Count

6/14/2007

First day traveling... and traveling...

Yesterday at about 330pm, my family and I set off from Columbus Plaza to Peru. THIRTY hours later, we've finally settled in. Oh yes, you read that right. No disrespect to my Indian friends traveling back home, but this was still quite an ordeal.

Let's just say I haven't done anything weirder (this includes my ordeal with United in Denver and then my unbelievably timed trip to Boston) than:
  • Arrive and depart from the same airport FOUR times in a day
  • Fly from one airport to another TWO times in 12 hours

Our consolation prize was a great meal at a restaurant called TanTa. My god they were awesome. Maybe it was the whole travel mess; or maybe just hunger. I'm not sure. Either way, they were good, and they immediately quelled my fear of sub par food experiences instilled by 2R, whom famously said that she craved McD after her Peru trip.

Anyway, it was fitting that with all this adventurous mishaps in Peru that I finished reading Touching the Void, an amazing true story of how two friends survived broken souls and legs. Reading how the author survived his certain death fall and then managed to crawl himself to safety reminded me of my Tibetan experience (at the end of the page), which of course pales in comparison but still looms big in my life as my closet death encounter. Anyway, I thought the author had a very accurate desription of how one physially and mentally feels when he or she brushes death. I don't know how lose I was to death, but I had very similar experience - the voice vs. thoughts, setting into a pattern, collapsing one help came, etc. Very good book for a quik read. I can't imagine myself in a similar situation; well, part of it is because I am a wuss and I would never plae myself in that kind of danger... but also the guilt would just bury me alive. Highly reommended. I now want to read the other hiking books!

2 comments:

Faisal said...

Check out http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0404/adventure_books.html

It lists the greatest adventure books of all time, and if you enjoyed Touching the Void, you're going to love some of the others.

shmoo said...

Mr. Lam, you spent thirty hours getting from Chicago to Peru, what are you going to do now? Blog!

As for Faisal's list, it looks like a pretty good list of stuff I've never read. ;) Thought I have read different things by at least four of the authors (Twain, Greene, Wolfe, Irving). I've also, uh, seen a few of the movies. :)