Today my thoughts are more of home and wife than Base Camp.  My wife, Terri,  and I celebrate 31 years today.  We are celebrating like most couples – I am on Everest and she is gong to the beach! 

In 2006 my wife chose to make the trek to base camp with me.  Terri’s plans where to return to KTM after a couple of days at Base Camp and spend some time shopping.  Now Terri’s idea, up till then, of roughing it was staying at the Holiday Inn.  On our first night in KTM we had an expedition dinner at which the expedition leader had everyone share their climbing background and training for the trip.  When Terri’s turn came she told everyone she was an “extreme shopper” and had been doing “high intensity shopping” to train.  It was quiet for a second until everybody burst into laughter – all but the expedition leader.  I think he was worried what he had got into.  It didn’t help that I had gotten her a T-shirt made that said

Veni, Vidi, Visa…
I came, I saw, I charged

To make matters worse Terri got the Khumbu revenge the very first night on the trail.  Unlike my wimpness who parked where I was at for a few days when I got sick this trip she just kept going.  By the end of the trip she was frequently setting pace for the rest of the pack.

Terri has never met a stranger.  After she left BC to go home I was continually regaled with what came to be known as “Terri stories”.  That has been a feature of our life together.  She has always been the extrovert who knew everyone and their life story.  She baked brownies at Christmas for the girls at McDonalds and Applebees and some of the other places we frequent.  She really is a caring involved person.  I’m not shy just not very outgoing.  For several years I ate breakfast at the same place, same seat with the same guys sitting next to me.  We exchanged greetings and the occasional newspaper and nothing else.  One morning my wife happened by to have breakfast with me.  Of course she knew everyone in the place.  She stopped at my neighbors table and was greeted warmly.  At some point I heard one of the guys introduce my wife “as the lady who is married to that climber you’ve read about”.  She nodded to me.  He twisted in his seat and said “you’re her husband!”  I disappoint a lot of people that way.  Awkward.  He tried to recover by saying “well I thought you would be bigger”.  So I am scrawny too!

My bride has put up with a tremendous lot from me.  I have missed Thanksgiving, New Years, and birthdays galore.  The worst: I got stuck in Antarctica and missed Christmas one year.  She can’t claim she didn’t have fair warning.  She tells friends the first time we met she had a flower behind her ear and I told her if she would wash back there better weeds wouldn’t grow.  I don’t exactly remember it that way but I was a pretty debonair young man.  Her family wanted her to marry this kid from a rich family they knew.  When I proposed I offered to “save her from a life of prosperity”.  How could she turn down a proposal like that.  At our wedding the preacher only needed to say “for richer” cause it couldn’t have got “poorer”.

I’ve worried that the joy/aggravation ratio has spent more time in the negative but she has always supported me.  Even the trip to Nepal with me didn’t turn out as expected.  She had allowed a few extra days for shopping in KTM before returning to the US but when she finally got back to Kathmandu from BC the country was in a full blown revolution.  The Ministry of Tourism met her and her fellow trekkers at the plane and provided an escort through the deserted streets of KTM to their hotel.  There was a 24 hour curfew on, machine gun nest on all the major corners and tires burning in the streets.  I told her later “Hey, how many husbands take their wives to a civil war?”

After 31 years you do learn to accommodate.  A few years ago we took a vacation on a Caribbean Island.  The mouth of the resort’s harbor cuts across in front of the beach.  I went sailing one day, scuba diving a couple of days and even took one day to do some ocean kayaking.  I over heard my wife telling some people she had had a wonderful time just relaxing on the beach with her book.  “And every time Bud went buy I would just wave back” she told them.  I thought good grief I must have looked like Forrest Gump.

For over thirty years she is the only one I have cared about impressing.  I am glad to have the support of my friends but she is the only one who knows the price I have paid and the price she has paid to support me.  She once told the Ledger Enquirer that when I was finished with the Seven Summits we were going to do the Seven Malls.  She’s earned it.  I’ll just get me a book and sit on a bench and wave at her as she goes by.  Happy Anniversary Sweet Girl, your sea level challenged husband, Bud

Post Script

Despite the civil war in 2006, check points all over Kathmandu and the occasional looter she still managed to get in some quality shopping!  Make no mistake she is world class – and just not shopping!