All the pressure is gone now.  I'm nice and strong 2500 feet below Gorak Shep.  I had a nice relaxing morning, washed for the first time in a while and took a damage report.  I'm in pretty good shape.  I'm just a bit sunburned.  Unfortunately, when I shave the sunburn may prove to be beard shaped.  I picked up a bit of a cough.  My lips are a bit chapped.  Banana Boat's sunproof windproof chapstick had been working miracles, but during yesterday's disaster I forgot to put it on.  Finally, the underside of my nose is chapped from cold weather nose runs. 

Over breakfast I solved the question of what to do with the base camp goal.  I really lack the ability to take anything seriously for long.  Of course it stays on the list!  It is far funnier to be a failure than a success.  So far I have failed to swim from Alcatraz and I just failed to make it to base camp.  If all goes to schedule, I should attempt and fail to complete and Ironman within the next couple of years.

Perhaps my morning was too relaxed.  I thought it was an easy six hour walk to Namche.  I was wrong.  At 6pm I meet a Nepali walking the other way.  He tells me that I need to turn.  It is 1.5 hours to Namche and the curfew is in one hour.  I don't take him too seriously - it can't be another 1.5 hours to Namche.  A few minutes later a group of quickly moving Nepalis catches up with me.  I decide that I too should hurry.  I fall in line with the Nepalis and with my pack keep up a near job pace for 45 minutes despite a light rain, small rocks in one shoe and a cough that seems to be turning into a bit of a chest infection.  I arrive at the guesthouse in Namche 5 minutes before the curfew.  It's almost too bad.  I've never broken a military curfew before.