“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”— Aristotle

“I’m going to beat it. I know I am.” I’m not sure if those were Kate’s exact words, but the power and conviction are accurate. In her resolve to achieve the impossible, I heard myself. I heard myself after my accident, almost 20 years earlier. Doctors couldn’t cure my paralysis. A cure, however miraculous, was up to me. When I planned a trip to New York for a weekend of R&R following our June scouting trip, my tentmate John Lawrence said that I definitely had to meet his new friend Kate. “She will blow your mind.” So we met for brunch my final day in town. In the last year Kate had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic degenerative disease that attacks the nervous systems leaving lesions that break the sheath housing the nerve. Much like my spinal cord injury, these lesions create damage that prevents messages from traveling along the central nervous system. Unlike my paralysis, the lesions will continue to accumulate, damaging more and more of the spinal cord and stopping more and more of the messages.

Doctors can’t stop the lesions, so Kate took it upon herself to stop them with a commitment to her traditional MS medicine (a daily injection called Copoxone), positive thought, a restrictive diet and the advice of a functional medicine doctor, who looked not just at the symptoms, but also at their origins and the imbalances that created them. He helped her treat her imbalances and the lesion, in her neck at cervical vertebrae 4-5, reversed itself, which, in the clinical world, doesn’t really happen. Lesions don’t reverse. Nerves do not regenerate, but the lesion didn’t show up on the films anymore. Kate seemingly achieved a miracle, but the miracle was more about seizing control of her health, finding balance and harmony.

As the July rains fell in sheets on Tribeca’s Greenwich Street raising the smell of summer so nostalgic to my East Coast youth, I felt drawn to Kate’s energy, yet like a magnet of the same charge, I ultimately felt pushed away. Ironically, I pushed away. I want the euphoria of fighting the fight that only has a chance if I tap into that part of me that’s uniquely me, the raw essence, the naked part that’s so easy to cover up. In Kate, I see an unwillingness to hide, and it’s so damn powerful that everyone should experience it, because that’s what it means to be alive – to fight, to struggle, to accept heaps of abuse, to expect it, and keep going when there’s every reason to stop – to seek balance when all scales tip in the opposite direction.

I pushed away because I felt jilted by the very approach that made Kate so powerful. When I left the hospital after my accident, I vowed that I’d never be intimidated again. I’d recovered from a broken back and I had cheated death, probably more figurative than literal, but significant just the same. Calm and resolute, I felt destined. I would render disability irrelevant the way Michael Jordan had affected race, but I fell short.

I quit my athletic career for many reasons, chief among them was that I couldn’t achieve transcendence. Don’t get me wrong. I was really good, but I out-worked, out-thought, and out-disicplined my opponents more than I out-performed them. The very thing that made me good strangled my inspiration. In an arena that requires bigger, better and often crazier, I’d reached my limit both physically and mentally, and I felt like I left without reaching that destiny in which I’d believed so much, and I felt cheated, jilted because I hadn’t achieved the transcendence that was so central to my career.

When I retired, I lost the hope and the outlet to achieve that dream, which I so viscerally felt as destiny. I slipped into a depression. Without sports I wondered who I was. I doubted I would ever achieve on the same level. I grew apathetic and lashed out at the balance that I now saw anchoring Kate’s power. Sulking as result of my lost sense of destiny, I slipped into greater imbalance. My digestive system, stripped by years of antibiotics for urinary tract infections, refused to work properly. Each time I ate or drank I felt and looked like I had swallowed a bowling ball. Yet, even after seeing the power in Kate – the vibrancy, the life – it still took me five months to address my digestive problem, a luxury because it was simply uncomfortable and not life-threatening in any way other than it stripped me of happiness and comfort.

The day before Christmas, my integrative medicine doctor gave me a program of herbs designed to kill the bad bacteria and replace the good. He also gave me a drug to boost my adrenals. I needed to cut out all gluten grains – something I’d known on an intuitive level, but hadn’t always followed. On my own, I stopped drinking on December 27^th. I don’t consider drinking a huge health problem, but there’s a part of me that thinks that there might be some relationship between drinking and my UTIs. I have no scientific evidence to back up my hypothesis, but I want to become healthy. As my doctor said, “If your sitting on 10 tacks and you remove five it pretty much feels the same.” I don’t know if drinking is a tack, but it seems best to remove that possibility.

