"Dan, stop being soft," I said.

We were at the last checkpoint before hitting the summit of Mt. Fuji. My friend Dan and I had an ambitious plan: climb the mountain and get down all in one day, and get back to where we were staying, all within a span of seven hours. I needed to get back to Nagoya, where I worked, while he had to get to Tokyo.

On average, it took five hours to climb to the top of Mt. Fuji. But my hubris didn't allow me to be "average." I am, after all, a seasoned athlete who runs close to 70 miles a week all year. Dan... well, he plays tennis sometimes.

At that moment, Dan was having major leg cramps and cussing me out every couple of seconds for being arrogant. I wasn't even breathing hard, yet multiple older people around us were wearing masks, jackets, and a whole plethora of climbing gear that left us looking woefully unprepared. Myself? I remember that I was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, sweatpants, and Vans. Dan - a t-shirt, cargo shorts, and tennis shoes.

We looked like the biggest scrubs out there, yet the time read 2 hours and 30 minutes. We were nearly at the top, and I wanted to get there as fast as I could and brag about it to all my friends from home.

It was already supposed to be a race to get up and down as fast as possible and take in the view from the top. I distinctly remember taking the bullet train, the Shinkansen, from Nagoya to the big train station closest to Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka. However, I fell asleep on the train. I woke up just as I was supposed to get off at Shizuoka, and I had plenty of time. There was an entire line of people waiting to get off the train, so I was going to patiently wait until these strangers got off the train before I could get off myself.

Or so I thought.

The line wasn't moving for a couple of minutes, and I still couldn't understand the Japanese announcements. It seemed like the doors would close soon, and still no one was moving. It was when the doors to Shizuoka closed that I realized that everyone was standing because there were no seats, not because they were getting off. The next thing I knew, the train was going to Tokyo, and I would have to take a train back to a station close to Fuji... and be incredibly late.

By the time I got to the station, we were an hour off schedule and very, very late. Now, we only had six hours to get up and down the mountain, and Dan would revel in my stupidity for a long time. It increasingly seemed like our plans would be deterred.

However, I was determined to get up the mountain as fast as we could by brute force. We passed people left and right, tourists and seasoned climbers alike, in our mission to get up and down the mountain all within the allotted time we wanted.

Dan, at one point, told me that this was the first time he'd climbed Fuji. Given that he is Japanese and that he lives with his family frequently in Japan, I was shocked.

"What?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's not like we do this all the time. Most people only do it once in their lives. People are busy, you know."

In retrospect, it reminded me of this great poem by Robert Frost I've had to read a lot of: "The Mountain." The two main characters are a traveler and a local who talk about the large mythical mountain nearby. The traveler asks the local about a famous spring at the top, to which the local responds:

"I guess there's no doubt

About it's being there. I never saw it.

It may not be right on the top."

I'm trying to attribute much greater value to an everyday daily conversation, but I guess I'll do more of that for a lot of things as I grow up.

But we kept trudging on at a steady pace. Nothing was too hard. It was just walking, after all. But that was just what I thought.

Eventually, after a fair bit of arguing, complaining, and chatting with the local climbers (Dan, being fluent in Japanese, was the one doing the talking), we eventually got to the top. The view was incredible and we took a bunch of great pictures.

It was the only time in my life where I was outside and I could see clouds below me. I just remember thinking that at the time and realizing it was one of the only parts of my life where this could really happen. and it's only in retrospect that I really appreciate that more. Dan and I are pretty good friends back home, but when I think his name, the day will probably go down as the most memorable moment.

We made pretty good time too: we got to the top of Fuji from the bottom in two hours and 50 minutes. Naturally, going down would have been faster. We had plenty of time to just chill out and take pictures. We even thought that since we made such good time, we could go down an alternative route that would take slightly longer.

Let's just say that that was the beginning of a much bigger mistake.