Posts

/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. ...

I was going through my old notebook and saw this: This is from a very old project notebook. Two project notebooks ago, actually (for scale, I finish one of these every couple of years). I’m often reticent about sharing my thoughts. I don’t think they are important. Who cares what I’m thinking? I barely care what I’m thinking. I write it down and take notes so I can look back at it, but I almost never do. ...

The world is full of exceptional people. These people do things in a way the rest of us think are a little crazy. Some of them are crazy in business, like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Some are crazy in science like Einstien or Feynman. Some are crazy athletes like Sean White or Tony Hawk. Alex Honnold is one of those “crazy” people, and he is crazy about his Free Solo climbing. ...

Today is hack day at work. In honor of that I’ve started listening to a shared playlist on Apple Music containing the original soundtrack from the 1995 film Hackers. This movie changed my life. I remember when I first saw it. I was in my best friend’s house, I was 11 or so. We were in an upstairs room because that was where the TV was. I don’t think I got to see the whole thing, but the little I did see captured me. ...

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. ...