In 2007 my wife and I moved to Bailey, Colorado. At the time I had an old Schwinn hardtail mountain bike that was my first ever mountain bike, received on my 16th birthday in 1992! It was a classic, and the firetruck red frame hangs from the trusses in my shed. I had never done more than 25 miles on that bike at once, maybe not even that much. I'd never taken it on an overnight, never ridden at altitude. I keep it now as a symbol of my time learning - painfully, at times - how to become an adventurer.

NOLS

Over the years I have been fortunate to travel this country and the world on many, many amazing adventures. In 1994 after high-school I joined a NOLS trip to British Columbia within the Mt. Edziza Provincial Park. We learned how to travel cross-country as there were very few long distance trails in the park. We didn't have GPS units, or SPOT units, or smart phones. We were resupplied by helicopter and I can still remember watching those pilots come swooping in flying low with the contours of the land. The instructors left us via float plane for the last three days and we were left to find our own way out to a campground. It was a remote, lonely, volcanic crater-strewn landscape and it was the first time in my life I can remember feeling at home in the wilderness, feeling content, feeling like I was in the right place at the right time. Yes, it was hard and cold and people got on my nerves, but there were moments of euphoria and joy and when the trip was over I knew I needed more time outside.

College Years

In college I was a member of the Outing Club at St. Lawrence University in the mid-late nineties. We did dozens of trips in the Adirondacks and the surrounding areas. We climbed the high peaks and we skiied them. We did multi-day canoe trips in Ontario. We backpacked from lean-to to lean-to. I led a trip with a friend to the Great Smoky Mtns from northern NY, driving straight through in the club van. We spent three soaking wet days backpacking with a group of students who had never backpacked. They were miserable (and so were we, but we tried not to let on) but on the last day back at the van the sun came out and we were all ecstatic as we dried our gear, giddy with happiness at the sun, but deeper down giddy with the knowledge that we had soldiered through and successfully accomplished our trip through trying circumstances.

During summer breaks and winter breaks I went on cross-country road trips with my friends. We climbed Telescope Peak in Death Valley National Park, camped and explored in the Escalante-Staircase National Monument, skied with buddies at Alpine Valley and Squaw Peak, rock climbed in Bodega Bay, California, skied an unforgettable line on Lassen Peak in Lassen Volcanic National Park, watched a Coleman stove go up in flames because of its thick coating of bacon grease! We stood under giant Sequoia's, hiked to Delicate Arch, saw fresh snow on the hoodoo's at Bryce. We heard coyotes howl in the night, stole petrified wood from the Petrified Forest National Park then threw it out the window when we were certain it was causing us bad luck. We almost ran out of gas in the vast desolation of Highway 50, the 'loneliest road in America'. We threw frisbees in truck stops, drove through the night, met girls in campgrounds, bought weed from strangers in Flagstaff. On those trips, we lived life removed from responsibility, without fear and frankly, without a care in the world. And we did them in the St. Lawrence University Outing Club 15-passenger van with a stipend from the school!

After college I lived in Massachusetts where I dusted off my Schwinn and starting exploring the numerous Bay area land trusts and conservation areas. The guidebook I used was rudimentary at best, tangled masses of unmarked black lines representing trails. I got lost every time. I loved it.

Wyoming

In 1998 I moved to Jackson, Wyoming and worked buildings and grounds for the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. I learned about avalanche safety, backcountry winter travel, and bought my first set of alpine touring gear (got an advance on my meager paycheck to do so) and went skiing under the full moon on Teton Pass. We camped and built jumps on the hillsides of Mt. Taylor. We skied and skied and skied. I met Tommy Moe and almost got into a bar fight with him.

Massachusetts, Maine & Texas

After a year of ski bumming, I moved back East and got a 'real' job for an engineering firm learning GIS. I climbed 45 of the 48 4,000 footers. in NH's White Mountains (I will get those last 3 someday). I did the Presidential Traverse in a day, skied Tuckerman's Ravine, sea kayaked around Peaks Island.

