Bring Back the Blades, An Additive Adventure Entry

Yes, that is my shadow. I have yet to recruit a professional photographer to shoot my blading.In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs

It’s January 28th. My new skis are tuned and fat. In Colorado today, like most days of the winter, the sun is out. The mountains are choked in snow. It looks like a fine day for rollerblading.

It was my Physical Therapist who started it. My back rehab has been going so well I thought I was ready to advance to skiing bumps. She suggested starting with rollerblading. “Have you ever done it?” she asked.

“Is the Pope Catholic?” I responded.

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Me, As a Dot. An Additive Adventure Entry*

Photo By Gabe RogelFrom OutsideTV.com.

I have no idea who the people are who will change my life in the next two years. I had no idea, two years ago, that a woman making a spontaneous stop in a Patagonia store in California would change mine now. Susanne Conrad caught a glimpse of a tall hardbound book called Vertical Ethiopia. I’d written it, but that didn’t matter to her, then. Ethiopia mattered.

A few months later, a random email appeared in my inbox. Sapna Dayal introduced herself and suggested that we might have much in common. She was the executive director of imagine1day, a non-profit dedicated to changing the world’s future via building schools in Ethiopia. We spent following winter months talking. I’d come home from ice climbing in New Hampshire and watch it get dark and cold in New England as Sapna would pause her afternoon in a rainy Vancouver for us to brainstorm about how to work together in the high desert in the Horn of Africa.

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Transitions in Paradox

Where I started: Jima Airport, SW EthiopiaThree weeks ago I flew from southwestern Ethiopia to central Montana, in six flights. When I arrived at the Bozeman airport, at 11:45 pm. I’d been traveling for thirty-eight hours. It was -5 degrees outside, a 75-degree drop from where I’d started. My van, choked full of a winter’s assortment of climbing gear, files, and poodle food, was waiting in the parking lot. Peter and I tossed in our bags and, when the sliding door would not stay shut because of the cold, I held it closed on the drive to what would become our home for the next twenty-two days.

The next morning, mid-unpack, jetlagged, and missing my gloves, I met Gretchen, a friend of a friend, for coffee.  I warned her of my state in my greeting. “This might be a bad idea,” I said. “I’m probably about as least like myself, or most like myself, as I could be.”

Gretchen smiled compassionately. “Transitions are always hard.”

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To Do: Go To Namibia. Namibia 3.

Petzl Attaches, Lockers, Spirits, Fin Anneau Slings, and Poodle. 4/5 of which will be going to NamibCourtesty of Petzl: Check out their new Website.

I’m five days out from a five-week expedition. I have eight lists. On a one-to-one completion rate, the odds are not leaning in my favor. Right now I’m supposed to be working on my connections. That right there, to the left, that’s all the draws and anchoring material I’m bringing to Namibia. Five weeks of connection.
It’s a pretty basic question: what do you need for the next step in your life? I have some idea. I have no idea. The lists make me feel better.

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Working Make Believe

...Maria Montessori never talked about getting paid for work. She just wanted for children’s time to be valued. But when those kids grow up they enter a world where value, for work, comes in the form of money. Or at least money is the clearest sign of valuation.

I’m not talking about being zen about all of this—about realizing the other things “work” gives us. That is another subject. I’m talking about what happens at the end of the day when you close your computer screen and look around, and for all practical purposes to anyone in the outside world, nothing has changed since you opened the thing ten hours before. How do you know if it counts?...

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