Continue reading "Enormocast 293: Jim Ewing – The Quality of Life"
[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: You are listening to The Enormocast.
[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, sportiva is losing its edge.
[00:00:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Losing its edge.
[00:00:12] [SPEAKER_08]: The mandala is losing its edge.
[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_03]: No edge.
[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_03]: No edge?
[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_08]: More fun.
[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_08]: More fun.
[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_08]: The kids are wearing them in France and in London.
[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_08]: I was there when Keenan Takahashi tried on the mandala for the first time.
[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_08]: I said, man, that's a heck of a mustache.
[00:00:33] [SPEAKER_08]: I've heard you have a closet full of every great shoe that sportiva has ever made.
[00:00:39] [SPEAKER_08]: Even a retro pair of Megas.
[00:00:44] [SPEAKER_08]: I once used a sportiva mandala to drink Baileys from a shoe while sitting on her sleepwalker.
[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_08]: Sending it before anyone else.
[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_08]: After an all night wave in Las Vegas.
[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_08]: I've never been wrong.
[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_08]: I used to work in a climbing gym.
[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_11]: Optimized performance.
[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_08]: Facilitating fluidity.
[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_08]: Minimal materials.
[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_08]: Sticky coated toe box.
[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_08]: Supreme corrupt.
[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_01]: No edge.
[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_07]: More fun.
[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_07]: 10-Hut.
[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_07]: Alright, cans and bottles.
[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_07]: Follow in.
[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_07]: Barring any sort of unforeseen epic, forest pivvy or extended chit chat in a parking lot,
[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_07]: our climbers are due back to camp any minute.
[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_07]: And since we've been nestled here in this Yeti Tundra Cooler, chilled and thrilled,
[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_07]: we are poised to offer timely refreshment to these certainly knackered and thirsty climbers.
[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_07]: As we know, whether they sent or got bent,
[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_07]: stumbling back into camp after yet another best day ever
[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_07]: and enjoying an ice cold libation from this here tundra cooler
[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_07]: is one of the true pleasures in life.
[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_07]: Are you cold drinks ready to do your part?
[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_07]: I'll have a drink.
[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to die.
[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_07]: What was that, Rasperilla?
[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I don't want my can ripped open and my insides poured into someone's mouth, sir.
[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_07]: Son, I understand your concern.
[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_07]: We've been putting this here Yeti Tundra Cooler for a singular honorable purpose.
[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_07]: That is to give cool, refreshing comfort to our climbers.
[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_07]: Should one wish to slake their thirst with your syrupy and artificially tainted insides,
[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_07]: then it's a sacrifice you were born to make.
[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_07]: Just consider yourselves lucky that you're inside this here Yeti Tundra Cooler.
[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_07]: Any other icebox and we'd be warm and stale and likely dishonorably poured out after one sip.
[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeti has always backed up their products with years of testing,
[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_07]: re-engineering and upgrading to arrive at the majestic tundra cooler.
[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_07]: In my son's opinion, every climber owes it to their provisions to go to yeti.com
[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_07]: or a reputable outdoor retailer and check out a tundra cooler.
[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_07]: Stay cool with Yeti.
[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Today's show is brought to you by Black Timing Equipment,
[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_01]: La Sportiva and with support from Maxim Ropes.
[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Maxim has been keeping the Enormo Cast off the deck since 2012.
[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_10]: And now we can also thank the chill folks at Yeti.
[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_10]: And don't forget our charter sponsor, Bonfire Coffee.
[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_10]: Go to bonfirecoffee.com and entry enormo at checkout
[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_10]: to get a great deal on great coffee and to support the Enormo Cast.
[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And now back to the show.
[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_10]: Hello and welcome to the Enormo Cast.
[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_10]: This is your host, Chris Colus.
[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_10]: It is September 24th, 2024, about 930 here in Colorado.
[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_10]: And this is episode 293 of the Enormo Cast,
[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_10]: a conversation with the quad father, Jim Ewing.
[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_10]: You heard that right.
[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_10]: Jim Ewing has a legitimate claim to inventing the quad anchor.
[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_10]: Which we get into in the beginning of the podcast,
[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_10]: but that's not really what the podcast is about.
[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_10]: The podcast actually is about Jim Ewing's long climbing career
[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_10]: leading up to a lapse in judgment,
[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_10]: a bit of complacency and a 60 foot ground fall.
[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_10]: And what happened after that?
[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_10]: But until we get to that part of the interview,
[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_10]: Jim and I are racing to get our paperwork filled out
[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_10]: to trademark the quad father.
[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_10]: But do you know what else is coming up?
[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_10]: I've been invited to the Banff Mountain Film Festival
[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_10]: at the end of October.
[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_10]: I kind of feel like I've arrived.
[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_10]: It only took 13 years and nearly 300 episodes.
[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_10]: But yeah, I've been invited to the preeminent
[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_10]: mountaineering and climbing media event in the world.
[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_10]: I think that's easy to say.
[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_10]: I only have a small part in it.
[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_10]: I'm going to be doing a live interview with Barry Blanchard,
[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_10]: who's never been on the show.
[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_10]: I've come close, but never pulled it off.
[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_10]: So we're going to get that recorded, hopefully,
[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_10]: and have it out into your ears as well.
[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_10]: My little part of the festival is on Saturday,
[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_10]: the 2nd of November, 11am, over at the Banff Center.
[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_10]: You can check out the schedule for the whole darn thing
[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_10]: at BanffCenter.ca.
[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_10]: If you are in attendance, come by and see the live interview.
[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_10]: If you're a Bow Valley resident, it's free, so come on over.
[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_10]: And if you live in Banff, well, you've lucked out
[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_10]: somewhere along the line.
[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_10]: The stuff during the day is mostly free.
[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_10]: My thing's free, so come check it out.
[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_10]: There's going to be so many cool people there.
[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_10]: So many of my friends, frankly.
[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_10]: So I'm going to be hunting interviews.
[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_10]: I'm going to be having a lot of fun.
[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_10]: And they're giving me a hotel room.
[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_10]: And I'll tell you what, I'm at the point in my life
[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_10]: where a clean hotel room is heaven.
[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_10]: I don't know why, but yeah, checking into somewhere
[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_10]: that somebody else is going to clean up just feels,
[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_10]: yeah, just feels really great.
[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_10]: And I remember back to being a dirtbag
[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_10]: and every once in a while splurging for some crummy hotel room
[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_10]: that just felt like the Taj Mahal.
[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_10]: Getting out of the elements, getting cleaned off,
[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_10]: watching some TV.
[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_10]: You ever do that? You ever come in from Red Rocks
[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_10]: and get a hotel room?
[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_10]: Like at the Mirage, like on a Tuesday night for half-off?
[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_10]: I don't know. Everybody's vans are so nice.
[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_10]: I don't think that feels the same anymore.
[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_10]: Or Monticello, Utah.
[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_10]: I tell you what, the Super 8 in Monticello
[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_10]: can feel like the Pleasure Dome
[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_10]: after like a month in the sand out there at Indian Creek.
[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_10]: Especially like late November, December.
[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_10]: Ooh, yeah.
[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_10]: Anyhoo, let's get on to this interview with Jim Ewing.
[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_10]: This is one of those interviews
[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_10]: that becomes this very interesting web.
[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_10]: Jim has been a prominent climber in the Northeast for decades.
[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_10]: Going back to the 80s in North Conway.
[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_10]: He also worked for Sterling Rope for many years.
[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_10]: So he was in the industry.
[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_10]: He climbed with all sorts of legends,
[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_10]: including Hugh Herr,
[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_10]: which decades later, his friendship with Hugh Herr
[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_10]: would unfold in very surprising ways.
[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_10]: After Jim was involved in a terrible accident
[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_10]: in Cayman Brac,
[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_10]: that profoundly changed his body and his life.
[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_10]: But first, we're going to talk about the quad anchor.
[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_10]: So let's get to the interview with the quad father, Jim Ewing.
[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_09]: Anthropologists tell us that since the beginning of time,
[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_09]: the hunt for three essential things has ruled primitive primates.
[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_09]: Food, shelter, and bomber protection for thin cracks.
[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_09]: Today, before dawn, we stashed a pile
[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_09]: of black diamond Camelot Z4s
[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_09]: at the base of the thin and fierce magic line
[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_09]: to see what kind of species we could lure in.
[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_09]: Now we wait.
[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_09]: Oh my goodness!
[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_09]: Our first taker is a beautiful Honolaryctus.
[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_09]: Just look at those lats.
[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_09]: Honolaryctus is known for foregoing protection altogether,
[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_09]: but when in need, it goes for the lightweight versatility
[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_09]: of the Camelot Z4 every time. Just magnificent.
[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_09]: Wait, wait. What's this approaching the crack?
[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_09]: Ah, an absolutely stunning female Hazelonomous intrepidae.
[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_09]: These awesome and fearless creatures
[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_09]: choose the black diamond Z4 for its low profile and holding power.
[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_09]: Well, our experiment today has once again proven
[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_09]: that the Z4 from Black Diamond
[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_09]: is the smooth action, low profile,
[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_09]: and lightweight small cam of choice
[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_09]: for species of trad climbers all over the globe.
[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_09]: So head to your local shop or blackdiamondequipment.com
[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_09]: to see these essential survival tools.
[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_09]: And if you listen carefully, you may even hear
[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_09]: the somber call of a Didier Bertaudet echo from the cliffs.
[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_10]: The first thing is,
[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_10]: and we have to get this out of the way
[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_10]: because it's burning at me,
[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_10]: is that you have laid claim to the origin
[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_10]: of the quad anchor.
[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_10]: Which honestly is a dubious claim
[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_10]: because lots of people...
[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_10]: I'm not saying I doubt it, but I'm saying
[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_10]: that there's someone right now who's going like,
[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_10]: no, wait a minute, I invented that.
[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_10]: Or my friend Al totally was doing that in the 80s or whatever.
[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_10]: So tell me your claim.
[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_10]: If you were in the patent office right now, what would you say?
[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_05]: To be fair, I may not have been the original creator,
[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_05]: although I think I am.
[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_05]: So back in the late 90s,
[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_05]: John Long was working on his anchors book.
[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_05]: And he asked me to do some testing
[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_05]: on the cordelette because a friend of his,
[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_05]: mathematician Rich Goldstone,
[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_05]: had told him that the cordelette doesn't equalize.
[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_05]: Like mathematically it does not equalize.
[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_05]: If you know anything about physics,
[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_05]: you can look at a cordelette system,
[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_05]: the traditional method of having a masternaut with different length legs.
[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_05]: You'll know instantly, oh yeah, that can't equalize
[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_05]: because if you have different length legs,
[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_05]: they're all going to stretch to different amounts.
[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_05]: And the shortest leg is always going to
[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_05]: reach its maximum stretch first.
[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_05]: And that one will take the majority of the load.
[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_05]: So I set up in the lab to kind of test that
[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_05]: and sure enough,
[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_05]: yeah, things do not equalize with a cordelette
[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_05]: in that fashion.
[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_05]: Being kind of a ADHD brain kind of guy,
[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, well, how can I make this equalize?
[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_05]: And so I just kind of started playing around with things.
[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_05]: And having been around during the origins of the AMGA,
[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, okay, well it's got to be redundant.
[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_05]: It's got to be simple.
[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_05]: It's got to be all of the acronyms, serene.
[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_05]: So I just started playing around
[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_05]: with tying some slings.
[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_05]: I took a double length sling, like a four footer,
[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_05]: doubled it up, tied some stopper knots in it.
[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_05]: And then I was like, oh, well with the stopper knots in it
[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_05]: you have four strands in the middle,
[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_05]: which came up with the name quad.
[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_05]: And if you just clip any two of those strands,
[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_05]: then you have a super strong, self-equalizing,
[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_05]: redundant, captive anchor.
[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_05]: And so when I was reporting all my findings
[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_05]: to John Long, I said, well, just so you know,
[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_05]: I was playing around with this thing that I'm calling the quad
[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_05]: and this thing equalizes great
[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_05]: and the serene acronym ticks all the boxes.
[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think he included that in the book.
[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_05]: Although he was more excited about using
[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_05]: this other version called the Equalette,
[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_05]: which I also created that as well.
[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think in the book he gives me credit for that,
[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_05]: but then he gives a brief mention to the quad,
[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_05]: but for some reason the quad
[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_05]: just took off in popularity
[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_05]: and it's taught by the AMGA now.
[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_05]: It's become the standard
[00:13:21] [SPEAKER_05]: two-bolt anchor system.
[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if that's true, if it's THE standard,
[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_05]: but it seems to show up everywhere.
[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_10]: It sure feels like it.
[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it shows up everywhere and it's equally maligned
[00:13:35] [SPEAKER_05]: and loved.
[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_10]: I think I'm the only one maligning it and it's all a joke.
[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, for me, to be fair,
[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_05]: I created it and named it kind of jokingly.
[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, well, we'll just call this the quad.
[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_05]: And after that book came out,
[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_05]: after the anchors book came out, people across the country
[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_05]: were just coming up to me randomly at climbing areas
[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_05]: and showing me their self-equalizing,
[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_05]: redundant systems.
[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_05]: And I was like, oh yeah, that's great.
[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_05]: That really worked.
[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_10]: Like as a challenge? It was like a dance fight where they're like,
[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_10]: I got something better.
[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, pretty much.
[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_05]: I gotta show you my system.
[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_05]: And I think Super Topo was really big at the time,
[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_05]: rockclimbing.com, the discussions on there
[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_05]: were just endless, deep,
[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_05]: angry, you know how the internet is,
[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_05]: just angry, stupid discussions over the minutia of it.
[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_05]: And I kind of wrote it all off as like,
[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_05]: I hope I never hear about any of this stuff ever again.
[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_10]: Yet here I am, drilling you on it.
[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, then when Mo and I
[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_05]: were kind of prepping to go to the
[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_05]: Lotus Flower Tower, we were in,
[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_05]: was it 11 Mile Canyon in Colorado?
[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_05]: And we were at the base of some crag and this dude
[00:15:06] [SPEAKER_05]: comes over and was like,
[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_05]: are you guys locals? We're like, well, some of us are,
[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_05]: some of us aren't. Okay, who can tell me about the quad?
[00:15:17] [SPEAKER_05]: And I was like, what does being local
[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_05]: have to do with that? But also I was like,
[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_05]: well, you've come to the right place.
[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm like,
[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_05]: it just follows me everywhere.
[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_05]: Was that like some challenge?
[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_05]: He was a newer climber from Texas.
[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_10]: He legitimately wanted some info.
[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_05]: He wanted info about like,
[00:15:43] [SPEAKER_05]: have we set this up correctly or something?
[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, I don't know what being local has to do with that,
[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_05]: but okay, we can help you.
[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_10]: So you mentioned going into the lab.
[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_10]: Who are you that you go into a,
[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_10]: when you see a climbing problem, you go into the lab.
[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_10]: That has something to do with your background as something, right?
[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_10]: Because I don't have a lab.
[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_05]: So the reason John Long contacted me is because
[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_05]: I worked for Sterling Rope for 23 years
[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_05]: as a product developer and engineer.
[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, I was kind of really busy at the time and I told
[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_05]: the owner of Sterling, I was like, I don't really have time for this.
[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_05]: And she just said, well, just make it happen.
[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_05]: Just do what you can, make it happen.
[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_05]: It ended up kind of snowballing and I did a lot of testing,
[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_05]: had a few different statisticians analyzing data.
[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_05]: And then me, kind of like I said, the ADHD brain,
[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, oh, well, I'm going to side quest this
[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_05]: and I'm going to come up with something that will actually equalize
[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_05]: and tick all the boxes of redundancy and security and all that.
[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_05]: Simplicity.
[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_05]: And out of that came the Equalette and the Quad.
[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_10]: All right, I'm giving it to you.
[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_10]: I think your claim is legitimate.
[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_10]: The court has determined your legitimacy
[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_10]: until we hear something better than that.
[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_05]: I can't go back and look at John's book because I know he gives me credit
[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_05]: for the Equalette, which is a funny, funny thing.
[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_05]: He was going to call it the Jimbolet and I was like, I will,
[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_05]: I will fucking hunt you down and murder you in your sleep.
[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_05]: But that's, you know, that's his kind of humor.
[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_10]: Might have to get in line with old John Long.
[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_10]: But, you know, I watched the documentary that you suggested called Augmented
[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_10]: to prepare for this, which was was an awesome document doc and quite moving.
[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_10]: And that's when I kind of realized, like, wow, this guy is is,
[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_10]: you know, he's been around the block.
[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_10]: I then talked to some other people that know you.
[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_10]: And oh, yeah, you know, Jim is not like
[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_10]: that's not the sum of who he is as the climber.
[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_10]: The sum is much, much bigger than that.
[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_10]: So can you do that?
[00:18:09] [SPEAKER_10]: Do that sort of question about like what kind of climber you are
[00:18:12] [SPEAKER_10]: and talk a little bit about your your career without without,
[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_10]: you know, we don't have to go minute by minute since your birth.
[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_05]: But well, tell us what kind of climber what kind of climber I am is
[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm still trying to figure that out.
[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_10]: Like and maybe that's why I changed radically.
[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. Maybe that's why I've I've I have such longevity in it.
[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_05]: But how I how I got started,
[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_05]: if you talk to my mom, I got started at like age two.
[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_05]: I used to climb onto the roof of the house
[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_05]: and sit up there because I I remember I liked the view.
[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_05]: She tells this story of me sitting on the roof of the of the garage
[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_05]: and some woman, random woman stops and says, man,
[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_05]: you know, your your son is up on the roof.
[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_05]: And my mom had tried to coax me down with cookies or something earlier.
[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_05]: And I just said no.
[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_05]: And so she told this woman, yes, I know he's there and he can stay there
[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_05]: for all I care because because I was not I was not cooperating.
[00:19:14] [SPEAKER_10]: Where is this?
[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_05]: This was in southern New Hampshire and Hampton, New Hampshire.
[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_05]: OK, where which is where I mostly grew up.
[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_10]: Now they would she would have called the, you know, social services on your mom.
[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah. Everybody's all like that now.
[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_10]: Even even in New Hampshire, probably.
[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_05]: When we were kids, things were were way different.
[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_05]: Like I was a total free range kid and just,
[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_05]: you know, come home when the street lights turn on
[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_05]: and you don't even have to be within voice range of home.
[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_05]: Just just come home when the streetlights come on, if that.
[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_05]: But how I how I kind of got interested in climbing was
[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_05]: I have two older brothers and I used to sit in their bedroom
[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_05]: like flipping through old copies of National Geographic.
[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_05]: And I came across a couple of Everest expedition issues.
[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_05]: One was the the 53 expedition with Sir Edmund Hillary,
[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_05]: and then another was the 63 U.S. expedition.
[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_05]: And then there was also some
[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_05]: I think it was Doug Robinson's article about half dome by fair means.
[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_05]: I think that might have been the name of it.
[00:20:27] [SPEAKER_05]: But it was about climbing half dome clean, you know,
[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_05]: without the use of pitons.
[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_10]: Do you ever come across the the Titan one?
[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_10]: The Titan. It's like a 1963 or four issue with core on the Titan.
[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_10]: And that's one that I ran into was very big deal in my climbing
[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_10]: development was finding that one, actually.
[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. Around that time, my oldest brother was was kind of getting into climbing
[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_05]: and he so he was buying climbing gear and he was in high school,
[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_05]: I think at the time.
[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_05]: And a guy named you might know this name, a guy named Todd Swain
[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_05]: was also at that high school and was a climber.
[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_10]: My brother went on to be a big Joshua Tree guy, right?
[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. He was the ranger at Joshua Tree.
[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_10]: And yeah, Ranger and wrote guidebooks and stuff, right?
[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. He wrote he wrote one of the guidebooks for Red Rocks.
[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_05]: He's written guidebooks for the Gunks.
[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_05]: He was a ranger at the Mohawk Preserve for the Gunks for a long time.
[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_05]: So Todd went to the same high school that my brothers and I went to,
[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_05]: and my brother climbed with him a little bit.
[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_05]: So my brothers and I were all born in California.
[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_05]: We have friends and relatives in California.
[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_05]: So we were out in California for like Christmas break one year
[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_05]: and we went to the movies and we saw the Eiger Sanction when it was in theaters.
[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_05]: So I have a particular affinity with your podcast because like,
[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, I know these clips.
[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_05]: I've heard all this.
[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_05]: I've seen this in the theaters.
[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_05]: Like it's just stuff like that is just stuck in my memory.
[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_05]: And then through that, I kind of became obsessed with reading things about the Eiger.
[00:22:08] [SPEAKER_05]: So I read while I was in junior high,
[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_05]: I was reading the Eiger Wall of Death and the White Spider,
[00:22:15] [SPEAKER_05]: the John Harlan biography, Straight Up Life and Death of a Climber.
[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_05]: I was in junior high at the time, what the kids call middle school now.
[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_05]: I was into all the traditional sports as a kid.
[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_05]: I played football and hockey and baseball.
[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_05]: And as I got more and more kind of focused on climbing,
[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_05]: I started giving up those sports because they were kind of getting in the way of going climbing.
[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_05]: And once I got my driver's license, it was like, it was over.
[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_05]: I like gave up everything.
[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_05]: I was going climbing in North Conway, New Hampshire, like every weekend I could.
[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_05]: A couple days after I got my driver's license,
[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_05]: the first thing I did was drive the two hours to North Conway.
[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_05]: I bought a pair of ascenders and I went out and after reading Royal Robins' Advanced Rockcraft,
[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_05]: which included a section on rope soloing,
[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_05]: I went and rope soloed Thin Air on Cathedral, which is a big classic, 5'5", 5'6".
[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_05]: And it was equally terrifying and just completely captivated me.
[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_05]: This is it.
[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_05]: This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, and at some point, you became friends with people like Hugh Herr.
[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_10]: And that says to me that you sort of rose to this community of really good climbers.
[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_10]: But it just says to me that you became part of the fabric to where you were rubbing elbows
[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_10]: with that echelon of climbers, which is not to say you were some sort of elitist,
[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_10]: but it just shows that you were dedicated and hanging around and became a person that
[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_10]: was around enough to start knowing the people who are really involved in the situation.
[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_10]: So tell me about that next level, maybe fast forward to really getting into the climbing
[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_10]: community versus being this kid who goes and solos something all by himself because he probably
[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_10]: doesn't know anybody in North Conway kind of thing.
[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I didn't really know anybody there.
[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_05]: But I had been kind of haunting the cliffs as much as I could.
[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_05]: And I knew the names from reading the guidebooks.
[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_05]: And also back then, Climbing Magazine had a segment that was called, I think, Base Camp.
[00:24:35] [SPEAKER_05]: And in Base Camp, they would basically report all the new routes that people were doing and
[00:24:41] [SPEAKER_05]: attach the names and the grades of these things and who did the first ascent.
[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_05]: So I graduated high school in 82.
[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_05]: And I originally didn't really have a plan to go to college.
[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_05]: But then I discovered that there was a school in Maine that did an outdoor education degree.
[00:25:00] [SPEAKER_05]: And I applied to Unity College in Unity, Maine, went to school there.
[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_05]: But during the summers between school years, I would spend my summers in North Conway
[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_05]: and hunt around, either try to find places to camp or sleep on the floors in friends'
[00:25:20] [SPEAKER_05]: apartments, people that I've just met.
[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_05]: There was a crew of us who for a while we lived in John Bouchard's cabin.
[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_05]: He had bought this land between Cathedral Ledge and Whitehorse Ledge.
[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_05]: And he built a little cabin there.
[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_05]: And you could stay there, I think it was like three bucks a night or something.
[00:25:37] [SPEAKER_05]: So there was probably like a dozen of us living in there that in this cabin that really was
[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_05]: only meant for two or three people.
[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_05]: That was the base.
[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_05]: I lived there for a while with a guy named Randy Ratcliffe, super strong ice climber who
[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_05]: went on to do things in the Canadian Rockies with Mark Twight.
[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_05]: And he's also owner, operator of Cold Cold World Backpacks.
[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_10]: And an artist that everybody's seen, even if you didn't know.
[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_10]: Yes.
[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_10]: Seen some of his kind of woodcut block looking.
[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_10]: I don't know how he actually makes them, but...
[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_05]: He was dabbling in that early on.
[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_05]: And then we all kind of got jobs as instructors in either EMS or IME or like all the various
[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_05]: climbing schools.
[00:26:26] [SPEAKER_05]: And we had some money.
[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_05]: We got apartments.
[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_05]: And he kind of always lived in the basements of all these apartments because that would
[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_05]: be the cheapest rent.
[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_05]: And he started doing the block prints while living in those places and just book upon
[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_05]: book upon book of sketches.
[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_05]: And his artwork was just amazing.
[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_05]: Randy and I, and then later Hugh, lived in this cockroach ridden chalet near the cliffs.
[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_05]: The place was horrendous, but it was cheap.
[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_05]: And I only lived there during the summers.
[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_05]: And Hugh was there, I think, during the one winter and one summer that he was working
[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_05]: for Wild Things.
[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't think I ever actually went out climbing with Hugh at the time, but we kind of became
[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_05]: the climbing community of North Conway.
[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_05]: We embedded ourselves there and climbed with people like John Bouchard and Joe Lentini,
[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_05]: Randy Ratcliffe I mentioned.
[00:27:27] [SPEAKER_05]: Jerry Handren eventually moved to town, became a guide for IMCS.
[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_05]: Nick Yardley came around and a whole bunch of others.
[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_05]: Stevie Danboys.
[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_05]: The climbing community in North Conway was pretty tight-knit, but people kind of always
[00:27:44] [SPEAKER_05]: filtered in and filtered out.
[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_05]: So Hugh, he filtered in to basically come back and, I don't know, I think maybe slay
[00:27:53] [SPEAKER_05]: some dragons that he had resulting from his accident.
[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_05]: And at the time, he was a bilateral amputee climbing 513.
[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_05]: He was probably one of the strongest climbers in the world.
[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_05]: So it was through that relationship with Hugh and hanging out with him, seeing him climb,
[00:28:14] [SPEAKER_05]: seeing him ride bikes, run, do whatever.
