Antigua
English Harbor
17.00.259N
61.45.596W

I’ve still got my cold but am feeling a little better. When Dale suggested a walk up to Shirley Heights on the hill overlooking the harbor after lunch, I figured that I was up to the challenge. Boy was I wrong!

We dinghied to the beach and walked a bit down the road to where the path began. There was a sign over it placed there by the local yachties declaring that it was the path we were looking for and that it was ½ mile to the destination; not a problem. I park my car a ½ mile from the mall to go shopping on a big sale day. What it didn’t say was that it was straight up!

I probably would have had a better chance of obtaining my goal if I had waited until it was cooler in the day, had actually eaten something for lunch, or bothered to have brought the bottle of water I normally carry around in my backpack. But No, this time, I take off at a little after noon, on a 90* day, after taking an antihistamine and without bringing so much as a stick of gum. I literally had to grab tree limbs and rock outcroppings to hoist my fat . . . to pull myself up in certain areas. Other areas would level off but then you’d go around a bend and would be rock climbing again. I was coughing and wheezing trying hack up a lung and sweating like I’d contracted malaria in the deepest darkest jungle.

Dale, of course, was sprinting ahead like a blasted gazelle telling me how he always feels better after he exercises. He actually likes to sweat. If I could have seen him through the waterfall coming off my brow, I would have smacked him. As it was, I just ignored him.

Needless to say, ¾ of the way up, I sat down, gave him the camera and told him to go knock himself out. While sitting there waiting for the spots to clear in front of my eyes, I thought of our son going through BUDS training. How could I expect him to keep getting up when he was tired, if I didn’t give him the genes to do it with? So, I’d catch my breath and start climbing again.

I’d like to tell you that I made it all the way to the top. But I can’t. I did make it to the back of the buildings that we were heading for but Dale was already on his way back down and I wasn’t going to push it since I still had to make my way back down again. I also prayed that James got most of his genes from his mountain goat father.