The Inca Diaries: Chapter 6: Training for Altitude: Planking Si

June 13, 2011

Some of you may not know what planking is. People lie down like a plank in the damndest places – atop poles, inside glass cases that hold bags of ice, atop police cruisers. You name the place, they’ve done it. One guy recently died in a planking fall. That’s me on the right, planking next to a cliff, during last week’s conditioning climb. And yes, that is a Tilley Hat.

Last week, as part of my conditioning climb for my Peru service in August, I planked Little Si. Not Mount Si, but Little Si, the runt mountain next to the real Si.
I did this because of my friend, Roger, who didn’t set his alarm clock right, and so arrived at our rendezvous site late. This gave me time to read a a Wall Street Journal article that alerted me to the fact that photos of planking have gone viral on the Internet, but the fever has broken and the fad is dying out. Sunday might be my last chance to catch the wave.
There have been too many critical things I've missed in life. Like the time in the 1960s when I got to Haight-Ashbury. The free-love flower children had all left, and instead I got picked up by a guy who took me to a meeting of gay maoists,. Being in the Air Force with a secret clearance, I naturally felt uncomfortable, particularly after he shared his vision of how he wanted to spend the night. Having missed the flower children, I definitely didn't want to miss planking.
Roger, being out of shape and all, had already negotiated me down to a wussy hike up Little Si instead of the real Mount Si, and now he was late. So I decided I would recover the momentum by planking my way up Little Si. And to recover his reputation, Roger spent a good deal of the time convincing me he’s not a wuss by suggesting we climb Mount Adams in July. At 12,300 feet, the summit of Mount Adams is 5,000 feet higher than I’ve ever hiked. It’s higher than Cuzco, Peru. You can do it in one day, but Roger suggests two. So maybe I’ll try it to see what I’m in for.

Anyway, the photos that follow pretty well tell Sunday’s story.

I’ve seen photos of plankers teetering on pokey light standards. I prefer smooth flat services like this rock. I forget – what do you do with the arms?

That rock proved to be too little a challenge. Then I spotted a fence. Now that was more like it—Until I tried it.
You know that saying, “easy as falling off a log?”

Gotta get those legs up, Uh..uh…

Roger, this hurts! Shoot the damn picture!

Those fence logs were a little narrow. Finally I found one that was a little broader and flatter. Keeping in mind what the hoods of old DeSoto’s looked like, I decided to imitate the carvings on the bows of old sailing vessels – the maidenhead. No, wait. I think that’s called the figurehead.

It was at this point that I realized that I hadn’t missed the wave. I remembered planking more than 40 years ago in McMahon Hall at University of Washington. A dorm mate placed two chairs facing each other. I rested the back of my skull on the seat of one chair and my heels on the other. Using my abs, I raised my middle until I was suspended flat between the chairs, just like the image below: Sorta. That’s big Mount Si in the background.

This is the position we used in the dorm room. I call it the reverse two-point supine plank. Note how impressed those kids are at my ability to do this 40 years later.

Here’s a better image of the reverse two pointer: