Mountain Climb turns into bike ride!

Hi everyone..

You have to read this from my friend Joe D. He was sending us emails from his blackberry on the mountain so we could keep up with his journey! Your to funny Joe..we are so glad you Mountain climbing turned bike ride was a great success!!!

We flew (Pat Singh and I ) into Mendoza after reading a few climbing books (No short cuts to the top) and (Deep Survival).We now knew it was dangerous but could it be harder than an Ironman? We didn't think so....So we get to Mendoza and are stuck in a tiny room for two days waiting for the other 6 climbers. (Waste of valuable training time)We leave Mendoza to start an acclimitization to Puente Del Inca at 2800 meters for another waste of a day...We were not allowed to run!Next day we head to Confluenza at 3300 meters to kill another two days doing a short slow 3 hour hike! Over 2 days a 3 hour hike?Next we head to base camp about a (8 hour hike) to spend 4 nights at 4300 meters.....So now we have been confined to 25 square feet for 7 nights.....and have still done nothing....The tents incidentally spend most of their time elevated off the ground blown around by the winds.....We are now ready to climb....we head up to 5000 meters to spend a night at camp Canada.....it is now getting exciting as one of our group was pulled off the mountain by a doctor which landed us the bonus of Adam in our 2 person tent.After that fun evening we headed up to camp Nido at about 5500 meters.....finally the sun was out and we could waste 2 days at camp Nido acclimitizing! The 70 KM winds had finally subsided so that we could sleep.But who could sleep? That's all we had been doing!We then headed for 6000 meters to acclimitize some more!!!! This was the toughest of camps as the wind and snow had entered our tent for the night....We woke up or I should say climbed out of our tent at 4:00 a.m. For our summit attempt only to see lightening everywhere....while out of our tent it nearly blew off the mountain.....We climbed to 6300 meters before the guides turned us back....This was a critical point as I was unsure (as most dead climbers are) as to whether or not I would just go up anyway......it was apparantly as easy as telling the guide sorry I'm going anyway....Thankfully we listened and headed back to 6000 meters.....That is where we were told we could wait for better weather.....That is where we decided to just bicycle to better weather.....We left 6000 meters at 10:00 a.m. We arrived at the beaches in Chile 34 hours later about 280 k away with head winds that I have never experienced before.....non stop headwinds in any direction we headed. Our bikes would stop short down hill!!!Mountain climbing is for the birds...they clearly like hanging out in high places...we are now acclimitizing at sea level in Vina Del Mar Chile!!!!my phone is in and out will be home in a day....