Please! Don’t lose any more sleep! I made it down from the mountain alive!



Phew. I know you have been thinking of nothing else, and I want to apologize for letting you dangle for so long, ignorant of whether I survived or whether my life was taken in the jaws of an icy crevasse.



Yes, I, Breakup Babe, survived the toughest endurance climb in the lower 48 states. Not only that, I made it to the top. Not only that, I wasn’t even tired! Well, a little, teeny bit. I was too busy being terrified to be tired!



I mean, how can you be tired, for crying out loud, when you are standing on the side of 14,000-foot mountain, staring down at giant crevasses? Or walking across a foot-wide ledge with a cliff on one side and a chasm on the other?



When the terror would momentarily give way, there was room for exhilaration too. At the sight of the Northern Lights at 2 a.m. Or the snaking line of headlamps coming up the mountain with a pink and purple sunrise behind it. Or a bergschrund curving its giant edges delicately over the trail.



And the guides! My! They were a sight in themselves. Breakup Babe may have a b-b-boyf—well, you know what I’m trying to say – these days, but she cannot help but notice such spectacular specimens of manhood!



Anyway. While most of you probably imagine me as some glamorous model type gadding about town in the latest fashions and sipping designer cocktails at the coolest bars, there is another side to me too (Gemini, remember?), and that would be the Earthy Crunchy Outdoor Girl who loves nothing more than to spend whole days and nights climbing mountains. Preferably steep, hard mountains. Preferably with a cute boy who has lots of stamina.



And if ever there was a poor match for BB in terms of boys with stamina, it was Loseur. Oh he tried to keep up with me, I’ll give him that much. In the beginning, he desperately wanted to impress me. He spent lots of money on lots of fancy gear. And in fact, we went on some great bike rides.



But the truth is, when it came to the mountains, he was tres wimpy! My God! That man would not have made it five steps up Mt. Rainier before whining that he was tired and sick; turning around; then getting mad at me later for not offering to turn around with him, even though 1)he didn’t ask and 2)it was my fondest with in the world to climb Mt. Rainier.



Hmmph. Lucky, then, that I found a boy who likes to climb mountains as much, if not even more than me. IRD (who has already climbed Mt. Rainier) is currently trying to convince me to climb Mount McKinley with him. Fat chance of that ever happening, but I’ve been a long time looking for a boy who would even ask such questions.



So, this summer continues its amazing run. Do you think it can end without anything bad happening?



The only thing that would make it a little more perfect is that if my father were still alive. I so much want to tell him about Mount Rainier!