I am fascinated with Mt. Everest. Don't ask why, not sure myself, but I DO know that this fascination began over 5 years ago, right before I quit smoking. I swore when I quit smoking, that I would make it to the Base Camp of Everest in my fortieth year. I was going to do it, by cracky! Well, I didn't make it to Base Camp, but I'm really not too disappointed. For instead of making the actual Everest Base Camp climb, I have tackled more personal 'mountains'. I quit smoking, and remain smoke free today. I am 7 courses away from FINALLY getting my associates in business. I have a cool job that I actually like and get paid pretty well to do, and my kids are turning out to be pretty cool in their own unique ways. So though I may never make it to Everest( note I didn't say I WILL never make it- never say never!), I am tackling some pretty tough, albeit satisfying and exhilarating mountains right here in good ole Whitman, Taxachusetts. P.S. for good Everest reads, try The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev(this is about the tragic '96 expedition), Climbing High by Lene Gammelgaard( she was on same '96 expedition), and The Other Side of Everest by Matt Dickinson. The Climb is, IMHO, the best of the bunch. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer(sp) is another offering about that '96 expedition, but he got alot of facts about exactly what went wrong, and of Boukreev in particular, wrong, and he has an air of superiority and 'not meitis' that can be hard to stomach.But try to read both his book and The Climb one after the other, and see if you took away from it what I did. I RARELY read a book twice, but The Climb is one of those rare exceptions. I am just glad that Boukreev got it done before he tragically passed away while climbing in Nepal on Christmas Day, 1997.