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OK. Now let's go to the website and we'll see how all of this works.
Here we are; there's two websites you can see, Clawing for the Stars and Chronicle of
Pedro de Merida. Let me address the Chronicle: that's a separate book; it's already written;
the publisher doesn't have it yet because I'm still working on the website, and besides,
I intend it to come out after the Clawing for the Stars book. So, let's enter the Clawing
for the Stars site and begin going through some of what you see here.
Table of Contents and Selected Chapter Passages: I just put this here; if you click on Chapter
1, you can see I put out there a couple of paragraphs and some sentences from the text
of that particular chapter. Go to Chapter 5; it's the same thing there. Monte Pissis,
Chapter 7; more there. Just to give a sense to the reader of what's coming up.
I want to say something, just briefly, about the Google Earth tours and how they came about.
This happened at Easter time in 2012. Family was over. I had been playing around with Google
Earth, and I had been working on it for a couple of months. And I brought Alex, my grandson,
in, and I said, "Look, I can take you right down to a particular peak that I climbed;
I go right down to the route." I took him right up the route on one of the peaks, and
he was watching it, and he said, "Why don't you make a tour?" I didn't know what he was
talking about, and I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, you can record a tour:
sound and sights and everything, just as you're doing this for me, and you can even put it
on your website." So that's how it all came about.
Let's go to Chapter 1. Now, we're hovering above Copiapo, Chile right here. Now, Copiapo
is the city that I took off from most of the time on these climbs. So, each one of these
tours, my intent is not to tell what goes on in the chapter. If I were to do that, then
people would say, "Hey, why do I have to buy the book? I'll just go to his website and
I'll know what happened in each chapter." So I'm pretty much silent on that. But my
intent is to take the reader out to the peak; show the reader, you know, the general surroundings,
the geographical location of where I am. Now let's move this along to about four minutes.
This is another aspect of the mountain, and I'm moving toward the mountain; I may not
be moving right now. Let's go to a little over eight; I'm getting closer to the peak,
in this area. I keep plodding up the mountain. Now we can go to, let's just plug along here
to fifteen, a little over fifteen. Here I am on one of the "steps"—you can read about
it in the book, what that is—as I proceed up the mountain. So, as I said, each one of
these chapters that's what I do: I take you out to the peak, show you the important features,
and take you up the mountain with me and bring you back down. So, this is another way for
the reader to enjoy each particular chapter. Let's move on to another big content section,
and that's Photos. This was the most difficult thing for me physically, because there's more
than 300 photographs on the site. The printer-scanner was on the floor at that time, so here I had
all these photographs; I had to bend down, pick up the top of the scanning thing, put
in the photo, close the cover, do the cropping, bend down, open the cover, pull out the...
It was a bit difficult. Now, don't ask me why I didn't think about putting the scanner
on top of the computer table. That's where it is now. Please don't ask.
Let me explain something here; I've got photographs here for Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina,
but those aren't particular chapters. The photographs are from climbs I took with a
guiding company out of Washington state. Again, they don't figure in a chapter—I mean, I
mention them parenthetically sometimes. But let's go to some pictures, and let's go to,
let's say, Llullaillaco, Chapter 3. Now, each one of the photo folders for a chapter are
like this. There's generally twenty, twenty-five pictures, something like that. Now, just to
show you how to manipulate this, let's go to 3.8. Just click it, and of course you get
the enlargement. 3.8: Giancarlo checks one of the rooms. He was my driver, and then he
passed away a couple of years later, and I tell how that happened; it was rather tragic.
Now, the significance of the numbers: now, these are laid out chronologically, so it
gives some kind of order, but more importantly, it's related to the book. Because in each
chapter, if there's a picture that I think would help the reader understand where I am
in the text, I put the word "Photo" in the left column, I give a brief caption, and then
I direct the reader to where he or she should go. So, let me see, I've got one, I think,
for 3.11: alpenglow on the peak. In the text, I say, please see photo 3.11 in the Chapter
3 folder. Now, I do that four or five photos for each chapter. This first page here of
photos: if you hit the arrow to the right, then of course you see the other photos.
A brief note about Panoramio: Panoramio is fun to work with. You know, you've got your
own file, you load your photographs out there. The extra added benefit is, when you enlarge
one of the photographs you've got a little Google Map off to the side, and you can go
down right to where I took the picture. On the right-hand column there, we tell you how
to download Google Earth. It's free, it's easy, it's very fast. Now we come over to
the Panoramio column here on the left, and why don't you click "this site"? Now, what
you see is the first page of six or seven pages in my Panoramio account, with my photographs.
Now, these are not ordered by a particular mountain, and so it can be sort of confusing.
What I did is, I came up with tags for each particular mountain. Let's go to the tag,
"Monte Pissis." So you click on Monte Pissis; here are photos from the several times I went
to Pissis. So, you're probably saying, "So what? So you've got more photos out there!"
The important thing about Panoramio is, go to the right, and there's another box. Now,
that's a Google Earth box. Now you get a larger view. There's Pissis that's just to the right
and below. So that's a fun thing about Panoramio: you can see where I actually took the photo
from. Yet another way to enjoy the book. A short point about the movies: I didn't have
to do much of anything. I took it to a professional editor, so he did the editing, and pulled
out the dross, and the stuff that doesn't flow, or just doesn't fit; too much noise,
or whatever. So that's the result that's up there on the site. Now, if you hover over,
for example, November 1998, we put in there, "An unsuccessful climb of Llullaillaco with
my friend, Sverre. Film opens with a discussion with [Giancarlo's widow] Maria Ester and Sverre
at the La Casona Hotel." April 1999: "An unsuccessful attempt on Tres Cruces with Gary, a client.
(Not mentioned in the book.)" Now, these first four movies: they don't pertain to a particular
chapter. So, you're probably asking, "Well, why are they out there?" Well, they go to
some of the peaks that are mentioned in the book. And so, if you watch one of these movies:
for example, go down to March 2000: Attempts at Pissis and Tres Cruces. You can go out
and you can see Pissis, you can go out and see Tres Cruces. So when you read a particular
chapter—for example, here in March 2000, I said Chapter 6 does have a thing on Tres
Cruces; Chapter 7 is a Pissis chapter; there's another Pissis chapter also. So, these are
meant for the reader to be able to see what the terrain is like out there. In a movie,
and not, you know, in Google Earth or in a stationary picture. Now, the last four movies
down there: as you can see, there's Chapter 9 Part 1, Part 2, and then Chapter 10 Part
1, Part 2. Well, that's it. I hope you now see how the
Read and View approach will enhance your enjoyment of the book. And thank you very much for joining
me.