[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_05]: After I had my accident, the idea of amputation wasn't quite so terrifying.
[00:28:23] [SPEAKER_05]: Which is funny because prior to that, the thought of losing a finger even was kind of
[00:28:29] [SPEAKER_05]: terrifying.
[00:28:30] [SPEAKER_05]: Like I once cut my knuckle to the bone while working on my truck and I was like, I have
[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_05]: permanently handicapped myself.
[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_05]: My finger doesn't work right anymore.
[00:28:41] [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't bend all the way.
[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't have the strength it used to.
[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_05]: So I was devastated, maybe coming to grips with mortality or something.
[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_10]: TC's normalized climbing with finger loss as we know as well.
[00:28:59] [SPEAKER_10]: When you're talking about Conway and the climbing community, and this is so typical when I
[00:29:03] [SPEAKER_10]: talk to male climbers of that era, it's just like, yeah, me and the boys lived here and
[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_10]: the boys lived there and me and the boys battled cockroaches in this cabin.
[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_10]: I think it's of the times.
[00:29:21] [SPEAKER_10]: We've gotten used to much more parity in the sport.
[00:29:26] [SPEAKER_10]: But when I joke, I'm like, yeah, it wasn't like that 25, 30 years ago.
[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_10]: I think people don't quite understand how much it wasn't like that.
[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_10]: And in a place like North Conway, maybe even more so.
[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_10]: But you did manage to have some sort of obviously some sort of social life outside climbing as well.
[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_05]: I think the reason I didn't really cover that part is because the story of how my wife and
[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_05]: I met and our eventual marriage courtship is kind of a wild story all on its own.
[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_05]: But it also, it kind of goes together with the hanging with the boys in North Conway,
[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_05]: because there was a phase where, well, sport climbing was really just getting started.
[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_05]: And so like focused training for climbing was getting started.
[00:30:19] [SPEAKER_05]: So we would do things like we would work all day banging nails, doing whatever.
[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_05]: We all had various jobs.
[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_05]: Then we'd go to the climbing gym, workout, lift weights, climb the walls, do whatever.
[00:30:32] [SPEAKER_05]: But then for aerobic workout, there was this really cool club in Portland,
[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_05]: Maine, which was like an hour and a half away.
[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_05]: It was like a techno dance, hip hop, industrial house music kind of place.
[00:30:49] [SPEAKER_05]: It was a predominantly gay dance club.
[00:30:52] [SPEAKER_05]: So my buddies and I, we were driving down there like two or three nights a week to get
[00:30:57] [SPEAKER_05]: our aerobic workout in.
[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_05]: We would just go in and just jump around dancing like fools until two or three in
[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_05]: the morning.
[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_05]: And then I would drive-
[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_10]: The gay dance club aerobic training program.
[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, it was-
[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_10]: I haven't seen that one online.
[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_10]: It's a niche that you could fill.
[00:31:14] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I mean, the gays have the best music.
[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_05]: Like they had the best dance club music.
[00:31:20] [SPEAKER_05]: It was incredible.
[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_05]: So I would leave there, drive to the job site, sleep in my car, get up, bang nails again
[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_05]: the next day and just start the whole process all over again.
[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_05]: Sometimes we would actually go out climbing instead of going to Portland.
[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_05]: So it was at that club that I met my wife.
[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_05]: And over the course of several months of kind of not dating her or even really talking to
[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_05]: her, I think one day I eventually got the courage to kind of ask her for her phone number.
[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_05]: And this was pre-cellphone era.
[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_05]: And eventually I gave her a call and we had a first date.
[00:31:58] [SPEAKER_05]: Our first date was climbing because when we first met her, she asked me, what do you do?
[00:32:04] [SPEAKER_05]: And I said, well, what do you mean?
[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_05]: What do I do?
[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_05]: What do I do for work or what do I do?
[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_05]: And she kind of gave me the sideways look of like, what are you talking about?
[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_05]: Like, what is this?
[00:32:19] [SPEAKER_05]: I said, well, you know, I'm a climber.
[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm a rock climber and ice climber.
[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_05]: And so she's like, kind of, that sounds cool.
[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_05]: And said, do you ever, would you ever want to try that?
[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_05]: And she said, yeah, yeah, maybe.
[00:32:38] [SPEAKER_05]: So eventually, long story short.
[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_10]: It's like the only card we have, you know, back then.
[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_10]: Like it's all you got.
[00:32:45] [SPEAKER_10]: If you can entice them to go climbing, that's it.
[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_05]: There were so few climbers back then.
[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_05]: It was like definitely still very much a fringe element.
[00:32:54] [SPEAKER_10]: You know, these two things we've covered are important and, you know, we're burying the
[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_10]: lead here about the foot.
[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_10]: But the two things we've covered are important is A, you get married, eventually start a family.
[00:33:07] [SPEAKER_10]: And B, you know, this just normal haphazard climbing friendship with you, her comes back
[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_10]: big time later in your life.
[00:33:18] [SPEAKER_10]: Seems like, yeah, you had that progressive life of, you know, getting a real job, even
[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_10]: though it was for Sterling.
[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_10]: You know, and maybe you thought like, oh, it'll be cool.
[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_10]: It's like a climbing company.
[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_10]: And then you work your ass off and get burned out.
[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_10]: But obviously stay with them for a long time and start a family.
[00:33:36] [SPEAKER_10]: And like all climbers, whatever happens, the climbing starts to take a backseat to
[00:33:40] [SPEAKER_10]: a certain extent.
[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_10]: But you start climbing with your family.
[00:33:43] [SPEAKER_05]: My wife and I would go on climbing trips and sport climbing trips mostly because she didn't
[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_05]: really care for getting multi pitches off the ground.
[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, we continued traveling across the country, going to Europe, sport climbing, doing whatever.
[00:33:59] [SPEAKER_05]: Ten years into the marriage, we have a kid and I continue climbing.
[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_05]: Kathy did a sudden change of careers and went back to school for nursing.
[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_05]: I was able to, because I was working at Sterling, I could still go climbing and eventually I
[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_05]: could bring our child out to the cliffs as well and continue sport climbing.
[00:34:26] [SPEAKER_05]: And my child is non-binary.
[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_05]: But as a toddler, as a young kid, pre-adolescent, she was a she.
[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_05]: So I don't know how to phrase that when I'm talking about them in history.
[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, we could just use they, now that you've explained it.
[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_05]: So eventually they became old enough to go climbing and we would go climbing as family.
[00:34:51] [SPEAKER_05]: We went to Yosemite, we went to Tuolumne, Colorado, City of Rocks, a bunch of different
[00:34:59] [SPEAKER_05]: places.
[00:34:59] [SPEAKER_05]: There were a couple of times that Maxine and I went off on climbing trips without my wife
[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_05]: because my wife was still working.
[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_05]: So we went to Wild Iris, we went to Ten Sleep.
[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_05]: So the climbing continued.
[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_05]: Guys that I climb with locally in Maine kept trying to talk me into going someplace warm
[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_05]: for a winter climbing trip where our kids could spend time in the water, go someplace Caribbean.
[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_05]: So my friend Steve had heard about Cayman Brock and between he and my wife, they wore
[00:35:34] [SPEAKER_05]: me down about going to the tropics, going to the Caribbean.
[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_05]: Because I just figured I'm not a warm weather person.
[00:35:40] [SPEAKER_05]: Hot, humid weather just destroys me.
[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_05]: So I didn't have much interest in it.
[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_05]: And when I stepped off the plane-
[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_05]: You're a proper Mainer.
[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, proper Mainer.
[00:35:49] [SPEAKER_05]: I stepped off the plane in Grand Cayman and I nearly fell over from the heat.
[00:35:56] [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, holy shit, I am going to fucking die here.
[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_05]: This is more than I can handle.
[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_05]: But eventually you kind of acclimatize to that stuff and you can function.
[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_05]: So we actually went climbing on Cayman Brock.
[00:36:13] [SPEAKER_05]: It wasn't terrible.
[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_05]: It was pretty decent.
[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_05]: But the snorkeling was phenomenal.
[00:36:20] [SPEAKER_05]: And I just want to stay down longer.
[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_05]: I want to be able to stay down longer.
[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_05]: So after that trip in 2011, I came back to Maine and my daughter and I both got scuba
[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_05]: certified, vowing to return to Cayman Brock and go scuba diving.
[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_05]: So in December of 2014, we went down before Christmas.
[00:36:43] [SPEAKER_05]: And just my daughter and I went down before Christmas.
[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_05]: My wife had to work on Christmas Day.
[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_05]: So she was going to come down the day after Christmas.
[00:36:53] [SPEAKER_05]: So Maxine and I went scuba diving on Christmas Day and just absolutely enjoyed it.
[00:37:00] [SPEAKER_05]: It was the best diving ever.
[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_05]: Still think those first few dives down there were like some of my favorite ever.
[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_05]: And then the next day, the 26th, Boxing Day, we went to go climbing with some friends over
[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_05]: on the north side of the island at a place called Dixon's Wall that I hadn't been to.
[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_05]: And my wife was going to be flying in later that day.
[00:37:24] [SPEAKER_05]: So we really only had like a few hours to go climb and then we had to run to the airport.
[00:37:29] [SPEAKER_05]: So we did a few climbs, some warm ups or whatever, just some 10s there.
[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_05]: There weren't a lot of well-established moderate climbs there at the time.
[00:37:40] [SPEAKER_05]: Eventually it came down to, well, let's just do this one last climb and then we got to
[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_05]: go to the airport.
[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_05]: So it was a thing called Dixon's Delight, 11B maybe.
[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_05]: I don't remember.
[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_05]: And Maxine being significantly lighter than me, I had to anchor her to the ground and
[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_05]: the only place I could do that was down this little hill and kind of back from the cliff
[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_05]: a little bit.
[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_05]: And the first bolt was kind of low on the route and then it goes up to this big overhanging
[00:38:21] [SPEAKER_05]: headwall, up some tufas.
[00:38:23] [SPEAKER_05]: But I had stopped on this ledge that was not a completely no-hands ledge but it was a pretty
[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_05]: good rest where you could just kind of balance there.
[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_05]: And I don't know what happened but I just had a brain fart and it stepped off the ledge,
[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_05]: just wasn't paying attention.
[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_05]: And because of the way that I had set everything up, and this is the big key, the thing that
[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_05]: people ask me, well how did your accident happen?
[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_05]: I was complacent.
[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't look everything over exactly thoroughly and didn't think about what was going to happen
[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_05]: if I did fall on this thing because I didn't expect to fall on it.
[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_05]: But I did fall and because of the way that I had left the rope, the stack of rope was
[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_05]: uphill in front of Maxine, in front of the belayer, in front of the Grigri.
[00:39:17] [SPEAKER_05]: So when I waited it, the Grigri locked initially but because Maxine was anchored to the ground
[00:39:22] [SPEAKER_05]: it pulled her off her feet and then there was some slack in the system from the recoil
[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_05]: and the Grigri unlocked.
[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_05]: And Maxine held her brake hand as tight as she could but it was just pulling through
[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_05]: her hand and burning it.
[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_05]: And eventually she had to just let it go, which at the time Maxine was 13 and had held
[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_05]: me on dozens of sport climbing trips, dozens of sport climbing falls, probably hundreds
[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_05]: of falls climbing in the gym like no problem, could definitely knew how to operate a Grigri.
[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_05]: And I had taught her that if a Grigri doesn't lock your hands are probably doing something
[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_05]: preventing it from locking so let go of the rope and get your hands away from it, let
[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_05]: it lock.
[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_05]: So she did that and because of the arrangement of the ropes it just ran through the Grigri
[00:40:20] [SPEAKER_05]: and I just went 60 feet to the ground.
[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_05]: And I actually didn't feel like I had hit all that hard.
[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean I definitely, it was a hard landing but I was very aware of everything going on.
[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_05]: I actually kind of turned as I was falling and made eye contact with another climber
[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_05]: who was just arriving at the cliff and I just like stared this guy in the face as I piled
[00:40:47] [SPEAKER_05]: into the ground.
[00:40:51] [SPEAKER_05]: And I didn't hit my head, I didn't lose consciousness but I got the wind knocked out
[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_05]: of me and I was kind of laying there on the ground and trying to catch my breath.
[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_05]: And I remember telling this guy, his name is Matt, Matt Gustafson from Oregon and I
[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_05]: told him well as soon as I catch my breath I want to roll over so I can breathe easier
[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_05]: and so I kind of was not catching my breath very well.
[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_05]: And eventually I said well I'm going to roll over anyway and as soon as I tried to roll
[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_05]: over I felt all the bones in my pelvis grind and I was like okay well that's not happening.
[00:41:34] [SPEAKER_05]: And then I said well just be aware, I could see that my wrist was at a funny angle, I
[00:41:41] [SPEAKER_05]: said watch out for my wrist, I think it's broken.
[00:41:44] [SPEAKER_05]: And he said yeah well your ankle's not looking too great either.
[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_05]: So I'm…
[00:41:51] [SPEAKER_05]: Were you bleeding much?
[00:41:52] [SPEAKER_05]: I was not bleeding anywhere.
