Today I injured myself climbing.  This isn’t one of those “I’ll be better in a few days” type injuries, but more in the category of me being unable to climb at all for a month or two.  Considering that I have been looking forward to climbing full time for almost seven years now, this is a major set back.  I’m still dealing and mentally processing what I’m going to do with what has happened to me but I don’t really blame myself.  It is interesting that after all of my sacrifices and hope that I don’t feel that anyone or anything has cheated me out of my dreams.  More than anything else at this time I see it as an opportunity to take a breath and see what I want to do with the time that I am going to have in the near future.  Right now I am in San Francisco and was planning on being here at a week at most, but now my stay is potentially going to be much longer than that.  I have some serious decisions to make, but those will wait for a day or two when I have a better idea as to what my near term physical health is going to be.

So I have finally made it out of Seattle and am now on the road!!  I start this trip with some trepidation and apprehension but am excited for all of the opportunities that are available to me.  I feel that my leaving Seattle was a bit rocky and I didn’t say all of the goodbyes that I wanted to.  It was difficult to actually leave Seattle, but I ended up doing it by leaving on a Monday and having a first stop already figured out.  Right now I am in Portland with my twin brother Mark and it has been a wonderful first stop.  There has been a lot of turmoil in his life over the last couple of months and he is working on getting momentum in life once again.   The two of us have always been able to communicate fairly well about what is going on in our personal lives.  I feel that I am fortunate to have a brother that I can talk to about what is going on in my and his personal life without judgment.

Portland will most likely have my attention for about three or four days before I continue my journey down south to San Fran and eventually over to Bishop, CA.  One of the things which I hope to do better with in general is being present in the moment and not dwelling in the past or over planning my future.  I suppose the first bit of that already happened for the last few days I was in Seattle and will continue over the next few months/years.

Hey everyone, so here is the video that I promised everyone of climbing in Leavenworth. I have a lot of touching up and work to do to learn to use the new video editing suite as well. Enjoy!!

I have finally started what I consider to be my big climbing trip this last weekend. Kaiti, Mattie Ari and myself went out to Leavenworth for three days of climbing and exploring what Leavenworth locals make of Octoberfest. Two of the days we got in some really good bouldering and one of the days was a general climbing wreck with some trad climbing. I’ve been spending so much of my climbing career bouldering that I haven’t really developed my ability to climb hand cracks and that became very apparent last weekend as we struggled to make it up some fairly easy cracks and ended up heading over to some more difficult sport climbs. I’m really looking forward to learning so much more about climbing movement by putting in mileage.

It was really wonderful to be able to spend a couple of days with friends relaxing outdoors and focusing on what I enjoy doing the most. The next few weeks transitioning to climbing on the road fulltime is going to be a wonderful growing experience for me and should be a good chance for me to reflect on my life and explore more of my personal aspirations for the next few years.

np: A Day Apart from the album “Language Barrier” by Lusine Icl