I remember once, on a family skiing trip to the Alps, Dad’s practical joking got all of us into a particularly tight spot.
I must have been about age… - Bear Grylls
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I remember once, on a family skiing trip to the Alps, Dad’s practical joking got all of us into a particularly tight spot. I must have been about age ten at the time, and was quietly excited when Dad spotted a gag that was begging to be played out on the very serious-looking Swiss-German family in the room next door to us. Each morning their whole family would come downstairs, the mother dressed head to toe in furs, the father in a tight-fitting ski suit and white neck scarf, and their slightly overweight, rather snooty-looking thirteen-year-old son behind, often pulling faces at me. The hotel had the customary practice of having a breakfast form that you could hang on your door handle the night before if you wanted to eat in your room. Dad thought it would be fun to fill out our form, order 35 boiled eggs, 65 German sausages, and 17 kippers, then hang it on the Swiss-German family’s door. It was too good a gag to pass up. We didn’t tell Mum, who would have gone mad, but instead filled out the form with great hilarity, and sneaked out last thing before bed and hung it on their door handle. At 7:00 A.M. we heard the father angrily sending the order back. So we repeated the gag the next day. And the next. Each morning the father got more and more irate, until eventually Mum got wind of what we had been doing and made me go around to apologize. (I don’t know why I had to do the apologizing when the whole thing had been Dad’s idea, but I guess Mum thought I would be less likely to get in trouble, being so small.) Anyway, I sensed it was a bad idea to go and own up, and sure enough it was. From that moment onward, despite my apology, I was a marked man as far as their son was concerned. It all came to a head when I was walking down the corridor on the last evening, after a day’s skiing, and I was just wearing my ski thermal leggings and a T-shirt. The spotty, overweight teenager came out of his room and saw me walking past him in what were effectively ladies’ tights. He
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About
Bear Grylls
Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls (born 7 June 1974) is a British adventurer, writer, television presenter and former SAS trooper who is also a survival expert.
Biography information from
Wikipedia·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Jamie Gray from England www.jamiegrayphotography.co.uk (CC BY)
Many times I have been grateful for the simple, military skill of being able to live with people in confined spaces. It has helped me so much over the years on expeditions and beyond. And I was especially glad to be with Neil. When we hang with good people, some of their goodness rubs off. I like that in life. The other thing the army had taught me was how, and when, to go that extra mile. And the time to do it is when it is tough — when all around you are slowing and quitting and complaining. It is about understanding that the moment to shine brightest is when all about you is dark. It is a simple lesson, but it is one of the keys to doing well in life. I see it in friends often. On Everest that quality is everything.
I have always loved the quote from John F. Kennedy: “When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” Looking back on my life, I can see that I have never had a crisis that didn’t make me stronger. And here was all that I loved before me: great risk, but also great opportunity. I had never felt so excited. Neil was already preparing to come back up. Mick, so fortunate to be alive, was staying firmly, and wisely, at base camp. But for me, my time had come. That evening, camp two was again full of friends. Neil and Geoffrey were there along with Michael and Graham, Karla and Alan. But the weariness of coming back up to camp two again oozed painfully from Karla’s gaunt face. She was utterly exhausted, and you could see it. Who wouldn’t be after three months on Everest, and having got within four hundred feet of the summit only days earlier? Tomorrow the biggest battle of our lives would begin.
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