Six months to summit day!

In six months we'll be on Kilimanjaro, hoping to summit. We have been going to a lot of talks by the Mountaineers or at REI, and one of the speakers -- a guide with International Mountain Guides -- noted that she's now very careful when talking about climbing trips. During her talk someone asked what happened if the weather was bad, or if someone couldn't make it to the top -- "Do they get their money back?" 

Ummm, no.

There was a weird whispering among the crowd -- wait, if the weather is bad and I'm unable to summit I don't get my money back? That's a ripoff! 

Again, no. 

Climbing is always risky, and there are a lot of variables that are beyond your control. So what you are buying is a climb... and a summit attempt, not a summit. 

Of course, what I want to do is summit. But what I really want is to have an amazing time, come down safely, and share it all with Wil. 

The next six months have a lot of training, and a lot of things to work on. But we've made some great strides:

• We booked our flights to and from Africa -- using air miles. Woot!
• We booked our hotel in Nairobi.
• We booked our flight to Zanzibar.
• We applied for our Tanzanian visas -- the Tanzanian embassy has had our passports for a few days now; we expect to have them back by the end of next week.
• We made an appointment with Beverly, the pharmacist at Katterman's for a travel consultation next week.
• We started to sort out cat sitters for while we are away. 

Also, I took delivery of my great big 90-liter Catagonia, err, Patagonia Black Hole duffel bag. Bub approves.