I lost a friend last week. She was amazing and I want everyone to know about Linda. I met Linda six years ago in the Planet Granite Masters Class. She always climbed levels above me, but was never too busy to encourage me as I worked on my projects. She was a magnificent climber. Linda shaped my life with our friendship. One such example was the following exchange (to the best of my memory): ...
My life has been shaped by this microscopic little virus called Novel Coronoavirus. It’s a small little virus that is changing our world. It is changing the way we see each other and treat each other. It is effecting our relationships in so many different ways, and it is also negatively effecting our economy. I am worried on so many levels. I’m worried about what this means to our human relationships. I’m worried about what this means to my career as an acroyoga instructor. I’m worried about how this is affecting my roommate dynamics. ...
As an adult life gets in the way. You need to clean (we actually hire someone to clean our space), you need to take care of your stuff, you need to process the events that occur. Life is full of change but if you spend all your time processing the change, you won’t change yourself. Changing oneself isn’t an easy thing. It takes time and effort. What is stopping you from change? ...
/assets/img/2018/12/IMG_6554.m4v Last weekend was the annual Battle for Bolts at the Planet Granite Belmont location. It’s a 12 hour overnight climbing competition. I was unable to attend the Belmont one last year, but I did do the Portland one. This was my first Belmont B4B, and I entered it with great anticipation. Rules: 12 hours of climbing You get bonuses for climbing at least 1 climb every hour Climbs are rated by level. You must climb the whole route form bottom to top without breaks for the points. You may only do a roped route 10 times throughout the night. You can do bouldering problems 20 times. You can only do each climb at most 2 times in a row to allow for more people to get the wall. About my experience this year This year I was part of team D-AR-E To Be Great! with Linda. Our set goal at the beginning was still to be there at the end. Basically, not get Evan to kick us out of the space. For those of you who don’t know, Evan is the gym manager at Belmont and my cohost on my podcast South Beta Podcast and as manager of the gym there was some serious concern if we would survive the full night together. ...
Several years ago I was on a photography expedition with my best friend Aaron and his photography partner, Willie, shooting waterfalls up in the Columbia River Gorge area when I realized that I was wearing head to toe Patagonia. My interest in Patagonia up to that point was mostly about the quality of the product and guarantee. When we got talking about my Aaron said “You really are a Patagonia Fan Boy. You should buy the domain”. We brainstormed about what the domain would have and somehow we landed on the idea of visiting all the Patagonia stores. We started small, aiming for all the stores in the US. ...