I always liked an outdoor activities, especially backpacking or mountaineering. Actually, I used to take part in such trips quite often during the first tree years studying in university. During that time I got around almost all Ukraine. I took up it seriously at 2001, when I and my friend Tema decided to enter a local tourist club. Before we joined the club, I had been looking for any convenient one through the Internet, but there were not too many of them. We arranged an appointment with the leader of the club the very next day after we found his mobile-phone number on one of the outdoor forums. One shiny spring day, we met a dark-haired blue-eyed wide-smiling stocky guy. His nickname was Sema. I hadn’t known his real name nearly a year, but in tourist environment having a nickname instead of real name is a common thing.

Crimea May, 2004

The story is not about that astounding time spent in the club, and not about hard but amazing hikes to the most picturesque places of Ukraine. The story is about the fact, that this weekend was a ten years anniversary of Sema’s leading different hiking trips and his training activities.

Last Tuesday, when I was debugging a piece of buggy Java code, my ICQ was knocked, and I surprisingly discovered announcement about Sema’s plans of celebrating this significant event in his life. In spite of the fact that I haven’t been to any place outside civilization like forest or lake during the last one year (I got married :) ) I immediately decided that I definitely come and congratulate Sema. I even wasn’t surprised about place and time of celebration which were 8pm on Saturday near Mrygi hamlet in the forest.

To be continued…