Nepal had widened my outlook. Standing near the top of the world, I'd seen powerful beauty and enormous need. That trek inspired me. No goal seemed out of range. The role of the "dutiful woman" that I'd imagined to be my fate in Dallas had all but disappeared as I ratcheted up my aspirations. In one sphere after another, I began taking on challenges I wouldn't have considered a decade earlier.

Denver, gateway to the Rockies, breeds adventurers. Our urbane friends cross-country ski to each other's mountain cabins and scale the peaks of the Continental Divide. Dinner conversations are as likely to cover a slalom race as a political coup. At one such table in January 1989, I sat beside Jack Klapper-a pain specialist, fittingly-who described his recent marathons. "Someday, I'd love to try one," I confided.

"I've got just the race: Venice. October," he replied casually. "It's flat and sea level."

"You're on," I said impulsively, shaking his hand. After all, I had ten months to get in shape. I began training the next day. Charles had taken to asking me, "How's my little chickadee?" But it was a joke; we both laughed at the thought that I would ever be of chickadee proportions.