In short, I’ve been literally constipated for the past few years. I have felt guilty training because it was part of my former life. I’d gone from under 140 pounds when competed in Athens in 2004 to more than 160 when I landed in Tanzania for the scouting trip in June. We’ve spent so much time, effort and money reducing the weight of the rig by 30 pounds, and now it’s my turn to accept some responsibility. I might not ever achieve the truly transcendent physical feat, but even when I competed I wanted to tell the story – to point people in the right direction and help them see what I saw. This year, I have the opportunity to do that.

So in the tradition of New Year’s Resolutions I set mine: to be honest enough and courageous enough to be healthy and happy.

Thanks Kate, for facing your demons. You remind me of the person that I want to be. We learn from each other and often the greatest lessons are the ones that we have to learn over and over. Balance is the sustenance of happy, healthy life. Happy New Year.

If you would like more information on Kate’s story please visit her YouTube trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35v7UFpBPRs

She tells her story much better than I can.

My mental development is that of a five-year-old. It’s a harsh realization, but sometimes when I see children squabble I think that I’m not all that much different, I just hide it a little better.

We all know the scenario: One child steals a toy from another, a fight ensues, a parent removes the obviously offending toy, and both kids go away mad. I might be able to hide my disappointment, and I can suppress the urge to steal someone else’s toy, but how often do I feel like there’s an obvious loser in these situations and why do I keep thinking about the airline ticket desk, where it definitely doesn’t serve to yell the loudest as much as it might feel really good since someone should be responsible?

My friend Donna told me that kids need words. They need a script. They don’t just know these things. “Can I play with that toy?” “Not now, I’m playing with it, but you can have it in 10 minutes.”

You mean everyone stays happy? Talk about revolutionary.

Yes, it sounds simple, but simple is the best kind of revolution. It’s the kind of revolution that succeeds. Those complicated ones never take. But using your words, creating a script – could they work for me? I’m climbing to the top of the tallest mountain in Africa in the hopes that people will see me, that they’ll get the script, but maybe I need to do more.

But why do people need a script? The need became obvious after I had two disappointing, yet far too common, interactions at a recent Christmas party.

First, a woman told me that I should meet her nephew, who is in a wheelchair, too. My immediate thought was that we didn’t choose this situation, and most likely don’t share that much in common. We’re not like my childhood best friend’s father, who drove a BMW and waved at all the other BMW drivers. They’d made a choice we hadn’t. In fact, I probably share more with most of my able-bodied friends than I do with the vast majority of disabled people because we’re all something else first. We’re white, black, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, middleclass, educated, uneducated, active, inactive, artistic, inartistic, etc. I shared a lot in common with my former disabled teammates and competitors, but with most disabled people, I only share the fact that we each had an unfortunate moment in time, a greater collection of scars than most and general rejection from health insurance companies.

So this woman thought that her nephew and I would have something in common. That really isn’t a huge stretch. This guy sounded active, but then she compared his wife to Ruth from the Bible’s Old Testament, and talked about the patience of Ruth and how her nephew’s wife had to endure such hardships. The woman dumbfounded me and insulted my friend, who had invited me to the party and stood by during the conversation, but many share the woman’s assumptions.

The next guy approached me as I hoped to leave for the night. My departure seemed to ratchet toward the exit, moving two rooms forward and one back. He found me in the piano room where the kids were playing remarkably well. Without preamble he said, “What happened to you?” I explained that I’d had a freak skiing accident almost 20 years ago. I hoped the “almost 20 years ago part” would set him at ease because he shifted, stammered and couldn’t look me in the eye. It didn’t. He said, “That was really hard for me.” I didn’t know how to respond. Did I need to tell him that it was okay? Did I need to tell him that I was okay?

The script surrounds us, but it might not be the accurate script. And people might continue reading from that same bad script unless provided a new one.

Driving down the highway during a quick trip to Montana last week, I saw a billboard with a policeman standing with his hand on the push handle of a wheelchair and the statement: “Think seatbelts are confining? Try a wheelchair. Buckle up.” Obviously buckling up is a good idea. I support seat belts, but the billboard message perpetuates the existing script that made it so difficult for the guy at the party to approach me: Life in a wheelchair is so confining it’s worse than death, which after all is the biggest worry when you don’t wear your seatbelt.

My challenge lies in replacing the script. The billboard states that the wheelchair is the end. Both people at the party were reading from that same old script. Adopting the new script proves difficult because that obvious question, the one you’re not supposed to ask, rattles around in your head. It’s right there begging for attention and the more you try to ignore it the more you fear it will just slip out.