[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_05]: I had maybe a little bit of a scratch on my wrist or something, didn't hit my head,
[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_05]: didn't… which is really shocking because Cayman Brock is notorious for how sharp the
[00:42:10] [SPEAKER_05]: stone is, it's called Ironstone.
[00:42:12] [SPEAKER_05]: And I sometimes joke that any time your bare skin touches rock there you're drawing blood.
[00:42:21] [SPEAKER_05]: So the fact that I piled into the ground amongst all these rocks and did not get any cuts was
[00:42:28] [SPEAKER_05]: almost unbelievable.
[00:42:29] [SPEAKER_05]: I remember thinking well you know okay my ankle's broken, I could maybe still go snorkeling
[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_05]: for this trip, you know climbing is over but I just had no idea how badly I was really
[00:42:40] [SPEAKER_05]: hurt.
[00:42:40] [SPEAKER_05]: Eventually other climbers there went out to the road, called an ambulance and sent the
[00:42:46] [SPEAKER_05]: ambulance in.
[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_05]: This cliff is literally in this guy's backyard, it's two, three minutes from the road.
[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_05]: Ambulance shows up and I'm telling them all of my injuries, like my wrist is broken,
[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_05]: my pelvis is broken, my ankle's broken.
[00:43:03] [SPEAKER_05]: And they said okay we're gonna roll you over and I said no no no no no, my pelvis is broken
[00:43:08] [SPEAKER_05]: and they tried to roll me over and I just screamed and I was like my pelvis is broken.
[00:43:14] [SPEAKER_05]: So they went oh your pelvis is broken.
[00:43:19] [SPEAKER_05]: You know this is a tiny island, like 1,500 people there, permanent residents, if that.
[00:43:26] [SPEAKER_05]: They don't deal with this kind of stuff.
[00:43:28] [SPEAKER_05]: They put like a diaper sling on me and rolled me over and that was much better and got me
[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_05]: off to the hospital.
[00:43:34] [SPEAKER_05]: At the hospital they didn't want to give me any pain meds because they knew I was going
[00:43:38] [SPEAKER_05]: to need surgery so they were conversing with the hospital over on Grand Cayman, the big
[00:43:44] [SPEAKER_05]: hospital.
[00:43:45] [SPEAKER_05]: At one point I said hey I feel funny and I just passed out and it was from the pain.
[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_05]: The whole time I was talking clearly and wasn't really in shock but it was just an
[00:43:59] [SPEAKER_05]: overwhelming amount of pain and I just like shut down.
[00:44:02] [SPEAKER_05]: And one of my injuries was my ribs were all separated from my sternum because when I landed
[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_05]: everything, the force was just blasted up into my chest and just blew my chest open.
[00:44:20] [SPEAKER_05]: So that injury, when I passed out, what do the nurses typically do to see if you're
[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_05]: awake or get a response?
[00:44:30] [SPEAKER_05]: They do a sternal rub.
[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_05]: Like they take a knuckle, give you a knuckle right to the sternum and rub it really hard.
[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_10]: My brother used to do that to me.
[00:44:41] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_05]: I woke up screaming.
[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_05]: I think I swore a few times and they're very religious there and they're like now Mr.
[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_05]: Jim we're not going to take care of you if you keep using that kind of language.
[00:44:55] [SPEAKER_05]: And I was like I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_05]: Then they started cutting, they cut my harness off of me.
[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_05]: They cut my shorts off of me.
[00:45:04] [SPEAKER_05]: I begged them not to cut my shorts, they were my favorite shorts.
[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_05]: They were going to cut my climbing shoes off and I begged them not to do that because they're
[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_05]: brand new, brand new shoes.
[00:45:13] [SPEAKER_05]: So just unlace them all the way down to the toe and then they'll come right off.
[00:45:17] [SPEAKER_05]: So they do that.
[00:45:18] [SPEAKER_05]: They came right off and then they threw them in the trash.
[00:45:24] [SPEAKER_10]: It's funny you're like a total dirt bag climber through and through still.
[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, yeah absolutely.
[00:45:31] [SPEAKER_10]: Even at this moment of basically like-
[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_10]: Fighting for your life.
[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_10]: Looking at the end of the tunnel there, you're like I still got to keep these shorts.
[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_10]: I still got, those are new shoes dog.
[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_10]: I don't care how much money I make a year.
[00:45:44] [SPEAKER_10]: Retail climbing shoes are expensive.
[00:45:46] [SPEAKER_05]: Right, right.
[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_05]: I love it.
[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_05]: At this point I don't even remember what they were but they were pretty expensive.
[00:45:51] [SPEAKER_05]: But they were brand new.
[00:45:52] [SPEAKER_05]: I think they were five tens or something.
[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_05]: So it was at that point that we discovered that I did have one wound and it was a puncture
[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_05]: wound in my heel.
[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_05]: And originally I thought well maybe that was from a bone going out through the skin but
[00:46:12] [SPEAKER_05]: I later realized that it was actually a rock going in.
[00:46:16] [SPEAKER_05]: It went through the shoe and then into my heel.
[00:46:19] [SPEAKER_05]: But that was the only open wound that I had out of the whole thing.
[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_05]: So eventually they called the Cayman Islands police helicopter to come over and get me
[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_05]: and when they were packaging me up to put me in the helicopter I thought oh shit they
[00:46:39] [SPEAKER_05]: put this like bubble thing over me.
[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_05]: I thought they were going to put me on the outside of the helicopter and I was like oh
[00:46:45] [SPEAKER_05]: Jesus I'm going to die on this trip.
[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_05]: Like I'm not going to be able to talk to anybody.
[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to be outside the helicopter for this hundred mile flight to Grand Cayman and
[00:46:58] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm just going to fucking die out here.
[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_05]: But I was totally okay with it.
[00:47:02] [SPEAKER_05]: Well you know this is what it is.
[00:47:04] [SPEAKER_05]: And then once I got to the...
[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_05]: well once they started giving me pain meds things kind of started to get blurry and the
[00:47:12] [SPEAKER_05]: next couple of days were kind of still kind of a mystery to me.
[00:47:16] [SPEAKER_05]: And even my wife who while I was in the first hospital I asked them to call the airport
[00:47:25] [SPEAKER_05]: tell my wife to stay on Grand Cayman Island.
[00:47:28] [SPEAKER_05]: I will be over shortly but they didn't catch her in time.
[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_05]: She gets off the plane on Cayman Brock and they call her over and say your husband's been
[00:47:38] [SPEAKER_05]: in an accident and she thought well it had to have been a car accident because Jim doesn't
[00:47:42] [SPEAKER_05]: have climbing accidents and they eventually tell her that yeah it's a climbing accident
[00:47:48] [SPEAKER_05]: he's being flown to Grand Cayman.
[00:47:51] [SPEAKER_05]: So she gets right back onto the plane that she just got off of and goes to Grand Cayman.
[00:47:58] [SPEAKER_05]: Maxine ends up staying on the island for a night maybe two nights with a friend from
[00:48:05] [SPEAKER_05]: Maine who just happened to be there at the same time and took care of Maxine because Maxine
[00:48:10] [SPEAKER_05]: was 13 couldn't drive you know had to be dropped off at the airport.
[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_05]: So Maxine actually was kind of left with gathering up all of our scuba gear all our climbing gear
[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_05]: throwing that all into duffel bags and getting that to the airport and getting back over.
[00:48:28] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean that's a lot for a 13 year old kid to deal with.
[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_10]: And this accident running through their head the whole time.
[00:48:35] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah and dealing with it.
[00:48:36] [SPEAKER_10]: Must have been a really difficult couple days.
[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_05]: It's well it's turned into a difficult few years like it's that trauma from that is not
[00:48:45] [SPEAKER_05]: like I don't mean to minimize that or brush that off at all like that.
[00:48:50] [SPEAKER_05]: What Maxine went through I can't imagine.
[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_05]: So eventually I get to Grand Cayman in the hospital there and all three of us are there
[00:49:04] [SPEAKER_05]: and I went through a couple of surgeries to kind of stabilize some of the injuries
[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_05]: but they're not a level one trauma center.
[00:49:12] [SPEAKER_05]: So I had to get to the closest level one trauma unit which was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
[00:49:18] [SPEAKER_05]: Which meant my wife had to book and pay for an air ambulance from Grand Cayman to Florida
[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_05]: and they won't leave the ground until they're paid in full.
[00:49:31] [SPEAKER_05]: And that was $26,000.
[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_05]: So like we maxed out a couple credit cards to pull that off.
[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_05]: That flight I didn't realize it at the time because I didn't feel that bad but I came
[00:49:46] [SPEAKER_05]: probably the closest I came to dying out of the whole thing was during that flight.
[00:49:51] [SPEAKER_05]: Because my blood saturation oxygen saturation was down in the 60s.
[00:49:58] [SPEAKER_05]: And my wife a nurse is on board this plane where I've been crammed in there into this
[00:50:04] [SPEAKER_05]: little Learjet all bandaged up with I had because my broken pelvis I had a like an erector set
[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_05]: bolted into my hips to stabilize those fractures.
[00:50:17] [SPEAKER_05]: My wife was watching everything trying to stay out of the way but eventually she's like
[00:50:22] [SPEAKER_05]: what what are you doing?
[00:50:23] [SPEAKER_05]: Like the air ambulance crew was really not up to speed on things and I probably should
[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_05]: have been on a ventilator because my lungs were so badly bruised that my oxygen saturations
[00:50:39] [SPEAKER_05]: were really low.
[00:50:42] [SPEAKER_05]: But I tell people in the medical world yeah my my SATs were in the 60s they're like holy
[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_05]: shit we almost call the crash cart if your SATs go into the 80s.
[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_05]: So my wife is freaking out she takes over from the air ambulance crew and eventually
[00:50:59] [SPEAKER_05]: they didn't have the right type of mask and she she takes the mask gets it on me and actually
[00:51:05] [SPEAKER_05]: tapes and seals it around to try to stabilize my oxygen intake.
[00:51:10] [SPEAKER_05]: Then we we arrive in Florida the receiving ambulance is asking for a report the air ambulance
[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_05]: crew doesn't have a report they don't know what's going on my wife is like giving them
[00:51:21] [SPEAKER_05]: my vitals and then while she's giving him the report customs shows up and starts asking
[00:51:29] [SPEAKER_05]: for asking for papers and the air ambulance crew is like no comprende.
[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_05]: So part of me kind of thinks that this whole air ambulance thing was was a front for like
[00:51:40] [SPEAKER_05]: a drug smuggling operation because it it just didn't seem to like scream we are a professional
[00:51:47] [SPEAKER_05]: air ambulance system here.
[00:51:49] [SPEAKER_05]: But customs sees me laying on the tarmac literally dying in front of them and they're like
[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_05]: you all can go.
[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[00:51:57] [SPEAKER_05]: So I went like they rushed me over to the hospital and then kind of got me straight
[00:52:03] [SPEAKER_05]: into surgery but as they were taking me into surgery somewhere in south Florida some dude
[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_05]: with a sailboat towing a sailboat hits a power line and just like blacks out the whole eastern
[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_05]: seaboard of Florida.
[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_05]: So they didn't do surgery on me because they they won't start surgery on the emergency
[00:52:22] [SPEAKER_05]: generators because if the generators go down then there's nothing so they had to wait until
[00:52:26] [SPEAKER_05]: the power came back on before they would start that's the first surgeries and start piecing
[00:52:31] [SPEAKER_05]: me back together.
[00:52:32] [SPEAKER_05]: And then I spent the next like three and a half weeks in that hospital getting patched
[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_05]: back together fixing my wrist my ankle my pelvis and whatever else.
[00:52:45] [SPEAKER_05]: Eventually we got another air ambulance to take me back to Maine and I spent another month
[00:52:50] [SPEAKER_05]: in a skilled nursing facility you know not getting any more surgeries but basically just
[00:52:56] [SPEAKER_05]: someplace where I healing yeah someplace I could kind of heal up a little bit before
[00:53:00] [SPEAKER_05]: I could go home.
[00:53:01] [SPEAKER_05]: And then eventually I was home and I was home in basically in bed for like six months not
[00:53:10] [SPEAKER_05]: really doing much of anything.
[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_10]: Part of the deal I want to do is just talk about how experienced a climber you were and
[00:53:16] [SPEAKER_10]: at some point during this process you know when does it when does it the sort of what
[00:53:23] [SPEAKER_10]: the fuck moment of like how did I make it this far to have this happen I heard a little
[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_10]: you know sort of sub sub story of that when you were talking about the accident of like
[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_10]: how did I get this far I mean the complacency but it must have hit you like a ton of bricks.
[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah you know so at that time I had been climbing for what oh like probably already over 40
[00:53:45] [SPEAKER_05]: years and done lots of sketchy stupid things in the mountains dangerous things even my
[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_05]: earliest experiences like I didn't take real lessons and learn how to place gear like this
[00:54:00] [SPEAKER_05]: was all trial and error so to live live through all that and then live through all of my other
[00:54:05] [SPEAKER_05]: exploits over many decades cheating death like kind of all over the place places things
[00:54:11] [SPEAKER_05]: that should have killed me and then I nearly die sport climbing in the Caribbean of all
[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_05]: fucking places.
