Valerio Massimo Everest Expedition 2009

Valerio’s trainer has been impressing upon him the need for lots of food and sleep this last week to build some excess weight but our plans for a last-but-one lie in this morning were thwarted by a couple of well- meaning (we think) Germans who rang at 6:30 am with some ‘very important’ questions about Everest. Having satisfied their curiosity

 [“Are you actually in a tent right now?” “No, not yet, we’re in London so we decided to use the bed”.

“And how high is Everest exactly?” “Try Wikipedia” etc…] 

we reluctantly got up and threw ourselves into an almost-final last day of planning, packing, and package reception. 

First nightmare of the day: we called FedEx to discover that British customs had secretly delayed all our communications equipment since Monday. On calling they proudly announced that they had “sent us a letter” informing us of its arrival. As this wouldn’t have arrived until after Valerio had left it seemed a little pointless, and resulted in lots of headless chicken behaviour on our part.

But it all ended well and we are now in possession of enough satellite and communications equipment to take control of the world from our tents, Bond-villian style. We just have to work out how to use it all.

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