I'm going to Everest

“Soooo, hypothetically, if there was a fundraising trip to help save the Rhino’s and you got to be part of a team to trek to Everest base camp this year, would you be keen?”

- Evangeline (my friend), Whatsapp, a few weeks ago

I’m going to Everest. I've been saying that to myself a lot over the past few weeks, like a lottery winner repeating over and over to himself, “I’m a millionaire. I’m a millionaire.” before he’s had time to go out and make some bad financial decisions. And every time I say it Debussy’s Claire de Lune plays as the soundtrack in my mind like one of Billy Ocean’s Eleven watching the Bellagio fountains.

                            Obscure Movie Reference: Billy Ocean's 11 - Bellagio Foutains

Maybe going to Everest isn't like winning the actual lottery, but you can bet that if I did win the lottery, Everest would be right at the top of my shopping list. But I'd be lying if I said that going to Everest has always been one of my biggest dreams. Rather, it's been one of those barely-formed dreams- you know like becoming an astronaut or flying a fighter jet or being actual real actual Kelly Slater. These are the dreams that one never really cares to build on because of the sheer improbability of them. They just linger in the back of your mind with all the other wouldn’t-it-be-nices.

In all honesty, Everest only joined my list of improbable dreams some time after Christmas. I was doing a little subconscious audit of my dreams (see fig.1) when a subconscious map of the World subconsciously slipped into my minds eye, and I thought, “Flip, I'd like to go to ALL the places! What are the chances?”

    Fig.1: Subconscious Dream Audit

So I started this quick subconscious calculation (people who like to calculate stuff, I’m sure you can relate):

192 – countries in the world (United Nations figure).

18 –    countries I’ve been to.

15 (approx) – Middle Eastern and countries ending in “stan” that I don’t want to visit.

192 - (18+15) = 159 countries still to visit

28 yrs old – current age

80 yrs old – life expectancy as expected by me

80 - 28 = 52 years still to live

159 countries divided by 52 years to live = 3 to 4 countries/year

I don’t want to be a pessimist here but like, that’s impossible! The chances of going to ALL the places are slim. So I narrowed it down: “Which places do I have to see before I die?”

1. India
2. USA
3. Polynesia
4. Mexico
5. Seychelles etc.

And then I relaxed and did no more thinking or calculations. But later, after I’d finished relaxing, I thought, “What if you had to be extravagant? No calculations, no listing of your favorites, no surfing-takes-priority, just pure, selfish, no logic wishes.”      à     Everest.

Around this time, but unrelated to the event, I felt God telling me to dream big. I mean live-in-Hawaii-famous-author-be-actual-real-actual-Kelly-Slater big! I know everyone wants to dream big like a motivational poster, but I think my dream-big mechanism had been broken for a while and God needed to remind me how it worked. So I listened. I wrote down some of my big dreams and set in motion some plans to achieve them. Everest was not among those dreams. I hadn’t really thought of it as a dream really, just a wish.

But I've become accustomed to God surprising me with unexpected stuff. Sometimes it’s not great stuff (He calls it character building), and other times He blows my mind by answering prayers I haven’t even had time to pray. Being all-knowing He knows the "silly wishes" that linger in the back of my mind with all the other rubbish and half formed twitter updates that get stuck back there. Why he chose to pull this one out of the random file, and not oh say, "becoming really good at break dancing", I just don't know. But he has, and I'm lank pumped! I'm going to Everest! 

Also...thanks Eva ;)

Not An Open Letter To The Lady Who Killed The Lion King

As I sat down at my computer with my take-away Executive Breakfast this morning I opened Facebook and got ready for a little pre-work social networking. I smiled as I un-wrapped my favorite brekkie of 2 eggs, 3 rashers of bacon and 200g rump steak.

But what I saw as the page opened onto my news feed made me sick- a photo of some despicable woman kneeling next to the dead body of the Lion King, smiling demonically with rifle in hand. If it weren’t for my insatiable appetite for the flesh of farm animals I would have stopped eating right then and there!

As I continued to read, all the while chewing on bits of unfertilized chicken embryo and slithers off of a pigs back, it became apparently clear that this Lion King was actually part of a “canned hunting” scheme. I didn’t want to research it, but from my imagination what I gathered was that Yanks (or Brits and I’d like to add possibly Croatians and Westerosi) are crossing our borders and sneaking into the Kruger National Park to genocide these Lion Kings that are being bred like cattle for the slaughter on Lion King farms.    

Let me tell you, I was so shocked with my conclusion that bits of partially ground Bonsmara fell right out of my mouth onto my bloody plate! I mean, can you imagine, just these farms with herds and herds of Lion Kings grazing in the fields, or buildings where elephants are force fed to fatten them up for consumption, or slaughter houses dedicated to providing leopard braai meat for National Braai Day?

The story just reminded me so much of that elephant-hunting-family story that went viral a month or two ago. You know that one with an entire murderous family smiling next to that kind of extinct species elephant?

As I read through those 14 762 rage filled comments I felt myself nodding in agreement as people were hoping and praying for an opportunity to meet that family in the street and maybe perform some mob violence on them just as they had done to that extinctish elephant. Flip, by the end I was just so pumped to go out and end some serious human life!

But then some douche on the comments feed started talking about conservation and the importance of controlling elephant populations in national parks and I was like, “Conservayshun? Who’s that? Screw Him! WHAT DO WE WANT? Vast rampant herds of uncontrolled elephant. WHEN DO WE WANT IT? Now!”

Anyway, tonight, after I finish my delicious meal of Atlantic Blue Marlin fillets, I’m going to write an open letter to that demon lady and that other family with really young kids from hell. All I want them to know is how this compassionate world will NOT stand by as they wipe out our population of animals that have featured as characters in Disney movies. They must expect to be Spanish Inquisitioned!

Afterword

It may or may not please you to know that I, in fact, hate hunting (canned hunting worst of all)! There are discussions about the effects (whether positive or negative) of canned lion hunting on the conservation of the species. These are held between specialists who know vastly more about the issue than any Facebooker. Still, I think it’s a horrible thing to do!

However, I also hate the double standards that people have. No one freaks out over the deaths of hundreds and thousands of cows for beef because no one has an emotional attachment to cows. I am a meat eater, so I realize the importance of the beef industry, but I don’t think the death of a cow is any less sad than the death of a Lion (except where conservation issues are concerned). What shocks me too is the violence directed from one human to another over these photos that have gone viral and the fact that people just don’t do research about these issues before they lash out. Anyway, this was just a fun post to have a dig at said lashers.

If you actually are interested in learning just a little about these issues, here are two links which might enlighten you as they have me… just a littleJ

Extinctish-but-not-really Elephants:

http://www.sanparks.co.za/parks/kruger/conservation/scientific/key_issues/Elepolicy.pdf

Issues concerning canned hunting of Lion Kings:

http://ewn.co.za/2013/06/03/Canned-lion-hunting-could-save-the-species