[00:54:19] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah the irony is not lost on me so it's like the complacency is that's the thing that
[00:54:28] [SPEAKER_05]: gets a lot of people you know you kind of have one not a momentary lapse in judgment but maybe
[00:54:36] [SPEAKER_05]: a momentary lapse in awareness of what could potentially happen if this happens if this is
[00:54:43] [SPEAKER_05]: here and this fails what's going to happen like you know talking to to will dad about stuff like
[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_05]: that he he says he he coined the phrase the power the positive power of negative thinking like what
[00:54:57] [SPEAKER_05]: can go wrong and on that particular day I didn't think very carefully about what could have gone
[00:55:04] [SPEAKER_05]: wrong is that what you're looking for for that particular yeah just kind of curious because
[00:55:11] [SPEAKER_10]: yeah and it's not an unusual story I mean your vacation climbing and so sometimes you know
[00:55:16] [SPEAKER_10]: people's awareness like when you walk into the mountains you know you you've mentioned
[00:55:21] [SPEAKER_10]: climbing in Canadian Rockies and things like that it's like yeah you're you're on you know
[00:55:26] [SPEAKER_10]: you're on high alert because here we are in this place yeah and I think that the complacency is
[00:55:31] [SPEAKER_10]: tricky with that and I've thought a lot about that in my own own life um because I mean here
[00:55:36] [SPEAKER_10]: in Colorado like nothing's more convenient than climbing and rifle and um and I'm surprised
[00:55:41] [SPEAKER_10]: actually how little um how few accidents actually go down in that place although it requires a skill
[00:55:48] [SPEAKER_10]: level I think that that um sort of things but but it's an interesting thing of this idea of
[00:55:54] [SPEAKER_10]: how safe you know sport climbing is or whatever but it's also this this can be this kind of drug
[00:56:01] [SPEAKER_10]: that you know makes you kind of let your let your guard down in a way yeah I was I was kind of
[00:56:09] [SPEAKER_05]: lucky that uh I don't know if this was in the early days of Mountain Project but
[00:56:17] [SPEAKER_05]: Mo Mo Mo said something uh during our recent trip to the Bugaboos is I often think about
[00:56:26] [SPEAKER_05]: what people are going to say about me on Mountain Project if this goes wrong like if I get hurt
[00:56:32] [SPEAKER_05]: here what what's you know what's the Mountain Project gonna gonna say about me so so Mountain
[00:56:38] [SPEAKER_05]: Project kind of erupted talking about my accident and like right away people all say oh you know the
[00:56:45] [SPEAKER_05]: greegree had to be loaded backwards or you know something of that sort and uh there were actually
[00:56:53] [SPEAKER_05]: like my climber friends who were there at the scene that was the first thing they thought and
[00:56:58] [SPEAKER_05]: they checked everything and they're like everything is perfect everything is normal and it wasn't
[00:57:03] [SPEAKER_05]: until I returned home and was back at work that I I kind of recreated the accident in in our drop
[00:57:13] [SPEAKER_05]: tower at work and it's actually kind of frightening how often you can make a greegree fail in that
[00:57:23] [SPEAKER_05]: if you have the rope above the greegree in front of the greegree how often it won't lock
[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_05]: and in this case we had a a brand new rope dry treated thin rope like it was kind of all of the
[00:57:38] [SPEAKER_05]: perfect elements for making that thing fail on that particular fall or that particular time right
[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_10]: the thing that's wild in this story is I mentioned it earlier is this eventuality of
[00:57:51] [SPEAKER_10]: amputation but that combined with this relationship you have with Hugh Herr and
[00:57:57] [SPEAKER_10]: you know we've been talking about Hugh a little bit on the on the program but
[00:58:01] [SPEAKER_10]: for anyone who doesn't know that he is basically the best most accomplished most visionary creator
[00:58:10] [SPEAKER_10]: of prosthesis in the world MIT lab that does leg prosthesis and so it turns out that you're
[00:58:20] [SPEAKER_10]: friends with this man who who was a pioneer in it on his own legs and it turns out that
[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_10]: eventually going back to like a famous enormocast episode with with Craig DiMartino you're faced
[00:58:33] [SPEAKER_05]: with the exact same gallows choice by the way Craig was one of my mentors going into surgery
[00:58:43] [SPEAKER_05]: like he was somebody I leaned on pretty heavily about what's gonna what life is gonna be like
[00:58:49] [SPEAKER_05]: for me after amputation and kind of just you eventually I mean you you didn't happen right
[00:58:55] [SPEAKER_10]: away but you had to elect the way the way the way he did because it wasn't healing
[00:59:01] [SPEAKER_05]: I was at what six months out and I was doing outpatient physical therapy like every other day
[00:59:10] [SPEAKER_05]: lots and lots of physical therapy and my ankle was just not getting better everything else kind
[00:59:17] [SPEAKER_05]: of healed the pelvis healed the wrist healed my ribs sternum everything kind of all slowly got
[00:59:24] [SPEAKER_05]: better although there is still like somewhat painful and just existing anywhere was kind of
[00:59:31] [SPEAKER_05]: a painful experience existing anywhere outside of a wheelchair was kind of painful I'll fast forward
[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_05]: to like a year out from the accident the local surgeon foot ankle surgeon said well let's do a
[00:59:46] [SPEAKER_05]: CT scan and because I I wanted the metal taken out of my ankle because I it hurt like I could feel
[00:59:54] [SPEAKER_05]: it they they doctors all assured me oh you can't feel that and I'm like no I'm telling you I can
[00:59:59] [SPEAKER_05]: feel it and it fucking hurts like the metal stings and he's like yeah okay well we can take it out
[01:00:06] [SPEAKER_05]: but let's do a CT first and see how the the bone is healing the the CT showed that the bone was
[01:00:13] [SPEAKER_05]: mostly dead the main fracture was still there although I had what was called a on Hawkins type
[01:00:21] [SPEAKER_05]: four fracture which is like the worst possible fracture of a talus bone the type four means that
[01:00:27] [SPEAKER_05]: it's kind of smashed and broken into several small pieces but the two main pieces were still not
[01:00:36] [SPEAKER_05]: healed the the main fracture had not healed and some of the screws were kind of failing they were
[01:00:41] [SPEAKER_05]: backing out and I asked that surgeon in Maine about amputation and he said oh no no like I won't
[01:00:53] [SPEAKER_05]: amputate like amputees they fall down all the time and like I yeah I won't do an amputation but
[01:00:59] [SPEAKER_05]: eventually you won't be able to stand the pain anymore and we'll fuse that and and that'll be
[01:01:05] [SPEAKER_05]: that and I said well I I had a whole lot of nerve damage in my foot that made it made the sole of my
[01:01:12] [SPEAKER_05]: foot incredibly painful like imagine tearing duct tape off of the most sensitive part of your body
[01:01:20] [SPEAKER_05]: like multiple times that's what it felt like to put my socks on and take my socks off it was
[01:01:26] [SPEAKER_05]: excruciating so I asked him about the nerve pain he said oh well I can't do anything about that
[01:01:31] [SPEAKER_05]: that's either in your sacrum or you know maybe the nerves were damaged in your foot when
[01:01:35] [SPEAKER_05]: when they did the surgery and like there's nothing I can do about it and to me that was kind of like
[01:01:41] [SPEAKER_05]: not acceptable and he also told me that well eventually we will fuse your um tibio-talar joint
[01:01:50] [SPEAKER_05]: so you won't have any plantar flexion dorsiflexion anymore and then eventually in a few years we'll
[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_05]: have to probably fuse your um subtalar joint so you won't have any inversion eversion anymore
[01:02:04] [SPEAKER_05]: and then eventually we'll have to fuse the talonevicular joint and like ultimately you're
[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_05]: just looking at having this club of a foot that doesn't do much for you and as a side benefit
[01:02:16] [SPEAKER_05]: the skin is is excruciatingly painful I added that part um so I I as an engineer I was like
[01:02:26] [SPEAKER_05]: I gotta find a way to fix this and I actually started looking at ways of creating a titanium
[01:02:33] [SPEAKER_05]: talus bone that I could have put in there but I also started researching what existed out there
[01:02:39] [SPEAKER_05]: for technology to replace the talus bone or revive the bone and there's a bunch of different options
[01:02:46] [SPEAKER_05]: but every every kind of avenue that I went down ultimately led to yeah this is not a great
[01:02:54] [SPEAKER_05]: solution this is not a great solution every everything kind of ended with less than
[01:02:59] [SPEAKER_05]: satisfactory results and so I started looking up a bunch of newer surgeries that could potentially
[01:03:08] [SPEAKER_05]: revive the bone salvage the bone and then I thought well I just kept coming back to well
[01:03:15] [SPEAKER_05]: Hugh managed just fine as a bilateral amputee so and I I had from a distance I had kind of kept
[01:03:23] [SPEAKER_05]: up with what Hugh was doing I knew that he had gone on to get his PhD in biomedical engineering
[01:03:29] [SPEAKER_05]: or something of the sort and was now a professor at MIT and I I knew he was pretty well connected
[01:03:35] [SPEAKER_05]: in kind of the research world and the medical research world so I gave him a call and kind of
[01:03:42] [SPEAKER_05]: caught up a little bit over the years but he said well why don't you come down and and we'll talk
[01:03:47] [SPEAKER_05]: so I went down to the lab his lab at MIT at the media lab in January of 2016
[01:03:56] [SPEAKER_05]: because this was now a full year out from the accident a year and a month and so we in in our
[01:04:05] [SPEAKER_05]: conversation I said so I'm hoping that you can connect me to somebody who could rebuild my ankle
[01:04:11] [SPEAKER_05]: and I followed that up with and if nobody can rebuild this what would life as an amputee look
[01:04:18] [SPEAKER_05]: like for me now like what's new and what's what's the best going best thing going and he said well
[01:04:27] [SPEAKER_05]: it just so happens just do in he said we we have developed a new amputation protocol
[01:04:35] [SPEAKER_10]: and we haven't tried it out yet so listen I want to I want to I want to point something out here
[01:04:40] [SPEAKER_10]: is that I've been in this office I've sat where you probably were sitting across the desk from
[01:04:46] [SPEAKER_10]: Hugh like and I when I was watching the the documentary you know he mentioned like this
[01:04:52] [SPEAKER_10]: empathy for you to you know this pain that you were going through but I also was like huh I wonder how
[01:04:58] [SPEAKER_10]: like sort of like all right we got our guy kind of you know was rolling through his head at all
[01:05:05] [SPEAKER_10]: because yeah it was simultaneous with this protocol that they had created or were in the
[01:05:10] [SPEAKER_10]: midst of creating anyway to to receive a you know this incredibly advanced basically bionic leg
[01:05:17] [SPEAKER_05]: yeah so I met with Hugh in January and I said well I'm not totally sold on doing an amputation
[01:05:24] [SPEAKER_05]: yet like I'm I'm not there I still want to investigate reconstruction so he introduces
[01:05:31] [SPEAKER_05]: me to Matthew Carty who he has partnered with to develop this new amputation protocol and and I said
[01:05:39] [SPEAKER_05]: I want you to introduce me to to the surgeon but I'm not there yet like I want to talk to him about
[01:05:45] [SPEAKER_05]: this but I also want to talk about reconstruction so when I met with Matthew Carty I think I met in
[01:05:54] [SPEAKER_05]: March of 2016 this guy is the absolute best doctor I have ever met in my entire fucking life
[01:06:05] [SPEAKER_05]: and unfortunately I've met a lot of doctors and and I say unfortunately because they're usually
[01:06:11] [SPEAKER_05]: putting me back together or fixing me or or whatever he was the first first doctor that I
[01:06:18] [SPEAKER_05]: talked to who did not have his hand on the doorknob waiting to leave when I started talking
[01:06:23] [SPEAKER_05]: he sat with me for probably two hours all about the possibilities of what to what to do with my
[01:06:29] [SPEAKER_05]: ankle like is it salvageable and then all the questions I had about amputation and then actually
[01:06:34] [SPEAKER_05]: we even talked about possible transplantation taking a donated ankle from a cadaver and
[01:06:43] [SPEAKER_05]: transplanting it onto me and he said that in itself would be considered experimental and first
[01:06:49] [SPEAKER_05]: of its kind is having an elective amputation and transplant of a limb because normally they
[01:06:58] [SPEAKER_05]: they save limbs transplantable limbs for people who've already been amputated and you know trying
[01:07:04] [SPEAKER_05]: to improve their their life so uh so we we talked a lot about a lot of things and going forward the
[01:07:12] [SPEAKER_05]: plan was all right he will book me an appointment with the best foot and ankle surgeons in boston
[01:07:20] [SPEAKER_05]: book me appointments with the best neurologists who can investigate the damaged nerves in in
[01:07:27] [SPEAKER_05]: boston and these guys are all super duper world-class surgeons in their fields and the
[01:07:35] [SPEAKER_05]: orthopedic surgeon that I met with looked at my cts he looked at my ankle and he said well you
[01:07:42] [SPEAKER_05]: know I typically like to give people three options and you know your your first option is to do
[01:07:48] [SPEAKER_05]: nothing which obviously is not much of an option second option is we can do fusions but he said
[01:07:57] [SPEAKER_05]: i would want to do all of the fusions all at once because it'll just save you time in in
[01:08:04] [SPEAKER_05]: dealing with multiple surgeries and eventual possibility of collapse of the bone and stuff
[01:08:09] [SPEAKER_05]: and then the third option would be amputation
[01:08:13] [SPEAKER_05]: um so I you know I took that information oh and then we we did we I went to a neurologist who
[01:08:21] [SPEAKER_05]: did a bunch of tests on my the nerves down my left leg and in my foot trying to determine where
[01:08:29] [SPEAKER_05]: the damage was and if it could be repaired and they they could not isolate where the damage was
[01:08:36] [SPEAKER_05]: and in order to isolate it they said they would have to do that surgically and in that process
[01:08:42] [SPEAKER_05]: they would just fuck things up beyond repair he said it's just not worth hunting for this
[01:08:49] [SPEAKER_05]: so that was that was kind of the answer like all right well the nerves can't be fixed uh the bones
[01:08:55] [SPEAKER_05]: can't be fixed uh let's let's go let's get rid of this thing so yeah so I kind of I made that
[01:09:02] [SPEAKER_05]: made that decision um kind of all of the all of the repair options and other options just
[01:09:10] [SPEAKER_05]: kind of were not panning out and I I just started thinking about what is going to get me back to
[01:09:21] [SPEAKER_05]: uh being active what is what is going to get me the best quality of life
[01:09:25] [SPEAKER_05]: I was uh 51 and I was like how many more years can I can I get in if if uh you know I'm going
[01:09:34] [SPEAKER_05]: in to have my ankle repaired every couple of years like I I need right this just to be one and done
[01:09:40] [SPEAKER_05]: once I kind of made that decision like all right well let's just go ahead with this we put it on
[01:09:45] [SPEAKER_05]: schedule but it was several months out so it was scheduled for July of of 2016. So this is actually
[01:09:55] [SPEAKER_05]: like six months from the from the time that I talked to Hugh about amputation that uh we scheduled
[01:10:02] [SPEAKER_05]: the the surgery leading up to scheduling that there was there was a lot of meetings with um
[01:10:09] [SPEAKER_05]: with Hugh's research um his his grad students this one guy in particular Tyler Kleitz was a PhD
[01:10:18] [SPEAKER_05]: candidate and he was the one working on this the most he actually designed a lot of the
[01:10:25] [SPEAKER_05]: the surgery protocol you know there were trips to the lab to do a bunch of pre-amputation testing
[01:10:31] [SPEAKER_05]: there was a bunch of trips to to Boston for um being evaluated for um you know pre-op
[01:10:40] [SPEAKER_05]: evaluations and all this stuff and in the meantime I started...
