Oxfam Trailwalker Charity Event

Charity time!

Back in May I took part in a team charity event by the name of Oxfam Trailwalker. Teams of 4 raise a bunch of money, then hike 100km from the Pacific to the base of Mt. Fuji. That's my team above. We dubbed ourselves the "Oxfam Ramen Walkers". I may have influenced that title. We had another team as well. 8 friends about to walk for a couple days.

To be honest, I was originally in it for the walk. I have mixed, often pessimistic views about charities. But enough of my negative views! Oxfam raises a lot of funds for research and aid in impoverished communities around the world. Our 2 teams raised a lot, maybe close to $10,000. Word.

Like I said, I was originally in it for the hike.

Was being the key word. 100km is really far. I'll go on record now and say that it sucked, walking for 40 hours straight.

I don't know, but maybe 70 or 80 teams took part. From the get go, some teams take off running, finishing in less than 15 hours. Our other team did just that. They took off almost immediately after the start, though they only finished a couple of hours before us. Later dudes!

Nice hike... if it had been broken down into 30 or 40 kilometer trips.

So here's my team, the Ramen Walkers at the 50 mark. There was a marker every half a kilometer, so this means we are a quarter of the way. As you can see, spirits were high at this point.

At about the half way point shit got real old real fast.

As you can imagine from a slope called mugonzaka. No-talking-hill, as it translates to, is a place where even the chattiest of girlfriends will finally shut up for the next 6 hours.

The view from the top is nice. Made un-nice by my shitty iPod camera. Looks good on the iPod screen though.

We held up pretty well, I have to say. After a grueling physical challenge like this, friendships are bound to be tested. But after taking some Japanese oxycontin, finishing was no problem.

You can see our team's donation page at this link. Thanks to everyone who helped out!

To my team, sorry if I became a bit of an asshole later in the hike. We all have our coping mechanisms, and mine is to get really cynical and sarcastic. But standing on the top of that last hill, watching the moon set over Mt. Fuji made it all worthwhile.