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January 29, 2026  End of Things

Thing 1: The last continent -- Antarctica, as it's called in general, as it's visited for most, and for me as this was my last continent to visit of the seven. The last degree -- 89 to 90 south. Did it -- made it to the South Pole. See Oct 19 and Dec 26, 2025 posts (below) for the runup. The expedition was a trial but the only tears were at the end skiing into the pole. The interior is definitely like another planet—an odd mix of commercialized "fun" at Union Glacier camp (sky diving, fat tire bike, scenic flights) and barren polar desert (the 89th degree and ski to the pole). It was mentally / psychologically challenging (unlike the level of such on mountains) and physically challenging but not as hard as bigger mtns like Denali, Ama Dablam, etc.

Jan 8 dropped off at the 89th degree by ski plane;  8 days and 70 miles later on Jan 15, we arrived at the bottom of the world - no more to go. I suffered through low back pain and an upper respiratory infection for most of the way. Nine people started (two groups) and four of us finished. The rest were extracted (in two waves by a specially modified Toyota overland truck running on Jet A fuel from the pole - lucky for them as a ski plane evacuation costs $110K. I have a little lingering frost nip on the finger tips. Our "final four" team members are really nice people - I got lucky in that way. [pics below]

Thing 2: A trusty friend put out to pasture. Bye bye beloved beast of burden. You dragged me down. You clung to me, sweating and swearing. You held me hostage to sacks of gravel, concrete weights, and bags of water. You broke me down so I could build back better. I hated you. I'll miss you. I love you. Farewell old friend. You have reached the end of your road and I must continue on a little more. The other that takes your place will never travel as far as you did these past 30 years. We did it all - together. [pic below]

Thing 3: 2025 --  year in review:

• visited New Zealand for extended period, the Milford Sound was a standout among many other experiences

• climbed some new international destinations: New Zealand, El Salvador, Croatia

• rafted two new rivers, the Soca and Tara

• Sailed the Saronic Gulf

• Toured Metolius (climbing gear manufacturer)

• rock climbing in Croatia, Albania, and North Macedonia, Yosemite CA and Smith Rock OR

• world's largest tree by volume (General Sherman), world's second largest tree by volume (General Grant)

• first AT Ski Touring outing (Snoqualmie WA)

• New Years eve in Santiago Chile

• visited 8 new countries: New Zealand, El Salvador, Panama, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina , Montenegro, and Albania

• visited 3 new National Parks (Pinnacles, Kings Canyon, Channel Islands) and 4 new National Monuments (Sequoia, Fort Ord, San Gabriel Mountains, John Day Fossil Beds), and proper visit to Sequoia NP

• 2 new 50 NA Classic Climbs: Cathedral Spire and Mount Conness (Yosemite, CA)

• live music: AC/DC, Live, NIN, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Start Making Sense, Grand Ole Opry show

• 240 days travel

• read 40 books (and DNF 2)

It was not without its trials and tribulations. I seemed to have a dark cloud from October through November. It is this way with me sometimes. Laughably bad: first ever new car lasted 14 days before a giant deer inserted itself under my front clip. Eight weeks and $17K later with a paint job that doesn't quite match, I'm driving it again. An oncoming vehicle decided to sideswipe a few of us the other day and clipped my mirror (minor/no actual damage) just to hammer home this might be a cursed car. Fun fact: 6,400 deer incidents in PA in 2024, $35M in repair bills -- we are in the top 5 states with this plague. Please eat more venison and sponsor the hunters! My wallet was stolen from one of the rental cars I had —it included my passport card, so I had a lovely week replacing all of that stuff. My passport fell out of my car during the process (used it for ID for the replacement card), eventually showed up mailed to me from Dept of State with mysterious letter and staple in it. Went through 6 weeks of Dept of State dumb-assery to finally get assurance that it was actually still valid (2 weeks before go time to Chile). Two duffels of camping, climbing and travel gear stolen from my rental car in Portland took about 40 hours of work and $5.5K to fully replace. Sprained my ankle to the point of chronic sprain -- PT and rehab ongoing. There were many more, almost daily challenges to deal with -- hopefully the next dark cloud period is far in the future. [pics below]

