69 flights, 1311 steps, 788 feet of vertical elevation, One Common Cause

My team and fellow SW alumni: me, Darlene, Mike, Jack, and John.

Team huddle.

Registering to become potential bone marrow donors.

I've known this trouble maker 20 years... did I just admit to being old enough to know someone for that long? He took top honors on our team.

"Where's the cap?" (Isn't that a cool shirt?)

We all took turns signing the dedication wall...

The view from the top.

Darlene killed it on the stairs... what a rockstar.Discussing the ipod lineup I think. I dunno, I was clearly not paying attention.

Brother taking my picture without consent.

So proud of these guys.

Motivation. Incentive. Due reward. Whatever, it was good.

A pint each turned into a pitcher each ...

Today was the Big Climb to benefit The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! It was so fun and hard and rewarding. Did I mention fun? I won't know climb times until later this week, but I climbed steady and maintained the pace I'd been training at, so I finished with no problem, from listening to my teammates I should have used the handrails to pull myself up the stairs (which probably would have improved my time) but if I do recall it's called the Big Climb not the Big Pull. But that's just me, a purist. Yeah, a purist.

One thing I was not prepared for (ok, two things) was the amount of puke on the stairs (glad our climb time wasn't the last in the queue, that's all I'll say about this subject as I'm sure the situation didn't improve as more climbers entered the stairwell) and I was not prepared to taste blood at the finish. I thought maybe I had bit my lip or something, so I kept licking them and stuff to check, but didn't see anything. Then a teammate noticed what I was doing and asked if I tasted blood... apparently I wasn't the only one. Weird.

But ohmygosh the 4 pitchers of Pyramid Hefeweizen at the alehouse afterwards... I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. My cheeks still hurt!

And... since I'm a forever dork: halfway home Darlene and I stopped at a rest stop and I noticed (now in my defense I got dressed at 530am in dim lighting and little sleep) that my pants were inside out. Yeah. I wore them ALL day like that. Now, they actually might be reversible, since the seam is the same on the legs inside as outside and they're tagless. Actually, that's a lie because there are certain design elements to these pants that make it very clear to me that I was wearing them inside out. I'm awesome.

And some fun facts for the geeks (like me):

*Tallest building by number of floors (76) west of the Mississippi River.

*Originally designed to be 1,005 feet tall. The FAA had it shortened because of a flight path to SeaTac Airport. The same number of floors was retained by shortening the floor-to-floor height by 6 inches.

*Number of windows: 8,816.

*Actual height of structure from main entrance (4th floor) on Fifth Avenue, due to elevation changes between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, is 882.5 feet.

*The rooftop is exactly 1,042.5 feet above sea level.

*Fourth Avenue entrance is 110 feet above sea level.

*Fifth Avenue entrance is 160 feet above sea level which includes a 12-foot rise in the plaza from Fifth Avenue's 148 feet elevation.

*Lowest elevation point of 106 feet above sea level is at corner of Fourth & Cherry making the overall height of building 936.5 feet.