In 2002 I started planning a canoe trip with a friend who had a college buddy in Fairbanks, AK. My friend Jim and I flew to Anchorage and rented a car, we drove to Chugach NP and then drove north to Talkeetna ('a drinking town with a climbing problem') then to Fairbanks, marveling at the fact that the sun barely dipped below the horizon. We spent the next few days on a canoe trip on the Tanana River northwest of Fairbanks that may forever be the most adventurous of all my outdoor exploits.

I met my wife in Portland, ME and we moved to Texas after a couple years in Maine together. In Texas we camped in Texas's State Park system, camping in Lost Maples, Pedernales, Palmetto and other great locations in the vast Hill Country. We backpacked in Guadalupe NP, we cycled along the Rio Grande in Big Bend country. We road biked miles and miles of farm-to-ranch roads and ate BBQ at long benches for lunch. It was in Texas that I learned to love cycling. I even took my old Schwinn to a rocky trail system at Canyon Lake.

Colorado

We moved to Colorado to be in the mountains...well, to be fair, I did...and told Wendy she would love it. I know she pines for the beach and warm sunshine, and I owe her. But I know she has had moments in the mountains (x-county skiing at Snow Mountain Ranch for one) where she hears the call of the mountains and feels the serenity that they can offer sink in.

I wasn't much of a mountain biker when I moved here, but I quickly became one. Personally challenging, brutally strenuous, incredibly rewarding. I loved it. I had a neighbor who was doing long rides, epic rides, big rides, and I was awed. I joined him and a group for weekly night rides and was totally out of my league, but had fun (Type II fun - scary and hard at the time, but afterwards...damn, that was fun). I got a new bike, figured out better gear, got in shape, and did longer and longer rides and it was at this point that I tried my first over-nighter.

This was 2007, before bikepacking gear became ubiquitous, even before anyone had a good website for gear. I think Eric Parsons in AK was producing stuff before it became Revelate Designs, but regardless, I didn't know about any of it. I bought a rear rack, used a compression sack and shoved my Hennessey Hammock and a 3lb Mountain Hardware 0-degree bag in there. That was probably 10lb's just on the rack. I filled a backpack with camp gear and food and water, and used an old camera bag on my handlebars for odds and ends. It was a really bad setup I can say now, but at the time it was unique and incredibly exciting and I set out from Waterton Canyon, outside Denver. My plan was to ride to Wellington Lake - approx. 40 miles with about 35 of it on the Colorado Trail - then meet Wendy for the night, break camp and then ride the 25ish miles home. Sounded great. Turned out differently. Long story short, I found my physical breaking point. I threw my bike down in disgust at myself, so angry that I was so inexperienced and so weak and so pathetic. I literally could not move forward. I wept. I tried to call Wendy but had no signal, and threw my phone down in disgust too.

But then something happened. I realized that I had no choice but to get back on the bike. The trail went two ways - forward and back. I couldn't go back, it was too far. I could only go forward. One choice. Clear as day. So I got back on my bike and I found strength again. Half an hour after my breakdown, I was high as a kite, euphoric, barreling down buttery-smooth Buffalo Creek singletrack, realizing that I had just smashed down a barrier in my mind and body and then simply stepped through. Not something you do everyday. Maybe not something you ever do.

That adventure taught me what years of being outside hadn't. That I was stronger than I ever gave myself credit for, that I was more capable than I thought, that I had fortitude and perseverance aplenty. After that, I did longer and longer rides, updated my gear and learned through trial and error how to eventually take part in rides like the Colorado Trail Race in 2013, the Dixie 200 in 2015, the Arizona Trail Race in 2016, and the Tour Divide in 2018.

We have 3 girls now and we try to get them out as much as we can, but it gets hard at times to do as much as we'd like. You can't just run out the door anymore! Life is busy, and 'normal' life can get in the way of so much that we want to accomplish. But I know I want to live adventurously and I want to pass my passion for the outdoors on to my girls and I will continue to try and do that in any way I can. Wendy and I woke them up in the dark one morning, and the girls and I drove to a trailhead near Fairplay, and we got up to 13,000' just under Mt. Sherman to see the sunrise. THAT was an adventure!

As I said before, I have been extremely blessed to see so much natural beauty in the world. It makes me want more, more, more. The only downside is that the more I see, the more I want to see and I'll never be able to see enough. I better get out on another adventure, and so should you!