BG Energy Challenge

For those of you who haven't heard, two weeks ago I hiked high and low in support of the Oman National Association for Cancer Awareness. Yes, the ultimate couch potato walked through the desert for two days straight to raise money for a good cause. The goal was to raise money to eventually buy a mobile cancer unit that will go into the rural areas of Oman and provide cancer education and early screening. Every team had to raise at least $5,000 to enter, but they didn't expect this would raise enough money this year to actually buy the unit. It turns out, though, the 27 teams who entered raised over $250,000, which is well over the cost of the mobile unit. Thanks to those of you contributed to the cause in support of me, my team was able to raise over $7,500. We left on a Wednesday to set up camp. (Remember that our weekends are on Thursday and Friday over here, not Sat/Sun.) We met at a resort about an hour outside of Muscat. Then, we were transported about an hour into the interior of Oman. From there, we were dropped off, and we hiked 2 km to our campsite. I must admit that I cheated a bit on the hike by putting most of my belongings in Jason's car. He was helping out with the entire weekend and was able to drive his car directly to the campsite. But I still did the hike! After we set up camp and settled in, it was just about dinner time and time for the first challenge. The goal was to make the longest kebab in Oman history. I think this was just an excuse for the cooks not to make dinner for the night, but whatever works. They loaded us up with meat and charcoal and off we went. Each person had to make 2 kebabs, and then, we were supposed to put them all together to make one big long kebab. Sadly, the first part of the challenge was just to build the grill. They gave us several bricks to surround the charcoal, and you wouldn't believe how long it takes 5 women to figure out how to lay bricks down on sand! In the end, we finally agreed on a "design," and we started cooking our kebabs. Unfortunately, it took much longer to cook the food than the organizers had planned, so the whole event turned into a disaster. Not to mention that I was starving, and as a lot of you know, I am not a pretty sight when I am hungry. Fortunately, I think Jason was the only one that felt the brunt of that one, though. Sorry, Jason! The next day, we set off onto our trek through the desert. The hike started straight up, with us going up a pretty steep sand dune. Fortunately, it had rained a couple days before, so the sand was a little more packed down than normal. We managed to make it up the dune, and continued on to complete the 15 km hike in about 5.5 hours. By the way, that time includes water stops and some other miscellaneous challenges they had set up for us (including sand boarding back down that sand dune we hiked up at the beginning of the day). It got pretty hot that day, and shockingly enough (ha ha), there wasn't a lot of shade in the desert. So one of our team members ended up with heat stroke. She did make it through the whole hike, and after a lot of water, electrolytes, and sitting in an air conditioned car for a while, she was back to normal and ready for the next day. The next day, we packed up the campsite, and hiked the 2km back to meet up with the busses. Then, we were transported a short distance to a nearby wadi. A wadi is a river bed (normally dry, unless it is raining) that funnels all the rain water towards the ocean. We hiked about 13 km through this wadi, and about half the time, we were wading through water. Just for the record, in case it isn't obvious, it is much harder to walk with water logged shoes than with dry shoes! I was pretty tired by the end of this hike, but we all made it in one piece. Then, they transported us back to the resort, where we first started a couple days before, for a celebratory dinner. But before the dinner, they had to put us through a little more torture and humiliation, and they made us slide down in these intertubes to the finish line. All in all, the entire weekend went pretty well, and I had a pretty good sense of accomplishment for what all of us had done. (And I wasn't even sore the next day!) Oh, yea, and this last picture is just showing you what Jason did all weekend long, while I was working hard . . .Ok, he did actually work pretty hard, but he did get a bit of time to play as well. Thanks again for everyone who contributed to a really good cause, and everyone who was thinking about me while I was out there!