Scott Waxenberg is my hero, or what I learned in the Presidentials April 2008

So, where to begin.  This post is way overdue but work has been insane lately and unfortunately, i have had no time at all to post.

Mark, unfortunately, never made it to NH.  He was stuck in O'Hare for 11 hours.  Ergo, the dedication of these posts to him.  The irony is that Mark is truly my climbing partner, although Scott is coming on strong, and of the three trips we have planned, we have only climbed together once!

So, what follows will be a number of random thoughts from the NH trip distributed across an equal number of random posts.

From Mountain to Great Big Mountain

The odyssey that is this week begins! Tomorrow, its off to Scottsdale Arizona for the Freddie awards, the penultimate awards show for travel loyalty programs. GO SPG!!!!!!!!!!!

While there, we have an event with an agency where we will have a healthy breakfast and then go hike up camelback mountain. Fun!

On Friday, after a hopefully hugely successful night (GO SPG!!!!!! -- did I already say that?) i get on a flight at 7:35 am and fly through Cleveland to Manchester NH on Continental. I then rent a car, drive 2 hours and get to North Conway NH at about 8:30.

Saturday morning, we meet at EMS, plan the weekend, hike in and camp below tree line overnight. Sunday, we wake up and go PEAK BAGGING!

This time, I will be smarter and not drive home sunday night, but I will head to the best nacho place ever where we had brisket nachos last year. Wax and I then drive home on Monday.

What a week!

Getting There

So, I think I have mentioned before that I work in Interactive and Call Center Marketing for Starwood Hotels. This week, I was at the Phoenician (Beautiful, and not saying that as a company man) and the shower was incredible! Thats not really on topic, but you have to like huge drenching showers in the middle of a 120 degree desert.

So, it was the usual bevy of blah blah, but the night time activities and the social pieces were great. But, you ask, being that this is a blog about my middle age crisis and dream of becoming the next Edmund Hilary, what does Phoenix have to do with anything????

Luckily, the Phoenician (with the great showers) abuts (now there's a word that should be used more often) CamelBack Mountain, a 2500 foot mountain in scottsdale az. So, being that I am in training for the September Baker adventure, I thought to myself "self, there is a mountain in walking distance just daring me to climb it". So I did. The first time was the warm up, the "get a feel for it" hike. But day 2, with a climbing interactive marketing partner, we summitted. Its an awesome hike. Trail for a while, but a lot of scrambling to get to the top. Very good feeling when you hit the top, until you hear the story about the 70 year old who does it 3 times every day!!!!

The best part, we didn't see one rattlesnake!