In the last couple of weeks, several people have died trying to climb Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. In at least some cases, Sherpas were telling the people to get down off the mountain, but they went ahead to the summit and died on the way down.
I recently returned from a trip to Nepal where I realized a long term dream. I trekked with my wife Karalee and a group of friends through the Himalayan Mountains to the Annapurna Sanctuary where we got to get up before dawn to hike up to Annapurna Base Camp and view the early rising sun paint Annapurna, the tenth tallest mountain in the world, with light. While any fit person can do this trek, it created some personal challenges for me that are among the greatest I’ve ever overcome.
I volunteer at Dragonboat Regattas in Vancouver’s False Creek. Dragonboat racing is a popular sport in Vancouver with thousands of participants. This weekend I was driving race referees around the race course all afternoon. There was one other referee and boat driver and between the four of us we had no extra people on the water. Which meant that we spent the entire afternoon out on the water helping to run race after race.