[01:10:44] [SPEAKER_10]: Well you know I want to ask you a question about that because this team and you know I've
[01:10:49] [SPEAKER_10]: in the document I mean they're so young like yeah it's just it's wild I mean they are like
[01:10:55] [SPEAKER_10]: best of the best right as far as as far as what they do um but it's just I mean Hugh's not young
[01:11:02] [SPEAKER_10]: but he's sort of just there like overseeing it and the the people doing the work you know these
[01:11:07] [SPEAKER_10]: researchers like this this gentleman Tyler that you were talking about like it's crazy you know
[01:11:12] [SPEAKER_10]: yeah in the hands of these youngsters yeah but it was cool.
[01:11:17] [SPEAKER_05]: You know Tyler Tyler is pretty amazing individual he's now a he's a professor
[01:11:22] [SPEAKER_05]: of physics and engineering at UCLA now I think yeah Hugh is guiding these research students these
[01:11:29] [SPEAKER_05]: these grad students and uh he's just kind of overseeing all of this and and actually I was not
[01:11:37] [SPEAKER_05]: supposed to be the first patient I buried the lead there so I ended up being the first patient for
[01:11:44] [SPEAKER_05]: this new new protocol but I wasn't supposed to be and it was maybe a month or two ahead of the
[01:11:51] [SPEAKER_05]: the surgery date the surgeon called me and he said uh we had the other patient has has dropped out
[01:11:59] [SPEAKER_05]: and so you're now into the first slot and he said are you are you okay with that I was like honestly
[01:12:05] [SPEAKER_05]: it makes no difference to me like the thought of amputating my leg is is fucking terrifying enough
[01:12:13] [SPEAKER_05]: that it doesn't matter to me if I'm first or second it's not more terrifying to go first and
[01:12:19] [SPEAKER_05]: I I kind of I had that confidence about this right from the beginning I was like sure this is
[01:12:24] [SPEAKER_05]: experimental but if it goes wrong what's the worst that can happen like I could be in agony for you
[01:12:32] [SPEAKER_05]: know for however long it takes them to undo it and you know to me I had already been through
[01:12:39] [SPEAKER_05]: a year and a half of excruciating debilitating pain like the worst pain of my life
[01:12:47] [SPEAKER_05]: so it can't possibly get worse from from there well and to fill in this blank real quick is you
[01:12:54] [SPEAKER_10]: know we've been talking about this protocol but the idea in it and you know we don't have to go
[01:12:59] [SPEAKER_10]: into the details of that because that's on a whole other you know bio mechanics podcast I'm actually
[01:13:05] [SPEAKER_05]: really good I can yeah I can give you a quick synopsis of that like yeah just to fill us in
[01:13:10] [SPEAKER_10]: about why this is so special so what's not just lopping your foot off right so what's special
[01:13:15] [SPEAKER_05]: about this is so we've all seen the amazing robotic prosthetics that are out there they're
[01:13:20] [SPEAKER_05]: always you know kind of touting these things when when somebody develops some new one but the problem
[01:13:26] [SPEAKER_05]: is the actual control of them has been relatively unsatisfying and unsatisfactory for the end users
[01:13:36] [SPEAKER_05]: they don't have great control over them and it's a lot of times the the control has to be
[01:13:42] [SPEAKER_05]: they've got to use AI or some you know sophisticated software to make these things work correctly
[01:13:47] [SPEAKER_05]: and the end user it doesn't feel like their own limb so this new protocol was designed and intended
[01:13:57] [SPEAKER_05]: to bridge that gap and to make them feel more natural and more part of you and it's very super
[01:14:06] [SPEAKER_05]: super simple I mean it sounds like science fiction sort of stuff but it's super simple
[01:14:12] [SPEAKER_05]: so every joint in our body has an agonist antagonist pair of muscles right so you know
[01:14:19] [SPEAKER_05]: your you have your tricep and your bicep your tricep contracts your bicep stretches your bicep
[01:14:26] [SPEAKER_05]: contracts your tricep stretches that gives your your brain your nervous system lots of information
[01:14:34] [SPEAKER_05]: about the position of your hand in space without looking at it and and the medical world and and
[01:14:43] [SPEAKER_05]: PT world calls that proprioception you know it's the ability to close your eyes and touch your
[01:14:50] [SPEAKER_05]: nose without seeing it so in traditional amputation that agonist antagonist relationship is destroyed
[01:14:59] [SPEAKER_05]: you know you you if you cut off an arm across the humerus you no longer have the bicep and tricep
[01:15:05] [SPEAKER_05]: talking to each other so you lose that proprioception in that limb and if you have a
[01:15:11] [SPEAKER_05]: prosthetic limb on there that proprioception doesn't come back it's it's gone because those
[01:15:16] [SPEAKER_05]: muscles aren't talking to each other so in my case they took two pair of muscles that control the
[01:15:23] [SPEAKER_05]: ankle that do your plantar flexion dorsiflexion inversion eversion they connected those through
[01:15:31] [SPEAKER_05]: little pulleys that they built on my tibia and mounted there so now my brain thinks that my foot
[01:15:39] [SPEAKER_05]: is still there and that it can control it and so i still can plantar flex in my in my mind i'm moving
[01:15:48] [SPEAKER_05]: my ghost foot around plantar flex dorsiflex invert ever then when i'm have these robot
[01:15:54] [SPEAKER_05]: prosthetics connected to me they are attached to my muscles just through surface electrodes and
[01:16:02] [SPEAKER_05]: just picking up the the myoelectric signals from those muscles then it goes into a computer and the
[01:16:09] [SPEAKER_05]: tries to move the robot accordingly and what they found was that it worked like so the first
[01:16:18] [SPEAKER_05]: tests that we were doing as probably shown in the in that documentary augmented the first time they
[01:16:24] [SPEAKER_05]: actually had it on me and tuned correctly my brain my body adopted that robot foot as if like oh hey
[01:16:34] [SPEAKER_05]: your foot is back we're just going to start using it and you automatically adopt that component as
[01:16:41] [SPEAKER_05]: part of you and hugh coined the term neural embodiment meaning my nervous system said
[01:16:48] [SPEAKER_05]: hey this is part of us now let's use it and so the movement of the foot and the
[01:16:56] [SPEAKER_05]: use of the foot was just natural instinct i was doing some just kind of puttering around in the
[01:17:03] [SPEAKER_05]: wearing the robot and i noticed that as i lifted my knee to go up these stairs
[01:17:10] [SPEAKER_05]: that the foot would automatically toe up and if you think about this now when you go upstairs
[01:17:16] [SPEAKER_05]: you automatically lift your toes without thinking about it to clear the step and when you turn
[01:17:22] [SPEAKER_05]: around you come back down the stairs you automatically without thinking about it
[01:17:26] [SPEAKER_05]: you reach for the step as you step down and the robot was doing those things without me really
[01:17:34] [SPEAKER_05]: intending it to it was just doing it automatically and i said hey guys look at this and i'm like
[01:17:40] [SPEAKER_05]: what and i said the foot it's like it's doing these things as i'm going up and down these stairs
[01:17:47] [SPEAKER_05]: and it's doing it all on its own i'm not really i'm not consciously thinking about this it's just
[01:17:52] [SPEAKER_05]: doing it and that that was kind of the moment where they're like wow this is this is actually
[01:17:58] [SPEAKER_05]: working better than than they had hoped and i remember that day in the lab because everybody
[01:18:06] [SPEAKER_05]: you know this the lab is full of research students research grad students all working
[01:18:12] [SPEAKER_05]: on their various things everybody in the lab had stopped working and they were all you know
[01:18:17] [SPEAKER_05]: you've been in that lab there's like the mezzanine up above everyone's just all watching
[01:18:22] [SPEAKER_05]: what's going on down there because this is this was a moment that they had been working towards
[01:18:28] [SPEAKER_05]: for several years in creating these new prosthetics so it was it was kind of a big moment and the
[01:18:35] [SPEAKER_05]: documentary team was there at the time
[01:18:41] [SPEAKER_05]: honey come here sorry that's okay in your lap again yeah hey come
[01:18:52] [SPEAKER_10]: good up up up there you go chill she'll be happy there uh so i mean what what were your emotions i
[01:19:04] [SPEAKER_10]: you know like um was it at that moment was it later like what at that moment it was i was not
[01:19:10] [SPEAKER_05]: emotional i was like oh this is all really cool um this is fun but then driving home uh that night
[01:19:18] [SPEAKER_05]: so i have a from the lab it's a two-hour drive to my house in maine and i was like holy shit like
[01:19:27] [SPEAKER_05]: this was kind of a big thing i just kind of replaying all of the day's events in my head and
[01:19:34] [SPEAKER_05]: remembering everybody stopped doing what they were doing everybody was watching this i was like
[01:19:38] [SPEAKER_05]: this was this was kind of a big moment for the lab it was a big moment for hugh
[01:19:44] [SPEAKER_05]: it was a big moment for for tyler because because this was his phd
[01:19:49] [SPEAKER_05]: yeah it was it was like wow this this is kind of an important big step in the development of
[01:19:57] [SPEAKER_10]: these new prosthetics so yeah and like not just for you obviously this is yeah not just this
[01:20:02] [SPEAKER_10]: is a harbinger that your life is probably going to get better and well it's also this this harbinger
[01:20:09] [SPEAKER_10]: because i mean these are things that i think uh they mentioned in there that you know they're
[01:20:14] [SPEAKER_10]: they're partnering with the department of defense and things like that for
[01:20:17] [SPEAKER_10]: yeah wounded veterans so this is like a huge move forward for the possibilities for all sorts
[01:20:23] [SPEAKER_05]: of people right so so while i was driving home hugh called me and he he said what would you think
[01:20:32] [SPEAKER_05]: about a a robot foot specifically for climbing and i was like oh yeah yeah that would be cool but you
[01:20:39] [SPEAKER_05]: know there's probably not much of a market for that but but yeah that'd be really cool but what
[01:20:45] [SPEAKER_05]: hugh was probably thinking uh was this would be a great demonstration of the capabilities of this
[01:20:52] [SPEAKER_05]: technology so he had one of his grad students uh do she was a master's degree candidate i think
[01:21:01] [SPEAKER_05]: for mechanical engineering and she created the the climbing foot that was um uh shown in the
[01:21:11] [SPEAKER_05]: documentary so i went back to cayman brock and went climbing on the the sea cliff there with this
[01:21:19] [SPEAKER_05]: robot uh foot designed specifically for climbing and uh yeah so it was like there's just been kind
[01:21:29] [SPEAKER_05]: of those moments um ever since then ever since the surgery like every everything is like this
[01:21:37] [SPEAKER_05]: milestone moment has been well yeah and there's crazy wild right i still keep thinking of like
[01:21:42] [SPEAKER_10]: thinking about this like faithfulness of being friends with hugh you know yeah before he was
[01:21:48] [SPEAKER_10]: this person because when you were friends with him you know he was wearing prosthesis many of which
[01:21:54] [SPEAKER_10]: he just made like literally like in probably one of the rooms in one of those shacks that you guys
[01:21:59] [SPEAKER_05]: lived in yeah and and he was not this professor right and the the sockets that he had back then
[01:22:05] [SPEAKER_05]: those things were junk and they weighed a ton right the technology he's a climber you know like
[01:22:12] [SPEAKER_10]: the multiverse that we happen to live in that that the the most prominent creator of hand and
[01:22:19] [SPEAKER_10]: leg prosthesis happens to be a climber you know yes it's like bizarre and that this is a priority
[01:22:27] [SPEAKER_10]: to him and has been since he lost his legs and so it's like it's just like this crazy system of
[01:22:35] [SPEAKER_05]: of like that ended up you with a climbing foot that works the the serendipity um of it yes and
[01:22:42] [SPEAKER_05]: so when the the documentary crew started proposing to us about doing this documentary they didn't
[01:22:49] [SPEAKER_05]: know that hugh and i were roommates back in the day and so as they kind of were digging into the
[01:22:56] [SPEAKER_05]: various aspects of this the whole story they're like wait what you you guys were you knew each