I know because I’ve been there.

A few years ago, I shared the gym on a quiet Sunday with a woman who walked on two prosthetic legs. I wondered if she lost her legs to frostbite because at the time I was reading a book about Hugh Herr, who lost his legs to frostbite after being trapped on the side of a mountain. But as much as I knew I couldn’t ask that question, it was all I could contemplate. So, I’m stuck in my own head when she walks by, deliberately heel-toe, on her black and grey weave, carbon fiber legs. She looks down at me lying on the bench and says, “That’s a lot of weight.” Ahh, a compliment, that’s a good way to start a conversation, but those thoughts rattled in my head. I could only muster, “Umm, thank you.” Brilliant. I am a heck of a conversationalist.

So what’s the end result? Like many things, adopting a new script is easier for kids, because they don’t need to forget the old one. We should follow their model. They ask whatever questions, and they want answers. Questions are good. They represent interest – as long as we forget the old script.

But what does the new script say? Think like a child. What do you like to do? Who are your friends? Want to play? Maybe having the mental development of a five-year-old isn’t such a bad thing after all.

From the beginning, I’ve said that I want to keep up. Speed. Speed. Speed. During our June scouting trip it took me forever to reach camp. Each day, I slowed more and more on the rocky slopes of Kilimanjaro. If I can’t reach camp, then I can’t make the summit. With our brand new rig, Bomba, which as one of our Tanzanian drivers told me, means cooler than cool, speed is starting to come.

In November, we returned to Tanzania to follow two stories for the film, but Dave Penney, my Expedition Manager, and I managed one day on the mountain. We climbed two thousand vertical feet on the porters’ road in 2:42. Later in the week, there were times that Dave had to run to keep up with me as we climbed from the hotel to the shoulder of My Meru, but we didn’t have direct comparisons and without direct comparisons, we couldn’t know how much faster we were. Two days ago in Moab, we got our direct comparison. In the spring, I rode Schaefer Trail on the White Rim Trail covering the 1500 feet of vertical in three hours. Two days ago that same 1500 feet took me 1:26—less than half the time, and more importantly about a thousand feet of vertical an hour.

The trail on Kili will be far more technical than Schaefer Trail. One thousand feet of vertical an hour will not be realistic for most sections, but it started us thinking. From hut to hut it’s approximately 3000 feet of vertical a day. With a thousand vertical an hour under the most optimal conditions, I could complete most days in three hours. That’s far from realistic. There will be many spots where I will grind to a complete halt, but other sections will allow me to cruise. I’m starting to think that it might be realistic to move from hut to hut, three thousand feet of vertical a day in six or so hours a day, which would allow me hours of daylight per day. As everyone says, “Every day on the mountain is summer and every night winter.” It would be very nice to enjoy some of the summer.

As we drove back from Schaefer trail Dave couldn’t help but think about the new speed. Maybe we could make it from Kibo hut, at 15,500 feet, into the crater at about 18,500 feet in one day. Originally he’d planned to cut that stretch in two relatively equal sections. In order to even contemplate that stretch we need to work on the winch that will help us over the loose and step sections of the upper mountain. If we can make similar time on the winch, it could be a possibility. That’s the cool part, the possibilities that this new rig brings.

A week ago, I climbed a good section of Guardsman’s Pass in three to four inches of snow. I never would have been able to do any of that in the other rigs. Funny how the my mind works, the whole time I climbed up the mountain I thought this would be great on a beach. Dressed in ski pants, Ugs, three layers of fleece, ply-pro and wool, and a hat, and I’m thinking this could get me to the ocean. The last time I went to Hawaii, my girlfriend gave me a piggyback to the water. Bomba would let me do it myself. Obviously, each scenario offers unique benefits, but the independence would be nice.

Exceeding expectations, that’s a part of our mission. This rig has exceeded my expectations. It’s brought me to think about how many other things we might be able to do. I could ride this on the beach. I could ride it uphill in the snow. I could ride it up hill faster. I could ride with my friends. My world opens—my opportunities. When I climbed to the top of the Schaefer trail, Paul Quinlan, a friend who had ridden the White Rim’s 78 plus miles numerous times, said, “You could totally ride with a group of people.” To enjoy recreation with my friends might be my true mission as I saw during my skiing career.

