
That said, one of the brief, but amazing topics in Weatherford’s book was this: [read the full post…]
Our pre-trip research has turned up some amazing multi-day treks in some of the countries we’ll be visiting. One of the most extreme has to be the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. The trek is 17 to 21 days long, covers roughly 186 miles and takes you up to nearly 18,000 feet.
Anjel and I are enthusiastic and in pretty good shape, but the one things we don’t have is much hiking and camping experience. Enter our good friend and wilderness enthusiast, Michael Yap. We’d been talking about going camping with him and his wife for sometime and finally set a date. Catching the last few days of REI’s big sale, Anjel and I spent an epic 5 hours in the Berkeley strore, trying on packs and boots. The pack department guy was unbelievably helpful and we walked out with two Osprey packs, two sleeping bags and a brand new pair of boots for me.
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