Happy (palindromic) birthday, man. We love you....   (read more)

Very many thanks to all who came out. And lots of love to those far away....   (read more)

So the shootin' was pretty good in the Alps. Here's a flier at a photo greatest hits collection. It's a bit subjective, and I'm sure I made a few wrong calls, but I think it still makes a decent little high-speed review....   (read more)

Today we would be walking through more undramatic forest and hillsides and river paths. But it made a change. And it would end at Champex-Lac, a village on a lake - way higher up in the mountains than you'd expect to find any kind of lake....   (read more)

Today's walk was to include: * a leisurely ramble through a flower-and-butterfly-filled valley; * a climb up to an entirely decent col overlooking a big ole glacier, with a herd of ibex down on some cliffs below, and which took us over the border into Switzerland; and * a couple of hours of actual rain, and a slog therethrough - the only real rain event we experienced on a TEN-DAY WALK....   (read more)

Day Five of the TMB was a day of superlatives, including: * The longest, hardest climb I (for one) have ever done; * The biggest single hunk of towering massif we'd ever see in one place (the Grandes Jorasses) - at the foot of which sat: * By far the most amazing refuge (or, perhaps, lodging of any kind) most of us had ever enjoyed....   (read more)

The photo above depicts me in, or just before, the moments when I felt, more than at any other time before or since, that it was possible I might lose my life. Obviously I didn't die, and reasonable people seem to disagree about how much danger I was actually in. But there can be no question that I've never been so scared. In my mind, at the very least, this was a no-bullshit, breath-stealing, pulse-supercharging, this-could-really-be-it (the end of my whole story, right here and now) tango with death....   (read more)

TMB Day 1, Les Houches to Les Contamines: to include the first punishing climb; the first stunning mountain col - and (not unrelatedly) the first snowfield across the path; the first knee-murdering, endless descent; plus the amazing Refuge di Miage, Lynchian cows, and also much witty banter....   (read more)

Gobsmackingly beautiful mountain vistas... ass-smashing, neverending, unprecedented, merciless climbs... traverses over treacherous icy escarpments and steep snow diagonals... at least one genuine, no-bullshit, breath-stealing, this-could-really-be-it dice with death... climbs over cols and around glaciers of soul-tweaking beauty and grandeur... close encounters with Alpine wildlife (such as ibex, chamois, and marmots)... and nights in remote refuges perched in absolutely unbelievably stunning mountaintop settings (that could only be reached by Alpine trekkers, and resupplied by helicopter)....   (read more)

So my latest fabulous (weapons-themed) Xmas gift from Alex was a day at a shooting range which will rent you various high-powered fully-automatic firearms to play with. I brought my camera. The rockn', Zombie Apocalypse-themed, heavily annotated, music-video bullet festival results are below....   (read more)

Video games are now fairly widely recognised to be an art form. And, perhaps in the same way that a movie trailer can condense a lot of emotion and adrenaline down into a 90-second speedball, video game trailers seem to have gotten pretty damned good while no one was looking....   (read more)

Okay, this is pretty damned cringe-making, but here are a huge number of photos of me....   (read more)

Sunday morning and Alex came in all geared up for business battle, and the three of us lay around chatting happily (me in a towel), and then we hit the road...   (read more)

So Tag Zwei opened with the traditional free hotel buffet breakfast....   (read more)

And so Alex rang up and said, Dude - I'm going to be in Munich for a few days if you want to cruise over, and I thought, Hey - Random jaunts to the Continent are precisely what Americans living on this side of the Atlantic are supposed to do...   (read more)

Fucking great. Now not only are we going to be assailed by sidewalk-hogging, escalator-blocking, over-foot-rolling, twice-the-space-of-normal-people, thumpity-thump-goddamned-thumping, draggy luggage people - but now they're all going to be stopping periodically to get at their coffee in their draggy luggage-mounted *cup holder*. ...   (read more)

"Israel will be annihilated." - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...   (read more)

So in all my patting myself on the back for recent good news on the book front . . . I've egregiously neglected to pat on the back those who emphatically deserve it most: that is, YOU....   (read more)

And so Alex had to be in Paris for a week, and happily managed to carve out another week on the backside for us to kick around somewhere. I talked him into Belgium....   (read more)

Michael Crichton can discourse on global climate change - all kinds of people do - but you might want to consider leavening your reading of him with some scientists, or science writers, who also discourse on the subject....   (read more)

Sara landed in Quito three nights ago. All four of us, my three adult sisters and I, seemingly following some genetically hard-wired agitation timer, have simultaneously thrown ourselves into massive transition. ...   (read more)

Reader response to the Bunny Episode was lively and varied. Thanks equally to those who ooh'd and ahh'd at the high cuteness involved; gently indicted me for being such a nancy about the whole thing; provided a bit of genuine empathy regarding my initial shock and horror...   (read more)

(splashy, splashy, splashy) Michael: OH MY GOD! Michael: Do you happen to have, like, a number for neighborhood pool maintenance? Alex: Hmm, you'll have to ask Jennifer. Something wrong? M: . . . There's a freaking CREATURE in the pool....   (read more)