I never said I'd update this daily.

I've been thinking a lot about climbing and adventuring lately, and I want to get some of my thoughts down in words.

There's something about the treeline. I felt it climbing Olympus. I felt it on top of Marmot Basin. I felt it on Mt. Marcy. You feel like you're breaking some rule -- a rule that everybody knows but yourself. It's the reason that natives of the Karakoram don't climb (that's the region of the Himalayas that has the biggest mountains in the world).

Climbers are always superstitious. Usually for good reason, too. When I was on Marcy I made some comment about being stronger than the mountain, and throughout the rest of the day little things kept going wrong for me (stuff falling off of my pack, little things breaking, etc), that didn't happen to anybody else. I'm not akin to superstitions myself, but it was still strange.

I just got my hands on some new gear that I'm pretty excited about. I got a new jacket, pants, and a hat. The more I buy, though, the more I realize how much I need still. It's dang expensive, too. If I climb for a while (through to my 50's or so) I bet I'll spend about $300,000 on the sport. If I get any good, though, I'll get a lot of that covered through sponsorships and stuff like that.

It's funny though: in spending a lot of money on this stuff I really don't feel any buyer's remorse. I did when I bought my bike, and I do whenever I go out to eat, but I'll gladly drop $200 on a jacket (even when it's a "worse case scenario" jacket that I hope I'll never have to use). I think it'd be real cool to mix medicine and climbing. For one, I could always be an expedition doctor and get on with big-time climbs. Big-time mountains are almost always surrounded with vulnerable/indigenous/exposed populations. I think it would be real cool to go work with some of those populations, too (kind of like how Greg Mortenson got his start in Three Cups of Tea). It's an idea, but who knows. I guess I gotta get into med school first.

I've been training real hard. I can run 10 miles pretty well now (I have no idea what my time is), so I've been throwing in a ton of hills. We have a hill in downtown GR that rises about 250 ft. in about half mile, so it's pretty steep. I try to run that five times within a 5 mile loop (thus giving me about 10 miles). I find that I love that hate the hill all at the same time. My knee hasn't bothered me in a really long time, so I figure I'm doing things right. I started lifting, too, so that should help me out a bit. Hopefully it will all put me on top of Mt. Elbrus.