Welcome, May!

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The past few weeks have been stressful. Training new employees, dealing with difficult customers, not sleeping well, not exercising (I’ve gained 20 pounds in the last two years), getting through family drama (two life-threatening events in the same day, 2000 miles apart: my dad’s heart attack in NM and a 9 year grandchild starting the rest of his life with Type 1 Diabetes) . . .  My CrossFit lifestyle withered into oblivion when I lost my job at the University in 2020, as Covid got going. Deep depression brought me to a standstill as I took a few months to try to reset. Since then, my physical status has been on steady decline. Now my daily schedule looks something like this: Work 3-11 pm (on a good day), Go to bed at 4 am, get up between 10:30 am and noon, get booted up and go back to work. If I get one day off a week I’m fortunate. At least I don’t have to work all night for now. That was the worst.  So I haven’t had time or energy to do much, even read, much less write. And since my

It's Time To Go Again

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Celo Knob (6,327 feet) on the way to Mount Mitchell (6,683 feet, in the clouds, behind me in this pic). 8 more peaks to summit and descend from this point before we're there. (May, 2015)

"Mountain climbing is comprehended dimly, if at all, by most of the nonclimbing world. It's a favorite subject for bad movies and spurious metaphors. A dream about scaling some high, jagged alp is something a shrink can really sink his teeth into. The activity is wrapped in tales of audacity and disaster that make other sports out to be trivial games by comparison; as in idea, climbing strikes that chord in the public imagination most often associated with sharks and killer bees . . . why would a normal person want to do this stuff?" (Author's note, viii)

Krakauer, Jon. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains.  Krakauer: Lyons & Burford, 1990.


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