I was so happy this morning when I opened the window blinds of my studio. I could finally see Mont Salève (a.k.a. the balcony of Geneva) again, which had been masked by clouds in the past weeks. I could not wait to climb this mountain again, and fortunately, I bought some decent trail running shoes earlier this week which would help me conquer the slippery, muddy, rocky, snowy, and ridiculously steep trails of this majestic mountain.
Faster than four weeks ago, I reached the observatory tower on top of the mountain, and filled with joy I overlooked Geneva from the adjacent alpine meadow. I was also very happy with my new shoes at that moment. That much, actually, that I decided to run down the mountain as well, unlike four weeks ago when I went down by cable car. So, I ran to the far end of the meadow and followed some fairly fresh foot prints in the snow, going both uphill and downhill, which seemed to be heading in the right direction.
I followed the foot prints down a horrifying path, and several times I thought that it is sheer idiocy that people laid out a path like this. At one point, I said to myself that it would all end for me this day. A couple of meters further, I said out loud “sorry mom” while in the meantime wondering whether a helicopter rescue operation would even be possible from my position. Some more meters further, I lost track of the foot prints and decided to follow an animal trail which I spotted not far from where I was at that time. I quickly lost track of this trail as well and got stuck on a steep section covered by mountain gravel. There were fortunately some trees there, and I managed to get behind one of them thereby reaching a relatively safe spot where I could think about how to proceed.
Surprisingly, I had access to 4G internet on my telephone, and I could thus find my position in the ‘Swiss Maps’ app which features basically all hiking trails in Switzerland (and in areas just across the Swiss border). Within seconds I learned that I needed to go back to the observatory tower as there were actually no trails whatsoever on the part of the mountainside where I had ended up.
Driven by a strong survival instinct, I started climbing uphill, and I soon reached the point where the foot prints ended. I took a few seconds to re-catch my breath, and at that moment I found out that the uphill and downhill footprints originated from the same pair of shoes. Someone else apparently did the same stupid thing as I did, and this person likely got back to the observatory tower safely. I thus set out to do the same, which I fortunately did. With a tear in my eye and with an enormous feeling of guilt towards my family I reached the alpine meadow, and I decided to go home as soon as possible and reflect on what happened today.
Well, I will not bore you further with my adventures, but I do want to take you back to the point where I found the foot prints again. I probably could have peed my pants back there, yet I decided to pull down my pants and take a piss in the snow. Yes, I know, this is not something to be proud of, and I feel ashamed of myself. But at this very moment I started to laugh out loud as a stupid idea popped into my head. That is, I thought that it would be funny to collect some of that urine and to analyze it later in the lab. I did not actually do this, by the way, but did I reason at that moment that it was a good thing that I could laugh and think about some nice aspects of my work while being in a difficult situation on a dangerous mountainside.
But wait, did I just write that I associate urine with nice aspects of my work? Yes I did. Actually, I am glad that I am focusing on urine again in my current work, just like during my Master’s research project, as this bodily fluid contains so much information on how our body is doing. Urine furthermore may provide us with information on the drugs we use, the food we eat, the beverages we drink, et cetera. My urine of today will, for example, contain unusual high amounts of muscle breakdown products, it will contain caffeine, it may contain pesticides (if these were present in/on the five bananas I ate today), and maybe it will contain a “survival instinct” or “guilt” marker which no one has ever identified. Who knows? I will not for sure, as I did not collect any of my urine. But maybe, there was a third idiot who went down the same path today and who decided to collect some of the yellow snow he found there to analyze in a lab using fancy analytical techniques. If so, let us hope this person arrived home safely.
analyzed-by-frank.com 