Hobbies

I got into climbing because my son wanted to try it. He was six, RoKC had a youth program, and I figured I'd drop him off and watch. Instead I got on the wall myself, and something clicked.

What I like about climbing is that it's a spatial and creative problem. Every route is a puzzle someone designed for you to solve: the hold selection, the sequence, the movement. You can brute-force some of it, but the better you get, the more you realize the elegant solution is always available if you're willing to slow down and read it.

Climbing is my zen. I imagine it's similar to what surfers feel during an early morning session on the water. I live in Kansas, so surfing isn't an option, but an early AM climb with a good crew does the same thing for me. Mental boost, physical boost, and for an hour or two I can turn my brain off to everything except the problem in front of me.

I've loved bikes since I was a kid. Rode through childhood, through college, and now in adulthood I've found a way to keep playing. Mountain biking is just the grown-up version of that.

It's physically hard and mentally demanding in the same way climbing is. When you're on a technical trail, there's no room for anything else in your head. You're reading terrain, picking lines, committing. The trail has your full attention or it has your face.

Being in nature is a big part of it too. Moving through trees at speed, elevation change, weather, dirt. There's something about that environment that a gym can't replicate. It fills the same need climbing does, just differently.

Coming soon...

Coming soon...