Skier & Writer
The highlighted cultural activity in Edinburgh was the Scottish Museum of Modern Art. Some of the art was questionable, but some was absolutely fantastic, especially the neon words at the entrance (perfect after reading The Dharma Bums by Jack Keruac), and all the work by Victoria Morton, especially Dirty Burning.
After the marathon, Davinia's dad took us on a small road trip all around the Lake District, with stops in Barrow-in-Furness, Kirkstone Pass, Glenridding, and, as a perfect post-marathon walk, Easedale Tarn by way of Grasmere. The rocky green hills and lakes were awesome to see, and definitely got me excited for my indefinite time here in England.
What I did not anticipate was that I would lose feeling in my toes during the mountaineering mission in Kyrgyzstan, so I ended up running this marathon without feeling in most of my toes, except pain when I ran downhill, especially on asphalt.
As soon as we were on the other side, a podgy Kyrgyz man in a crowd of other men watching the clearing of the slide started screaming at me in Russian, too quickly for me to understand. He approached me with his hand raised, as if he were going to hit me in the back of the head, so I flinched and got out of arm's length as quickly as I could. The rest of the crowd, which included military and police officers, didn't even give the situation a cursory glance despite an obvious foreigner about to be whacked in the head.
Right at the base of the descent, the ground disappeared below my feet, and I fell into a crevasse.
We hiked across the stream and set up camp for the night at the Onion Field trailhead. The next day, we had absolutely fabulous weather for the hike to Camp 1, and only a few instances where we could not find the trail because of snow. Camp 1 is at about 4400 meters above sea level, which was the highest I had ever hiked to before (this is the elevation of Mt. Elbert in Colorado). Needless to say, I was stoked for everything beyond.
