Stash, Cash and Lash

Today we picked up our kit, and it is quite simply AWESOME. So much so in fact, that I have even decided to put a picture up to show all you poor souls who don't have any. I'll skip over the collossal ball-ache that was sorting and dishing it all out, because it was worth it. God I love stash.

I should put that last statement into context. Last weekend Dave Kirtley stayed at my place and very kindly gave me an England training shirt that had previously belonged to his brother James.

I love it. In the nets last weekend I stuck it on and made a point of telling everyone it was a genuine England training shirt. The fact that not a single person gave a damn did little to deter me.

But now I have my own stash, and I have little doubt that after this trip I will have people coming up to me asking for shirts that I may have once worn, and I shall be only too happy to oblige, provided that is, it is not the shirt I'm wearing at the time.

The stash list does not stop there however. One of the phenomenal prizes we managed to source for the raffle at our send off party was a signed Ramprakash 100 hundreds bat. Only 100 of these were done and one lucky person would get to walk away with that little piece of history. That person, sadly was not me.

However, I wanted this thing bad, more than the tickets to the Ashes that were also going. My attempts to cheat in the raffle had been foiled (damn those honest people), as had my attempts to snatch it from the rightful winner before she got her mits on it.

Despite these setbacks I was not deterred, and I decided to hunt down said female winner and offer her cash, and finally my persistence paid off. Today I received the voucher for this little piece of kit, and I intend to get my hands on it sooner rather than later. It only cost me £100 too, bargain.

This leads me nicely onto my next topic. Cash. I appreciate that the above paragraph may make it sound like I have money to burn, and when I tell you shortly about my shopping trip to North Face, Ellis Brigham and Boots on Saturday, that theory well be backed up.

The truth is I actually am burning money, although not in the KLF who needs a million pounds way, more the, holy crap I'm really unprepared, perhaps if I buy stuff I can hide it way.

Unfortunately, for me anyway, my bank balance is throwing something of a hissy fit. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I was this skint. However, this is not something I want to dwell on, but if anyone has a spare couple of grand please feel free to send it my way!

So, the shopping episode. I met Hillary skipper Glen in Covent Garden and he then proceeded to do a serious sales job on me. As a man who has spent his entire professional life as a salesman (and may I add what a depressing sentance that is) you would think I'd be able to resist phrases like: "you'll really need two packets of rehydration tablets," and "I think you'd be crazy not to get that anti-bug sheet."

Why I didn't think of saying: "how about I just drink lots so I don't dehydrate and I'll stamp on the damn bugs" I have no idea. These things always seem so obvious after the event.

However, I do now feel very equipped for this whole thing now, and I can at least take solace in the fact that if all this stuff I've bought is a total waste of space, at least Glen bought it all too - and I've also told Hillsy he absolutely must buy the same things. Bonus.

Talking of Hillsy, I've not mentioned in much detail the fact that he failed the Umpires exam in February. This, I can only say, was a bit of a disaster. Just two days before we took the exam he had emailed me saying how happy he was about Umpiring and that he held no regrets about giving up a playing spot. Those who know the man will appreciate that he really loves his cricket, well, sport in general. On top of that, he's pretty good at it too, which is where the two of us differ.

Once he failed the exam he was left seriously redundant. No team and no role. Despite the fact that he took the general piss-taking that came his way with a gamely smile, I knew he was absolutely raging so I was incredibly relieved when he called me this morning to say he'd passed.

I did feel a twinge of guilt that Helen is now down to third choice, but then it's where she started and she always knew the deal. I think actually she's quite pleased that she will no longer, provided we both get there of course, have to face the wrath of an angry player whom she triggers. She will of course, be learning how to score on the way up - if she thought the umpires course was dull...

Finally, to lash. Back in September I gave up booze for a full four weeks in the lead up to the marathon and I fully intended to do something similar in the lead up to departure. With that just four sleeps away I can assure you all that this has not happened. However, we'll not be doing much drinking between now and the game on April 21st, so that is just something I'll have to come to terms with!

In other news, we have announced Nokia as our title sponsor, as you may have noticed from the picture above. It's great to get a known brand behind us and the announcement gave everyone a boost at our last meeting, which is splendid. It was also a bit of a relief being able to talk to people about it having been lucky enough to know a few days earlier.

Another great bit of news was that there is now a computer game of us. Yep, you read that correctly, someone has actually made a computer game based on our trip. Crazy. Even if you're not a cricket fan I strongly suggest you click here and have a look at this thing, it'll give you a small idea of what the event itself will look like. A huge thanks to Paul Collins at Stick Cricket for that.

So, we fly on Thursday. I'll try to post again before we leave, but you can follow our trip in some detail on the main website, which you should all know by now is http://www.theeveresttest.com/. Spread the word!

You may also have noticed a random selection of photos down the left hand side of this blog. These are some of my favourite photos from the trip so far that I have taken or have easy access to. I just thought I'd stick them in for a bit of a laugh. Until next time, whenever that may be!!

Getting emotional

OK, so since my last sense of humour failure the Everest juggernaut has continued to roll, and picked up a few folks on the way, on Saturday in our final meeting at Lord's we were very pleased to unveil Nokia as our title sponsor - at last!

As much as anything this means that Kirt can now chill out and focus on the expedition itself, on top of that I today received an email from Nir with the signed permission attached for the game - cue big sigh of relief.

