Official News page 4

ASTI'S BLOODY CLIMB TO EVEREST BASE CAMP

by Hazed

Usually when I ask you for money, it's to help keep Fed2 going, but this time I am asking for money on somebody else's behalf - and for a very good cause.

That somebody is Astrid Byro, whose connection to Fed is that she is Barb's (Freya's) daughter, and she once dressed up as Selena of the Spaceways (minus the helmet) for a Fed event at the science fiction World Con in Baltimore, as well as at a staff convention in New York. Sadly, I can't find any pix of Asti in her Selena outfit but here's who she was emulating.

Anyway, Asti is undertaking a mammoth adventure to raise money for Bletchley Park (more on that in a moment).

She is going to climb Everest.

Let me repeat that: she is going to CLIMB EVEREST. As she says on her blog, she is an overthehill, overweight, 30/day smoker and yet to raise money she will be climbing to the Everest base camp.

Wow. That beats running a marathon, or sitting in a bath of baked beans to raise money for charity!

You can read about the preparations for this expedition on her blog.

The cause for which she is undertaking this amazing feat is Bletchley Park, a site in the UK which is of huge significance to the history of computing but which until fairly recently nobody knew about because its role was top secret. It was here that codebreakers cracked the German codes during WWII, and the first computers were built to aid them. Without the work of the people at Bletchley Park the war would have continued for several years more. The movie Enigma was set at Bletchley Park.

Money is needed to help restore some of the buildings and turn it into a top-class education and heritage center. So please go read Asti's blog to find out about her plans, and when you are there, donate some money so that her trip will be worthwhile. Or go straight to the donation page.

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