After cooking up three soups, I proceeded to pour two of them into a bicycle water bottle. The third, I set aside to cool for use at the starting line. As soon as my riding partner, Brad “Alpo” Roalson (Read Brad's story), had gathered his gear, Mark Lowther, the official Birthday Challenge Scribe, set his stopwatch and started the 32-hour ordeal.

I must have been a bit nervous by the task that lay ahead, because the first soup didn’t have its normal ambrosia-like qualities. In fact, I was surprised to find that I had a little bit of difficulty getting it down. At that moment, I knew I was in for a tough time.

Once the first soup lay safely in my belly, Brad and I rushed downstairs to our bikes. We conveniently work about a quarter mile from the end of the Barton Creek Greenbelt, so in no time we were barreling down the steep and rocky trail called the Hill of Life. While my body bounced and jerked on the bike as it careened in partial control over the rocks, my noodle-filled belly once again reminded me that I had engaged upon a foolhardy mission and promised to rebel if I didn’t reconsider.

“My God,” shouted Alpo, “It feels like a sauna out here.” He was, of course referring to the 102 degrees and 92% humidity we were experiencing at the moment. “My only consolation is that I didn’t just chug down a pint of hot soup.”

I could see that this kind of heckling would be coming from all sides for the duration of the challenge…

The trail is quite technical and usually sees me spill painfully at least a half a dozen times over the six-mile stretch from the trailhead to the Seismic Wall, our first rock-climbing stop. But luck was shining brightly (or was that the blazing sun?!!) that day and we managed to do the section in record time with no major falls.

We arrived at the wall at 4:40 PM, where my wife, Megan, was waiting with the climbing gear. In a rare display of efficiency, I managed to knock out 7 climbs in just under an hour and then Brad and I were back on our bikes, riding down the trail.  My friend Alex had graciously agreed to meet me at our next stop, the New Wall, to assist with belay duty. We arrived there at about 6:00 PM, in plenty of time to knock out 5 more routes.  I had originally planned to be very conservative at this wall and stick to fairly easy climbs so that I wouldn’t pump out too early in the challenge. Nearly every route at the New Wall is overhung and they are some of the longest routes in the Greenbelt. But after the 2^nd climb, I was feeling strong and decided to throw in a route I had stricken from the list only a week earlier. Mr. Slate is a 5.11 route that has been known to eat up all my strength if I don’t hit the sequence of moves just right.  Luckily, with the adrenaline pumping, I managed to pull it off with plenty of energy left to finish the last two climbs of the evening.

As soon as I hit the ground from the last climb I cracked the first Lone Star. Megan had brought it to Seismic Wall, packed in a Ziploc freezer bag full of ice. Unfortunately it had been strapped to my Camel Back ever since and the ice was no match for the late afternoon sun, so I was forced to quaff the first beer luke-warm.

Marty really took the cake when he called for a break from playing strictly Dead songs and broke into a sweet bluesy Birthday song he had written for the occasion.  Next Rafael broke out the Ashiko drum and we launched into a funky, Joe Cocker-style rendition of Feelin’ Alright.

Before I knew it, it was 11:00 PM and we had only played 10 Dead tunes. I should have taken it as an omen and planned accordingly. I was beginning to realize that in a festive environment, it takes quite a while to get through a few songs – especially if they are by the Grateful Dead! I decided to make El Paso the final tune of the night, but then Brad insisted that if he was going to join me for the rest of the night’s activities, he needed a pick-me-up. So I closed the circle with my old standby – Bertha.