"You can do a lot in a lifetime, If you don't burn out too fast, You can make the most of the distance, First you need endurance, First you've got to last" -N. Peart (Rush)

July 30, 2025  Going with the Flow

Tomorrow I head off for morning yoga. It's a weekly ritual that I have done for so many years now I decided it was time to trace back and try to find the origin. With some orientation help from my journal and then triangulating on the calendar (yes, I have Google Calendar entries back to mid-2005), I am fairly certain that January or February 2011 was my first session that started the weekly habit.

Referring to old emails I know I tried yoga for the first time in late 2007 at Schoolhouse on the South Side as I recall. A one-off, thanks to encouragement from a girlfriend at the time. At that time yoga was still a very niche thing for us Pennsylvanians. Nationally, in the 1990s, yoga started to move beyond the counterculture and New Age movements and into the mainstream, with VHS tapes and DVDs making it more accessible for home practice. Brief research reveals that in 2001, approximately 4.3 million Americans practiced yoga and by  2003 that grew to 15 million, so a rapid expansion which including studios and retail stores as it seemed to be becoming an industry. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the number of businesses classified as Pilates & Yoga Studios increased from 18K in 2005 to 22K in 2010 and the number of Americans practicing yoga had grown to 21 million. 

Us eastern US folks in general, and amongst my friends, were still thinking yoga was just "stretching with mysticism". And it was mostly women - it took balls (literally and mentally) for a guy to unroll a mat in a yoga studio where you were almost guaranteed to be the only male there. I had plenty of friends assuring me of the deep merits of the practice and I sensed there was something more.

From my email history it looks like I was being pressured to try (again?) in late 2008, 2009, and 2010, and I was not taking the advice. It was becoming more adopted, mentioned in outdoor clubs, studios opening around the city. I was doing a log of rock and ice climbing and mountain biking. I recall being aware of my body being sore often and the muscles tight. I think in the back of my mind I knew that I had reached that point in life where you needed to actively stretch, before and after activity otherwise, well, you just wouldn't bounce back like a teenager!

The ECP was definitely listing yoga events so the Pittsburgh outdoor community was clearly gaining awareness. I think the climbing community might have seen the value in pairing stretching and balance work between the climbing outings. It felt like an engagement was in the works. I was struggling with joblessness at that time, and I believe I returned to work in January or February 2011, and it to an office in downtown. I can't recall exactly what the impetus was for going but I suspect I knew that I needed to fit in something to get back in the groove of workouts while doing the weekly grind and some sort of critical mass of my community of active folks assuring me it "was for guys too".

So I found and attended a convenient class I believe at lunch time. I remember there was a male instructor and that did a lot for my confidence in showing up to a room full of women. I recall really liking his style and learning that we were doing vinyasa "flow" style and I thought it was so much better that just forming shapes. No mysticism elements were included and I felt like I had a serious workout afterwards. It had clicked with me and I felt I now understood the fervor. My (different) girlfriend at the time was suspicious and accusatory of my motives and I remember thinking "well, that just makes me want to establish a boundary and stick to this - my intentions are pure and I'm keeping with this new flow!"

By March 2011 I was clearly committed to keeping the practice weekly as I see I was looking for alternative locations for when I didn't get to fit in a downtown session.  I recall my two attempts at hot yoga. It was really hot. A pool of my own sweat and the threat of slipping off of a balance move and crashing to the floor was just not for me. I hadn't learned about using a mat towel. So I swore off that style.

By July 2011 I had bounced around and tried different studios. I was getting a sense of styles, jargon, and important qualities of instructors really made the difference. Names would often be mentioned with accolades and reverence. The scene was sorting through the dabblers and superstars were rising to the top, drawing devotees to certain studios.