[01:23:03] [SPEAKER_05]: other before this like what and we've also done we've done all these other sort of news casting
[01:23:09] [SPEAKER_05]: stories um there was hbo real sports with brian cumble like i got i got interviewed and got to
[01:23:16] [SPEAKER_05]: hang out with soledad o'brien i don't know if you know who she is or yeah of course she's kind of
[01:23:22] [SPEAKER_05]: she's an amazing person she was really fun to hang out with fun to talk with so we did a piece
[01:23:27] [SPEAKER_05]: on that but they also their crew would be like wait you guys were roommates like you knew each
[01:23:34] [SPEAKER_05]: other before this like how like how has all this happened and every every article every news
[01:23:41] [SPEAKER_05]: article about it they're all that same sort of thing that wait a minute what in the in the film
[01:23:47] [SPEAKER_10]: and they they show you going back to cayman brock which obviously would have been you know pretty
[01:23:51] [SPEAKER_10]: emotional um but it was like hold on hold on circle let me let me stop you there okay everybody
[01:23:58] [SPEAKER_05]: says that the whole going back to cayman islands i i'm not wired that way like i took the film crew
[01:24:07] [SPEAKER_05]: the documentary crew to the site of the accident and they they kept asking me like are you okay
[01:24:14] [SPEAKER_05]: like is this scary for you is this um emotional for you and i'm like no the cliff is just this
[01:24:21] [SPEAKER_05]: inanimate object it did has no malice towards me it's not going to attack me and um and i i actually
[01:24:28] [SPEAKER_05]: have no ptsd about the accident i have loads of ptsd about my time in the hospital um in florida
[01:24:38] [SPEAKER_05]: because that that was fucking horrific but the accident was it it was what it was and and i don't
[01:24:47] [SPEAKER_05]: have any big emotions like could you could you pretend yeah they were they kind of often wanted
[01:24:55] [SPEAKER_05]: that stuff yeah uh but i my my wife my my kid will tell you that i'm i'm just not wired that way i
[01:25:06] [SPEAKER_05]: just i don't know what it is uh i don't experience things the same way that that ordinary people do
[01:25:14] [SPEAKER_10]: well let's have that same let's talk about um let's talk about your your climbing life after
[01:25:19] [SPEAKER_10]: you know you've decided that like you said when you were like i only have this much time left
[01:25:24] [SPEAKER_10]: to be an active climber to be an active person um i'm gonna go for it and one of the things
[01:25:29] [SPEAKER_10]: you know your your sometimes partner mo told me is that yeah you're you're sort of the instigator
[01:25:35] [SPEAKER_10]: um to get bigger and bigger things done and you've you've inspired her to do the same yeah
[01:25:41] [SPEAKER_10]: to a certain extent so so tell me about your climbing life after after this happened so i
[01:25:47] [SPEAKER_05]: should clarify that i i don't get to use that climbing foot um except for special occasions
[01:25:53] [SPEAKER_05]: it's it's strictly still prototype and and honestly it's fun to climb with um and it's
[01:26:00] [SPEAKER_05]: fun to feel like i have my uh a foot back there but it's too fragile to climb with regularly and
[01:26:07] [SPEAKER_05]: and too heavy and uh the battery life is is really not sufficient when we filled that doc
[01:26:14] [SPEAKER_05]: filmed the documentary in the cayman islands i i went through probably a dozen batteries
[01:26:20] [SPEAKER_05]: uh during just a two-day filming on one climb so it's not quite ready for prime time right right
[01:26:29] [SPEAKER_10]: um so if that's the lamborghini uh but what is your tacoma every day i'm wearing my everyday
[01:26:37] [SPEAKER_05]: foot is is actually what i'm wearing now which is a standard it it has a sock on it at the moment
[01:26:46] [SPEAKER_05]: because because i've been wearing boots out in the barn but this this is you know a standard
[01:26:52] [SPEAKER_05]: prosthesis it's kind of looks a bit like a running blade and you know it's very multi-sport
[01:26:59] [SPEAKER_05]: multi-terrain possibility standard socket although actually i i have my sockets kind of
[01:27:06] [SPEAKER_05]: specially cut down in weight like i want the the bare minimum amount of of uh bulk and weight on
[01:27:16] [SPEAKER_05]: this thing so when i go climbing on my own it's it's nice and light and and suitable for that
[01:27:22] [SPEAKER_05]: sort of stuff i actually started climbing again before amputation and that was part of my motivation
[01:27:29] [SPEAKER_05]: for choosing amputation was that climbing was so fucking painful like everything was painful
[01:27:37] [SPEAKER_05]: the slightest bump of my foot on anything on a foothold or if i just banged it on the wall
[01:27:43] [SPEAKER_05]: would just send me like it was a couple of times that actually threw up it was so painful
[01:27:50] [SPEAKER_05]: so after amputation before i even received my first prosthesis i went climbing i was climbing
[01:27:57] [SPEAKER_05]: in the gym and i felt so liberated because i no longer had to be concerned with bumping my foot
[01:28:05] [SPEAKER_05]: on anything i could you know wave my leg all around whatever and couldn't be couldn't be hurt
[01:28:11] [SPEAKER_05]: and i actually found myself once again i was like i'm free to dino up the wall and not worry about
[01:28:20] [SPEAKER_05]: bumping my foot once i got a prosthetic i went through this several phases of kind of making my
[01:28:27] [SPEAKER_05]: own feet out of wooden blocks or doing the old hugh hurr style which was taking this old type
[01:28:34] [SPEAKER_05]: of foot called a satch foot which is actually an acronym for solid ankle cushioned heel it's
[01:28:41] [SPEAKER_05]: really old school foot but it actually works pretty well as a as a climbing foot if you
[01:28:47] [SPEAKER_05]: you cut off the toes and shave it all down and glue climbing shoe rubber to it
[01:28:51] [SPEAKER_05]: and that works out in the garage right yeah out in the garage and honestly you know the the foot
[01:28:58] [SPEAKER_05]: that uh malcolm daly developed it was modeled after that like the geometry is still pretty
[01:29:05] [SPEAKER_05]: similar to the old satch foot hue her satch foot thing so once i kind of sorted out the the feet
[01:29:12] [SPEAKER_05]: i eventually settled on a satch foot that i would shave down and cram a uh a child's size
[01:29:21] [SPEAKER_05]: climbing shoe um onto it and and that worked really well i currently climb with a custom
[01:29:28] [SPEAKER_05]: made carbon fiber thing with hockey pucks that uh works really really well and that's what i i use
[01:29:35] [SPEAKER_05]: full time now um edges you you mortals could never edge like these things can hit
[01:29:43] [SPEAKER_10]: um yeah now you're still now you're sounding like you yeah it's you're better we've made improvements
[01:29:50] [SPEAKER_05]: there's sometimes sometimes it feels like cheating like i i can kind of sink onto
[01:29:58] [SPEAKER_05]: um a hold sink all of my weight into my press into my socket and just kind of rest and shake
[01:30:05] [SPEAKER_05]: out there whereas uh you you normal people would your calves would be burning you'd be
[01:30:12] [SPEAKER_05]: swapping your feet trying to trying to rest so so once i got kind of my climbing groove back
[01:30:19] [SPEAKER_05]: i started thinking all right well um what what do people do after a near-death experience and
[01:30:26] [SPEAKER_05]: and you get a second lease on life like you start looking for the old bucket list things uh
[01:30:32] [SPEAKER_05]: what were some of the things that i always wanted to do but never got around to and
[01:30:36] [SPEAKER_05]: lotus flower tower was definitely one of those um that i felt like i i really want to get up there
[01:30:43] [SPEAKER_05]: and give that a go but i i somehow thought it needs to be an all adaptive sort of thing some
[01:30:51] [SPEAKER_05]: of these need to be all adaptive the reason i feel that way is generally when when the general public
[01:30:59] [SPEAKER_05]: sees an adaptive person doing anything um particularly climbing it's automatically assumed
[01:31:07] [SPEAKER_05]: that that person has been guided up this thing or you know somebody else did all the work somebody
[01:31:13] [SPEAKER_05]: else did all the heavy lifting and you're just along for the ride and i didn't i don't know
[01:31:20] [SPEAKER_05]: i didn't want to be accused of that i i want it to be i want to make the statement that we can do
[01:31:27] [SPEAKER_05]: these things entirely on our own so i asked malcolm dahlia like who who would be some good
[01:31:34] [SPEAKER_05]: potential partners for this and he he mentioned well i already knew craig he couldn't go at the
[01:31:41] [SPEAKER_05]: time um he mentioned mo and he mentioned a couple other people and so i i messaged all these these
[01:31:48] [SPEAKER_05]: people that he mentioned and mo was the only one to answer me and i hadn't really met mo but i had
[01:31:56] [SPEAKER_05]: seen her uh climbing at a at a para climbing event in boston maybe i'd already had my accident
[01:32:04] [SPEAKER_05]: or maybe i'd already had the amputation but i i hadn't really at that point i had not made any
[01:32:10] [SPEAKER_05]: plans to go do any big big things like the lotus flower tower so mo said yeah sure but then also
[01:32:18] [SPEAKER_05]: like uh internet stalked me to make sure i wasn't sort of some sort of a creeper that she would
[01:32:23] [SPEAKER_05]: regret ever crossing paths with and we made the plan to meet and climb together in vegas like over
[01:32:31] [SPEAKER_05]: christmas and in that was christmas of 20 2017 i think picked her up at the airport we drove out to
[01:32:42] [SPEAKER_05]: the loop road and went to go to birdland is that the really popular like five seven or
[01:32:49] [SPEAKER_05]: something out there doesn't matter i can't remember i think it's birdland anyway and
[01:32:54] [SPEAKER_05]: so i give her the rack but i give her an 80s climber trad rack and like okay here you go
[01:33:04] [SPEAKER_05]: there's like i think there's like four cams and uh and a rack of wires on there and she's like
[01:33:10] [SPEAKER_05]: what this this is it holy shit but anyway she she starts off and she's climbing up and there's
[01:33:16] [SPEAKER_05]: of course it's a popular route so there's other parties above they're they're wrapping down and
[01:33:20] [SPEAKER_05]: this guy just sees mo climbing with her taped up stump and he goes what what happened to your hand
[01:33:29] [SPEAKER_05]: and mo didn't even look up at the guy she just said alligators like it just kept on climbing
[01:33:35] [SPEAKER_05]: and i was like man this is this is awesome like this is perfect we're gonna get along just fine
[01:33:42] [SPEAKER_05]: like this is my kind of humor this so the whole rest of that trip like we climbed for several
[01:33:48] [SPEAKER_05]: more days whole rest of that trip we were joking about that we were in vegas for the
[01:33:53] [SPEAKER_05]: alligator survivors support uh convention we're here for the ass convention
[01:34:03] [SPEAKER_05]: it was good and and uh yeah and we've we've kind of been pretty regular climbing partners ever
[01:34:09] [SPEAKER_05]: i think probably since that day i've climbed more pitches with mo in all of these years than with
[01:34:16] [SPEAKER_05]: anyone else like even my local climbing buddies that i climb with all the time i've i've climbed
[01:34:21] [SPEAKER_05]: more with her than than anyone we've now been done two kind of no three kind of biggish um alpine
[01:34:29] [SPEAKER_10]: trips together people can go back and listen to mo recounts the the the um lotus flower tower
[01:34:35] [SPEAKER_10]: pretty well um sound pretty miserable actually a lot of rain a lot of rain a lot of sketchiness
[01:34:42] [SPEAKER_05]: sketchiness well and in retrospect i made a uh a complacency error um i drank some water at the
[01:34:50] [SPEAKER_05]: base of the tower that was like running on the surface of the glacier or something the next day
[01:34:57] [SPEAKER_05]: which was you know summit day um the upper half of the lotus flower tower i woke up and i was like
[01:35:04] [SPEAKER_05]: i don't feel good uh and then proceeded to continue up the route just throwing up all over myself
[01:35:13] [SPEAKER_05]: for 10 pitches uh it was it was rough yeah it was really rough and eventually you know we wanted to
[01:35:21] [SPEAKER_05]: do it unassisted but i just i reached a point where i've i've lost too much i've just lost too
[01:35:28] [SPEAKER_05]: much i was i was weak and shaky and throwing up and so we we latched on to the film crew's
[01:35:36] [SPEAKER_05]: fixed line for a couple of pitches three pitches and then uh we climbed the last pitch um actually
