Blog assignment #5: A Memorable Interview

I was thinking of interviewing my father, years ago like before I was even born my dad got into a really big racing accident. My dads a nascar racer, so he was always at the track and even built his own race cars. He's told me the story of his accident a million times but this gives me and opportunity to get more details of it like where his love for racing all began and I also get to share this story with my classmates. My first question would probably go all the way back to the root of it all asking how old he was when he got his drivers license. Another one I'm curious about is what was going through his mind when he realized the car was going out of control. And I want to ask also did it take you Long to get back on the track and racing again. My dads a very private to himself man to hopefully this will let me see a different side to him, maybe a more emotional side. He is the owner of his auto body shop, and builds cars fixes them, he does everything and anything that has to do with cars. He's been driving since he was 11, illegally of course. He's known the car business since he was just a little boy so its only natural that he take on his fathers. I've always heard stories about everyone reacting to that day of my dads accident but since I wasn't there I feel like I'll never really be able to understand. I want to know more, its crazy to think someone so close to you went through something so crazy before you were even on this earth.

How old were you when you got your drivers license?

What was going through your mind as you felt the car get out of control?

Did it take you long before you got back on the track to race again?

How old were you when you first starting racing?

"Into Thin Air"

I chose the memoir "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krauker to respond too. One line that stood out to me when reading this memoir was in the very beginning his opening line he describes the struggle it was to just wake up in the morning and take a breathe and he calls the air meager. What really drew me in was the curiosity I had wondering what the title was about. Into thin air for me could have been a million different things. The thing that struck me the most was the second ti last page when Hals having a moment on the phone with his wife. The author makes it known that this will be the last phone call he ever has with his wife without being terribly dramatic and depressing the reader. It was also kind of like a twist, because the whole time he's talking about their journey and the struggles their going through, you don't expect it to have such a personal ending. The reason it was so popular with the readers I think was because it kept you on your feet the entire story, it wasn't very predictable.

This story is about 8 mountain climbers that were killed and 7 others that were left stranded. Krauker started this expedition with purely professional intentions. However once he got to the mountain his childhood reminded him of a desire he always wanted to fulfill. He had to train for a year before her was able to climb the mountain.  Krauker never expected to experience it the way he did. This journey begins in the beginning of May. A lot of the people taking part in this were having difficulty adapting to altitude, getting tired very easily, losing a lot of weight, and began to move slower and slower as the days went on. Despite all these obstacle the first death in the book doesn't occur till the very end. But once that first one occurs, it s not long before it begins to happen to almost all the climbers. For krauker he just misses the storm as he approaches camp number four. However he's more ahead then all the other men but is unclear of what has yet to come. Hall and Hansen become stranded. Hansen ends up running out of oxygen and is unable to keep going through the storm. Then another group gets lost but get assisted back to safety except for two of their men. Later we find out they died. Soon Hansen ends up dieing. An assistant actually dies on the way up to rescue Hal and Hansen. I feel like Krauker wrote this book because he had more to tell the world then just the article he wrote for the magazine. He feels someone should tell the story of these brave young men.

A sight for soar eyes

Two rows of characters all dressed in outrageous outfits stood few feet from me, they were so interesting. The different colors of fabric entertained my eyes, the shapes and sizes of all them was creating a magnetic pull, I couldn't look away. The first person on the line was a man holding a sword. At first I wasn't sure what he was going to do with it than with a wicked a smile he lifted the sword gently gliding through the air and hung it over his mouth before slowly inserting in his mouth. At first there was no reaction, I mean of course there's going to be a sword swallower, isn't there one at every single circus/freak show. But the deeper the sword got the deeper my thoughts were, how exactly has this sword not cut his insides into little shredded pieces like a piece of paper after it went straight through the paper shredder. He started to walk around showing people there was no secret trick. 

As he passed me by my eyes began to wonder onto another character in the distance,he stood with a very mischievous face on. His hand was raised to right under his chin almost as if was holding his head up. He wore black suede shoes, that looked as if they were shined just minutes before presenting himself to the crowd. With black pants underneath on top was a gold satin shirt draped down to his knees. On his head he wore a black cap that looked like it had paper stuffed in it, with a long bunch of feathers coming out of the front of it all held by a birch. My eyes didn't know who to look at, each one of them seemed so interesting. At first glance they all look like freaks, each one more of a freak than the last. The most freak of them all though, the one  who stood out the most to me....the mannequin woman. 

There stood before my eyes a very sweet looking woman, she wore a black cloche hat on her head with black little curls coming out the bottom that went right up to the bottom of her earlobe. Her body looked as if it was made to pin clothes on it. She had no arms and a stand with three prongs holding it up for legs. As i gazed at her up and down millions of questions ran through my mind, Where did her limbs go? Was that her body or was her head the only real thing to her? How did this happen? She was gently moving her head and smiling as the people kept surrounding her in awe, it was like she had been doing this her whole life. Heck, for all i knew she could of been doing this her whole life, just standing around getting pictures taken of you all day. 

Could she be happy with that? Or did she want more to life. What if behind that nice whitely bleached smile she was really unhappy and just wanted to be normal so badly. Then again I could say the same thing for everyone else in that show. Could the real act they were putting on be their own happiness? I began walking in through the drapes to the huge tent that was in bright red, yellow, and blue colors and looked for where my seat was. The first thing I thought of was what was that awful smell! It was terrible, it smelt like elephant poop but I couldn't see any on the floor where I was standing. The lights began to slowly dim signaling everyone to find our seats, so I quickly scurried to the tightly packed rows of seats and looked for my seat number. Row d seat 22, found it! I gently lowered myself and began to watch as the ringmaster took the attention of the whole tent.