My greatest day in skiing wasn’t a day that I won a medal. Instead, it was a day in Vail 1993. I had graduated the year before, but now my former teammates were in Colorado.  Under blue sky and warm spring conditions I became a peer for the first time since my accident. I fit in. No one worried about me keeping up. We just skied. The same as skiing, trail riding uphill has been difficult from the beginning and climbing Kili will remain an incomprehensibly difficult challenge, but there’s a slight shift.

When I first started to ride the three-wheeler, I thought that my heart would jump out of my chest in the first hundred meters. The first climb by my house (on a route that I’ve now done in 34 minutes) took well over an hour. Numerous times I wondered if I could make it to the top, which barely seemed like the top of anything. When I went to Kilimanjaro in June, I couldn’t believe the difficulty. I moved so slowly. We made the first camp the first day, though we finished in the dark after eight hours of climbing. Then it took me three days to get to the second camp and that was only after I had asked for help. I wouldn’t have made it there under my own power. Now, I know it will be far from easy and I haven’t even seen the top yet. It will be hard—incomprehensibly hard, but with this new rig and with the training, I can at least dream.

Building the rig

This rig is the compilation of many ideas that started with Mike Augspurger and One-Off Titanium. In the mid-nineties he developed a vehicle that could climb most anything, traverse rough terrain, and go off-road. I was his first disabled test rider. The idea of getting to the woods intrigued me, especially since life in a wheelchair usually requires paving the rough spots—sidewalks, ramps, and curb cuts.

Dave Penney and I spent a lot of the summer climbing. Hours of moving slowly left ample time to talk about ways to improve the vehicle. Our first thought was to shorten the wheelbase, moving the back wheels almost under my hips to improve traction. Then we’d need to reduce the weight and narrow the wheels. Those were our priorities, but we couldn’t find someone to make the changes (Mike wanted to focus on other projects) until Dave found Rod Miner and Lightfoot Cycles in Darby, Montana. In a short four to five days Rod and Dave created Bomba, a vehicle that makes me dream and believe that we can access the mountains, the beaches and who knows what else.

To see the rig in action go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbh496zgCF4 

We all know that Roger Bannister first broke the four-minute, but most of us don’t know the others who tried. Australian John Landy and American Wes Santee like Bannister searched for the “perfect race” when training, weather, track surface, and competition combined for “the perfect mile.” Each, by virtue of training and talent stood on the cusp, but who would be first? Bannister possessed a crushing final kick, Landy’s fitness reigned superior, and Santee a combination of both. The three revolutionized training methods. Bannister fit purposeful training sessions into his days as resident in neurology. He also studied the body as it approached and bypassed exhaustion. Landy ran under the veil of darkness—torturing himself with long, fast intervals in a nearby park while his family slept. Santee competed for the University of Kansas, turning in World Class times in events ranging from the 800 through the 10,000

As I read Neal Bascomb’s The Perfect Mile, I couldn’t help but project myself in the role of protagonist—couldn’t help but imagine my quest for Kili somehow approaching the four-minute mile. I started to add intervals to my training in the hopes of adding speed. In the past when I’d thought of Kilimanjaro, I’d considered it a long grind, but speed would help me get to the desired locations more quickly and before darkness fell. With speed would come power to surmount obstacles. And there was a race. Darol Kubacz and Jimmy Goddard both planned to be the first paraplegics to summit unassisted. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be first—to in some small way approach a feat like Bannister’s—to be first. At the time the four-minute mile had seemed as elusive as reaching the highest point on Earth. Bannister’s father had said as much to him—the four-minute mile and the peak of Everest are all that remain. Bannister and Hillary knocked those off in the span of a year. Like the four-minute mile, Kilimanjaro in a handcycle has proven elusive.  There have been at least five attempts, with none really coming close.

Darol took his second run at the mountain in August. Reading the blog on his website: www.uhuruascent.com, I marveled at his pace and long days. In five days, three climbing and two off days, he made it to Kibo hut at about 15,500 feet. He logged two eleven hour days and one fifteen hour day. During my June trip, I never climbed longer than eight hours, and even those were miserable thanks to temperatures that plummeted with the setting sun, about six pm. Darol climbed for another seven hours after sunset, and he climbed through miserable rain and mud conditions. As a feat of strength and will, his climb escaped comparison, but the mountain caught up. Pulmonary edema forced Darol to descend without a shot at the summit. Like those in the race for the perfect mile, I need to learn from Darol’s attempt. He obviously has tremendous fitness, but altitude thwarted his attempt. My fitness is coming. I’ve had numerous good four and five hour climbs—one day climbing over 2,100 feet in 5 hours. I also lowered my Nowhere Elks climb record by four minutes, finishing in 34:25. The Nowhere Elks day Dave Penney asked me, “Is this your regular pace?” I said, “No. I’m flying.” Flying or not, we’ll aim for shorter days than Darol—about 1500 feet vertical a day. Our pace will mean more time on the mountain, but hopefully a better shot at the elusive top. Summit day or the descent would be the only days that we might push to darkness, and only then if we can get up and return low relatively quickly.

