More spectacular shots from the plane

As I mentioned earlier, the first flight left before dawn provided an extended (because flying westward) pre-dawn and sunrise show. When I fly, I always try to look for optical phenomenon and this flight was the most spectacular I have ever seen.

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Every single day

You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say, “I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.” You don’t start there. You say, “I’m going to lay this stone as perfectly as a stone can be laid.” You do that every single day. And soon you will have a wall.

~ Will Smith

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Meditate upon death to motivate yourself

This blind spot in our perception is why we confidently tell ourselves that we’ll start that business, lose the weight, repair our relationship, get organized…in a few weeks or a few months, because then we’ll have more time. It’s an illusion. It’s a self-deception that allows us to soothe the pangs of our unfulfilled desires with the panacea that now is not the right time. The mirage of the time-filled future can string a man along until he’s 80, has one foot in the grave, and realizes that the expanse of time he imagined would open never appeared.

~ Brett McKay from, Meditate Upon Death to Motivate Yourself | The Art of Manliness

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Photo gallery for this series

This entry is part 1 of 72 in the series My Journey

This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow as I add more posts to this series.

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Photo gallery for this series

This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow…

Photo gallery for this series

This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow…

Photo gallery for this series

This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow…

Yes!

What do you at 1am when you’re on the way to the airport for a 6am flight?? …got off the highway at the airport exit and BAM!!

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Third route

Once we had our top rope up, we spent the rest of our daylight here. Staright up, dihedral with a 5.8 finger jam crack. Paste your feet on the right and bury your hands… four attempts, but I couldn’t quite pull this one off.

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…then

Straight up the middle of this. Blank and mossy until you get to this unique feature mid-face.

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Second route

Then we moved a bit left on that same wall. This was crazy hard to make the first move to get up onto the wall.

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Straight up

This wall was just a few degrees from vertical. Standing on tiny features like edge of a nickel. The upper lip is about 200 feet, and roofed out at least forty feet. Route started with this sheer, wet, mossy wall with a fist-jam crack (insert entire hand, make fist so it can’t come out and the walk up the wall :) Spent all day climbing all over this wall, and then one other route.

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Gorge-ous!

Rained all night and all morning… finally cleared up and now this terrible drive thru some lousy national forest or something… #whereAreTheRocks !

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Few shots from Friday

If you ask me, this was a pretty sweet place to start climbing! Super easy warm up… before we moved onto some much harder stuff. I can just barely climb the “easy” climbs here. Lots of insane over-hanging stuff that is way beyond me.

I did about 6 climbs in the afternoon before I was totally “burnt”. A couple of them were a grade or more above my best climbs the last time Mike and I were on the rocks. Really happy about that; Means my general “get in shape” continues to yield broad (health, life, parkour, climbing) benefits without my having to hyper-focus on specific sports.

Still a member of the Vertical Club… YES!

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You sure about this Mike?

First day at Red River Gorge. Mike picked me up at the airport and after a few provisioning stops… A short hike, hot and humid… but the grip on these rocks is awesome!

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