Friday 27 May 2016

Climbing mountains

A time ago, a bit before the time I travelled back in time (or after, with relevance to my place in time, or yours, at the time), and a little after the time I tried my hand at being a Superhero, I set myself a goal to scale a mountain.

Not just any mountain, mind you.

Mount Pichachuchutrayn

Mount Pichachuchutrayn was a relatively unknown mountain ranked as the 3rd-and-a-half highest in the world, after Mount Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga and before Lhotse. Forming part of the Outta Ranges, it is thought to be located somewhere between the Indian city of Outtalucknow and Islamabetter, Pakistan.


[Now you may have noticed, oh eagle-eyed reader, that I have been using past tense when describing the 3rd-and-a-half highest mountain in the world, Mount Pichachuchutrayn, like it had somehow disappeared or, at the very least, shrunk.

Well, that's because it's true. My grammar on this occasion has not been in error. At least, not in that part of this particular wordy thing.

History shows that unusually ranking Mount Pichachuchutrayn the 3rd-and-a-half highest mountain in the world was done in good judgement given it's sudden landslide in the world rankings. In fact, it's no longer even ranked given it is a mountain no more.

Here's how...]

To scale a mountain such as Mount Pichachuchutrayn I knew I had to get in peak fitness, so I compiled an elite team of the best in the business to get me into shape, including Stephen Dank (Sports Scientist and Calf-blood dealer), James Hird (AFL Essendon ex-coach), Dr H (America's Biggest Loser), Richard Simmons (lover of spandex) and some of the best Sherpas that would agree to help in exchange for some copied VHS tapes of 'The Best of Red Faces'.

I then put together a montage of Rocky and Karate Kid inspirational scenes and my preparation was done.

Soon after I set off with my Sherpa's on my trek to scale the mountain. And so in laid the problem.

I scaled Mount Pichachuchutrayn for 57 days and 13 nights when I finally reached the top. Yet my feet were still firmly on the ground. At base camp.

It was then I realised I should've paid more attention to my Sherpa friends when they were shouting, "Noooo!", "AGGH, what are you doing?!?!" and "For the love of Buddha, STOP!", in their native tongue while in their native kitycows.

For I had commenced scaling Mount Pichachuchutrayn with a fish scaler where, in hindsight, I should have climbed the mountain and left the scaling up to the experts (fishermen and Masterchef contestants).

And so it took me 57 days and 13 nights to completely scale down the 3rd-and-a-half highest mountain to the size of a molehill.

This in turn completely destroyed the livelihood of the Mount Pichachuchutrayn Sherpa community as, besides ants and moles, no one was enticed to climb Mound Pichachuchutrayn and therefore hire and pay the Sherpas for their Sherpa services. 

And as we all know, moles and ants are extremely tight with their money.

The Sherpas were forced to leave their community, in part, as they were chased out by the angry fishermen who enacted union action against the Sherpas for letting me scale the mountain of which scaling is a specialist skill that their 'Conditions of Employment (Salary Agreement)' nominates as a sole responsibility of Fishermen (and women, and Masterchef contestants), and also in part to search for a livelihood by which they sold themselves to dyslexic Pet Shop owners as Shar-Peis for quite the pretty penny.

Needless to say, the locals laid the blame solely on myself for the whole brouhaha.

Personally, I thought the whole situation had been blown out of proportion.

To me they seemed to be making a mountain out of a molehill, by me making a molehill out of a mountain.

6 comments:

  1. Mountains and molehills - a bit like the chicken and the egg!

    ReplyDelete
  2. you seriously are a bit funny... and I wanna be a sherpa because it sounds cool when you say it slow.. sherrrrr praaa.. movie star ish..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Say 'sherpa' 3 times, fast. Now do it while nodding your head from side to side.

      Delete
  3. True, you destroyed their mountain, but surely the sherpas realized the favor you had done them by leaving them with the worlds largest supply of ornamental garden pebbles? That stuff's expensive. I just checked on Amazon and they're charging $12.35 for 64 oz.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very good point, Bun, thankyou. Would you like to join my legal team? It would be pro bono, but I could offer 10oz of ornamental garden pebbles (they're quite expensive ya know!)
      In the sherpa's defence, with all the mountains around they were never able to get an internet signal to be able to check Amazon for this fact. Ironically, from my faux pas they get a perfect signal now.

      Delete

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