The four-minute mile captivated the world. Bannister’s name and achievement lit marquees throughout the world. For me, the summit is the top of the mountain and it isn’t. I achieved many proverbial summits in my life: gold medals, World Championships, but none achieved what I consider the ultimate summit: “To get noticed.” I spent last month in Beijing for the Paralympic Summer Games, the second largest event in the world this year with approximately 4,000 athletes, yet there was minimal to no television coverage in the US; www.paralympicsport.tv and Universal covered the Games on the web, yet it’s a shame that American viewers couldn’t stumble over the Paralympics while clicking their remote. It’s too bad that only existing fans watched the Games, and it’s too bad that many missed some of the greatest sporting achievements of the year.

For me, the climb is about reaching the top, but it’s about so much more. It’s about the genesis of ability—that spark that starts a journey from something inconceivable to something realized. At times, my spark has been completely internal. After my accident I knew that I had “to do it myself.” No one else could recapture my life. I needed to know that it was all me, but as I moved to disabled sports I learned so much from the people around me. I learned from Jim Martinson, twenty plus years my senior, about the youthful joy of hard work and physical exhaustion. I watched Sarah Will, all 80-90 pounds of her, strive to be the fastest monoskier in the world. At one point she beat almost all the men in the world. I watched those with doubts—the ones just starting out—and I watched the light bulb go on. I learned from the training of wheelchair racers like Scot Hollonbeck, Saul Mendoza, and Heinz Frei—and marveled at athletes like Jeff Adams ability to fight out of seemingly impossible situations on the track to reach the finish line first. Those around me pushed me—helped to create that spark—that genesis of ability.

 Is it a race? Yes. It’s a race to get noticed–to get the Paralympics on TV–to tell the story. 

The top. The summit. The cone. All my preparation focused on the top. The rest of the mountain did not seem to exist. It was all the steep, soft almost 4000 final feet. I envisioned my wheels sinking to a halt in the volcanic ash, my lungs screaming for oxygen. In reality, my wheels didn’t sink. Surprisingly enough, the part of the top that I completed—from 15,500 to 16,500 challenged me less than the more technical lower part of the mountain that I had dismissed so easily. At 16,500 feet my heart rate reached 141. It felt comfortable, yet altitude will still presented one of the biggest challenges. Oxygen at the top is only 48% of that at sea level.

The effects started at 12,500 feet when I stopped breathing—just for a moment, but long enough to wake me up. I fell back asleep and it happened again. Thoughts of pulmonary edema or cerebral edema snapped my eyes wide open. I reached out and shook my tent mate, John Lawrence, our doctor.

“I stopped breathing twice. Is that a problem?”

John struggled to wake. “Do you want drugs?” Diamox—the diuretic that balanced O2 and CO2 in the body—was on all our minds. Coming out of the haze of sleep, John offered the suggestion on the top of his mind.

“No. I just want to know that I’m okay.”

John gained lucidity, “You’re fine.”

That was enough for me. I fell back asleep, but I had planted a seed of altitude doubt for him. While I slept, he wondered about the altitude effects, and like a good doctor tested himself. Over and over he counted to ten in French. Each time he reached the end and only had nine numbers. And each time he knew that he had missed “sept” or seven. When he relayed his counting exploits to me the next morning I told him that if he knew he missed seven that meant that he was fine, but in the dark, in the thin air John worried, and I slept, but I’d have my own problems in the night.

John might well have been trying to remember seven as I slid into the side of the tent again. Not only did the slope of the mountain push me into the nylon wall, it also twisted the sleeping bag around me. Cold nipped at any exposed flesh. The locals say that on the mountain it’s summer every day and winter every night. I felt the winter. The zipper had rotated from my right side all the way to the left.