By August 2011 I had landed at Yoga Hive and found the entire staff to be high quality. It fit my need by having classes in the hour after the end of typical workdays, and it's been my go to every since.

Well, it might not be perfectly correct, but it's close enough. I'll consider February 2011 as the start of the weekly practice that has lasted up to now. That's 14 years and I can be proud of that. Admittedly, when I'm travelling (much more lately) it is not possible to keep the weekly commitment. I do my best when on the road and I'm straight to the studio within the first two days of returning to Pittsburgh. I can say that it's not something I just like to do anymore, it's an absolute necessity at this stage of the health span.

And, that I continue to try new things and expand the experience. Tomorrow, hot yoga! I kind of like it now, occasionally, when I don't forget the mat towel. :)

The light in me honors the light in you, dear reader. Namaste.

It's not how fast you can go

The force goes into the flow 

If you pick up the beat

You can forget about the heat… -N. Peart

May 8, 2025  They Call Me The Workin' Man

At this point in life, much of what it may possibly be is now in the past. It's a lot of years, decades in the rear view mirror now that my past eras almost seems like they belong to another person (I guess I sort of was another person) in my mind. Ages and phases have piled up and memories get buried. I have spent the last five years or so doing a memory walk to try to recall as many books I read and found it to be fun slowly mining out the data. Every time I think the vein is played out, I'll dig up another bit of ore. Sometimes I check the records and find that I had already (re-) discovered it. It's an enjoyable experience when it's a new discovery as I polish it in my memory and place it on the "shelf" of records.

ALL of my time working for pay is hopefully in the past and my "professional phase" work history is on LinkedIn. I am sometimes taken a bit by surprise with my own work history when some odd job or period of my working life comes up in conversation. So it occurred to me to apply the same idea as the reading recollection and take a mental journey to try to recall all of the jobs I've done, mostly for pay but I also decided to account for the volunteer ones as well. Almost instantly I was struck by how many this was likely to add up to and the vast array of roles I found myself in. 

Details are certainly going to be fuzzy in the earlier half, and exact timings aren't really important to me, so some guesswork applies. Here's what I recall as of today of all the jobs I was ever paid to do:

1. Babysitting, cousins and maybe others, 5 years

2. Newspaper delivery, a small local paper around my neighborhood, 40-50 customers, 3 years

3. Lawncare service (grass cutting, weeding, misc. yard work), 5-7 clients

4. Grocery store stock boy, Foodland and Duritza's, 5 years

5. Computer class final project black market, 1 or 2 years, 6-8 clients

6. Computer lab assistant, IUP, 2 years

7. Legal assistant, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, 1 year (1989-90)

8. Allegheny Power/Energy (now First Energy), Business Systems Analyst, Project Manager, 9 years (1990-99)

9. USWeb/CKS/marchFirst, Associate Partner, 1 year (1999-2000)

10. IronBridge Partners (venture capital firm), founder and partner, 1 year (2000-01)

11. Three Dimension Systems, Director of Operations (owner/partner, CIO, Corp. Secretary and essentially jack of all trades), 10+ years (2001-11)

12. Mad Evolution, video production company, founder and  partner, 16 years (2000-16)

13. Focus group participant, Campos, 2 days (2008)

14. Edwards Drums Instruction, drum instructor, 1 or 2 students (2008)

15. Chiropractor practice, IT service contract work, 3-5 days over a few months (2008)

16. US Census worker, 1 year (2009)

17. Discover Organizing, professional organizer, et. al., 2 years (2009-10)

18. House rehabs, hourly laborer, 2 clients, 2 years

19. Scouting COPE (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience) program, assistant/instructor, 2 years (2012-13)

20. CIBER, Business Analyst, Project Manager and Solutions Architect, 1+ years (2010-11)

21. Giant Eagle / Pyramid Consulting Group, Sr. Consultant / Project Manager, 1+ years (2011-12)

22. FHLBank Pittsburgh, Sr. Systems Project Manager, 9 years (2013-22)

Volunteer jobs:

