This weekend a printing press in Texas is warming up its rotors and ink jets just for me. For me, that is, and the 90 million people of Ethiopia for whom I wrote the book it’s about to print. Are you cringing right now? Did I really just say I wrote a book for 90 million people? You’re right, I … Read More
Joining The Return, Announcing Imagine Ethiopia 2011
Three years ago I received an email with a simple question at its core: could I envision a trip to Ethiopia whereby adventure and education combined to create new stewards of the world? I said yes. imagine1day said yes. And our first Imagine Ethiopia expedition was born. Last September, seventeen people joined us and journeyed through Ethiopia. This October, we’re … Read More
Robbery Friendships, An Additive Adventure Entry
In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs This is Haile. In 2006, I put Haile, and thirteen of his closest friends, in jail. In Ethiopian jail, to be precise. I’d like to say it wasn’t my fault, but then again, I was the one climbing in Ethiopia. The story went something like this: Caroline George and I were three hundred feet up a … Read More
The End of the Beginning, An Additive Adventure Entry
In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs The bowels of the Addis Ababa airport are laced with sweet, thick exhaust. Five minutes ago–forty-five minutes before my departure back to the United States–a man in a sharp-creased navy uniform summoned me away from the fluorescent passenger holding tank with a gun holstered at each hip. He didn’t give me his name, just confirmed mine. … Read More
Running With Haile, An Additive Adventure Entry
In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com This is how it happens. One person has the idea to run 13,286 kilometers—the distance from Vancouver B.C. to Mekelle, Ethiopia—to raise money to build a school in rural Ethiopia. It’s hard for one person to run that far himself or herself. So they ask for others to join them. One of the people who signs up … Read More
The Rebirth of Slick, An Additive Adventure Entry
In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com Three weeks from today, I’ll be flying to Ethiopia. I’ve been training for trip. I’ve been aqua jogging. Actually, I just had to stop aqua jogging. I was over-training with the 12”-wide water-flotation device. In my defense, I was just trying to keep up with Astrid, the 65-year old woman with a hip and knee replacement. At … Read More
The Ballad You Forgot, An Additive Adventure Entry
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LfSxYaZojs&w=450] A blog in conjunction with Osprey Packs and Outside Television. Let’s get this out of the way. I was 8. I made bad choices like singing Don’t Fence Me In at my father’s second wedding and lying down on the carpet in the school loft; I had bad choices foisted upon me, like a two-inch buzz cut—billed as a smart fashion move with … Read More
Me, As a Dot. An Additive Adventure Entry*
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: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn … Read More
Bigger This Time
Believe the hype, drink the cool-aid, make the trip. That’s my motto this month. I didn’t start it. My friend Sara did. Actually, an intuitive did. Or, to be precise, my decision to go see an intuitive. A month ago, while driving through the dark streets of Bozeman, I called Sara in Bend. We’d both lived together in Boulder a … Read More
Transitions in Paradox
Three 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 … Read More