I say my sleeping bag, but it wasn’t my sleeping bag. It was the sleeping bag of my former girlfriend. I moved my left arm out of the straight jacket-like, but warm cocoon of down and grabbed the nylon on my hip and pulled and slid myself back to straight, but then the bag popped. Feathers flew in the air. I immediately wished I hadn’t tried to straighten out—wondered how I’d explain popping her sleeping bag, then I fell back asleep.

In the morning John woke to the sound of me blowing quickly through pursed lips. He worried about altitude, especially since it was a world where seven didn’t exist or at least sept didn’t. Darkness—light and dark are almost exactly twelve hours apiece that close to the equator— kept John from seeing me burble goose feathers. As light rose, I rolled to my side and said, “John, I had an incident in the night.”

A scared look crossed his face. In the proceeding days he’d complained that he hadn’t been able to do any doctoring short of cutting the sleeves off one of my shirts. Now, he might do some doctoring and he looked worried. I let him flutter in the breeze like a floating goose feather, waiting a few seconds before I said, “I popped my sleeping bag.”

He raised up on one elbow. Looking at the space between me and the wall that I’d visited so many times during the night, it looked like snow. He started to laugh—part must have been relief in that he didn’t have to do some disgusting doctoring—and part must have been the pure spectacle.

Going higher on the mountain—going to that higher more difficult part—I’d just limited my ability to stay warm. My below zero sleeping bag suddenly went to an above zero, and when the porters packed the tent the feathers flew out the back. It was another lesson that the biggest challenges on the mountain are not always the ones for which you prepare. 

“Jambo…jambo” It is chant and chorus–Hakuna Matata–the song that The Lion King made famous. The porters, guides cooks, etc. surround me. I recognize Freddy, Solomon, Seki and a few others, but most–especially the ones leading the song, I haven’t seen before. There are 72 paid staff and most I haven’t even seen. They are the ones who carry the tents, the food, our gear, and they are the ones who just carried me.

We started at the bottom of the Rongai Route at about noon on the first day. It had been a four hour drive to the Kenya and dry side of the mountain to avoid the slippery mud of the Morangu Route. That first dayI felt strong and sure that I’d suprise myself. My training wasn’t what I’d hoped, but I had this strange feeling that I’d come into my own on the mountain. Eight hours later, under the veil of darkness, I’d rolled into the first camp–a feat I didn’t think possible before I’d started.

 That first day I’d climbed a steep rocky slope so much more difficult than anything I’d ever approached. We’d used the winch. I pulled myself up the fixed rope and the porters had laid boards over some of the more difficult sections. At the top one wheel perched at least three feet off the ground as I crawled over the last rock. I’d never been in that kind of position. I didn’t know if the wheel would come down or if I’d tip over. The wheel came down. For the first time everyone clapped. I felt a bit self-conscious because this was just the first day. This was supposed to be the easy part. Still, I made it to camp and that allowed me to dream, that just maybe I could achieve the summit.

 The second day was another eight hour affair and a slight setback. As darkness approached we were forced to set camp about 1000 vertical feet from the proposed camp. It was supposed to be 1000 vertical meters in a little over three miles. I’d never done 1000 vetical meters (3300 vertical feet or so), but after the first day it seemed manageable, especially in three miles. I didn’t realize just how steep and unrelenting it would be. Each turn presented another almost impossible, steep, loose rocked climb. Water bars of loose rock, spaced about a time and a half of my wheel diameter proved to be the most challenging part. I had to pick a line each time knowing that any slight miscalculation would stop me dead.

 The first fifteen minutes of the day’s climb are always the worst. I feel like I won’t make it thorough those first few minutes, but once I do I start to find my rhythm. That second day I never found my rhythm. It was a relief when Dean, the head guide, said that we couldn’t make the second camp and needed to stop. The sun went down at 6:30 pm. With the memory of the previous night’s sapping cold, I couldn’t wait to get into my sleeping bag.

We’d proposed splitting the days in half all along. With just a thousand feet of vertical left, I was sure that the next day would be easy. I’d finish in the light. It would be a recharge day. I took that belief with me as I started the third morning. Almost immediately I was forced to the winch. The trail was too steep. I couldn’t pedal without slipping. With the winch I moved forward, but it was slow moving, and we were still on the approach. This was supposed to be the easy part. The top was supposed to be difficult, and I couldn’t even see it yet.

Plugging away all day long I felt like I’d made some ground, but all those times that someone said that lunch rock was five minutes or ten minutes away slipped into an hour or more. Finally Dean presented me with a choice. I could continue, but we’d risk not seeing the whole mountain. We’d come to scout–to learn as much as we could, but I didn’t know what the decision would bring. I decided to ask for help.