However, it's not all that rosy I'm afraid to say. It's easy in these blogs to be very wishy washy and say how wonderful everything is, but actually the last couple of weeks have seen several people come under immense stress, and sadly that proved the undoing of one man.

My only contribution to the meeting on Saturday was to tell everyone what most people already knew, that Charlie Bathurst-Norman has pulled out with just two weeks to go to departure. I honestly cannot put into words how devastating this is.

I had worried about Charlie since he told me his stomach issues, which have bothered him since 2002, were as bad as they had ever been. He dutifully turned up at the door of 24: London for our send off party and did his bit ticking off names, but he wasn't drinking and left pretty early.

That was Thursday 19th, and when he called me on the following Tuesday and told me he was: "a non-starter" I really couldn't think of anything to say to him. We swiftly arranged to meet that night for a chat and on putting the phone down I just sat and stared at my screen for about 30 minutes. I genuinely felt like someone had died.

This may sound like an over-reaction, but Charlie was such a huge supporter of the expedition, and had given so much to it, that it just seemed so cruel and unfair that he, of all people, should be denied the opporunity to go to the place that he had become so obsessed with in the last year.

To give you an idea, he was a key part of the events committee and played a huge role in organising all the phenomenal parties we've had. He is the reason Surrey CCC have allowed us to use their nets every Tuesday, given us a suite for our return party and gave us some amazing raffle prizes. He came to Kathmandu with Kirt and I at Christmas and has helped us with some wonderful contacts over there. He organised a night out at City Golf for Team Hillary and came to Dartmoor for the absurdities that went on down there. Even that list does not do him justice.

It was because of these qualities that we seriously considered him for the captaincy of Team Hillary, but we felt he had enough on his plate already. How right we were. Vice captaincy simply would not have done justice to the man.

I could continue, but won't, I think you get the message. The email he sent out to the Hillary boys was quite something and I hope we have found a suitable way to honour him, which we also announced on Saturday but he is yet to find out about. I want to tell him to his face when I see him on Tuesday.

Now, after that rather morose bit of chat I should go back to all the good things that have happened. Another team weekend in Cornwall came right on the back of the Bath Half, which were both brilliant weekends and both involved a surprising amount of red wine and beer for a group of people who are supposed to be in training!

Mixed in with those we also had the comedy night on my birthday, and the send off bash, which were both extremely entertaining and proved once again how good our events guys are. I also went to The Oval to see one of the Lord's Taverners projects being carried out, table cricket for disabled kids. Quite humbling really.

We leave in just ten days time, everything is virtually in place. I tool delivery of 80 bright pink cricket balls on Friday, which we practised with on Saturday (they swing all over the place!) as well as all the medical kit that we dished out at the meeting, so my office was looking more like a delivery store room than a travel agents.

On that note, why is it that when people see a sealed cardboard box they feel they have to kick it? I shit you not, 6 different people walked passed the medical kit and said: "what's in here?" while putting the boot into the box. It's not like when they bring their mum into the office I would go and stamp on her foot while asking who she was would I??

Anyway, the excitement is starting to build, I for one, just cannot wait to get on the damn plane and be out there. Until next time.

Still Hooked

A little while ago I did a piece on being addicted to things, and here I am still struggling with the same issues.

Now, it's not like I'm addicted to crack or anything, but it would be nice to be addicted to something that is good for me rather than computer games or TV shows. I never became addicted to running or exercising, as many people told me I would when training for the marathon, and my latest fad is a slightly random by product of The Everest Test.

Yep, Stick Cricket ladies and gents. It is ruining my evenings and I can only say that it is a huge benefit to my professional life that it doesn't run very well on my system at work.

So I have set up Team Hillary and begun my quest for World Domination. After many efforts I finally chased down the 200-odd set by Bermuda, and once getting that first win under my belt I swiftly saw off the challenges of Holland, Canda, Scotland and Kenya, big wins all. Zimbabwe are currently posing a tougher opposition, but I am confident with hard work and single-mindedness I can beat them and move on to the big boys. Don't worry, I'll let you know how I get on.

Of course I have created all the members of Hillary and an interesting battle has been who would score the first hundred. This happened last night and I can imagine that everyone reading this blog will be disappointed. I came close myself, smashing 89* batting at six, then Kiwi hit 94 and Glen 91, but it was a man coming in at number 10 in a completely lost cause who struck a quite brilliant 111. I can tell you that Blade has now been promoted up the order.

So, other than that life is still pretty busy. Tonight I need to read everyone's blogs and decide on Blog of the Month, something I seem to have gotten myself into and really need to get on with - but it doesn't half take ages. Still, I need to find a good reason not to give it to Tooves, just to amuse myself. There's been a lot of good entries this month too.

I am also looking ahead to going down to the Brecon Beacons this weekend, as a follow up from Dartmoor. The latter trip was Hillary only and provided the kind of banter you can imagine when 14 lads get together and it was absolutely brilliant. I imagine with a slightly different selection of people we may tone down the chat slightly, but not by much.

Loads of stuff has happened since I last wrote here, the launch being the biggest thing as well as Kimbo's weekend, which I missed. Safe to say all things Everest continue to snowball and I also just finished reading "Into Thin Air". I strongly suggest you either buy the book or click on the link and read the short version - it's amazing and forced me to go and buy four more Everest-related books immediately afterwards.

The story itself is gripping and I can tell you now that when I lay my eyes on that mountain for the first time I will respect it even more now that I know and appreciate the true power it can wield.