No Pain, No Gain

I've never been much of an athlete, and I definitely have had trouble staying motivated to maintain an exercise plan. So when we decided that we wanted to go to Nepal and do some hiking, I thought I should really do something to try to prepare myself for a few days of hiking in mountains at a significant higher altitude than I am used to. I've hiked in the Rockies and at Yosemite before, but I think this is going to be a little higher altitude and a little longer than anything I've done before.

So what's my plan? Well, three weeks ago I decided that the best exercise I could do to prepare myself would be going up and down stairs. Of course I also thought cardio exercise would be a good idea. After some thought and trial and error, I have settled on a training program to get me ready. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I will do a 5 min. warm-up and cool-down on our elliptical machine with training on the stairs in between. I started at going up and down the stairs for 10 min. the first week am adding 1 min. to that each week. Today I just finished 12 min. I also decided that since I will be carrying a backpack, I should also do that in my training. I have some 7.5 lb. disk weights, and on Mondays, I wear my backpack with 1 disk in it, Wednesdays, 2, and Fridays, 3. I also decided that on Tuesdays and Thursdays I would do cardio training, so I usually do the elliptical machine for between 20 and 30 min. On the weekends, I try to ride my bike or go for a long walk.

You may be saying to yourself that that doesn't sound too terrible. For the most part, you're right. I can do 30 min. on the elliptical machine without too much difficulty, but the stairs are pure torture. To give you an idea what I am doing, today I went up and down the stairs 48 times in 12 min. with 22.5 lbs. in my backpack. That's 624 stairs and 390 vertical feet up and down. The first 10 times aren't bad. The second 10, I start to feel it. The remaining 28 are gruelling.

Based on pictures of Nepal I have seen online, I think it will all be worth it. Only 7 more weeks to go. Please pray that I make it that long.

Trip Plans

It's now 58 days until dad and I leave. We were supposed to leave on Friday, Oct. 9 and return Saturday, Oct. 24. Unfortunately, I found out the other day that the last flight in our trip has been cancelled. Our choices now are basically to come back on Sunday or to come back on Friday. We don't really want to come back from a long trip and have to go to work the next day, so we are probably going to have to cut our trip short by a day.

As of right now we are planning on travelling to several places in Bangladesh and Nepal. Some of this is subject to change, but our current itinerary is:

10/9: Fly to Dhaka, Bangladesh via Chicago and Abu Dhabi.
10/11: Arrive in Dhaka and go straight to Bogra where Phillip is living. We'll stay there for a couple of days and see what he does and what the area is like.
10/13: Drive back to Dhaka for a flight to Kathmandu, Nepal.
10/14: Travel to Pokhara, Nepal. We will hopefully go on a 3 or 4 day hike in the Himilayas.
10/20: Fly back to Dhaka. If we have time we will travel to Mymensingh, Bangladesh to see another area where MCC is involved. If not, we will likely stay in Dhaka for our last couple of days.
10/23: Fly back home via Abu Dhabi.

I'm most looking forward to seeing where Phillip lives and hiking in Nepal. It's definately going to be an eye opening experience.

(For those of you who don't know, Phillip is in Bangladesh with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for three years. He has been there since November of last year. He graduated last year with a degree in Economics. His role (to the best of my understanding) is to collect and analyze data as part of a team whose goal is to improve production for poor rural farmers. For more information, check out Phillip's blog.)

Welcome, Namaste, and Kemon Achen

Welcome to my blog. I am starting this as a way to share updates and pictures of a trip I am taking in October. My brother, Phillip, is living in Bangladesh for the three years. He has been there since last November. I had not really thought about traveling there to visit him until this past spring. At some point, I decided that this was an opportunity I may never have again. With that, I decided (with the blessing of my wife) to go visit him. I'll provide some more details in later posts, but the plans are right now to go for two weeks in October. Going along with me is my dad. We are also planning on taking a weeklong trip to Nepal, but those plans have not been finalized. I probably won't be posting too often because I'm not much of a writer, but I'll do my best. Please feel free to leave questions or comments, and I hope you enjoy reading about my trip.