Ok....bad news=pistons lost.  Good news=I just climbed to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hey,

well i made it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i wouldnt put so much emphasis behind that if i didnt mean it..it was so hard...we turned the 6 day trip into only 5 days...it was a blessing tho, because we pretty much were a step ahead of everyone on the mountain..they say only 40 percent of the people that attempt to climb kili actually make it ot the summit..im happy to report that my group, which comprised myself and 3 ladies, all made it!  100 percent!  it was so hard,, you cant imagine how it feels 20,000 feet up in the air...well you basically feel like crap....just wanna go to sleep.  The 3 ladies i was with...dee, tayo, and laurie...were awesome..dee was the lady from wisconsin that i did the safari with.  the other two are from colorado....(they live at 10,000 ft) so that helped them.  The ladies..and pretty much everyone that does the climb has been training for months for the 5/6 day tenting trek.  I am happy that i could just show up with no equipment and complete the trek.  The first few days of the journey were not that hard...The last day, the summit day...well we were on zero sleep...and had to get up at 12 midnight to start the 6 day hike to the top...at the top of the mountain..it was 20 below with a 50 mph wind...so cold so cold so cold so cold.  I would say this was one of the toughest things ive ever done..the altitude sickness part is horrible...especially for a boy like me from michigan, alt. 300 ft. or whatever....The ladies i was with were on anti alt. sickness drug and they said that helped a lot. So yeah, in 5 days we hiked 62 miles.  ahhh so much...but like i said the summit day was the worst...in a matter of 36 hours we slept for 1hr and hiked to the top of kili and back down...you can imagine how that added to the severity of the climb.  Looking back im super happy i did it....but you couldnt pay me enough shillings, US dollars, gold, or beer to do it again.  I have some great pictures and video of us doing the climb...i took a pic with my MSU shirt at the summit point...got a tee shirt and whatnot too...as far as how it worked with the guides and the porters...we had one head guide, deo, and he had an assistant...each day we started hikiing we would take exactly what we needed (ie rain jacket, extra socks, lots of water) and then start hiking..we left behind all the rest that we didnt need for the day hike with the porters.  There were 4 of us ("clients) and we had 14 porters (sad b/c they only make 5 bucks a day, but we tipped well) ....so we hiked up with deo and his assisant and usually hiked 4-5 hours a day...eventually summitting at 6:40 am on wednesday morning.  I give good earth tours Five stars/Five stars...if i could give them six stars i would..thats how great they were. i mean i showed up with basically nothing for hiking except my bag...and they rented me all the best stuff....all basically north face and H/H gear. oh and food...really good...we got breakfast lunch and dinner on the mountain every day in our lil dinner tent...our cook was awesome...you wouldnt believe how good food can be some thousands of ft up a mountain.