23. The Trust, Band Manager,  3 years (1992-1994)

24. Exploring (Engineering and Technology post), Chairman and Leader, 3 years (1991-1993)

25. Hunter's Hideaway, Webmaster, 2 years (1998-1999)

26. Winter Morning Pictures, Second Assistant Director and Production Manager, 3 years (2007-2009)

27. ARTEZ (Allegheny River Towns Enterprise Zone) Board of Directors, Board Member, 10 years (2008-2017)

28. Habitat for Humanity, laborer, 5 days (2015-2022)

29. Explorers Club of Pittsburgh (ECP), officer (3 positions), committees and instructor (mountaineering, rock climbing, backpacking, and mountain biking schools)

That is way more than I would have guessed from the start! Hopefully this list will also experience an occasional new nugget unearthed from the memory pile.

It seems to me I could live my life

A lot better than I think I am

I guess that's why they call me

They call me the workin' man. -Alex Lifeson / Geddy Lee 

March 13, 2025  Year in Review (2024) and Seven Months Catchup

As I do every year as it winds to a close, I reflect upon the places gone, experiences, and mainly bright spots to remember. There were also, as always, lowlights - which I'll not put here as they're often too personal (for me or others in my life). Overall, 2024 was again a fantastic year. Travel, exploration, and adventure continued to be the focus:

• 293 days of travel

• 9 new countries visited, 1 new US national park, 2 new national monuments

• Guatemala: Antigua and climbed/summited Acatenango (view Fuego eruptions), lake Atitlan, Santiago (volcano), Tikal

• NYC: saw Starry Night by Van Gogh (MoMA)

• Norway: ice climbed in Rjukan, Oslo: saw The Scream by Munch and many other sites, Bergen, Rosedal, trolltunga, fantastic food (bread, cheese, fish, salmon, meats, sweets, cider, etc.)

• Stockholm Sweden: the Vasa, Abba, modern art, and Nobel museums, palace, old town, cinnamon rolls, 40th country

• Copenhagen Denmark: Opera house

• Scotland: Stirling, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, climbed 2 munroes, Islay distilleries

• Colombia: Bogota, Guatape, La Carbonera, Teyuna - "The Lost City" 4-day trek, Suarez river rafting

• Italy: top to bottom, Dolomites

• Malta and San Marino : briefly

• Mountain: Mt. Whitney via East Buttress (see Climbing Resume)

• Mountain: Mt. Russell via Fishhook arete

• Algonquin provincial park Ontario Canada canoe packing

• Argentina, Chile: Patagonia, Torres del Paine W Trek, Ushuaia (southernmost city, penguins, Terra del Fuego National Park), Cerro Fitzroy, Cerro Torre, rock climbing

• Easter Island

• Rafted three rivers: Suarez River in Colombia, Snake River Hells Canyon section, Rio Manso in Argentina

• Downhill mountain biking at Whistler and Squamish, BC

• Hiked the West Coast Trail, Vancouver Island, BC

• US Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Craters of the Moon NM, Hagerman Fossil Beds NM, CA Pacific Rim National Park Reserve

• Some cool stuff: Total eclipse -amazing!, bungee jump (highest in the Americas), skydiving (fourth time), eFoiling (super fun), sailing ASA101 course and certification

• Live music: Queensrÿche, Sabaton, Judas Priest, Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie, Illumishade, Visions of Atlantis, Korpiklaani, David Gilmour (Circus Maximus, Rome), Iron Maiden

• Fancy feasts: SAGA (NYC), Stallen (Oslo), Savage (Oslo), Maaemo (Oslo, 3 star), Aira (Stockholm), AOC (Copenhagen), Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen), El Cielo (Medellin, Colombia), Retrobottega (Rome, "selected"), Lorelei (Sorrento), Sapio (Catalina, Italy), Azafran (Mendoza, Argentina)