[01:35:44] [SPEAKER_05]: mo climbed the last pitch i think following the fixed line but not um not jugging it and then i
[01:35:52] [SPEAKER_05]: i top rope the last pitch then we got the hell out of there yeah i mean these things happen
[01:35:58] [SPEAKER_10]: to everybody these types types of things but you know when you put yourself in front of this
[01:36:02] [SPEAKER_10]: challenge this specific challenge i mean you you obviously have to think over these decisions but
[01:36:08] [SPEAKER_10]: it seems like a few different circumstances forced your hand i mean are you okay with that in the end
[01:36:14] [SPEAKER_10]: or i would like to go back and take it off is there a disappointment oh it was definitely
[01:36:18] [SPEAKER_05]: disappointing um yeah we still i mean we summited it it was just not unassisted or
[01:36:24] [SPEAKER_05]: and by unassisted i mean mo and i doing all of the work so yeah i would love i would love to go
[01:36:31] [SPEAKER_05]: back there and actually maybe climb some other stuff but that place is the back end of beyond
[01:36:36] [SPEAKER_05]: it's it's not an easy place to get to it's expensive to get to did you guys use a helicopter
[01:36:41] [SPEAKER_05]: we actually we used a plane and a helicopter going in because there was four of us there
[01:36:46] [SPEAKER_05]: was me and mo and then the film crew which was uh pat and taylor and the four of us went in in
[01:36:52] [SPEAKER_05]: helicopter but not all of our gear could go in the helicopter right so there was another crew
[01:36:58] [SPEAKER_05]: going in at the same time they flew into the lake with the plane dropped all the gear off and then
[01:37:03] [SPEAKER_05]: after the helicopter dropped us off went down to the lake picked up the other crew and the rest of
[01:37:09] [SPEAKER_10]: our gear and brought it on up yeah we did the exact same thing it's exactly yeah honestly like and then
[01:37:14] [SPEAKER_05]: had the helicopter sling our stuff up yeah yeah it you know it feels feels a little bit like cheating
[01:37:21] [SPEAKER_05]: so we just did that in the bugaboos we went and flew a helicopter into to east creek but let's be
[01:37:28] [SPEAKER_05]: fair i'm a fucking cripple and hiking hiking that shit in for you know that distance those loads
[01:37:36] [SPEAKER_05]: it it fucks up my stump something fierce and then i like i have to take a few days off to
[01:37:43] [SPEAKER_05]: let everything heal afterwards so the helicopter is uh i don't know it's a necessary evil i guess
[01:37:50] [SPEAKER_05]: um so we just did myself and uh three others mo um nat and suneda did a all adaptive ascent of the
[01:38:00] [SPEAKER_05]: becky chenard in the in the bugaboos and uh we're we're pretty happy with that we were pretty psyched
[01:38:06] [SPEAKER_05]: to have flown in there like you get dropped off and you're like with almost no effort you're in
[01:38:16] [SPEAKER_05]: middle of nowhere you're all by yourselves it's kind of an awesome feeling you know we've talked
[01:38:22] [SPEAKER_10]: about you and uh maxine what about your wife she she's lived through this you know it's not easy
[01:38:32] [SPEAKER_05]: in in her own involvement it's cliche to say but she's she's been my rock through all of this she
[01:38:42] [SPEAKER_05]: well saved my life literally multiple times through through all of this i'm fortunate that
[01:38:48] [SPEAKER_05]: she has that she has the nursing education nursing background that she's a nurse but also i'm
[01:38:55] [SPEAKER_05]: fortunate that she's an incredibly compassionate empathetic person she she actually like she was
[01:39:03] [SPEAKER_05]: kind of stressed through my recovery not recovery of amputation stress through the recovery of the
[01:39:10] [SPEAKER_05]: accident and was actually thinking of leaving me because i had become so depressed and grouchy and
[01:39:20] [SPEAKER_05]: you know just become an incredible miserable asshole and i was simultaneously plotting my
[01:39:29] [SPEAKER_05]: departure from this world and repairing my ankle like i was doing both things at the same time
[01:39:35] [SPEAKER_05]: and i confessed to her that i was um like i i feel like i just want to end it i i can't
[01:39:42] [SPEAKER_05]: live like this because the doctors were just giving me more and more opioids to deal with
[01:39:47] [SPEAKER_05]: the pain and i just didn't want to take them and couldn't live like that so when i told her that i
[01:39:53] [SPEAKER_05]: was feeling suicidal she made me you know sat there while i booked an appointment for my my
[01:40:00] [SPEAKER_05]: primary care physician went to the appointment with me to make sure that i told my primary care
[01:40:06] [SPEAKER_05]: that that's what i was thinking and uh stayed with me while i had made appointments for therapy and
[01:40:12] [SPEAKER_05]: got on medication and went through that whole process and uh yeah she she stuck it out she went
[01:40:20] [SPEAKER_05]: through she went through hell through all of this um i i like i couldn't have blamed her for
[01:40:29] [SPEAKER_05]: for leaving me at those times and yet she's stuck it all out anyway and now she's a travel nurse so
[01:40:37] [SPEAKER_05]: she's uh she was in arizona for last year and this year she and maxine are in rapid city south
[01:40:46] [SPEAKER_10]: dakota let's get towards the end here um okay you know maybe some reflection time it seems like
[01:40:51] [SPEAKER_10]: you know i don't know if this is connected but you know you're talking about how going back to
[01:40:55] [SPEAKER_10]: to cayman brock to the scene of the crime so to speak is is not really something that bothers you
[01:41:02] [SPEAKER_10]: you know but what about like i've done that someone who i've done the route twice since
[01:41:07] [SPEAKER_10]: okay cool um no what about like i can still say i never waited the rope
[01:41:15] [SPEAKER_10]: yeah okay i don't know um yeah deeper story there but uh yeah so what about like someone
[01:41:23] [SPEAKER_10]: you know being reflective so you've you've been you know like you said you had whatever ptsd
[01:41:30] [SPEAKER_10]: whatever trauma came out of it was was part of this hospital experience this pain experience
[01:41:35] [SPEAKER_10]: your your daughter maxine um you know obviously went through that as well and and you're part of
[01:41:43] [SPEAKER_10]: that as their parent and then also you know you were on the forefront of this research
[01:41:49] [SPEAKER_10]: maybe by accident but nevertheless part of this research that's that's going to help and is
[01:41:55] [SPEAKER_10]: actually you know gone on to help a lot of people the the the literal amputation style below the knee
[01:42:00] [SPEAKER_10]: there is named after you it's it's the ewing procedure or whatever um you know and it's
[01:42:06] [SPEAKER_10]: forever it's out there known for my ability to lose body parts right right so i mean you know
[01:42:13] [SPEAKER_10]: the experience now is is is how far out i mean how old are you now i'm i'm 60 now and so okay
[01:42:22] [SPEAKER_05]: so it's 10 years out almost it'll be 10 years this december uh since the accident you know
[01:42:27] [SPEAKER_05]: as for reflection um i sometimes talk to maxine about this because there's there's times when
[01:42:34] [SPEAKER_05]: you know we still uh they and i have to still kind of process this whole accident thing and our in
[01:42:42] [SPEAKER_05]: each each other's involvement and you know maxine was 13 so absolutely 100 percent not their fault
[01:42:51] [SPEAKER_05]: um this was entirely my oversight my complacency and so you know in talking about this with them
[01:43:00] [SPEAKER_05]: i once said and and i don't take it back even if this was your fault it's not 100 percent not
[01:43:09] [SPEAKER_05]: but even if it was look at what has come out of this like i am not unhappy about the way this has
[01:43:16] [SPEAKER_05]: all played out i've gotten to play a kind of a big part in this research we've seen this huge
[01:43:24] [SPEAKER_05]: advancement in robotic prosthetic technology i've gotten to get involved with other para climbers
[01:43:32] [SPEAKER_05]: like mo and craig and the adaptive climbers fest and i also do a lot of i can't say it's
[01:43:41] [SPEAKER_05]: counseling because i'm not a licensed counselor or anything but i do a lot of
[01:43:45] [SPEAKER_05]: talking with people contemplating amputation or recent amputees and kind of helping them through
[01:43:53] [SPEAKER_05]: this this process kind of taking what craig did for me and you know passing passing that on and
[01:43:59] [SPEAKER_05]: it's it's kind of led me down some pretty amazing opportunities um to to give back uh give back to
[01:44:10] [SPEAKER_05]: the climbing community that kind of you know the climbing community it's well this is this is this
[01:44:15] [SPEAKER_05]: is a slight political statement but you know this country is so fucked up with our health care that
[01:44:19] [SPEAKER_05]: every time somebody gets hurt there's a go fund me but you know the climbing community set up a
[01:44:25] [SPEAKER_05]: go fund me for me and like uh really helped me out when i was i was out of work for several months
[01:44:32] [SPEAKER_05]: and had a lot of medical bills and uh so so all my contributions to this new research is kind of my
[01:44:41] [SPEAKER_05]: giving back and the coaching or counseling of potential amputees new amputees is giving back
[01:44:50] [SPEAKER_05]: it's not something i ever saw myself doing but i'm i'm happy and proud to be doing it uh sometimes
[01:44:58] [SPEAKER_05]: it's really tough um because i'm i'm the leader of the ewing amputees of sorts you know the de facto
[01:45:05] [SPEAKER_05]: leader and when i meet new amputees or somebody contemplating amputee and we start sharing our
[01:45:15] [SPEAKER_05]: trauma those are emotional moments like it's it's hard not to break down and cry when you
[01:45:24] [SPEAKER_05]: you know exactly what they're feeling what they're going through the struggle
[01:45:30] [SPEAKER_05]: it's not an easy thing but i'm i'm happy to do it like it's
[01:45:37] [SPEAKER_05]: it's uh well in some ways it's kind of it's an honor to be able to help people in that way
[01:46:06] [SPEAKER_10]: all right folks thanks for listening and thanks to jim for telling that story
[01:46:12] [SPEAKER_10]: quite an intense arc of his life if you want to follow jim he's over at instagram at jim ewing
[01:46:19] [SPEAKER_10]: he's very involved in the adaptive climbing community the para climbing community so if
[01:46:24] [SPEAKER_10]: you're interested in that kind of stuff go check him out he's got a really cute dog too that you
[01:46:30] [SPEAKER_10]: there's some pictures of the dog also if you're interested in more about hugh hurr you can go
[01:46:36] [SPEAKER_10]: back to my interview number 148 never broken is the name of that one a little bit awkward i'll
[01:46:44] [SPEAKER_10]: admit it's kind of an intense guy i think i got outbrained by him but anyhow it's pretty
[01:46:51] [SPEAKER_10]: good interview it's not terrible it's not terrible let me just just say that but there's lots out
[01:46:55] [SPEAKER_10]: there about hugh fascinating guy worth a listen 148 a norma cast also i'll link to that nova
[01:47:03] [SPEAKER_10]: documentary augmented about jim and hugh on the website a normalcast.com do you ever go to the
[01:47:09] [SPEAKER_10]: website yeah probably not anyway we're leaving september into rocktober it's magnificent here
[01:47:16] [SPEAKER_10]: in colorado i hope it's great where you are too and don't forget to check your knots and where
[01:47:23] [SPEAKER_10]: the rope is in relationship to the greegree
[01:47:44] [SPEAKER_06]: i was lucky to have hugh hurr as my guide although only 18 he's considered one of the top rock
[01:47:51] [SPEAKER_06]: climbers on the east coast and certainly one of the best in the world what went through your mind
[01:47:56] [SPEAKER_06]: when the doctor told you you were going to lose your legs type thing jeff said to his doctor let's
[01:48:03] [SPEAKER_11]: get rid of him get rid of my foot that's what comes down to let's get on with life
[01:48:10] [SPEAKER_06]: you called yourself the mechanical boy down there
[01:48:13] [SPEAKER_12]: why just the different feet you can change yourself make yourself taller shorter
[01:48:19] [SPEAKER_12]: mechanical you can be mechanical adjustable you've gotten very creative with them too i was
[01:48:24] [SPEAKER_12]: noticing these i think it's the wave of the future man working to adapt better i think you're terrific
[01:48:56] [SPEAKER_03]: so
[01:49:04] [SPEAKER_03]: it ain't fast the teachers told me that's where it's at