My team and the porters pulled and eventually carried me through a part of the trail that had been wiped out be the rains. There’s no way that I could have made it through that part on my own. It was far too narrow. I seem to arrive at camp in a moment and that’s when the singing starts.

Jambo…Jambo. I don’t recognize many of the words. It feels much more free form, though I hear Kilimanjaro, bicycleta (or something like that), American. For the first time our porters and guides share in my climb. I sit in the middle of the circle wondering how obvous defeat could turn so quickly into victory.

 I had started with the aim of climbing unassisted. I figured that the mountain would teach me something I needed to know. Unassisted could mean isolation. My indepence could keep me separate. By asking for help I brought the team together.

With the help of the team and porters I made it to 5000 meters or 16,500 feet. We saw enough to prepare for next year. I saw enough to know that another try will be the most difficult thing I’ve tried. Each time I thought that the trip would become easier it became harder. Rolling to the top was more like rock climbing than hiking. I solved problems the whole way. Physical fatigue was a part but the mental fatigue was worse. Even going back down was a struggle. The path was rougher than I could imagine. I rolled over boulders at least three feet tall. I had thought that down would be easy, yet I could barely keep pace with the walkers.

 If I wanted a challenge and I did, I’ve found it. The next few months will be a huge challenge, and then there will be many days on the mountain. I can’t imagine the lessons I will learn then.

I’m not going to make it the top. That’s a harsh realization even though this is a scouting mission. I’m supposed to just see the mountain to just prepare for the ultimate trip in March, but I be lying if I said that I didn’t harbor this belief that I might just make it now. We haven’t even reached the trailhead and I know that I won’t reach the top.

I know that I won’t because my guide Dave Penney speed hiked to the top his first couple of days in town. He knows my ability and the ability of the rig as well as I do, and his comment was, “No way.” That sounds pretty definite. Then the airline failed to deliver my wheels, kind of an important part of my journey. We’ve been forced to push our start off another day—yet another reminder of how the best laid plans can fall apart at any point on the mountain.

So where does that leave me? It leaves me realizing that reaching the top is not necessarily the ultimate goal—or not necessarily the only goal. Once I read a book on the Dalai Lama in which the author asked his highness what enlightenment was like. The Dalai Lama replied that he hadn’t reached enlightenment, which he saw as a mountain. He was on that mountain and knew that he would reach the top, but had not yet. If he didn’t know enlightenment, then how could anyone else?

I’m not sure that enlightenment is my goal. From the beginning I’ve said that this project is for other people. I want to shine a light on the disabled community. I want to minimize the barriers between us with “Nametags,” but ultimately this is my journey whether I want to admit it or not. Climbing the mountain appeals to me because it will stretch me to and probably past my limits. If enlightenment exists on this trip that’s most likely where it will lie—when I’m just to tired to think—or too tired to defend those beliefs that I’ve held so dear—when I finally let go.

The mountain, the journey, and the experience deserve respect, even reverence. If I succeeded this time, it might denigrate the effect. We are just starting on this journey. While I’ve trained some, I’ve just begun my process, which has been far from scientific thus far. While we’ve greatly enhanced the rig’s ability, we’ve only just begun. If I were to summit now, it would seem too easy—and I think it will be anything but. It will be one of the hardest things of my life. If everything goes well, I will climb for about nine to ten hours a day for eight days. I’m not sure that I’m ready for that, and I doubt that I’m fast enough to reach each camp successfully.

If this is my journey, I want to be stripped naked. Giving my best when I don’t have a chance of success has always been my biggest obstacle. I’ve always saved something for the future—something so that I could still feel successful. Well, this trip is about my best or more than my best. It’s about being naked. It’s about being vulnerable. It’s about being honest. Those sound like easy things until I try them. My journey is for others, and my journey is for myself. I’ve created an environment in which I will succeed or fail spectacularly and publicly. Realizing that I most likely will not reach the top—that I will not preserve this “ever successful” image of myself—is the first step in that journey, but that’s not to say that I won’t still try to defy the odds.

We’re off to Tanzania tomorrow for a three-week scouting trip. We’ll spend eight days on the mountain and another ten visiting children’s hospitals, rehab centers and other places looking for wheelchair donation prospects. If possible, we’d like to create a bond with the Tanzanian people.

