Day 3 - December 13, 2013

THE NEXT MORNING, I came out of the lodge and said 'good morning' to Sarah - she growled 'good morning Princess". Wow. I had been toying with saying something profound so they weren't so rude for the rest of the trip. I did have another 6 days with these people. Definitely thinking this route was a mistake. At breakfast, the ELEPHANT was in the room so before everyone left, I said something….to the effect that I have had 5 operations in the last year, I did have Cancer and chemo so my immune system is weak and am prone to bronchitis. I was afraid that if I stayed wet and cold, it would lessen my chances of summiting.

Sarah and Zak, the youngest Army folks blew a gasket. Sarah - "are you on chemo now" My mom has stage 4 breast cancer and some other irrelevant nasty s***. Then Zak chimed in, "I was a chemo nurse for 2 years and I know what it's like, how do you know what we said blah blah blah." The only thing I could think of to say was "oh, poor patients!" After their most uncomfortable barrage, I then said 'look, we have been thrown together and each of us is making this very personal journey for our own reasons. Let it go, because I will do what I think I need to do to summit, and I expect you will do the same - so we all make it'. Then shared what Chambo had explained to me about going slow adding that perhaps we should defer to his experience in getting people to the top and just do as he says - he is the leader. Then I left. I am so not impressed with the level of anger these people have - and they shoot MK14's and whatever else...OMG!

After we started hiking a rather pleasant route, without rain, Will and Dave and others were pretty nice to me so I felt better. In fact we were all happy until the GD rain started and poured for an hour and one-half. It was so miserable to set up tents and put mats in and try and keep them dry. Cat and I have started using old clothes for dry cloths. I am so grateful to Alfred for insisting I take some warmer pants and jackets so I could sleep and be warm. It rained all night and I am starting to feel a little nervous summiting with these awful conditions. Poor porters, don't they know how to do it. Here is what I wrote - "Rain sucks - avoid at all costs in future"!