Wanderlust

Three rounds for time:

Row 500 meters

Sumo-deadlift High Pull, 95/65 lbs, 21 reps

15 Burpees

Rest 3 minutes

Record total time to completion, minus the last 3 minutes of rest, to comments or the whiteboard.

Commit 10 to 15 minutes in either the warm up or the cool down to practicing and refining your last post on unexpected adventure, I should like to solicit the community’s top 3 to 5 greatest and/or unforgettable escapades in their adult life (we assume your entire childhood and teenage years as a category all it’s own.)  Here are mine:

5.  Living in New York, October ’03 to March ’04. Tired of LA and with no reason to stay, I packed up and left.  Lived and worked in Brooklyn, visited Manhattan every chance I had, every day was a feast and spectacle for my eyes and ears and brain and heart and pallette.  I would walk the streets for no reason at all, bask in the sun in Central Park for no reason at all, read at some random bench in Union Square, every second of every day I was the most alive I’d felt in years.

4.  Accepting Paradiso CrossFit offer, September 2009. I remember Diso’s text to me that he was leaving his secure and stable managing job at a seafood restaurant to dive into the gym full time, and scared shitless.  I would make the same choice 7 months later.  We knew we were leaving what would have been steady paychecks and benefits for the rare opportunity, the sacred responsibility, of just this fleeting chance to do what we loved everyday.  No business plan, no idea if it would work or not, no prospective clients, just us talking for hours every morning and night (sorry Martina!) abouth this thing we’re about to do.  It’s been an adventure every day and night since.  We have you guys and girls to thank for that.

3.  Underwater cave diving without snorkel!, Oahu, HI, 2002. One of my best friends gave me a 2 minute course on how to hold your breath and equalize underwater.  After that we went down and he pointed to a beautiful underwater archepelago reef (I know that doesn’t make sense etymologically but it’s the only way I could describe it), one of them with a gaping, long hole through it, the other side of which I couldn’t see.  When we came up he told me we were going to go down and swim through it without our snorkels, and I kindly told him to go f$^% himself   I watched as he demonstrated it, made it look easy of course.

  The first time I just dove and swam as fast as I could, fighting the involuntary chest spasms and blackness around my eyes as I was upside down and pulling my way through the rock, my face so close to the reef I could kiss it, and I was on the other side praying not to pass out before I breached.  We did it a few more times and there’s been nary an experience to mimic how shrived and vivid I felt after that.

2.  First top rope climb, some nameless rock face on Oahu, HI, 2002. Same friend from the underwater snorkel and his other buddy, both of whom are 6 foot plus Navy SEALS, hiked my out of shape ass up to a random rock face, strapped on the harnesses, monkeyed their way up as I watched, gave me the harness, and the extent of their instruction was, ‘Alright, get up there.’  So up I went, and there was a spot where only my left foot was on the rock, and my right arm had to make the next hold, easy for their tall asses, but for me, impossible without jumping.  Paralyzed with fear, left leg shaking, I could feel the howling wind laughing at me, taunting me to give up.  They yelled at me,’You’ve just gotta go for it!’  So, ignoring the visions of me plummeting to a bloody rocky death, I leapt off my left foot and miraculously caught the hold with my right hand.  That was the good news.  The bad news was, I only had my right hand on the rock.  So, the only things I felt were the howling (but fresh) Hawaiian air, my trembling and extended right arm, and the Fear of God, I pulled myself up and over.  The rest of the climb I don’t remember, but I’ve never had a climb like that one since.

1.  Glacier hiking, Alaska, 2003.

We were told that the glaciers had cracks in them hundreds of feet deep, and if we were to fall, they couldn’t save us.

  They lost 3 people several years ago.  But you know what, we were going to straight up walk on them.  There were rocks made entirely of ice, huge enough to swallow a large house, ancient ice that was ethereal blue, and ice that was matte black, which we were told was poisonous.  Hiking up it, the air wasn’t as cold as I thought but when I turned around the Alaskan air was so clean and fresh and untouched, I swear you could see pebbles on mountains hundreds of miles away, the evaporating glaciers wind such that you could inhale and keep on inhaling until it felt like your lungs would explode.  It was peaceful and powerful and majestic, and I often go back there in times of stress or tumult.

So let’s hear your top places people.  Like Diso said, you CrossFit so you can enjoy life, and you wouldn’t be reading this, or have made it this far, if you’re not the type.