Dobrindts dot com...again

For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by the story of a Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes mountains in South American in 1971. The survivors of the plane crash stayed alive for over two months in the harshest terrain on the planet. In fact, it was the only time a plane crashed at cruising altitude and at cruising speed with any survivors (the pilots thought they were flying in a pass in the mountains and crashed at 22,000 feet). Survival experts say that it is easier to stay alive in the dessert or on a raft in the middle of the ocean than the Andes Mountains in the middle of winter.

I read the book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, written by Piers Paul Read in 1974. I actually read the book 5 or 6 times and couldn’t put it down each time I read it. Last year a new book came out by a survivor called Miracle in the, Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, that I bought and read within three days of its release. And there was a movie made in the early 90s that stared Ethan Hawke that I have on VHS.

So about two weeks ago I was at a conference in San Fran and guess who the guest speaker was? Yep, the guy that was portrayed by Ethan Hawke and who wrote the book that came out last year, Nando Parrado. Nando had a sister and his mother on the plane who died. He was also the leader of the group and main force to find their own way out since the search was called off after 8 days. One thing they had to resort to so they would stay alive was to eat the flesh of those who died. Horrific but necessary. If you haven’t read any of the books and like real-life stories, I recommend it.

There were about 600 people in a large ball room. We were in there for about 2 hours listening to executives from my company speak and everyone was pretty tired and restless. Nando Parrado got up there and spoke for another hour and 45 minutes and not a single person moved. There were 600 sets of eyes wide open and glued on his every word. He showed some short videos and pictures to illustrate the chain of events, but for the most part he spoke for almost two hours. It was probably the best speech I have ever seen and 75% of the people had wet eyes when they gave him a standing ovation at the end.

My company gave out copies of his latest book and he stayed and signed the books for 2 hours that evening. I got to talk to him for a bit since I knew he was a motorycle rider and I have a small interest in bikes. Nice guy but more importantly he made all of us realize that making quotas and attending cadence calls and dealing with work issues is nothing compared to life and death decisions.

I have to admit one thing we did in poor taste. The next night a bunch of us were out having a drink. Standing in a circle, I pointed at the heaviest guy there and said “If we get into a plane crash, I am eating you first.”