Including working out. If only I was joking.

I started year 2022 realizing that I massively overspent the year before. I didn’t realize any sooner because I paid for some really heavy bits (like the Denali expedition or the flights to Ecuador) “out of band”: Denali from the budget of the delayed K2 expedition and the Ecuador flights my good old credit cards. When it hit me it was too late: the bill for my renewed flat rent contract came in and the yen started to slide. By the time I re-finished my payments for Pakistan, the yen was almost 30% weaker in the matter of 2-3 months. Such joy, empty savings.

This also meant that I had no budget for traveling domestically to snowboard, go ice-climbing or just hiking in the snow in some higher mountains. So I only had one (really cold) adventure in the Northern Alps and one trip to an accessible slope to snowboard. Otherwise on weekends you could find me in the mountainous western end of Tokyo, on either of my 4 hour to 6 hour routes. I did put my training miles in for Pakistan so I felt sufficiently prepared, but it wasn’t that easy.

Even before I could leave the country I got screwed by the authorities who were kind enough to grant my mountaineering visa three days after my original departure date. Yay. More money to spend on flight changes.

You can read about how the expedition to Pakistan ended unsuccessful too. While we did reach the mighty 8000m line on Broad Peak, not the summit, and after that I decided to turn around due to personal differences with the guide who was to lead the team on K2. Not to mention I hurt my knee on the glacier and that stuck with me for months afterwards. Not to mention my “interrupt for any reason” insurance is still delaying half a year later. Just as icing on the cake.

While I did get a properly documented, clear summit of Mt Fuji and a few really nice hikes in the Northern Alps in the autumn, I couldn’t get any more of the 100 famous Japanese mountains nor go back to my no-longer-usual autumn Hokkaido trip. Not to mention when I went back for a snow-free climb of Mt Hotaka it turned out to be already snowed. The early-summer camping trip to Ibaraki where I intended to escape the heat turned out to be just as hot as Tokyo.

In the summer I started planning to build a house, but then the land I already had an agreement on was sold to someone else so there went that. On the other hand, I did learn a lot about the process, the various pitfalls and the honestly pretty ridiculous “miscellaneous costs” involved in getting your own roof above your head (at least in Japan).

Without a clear next goal (or the financial background to start planning something big for next year ahead of time), my usual workouts weren’t as successful due to obvious lack of motivation.

In December I tried to fill my blog for the 25 days of Advent, but even that ran short as I couldn’t come up with stuff for the final few days. It was still a pretty fun experience and it feels like it attracted more attention than some example repo on Github.

Back in Hungary, while I finally managed to trail-run up the Karancs with my brother, later I caught a really bad cold-like something (might even be the rona) that took me out for the days of the family trip to the otherwise fantastic wine-region of Villany. Much less fun with an aching throat and barely any sense of smell. Which also means that I’m closing the year with my parents for the first time in I don’t even know how long (probably well over 10, possibly 15 years).

This summary might sound pretty negative and I guess it indeed is, but finding a positive look at the year isn’t easy as none of my major endeavors bore fruit. If something I could say I learnt a lot from all the things that went wrong and got myself a nice new mattress and a cool watch. Let’s consider this year the world’s turn—next year will be mine. It shall be legen—wait for it—dary!