Enjoyed a LOT of reading (see Books section) with the three standouts being Valuable Humans in Transit by qntm, Food Rules: An Eaters Manual by M. Pollan, and The Psychology of Money by M. Housel. Also highly enjoyed This is How you Lose the Time War by A. El-Mohtar and M. Gladstone, A companion to Easter Island by J. Peterkin, This is your Mind on Plants by M. Pollan, Eight Billion Genies by C. Soule, What's Expected of Us by T. Chiang, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by N. Gaiman. Thanks to friends that continue to recommend enjoyable reads. I also spent time importing most of my lifetime of reads to goodreads - follow/friend me there if you'd like more detailed reviews.

It's hard to believe I've been in this house for four years already and it's almost three years since I left the working world. It simultaneously feels like a long and short time ago - the brain definitely toggles depending upon how I frame up the recollection.

I've managed to get a good amount of large goal planning for 2025 and continue to update my Now page to that effect.

July 30, 2024  Permission to Board

Received official certification and seal finally, I'm an American Sailing Certified Sailor. Next steps TBD (as noted on the Now page). Meanwhile, I rafted the Suarez (Colombia) and Snake - Hells Canyon (ID/OR), spent a little time on a SUP and eFoil, and will be canoeing in Algonquin soon.

March 4, 2024  Strong Stuff

February was a wonderful journey, physically, socially, mentally, environmentally, emotionally. In its fullness there were some profound realizations. And from just a single day -- within one period of that day, a few moments of that day, just one of those enlightenments, I'm publishing here. For my continual reflection - and perhaps yours:

As if in each of us

There once was a fire

And for some of us

There seem as if there are only ashes now

But when we dig in the ashes

We find one ember

And very gently we fan that ember

Blow on it

It gets brighter

And from that ember we rebuild the fire

Only thing that's important is that ember

That's what you and I are here to celebrate

The ember gets stronger

Flame starts to flicker a bit

And pretty soon you realize

That all we're going to do for eternity

Is sit around the fire

Those last three lines. Yeah. Strong stuff.

February 4, 2024  Crossing Words Update

This is a follow-up to my March 2023 post below) regarding the NYT crossword solving. I subsequently kept at it April, May and June. Then halfway through July travel deserved more attention so I slacked off on keeping up with daily solving. I picked back up Oct and Nov, slacked in Dec, and crushed it in Jan. So it seems I'll ebb and flow in both available time and periods of break and obsession. I feel the on/off periodization also helps build long-term knowledge growth. 

I had logged enough solves to know my expected time to spend, and to date they are: M=20 minutes, T=30, W=50, Thu-Sat=1.5 hours, and Sun=2.5 hours. (Reading the clues and entering letters/words takes about 12 minutes minimum if taking almost no time to derive answers along the way.) I've developed a routine of working up to a certain time limit give the day and then kick into hint mode so as not to burn too much time.

Statistics are: 8-12 gold solves per month earlier on and recently 16 gold solves in January (boom!), first Friday solve came in April, and first Saturday in May (that was a glorious day). I've solved 3 Sundays w/o hints. I had a 5-day streak in April, then finally a 6-day streak in November. Hard days (Fri, Sat and Sun) solves are happening more frequently (still very tough) and feel especially exhilarating when they happen. Often times those Fri and Sat ones start off with just 2-3 words after initial walkthrough and I feel like it's going to be a complete slaughter, but sometimes they reveal. And sometimes it takes putting it down and coming back later or the next day. Those solves are addicting. And every time I learn something, a new word, historical info, random facts, spelling variations. Excellent mental exercise and sometimes conversation material.

There's been definite improvement. I've come a long way since the March 31 post, using less hints along the way, decreasing solve time, and solving not only a Sunday but amazingly Friday and Saturday puzzles too. I've exceeded my expectations and now feel like I have arrived. I'm no speed demon, but I can confidently call myself a NYT crossword solver. Goal achieved!

January's record is below. Blue = solved but used hint(s) (revealing mistakes or letters) and gold = completed without hints.