beezer.com

Hey everyone… Long time no update. Sorry, I’ve been *swamped* as of recent… Class, PT, work, etc. Finally have vacation coming up next week — about damn time.

Well.. the subject says it all. Exactly one year ago, at 10:30ish AM, I was, at some point, the tallest object for several thousand miles. I accomplished a goal that I had set out for years in advance. I had, with much help from Mother Nature, climbed the 14,411-foot Mount Rainier in Southwest Washington State. I had worked my ass off, overcome some pretty big odds, battled a cold, and, after a night of some pretty good hiking, I saw a sunrise at 13,000 feet on the northeastern flank of Mt. Rainier. I remember thinking right before that time, in the stage of the climb called “The Disappointment Cleaver”, that I was going to turn around… I felt like shit. I felt like everyone was slowing up because of me. My mind wandered. Instead of climbing smart, I was thinking about how to tell Saeed I wanted to go back.

Then I slipped.

It wasn’t a big slip or anything… hell, if it was some other part of the trip, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it or even remembered it. The point was it was the turning point in the trip. Every minute before then I was questioning myself. I was questioning whether I should be on this rock. Right then, I said to myself “Thinking like this is going to kill you. FOCUS on the climb.” And I did. From then on I had a renewed vigor. I remembered why I spent hours at the WRC on the stair machine. It was for a CHANCE to climb this mountain. It was a moment I will remember for a long time.

Instead of turning around, failing, and quitting, I refocused my thoughts onto “a step at a time”. And I succeeded.

Life is strange like that I guess. We can’t think about the big picture all the time. It’s about the small steps we take in life.

I want to publicly thank Mr. Saeed Tossi and Mr. Stefan Van Baars for their help on that trip… I learned a lot about myself, and at the same time, had a great time.

I can say, without a doubt, summitting Mt. Rainier was one of the greatest things I have ever done in my life. I worked very hard for 6 months… planned the trip for several yers… and it all definately paid off…

Looking back at my trip report, I found this… This just summarizes everything: “But it was exciting to think about summitting this rock. It had been the only thing I thought about for the last six months. Everything was coming together. It was really hard not to smile. Even if I didn’t summit, there was no better place I could think about being at the moment — cramped next to 45 others, trying to get sleep in a building that had everything from snoring, farting, talking and noxious gas fumes from the stoves that made our water. Tomorrow was going to be a big day and somewhere deep down inside me told me I would have a great day.”