This whole project is coming together. When I first started to think about it, I envisioned an all-encompassing effort. Climbing the mountain would be a significant part, but making the impression that I wanted meant finding a way to make people notice me, and the disabled community. We’re on our way to doing that. Our educational program, “Nametags,” has had three successful events—many more to come when school resumes. You can see parts of one on the homepage video. The documentary movie is taking shape exactly the way that I hoped. We’re on the verge of partnering with a major force in the industry. They will bring on sponsors. Our voice could get much bigger. Often I ask myself if this is all really happening. I think it is and I hope it continues along its present path.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the next phase. My production crew of five, plus guide and doctor, who also has a film background, will fly more hours than I want to imagine. We’ll learn what we don’t know, or at least a good portion of it. The climb makes me excited and nervous all at the same time. With some of our recent testing I feel that I should be able make it up a fair amount of the mountain. I said I should. That’s the question. What can I really do? I average about a mile an hour. Following the typical hiker’s schedule, I would do about 15k or 9.3 miles a day. At my present speed, that would take me at least nine hours.

I climbed for nine hours last week up Crested Butte Mountain. On the way back to my guide Dave’s house, we finally descended to the bike path—flat and smooth. The pavement turned to gravel and I felt the resistance rise. I asked Dave how far his house was. He said just on the other side of that house. It wasn’t more than 100 yards, yet a little voice in my head, or arms—it was tough to tell where it came from because everything was numb—wondered if I’d make it. I did, partially because I didn’t want to look like a weenie in front of Dave, but I was flat exhausted. I can’t imagine what eight days like that might do to me.

I can’t imagine, but I’m about to find out. We start the climb on Thursday. I doubt that I will make it all the way to the first hut that first day. We’ll be forced to camp somewhere along the way. The vehicle, at least before the flight, is in great shape, although it’s heavy. It weighs 83 pounds, or 57% of my 145 pound body weight. The vehicle, my fitness, and our knowledge of the mountain, all leave a bit to be desired—I’m just not sure how much.

Please come back to this site. I’ll update you as best I can on my progress, though I’m really not sure how my USB connect  (not even sure if you call that—it’s the computer thingy that allows or should allow me to connect) will work over there, and then there’s the issue of hard drives not working above 10,000 feet. I don’t know either of these from personal experience, but I’ll try my best to tell the story. I might have to write it all in my journal and then transcribe it when I get back down for the July 4^th celebrations in Tanzania. Okay, they might not celebrate over there, but I expect some fireworks. 

I have talked about letting go in a ski racing context here. It is the essence of the performance—the way to access the subconscious—that part of us that is genius, but it’s so difficult. In the start of a ski race, I tried to convince myself that I’d made a mistake before breaking the timing wand, or I reduced the entire run to a race to the first gate—just race to the first gate and the rest will take care of itself—something to jar myself into letting go. Letting go stood between my best performance and me every race. Even when I achieved that transcendent state, I never owned it, never owned the process, and now I confront it again.

From the moment that I decided to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, people have come to me. None of them told me that I was crazy, as I’d suspected. Instead, they wanted to be involved—wanted to help. They were drawn by the climb, and even more by my dream. I told them that I wanted to climb to make the world notice me and people like me. My friends and people I didn’t even know, jumped on board, but still, I moved slowly—hesitant to let go. Throughout the process, I’ve often said that I just need to get out of the way. This project, which is becoming a business, has a life of its own. I’ve often heard artists talk about their work as if they don’t really own it. It’s as if they are just conduits. That’s the way I feel, but yet I try to maintain control—try to move slowly so that I can understand.

Letting go remains the issue. I have begun to surround myself with great people, breaking from my history of trying to do it all myself, but still there is a fear. There’s a fear that we won’t do enough and there’s a fear that we’ll do too much. Too much sounds like a strange fear. I acknowledge its irrationality, but it’s based in a sense of insecurity. I’m as scared of the questions, “Who do you think you are?” “Why should you do this?”

It’s a valid question. Who do I think I am? I can answer it in a variety of different ways. I’m a guy who’s been successful in both the winter and summer Paralympics—and not only successful, but successful in the two marquee sports, but I think it goes further than that. I do well in front of the camera. I have a great network that will help me make this a success. I get along well with people and draw them into my dreams. I keep pushing to achieve. And I think I have something profound to say and the ability and desire to say it. But all of that still sounds like holding on.

Letting go is a different answer. Who do I think I am and why should I do this project?

My answer to that: Because I’m the one who’s doing it. How’s that for letting go?