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I won! Again! For the 4th time :) I'll provide a detailed blog soon. But for now, enjoy a few clips from my recent appearance on the Chinese television show "Super Brain": My short profile video (awesome! haha):
My memory challenge (memorizing a maze):
Enjoy :)
Hello everyone! It's been a while. A lot has been happening, and I will post many updates in the week to come chronicling all of that. But first, for those that are interested, here is the full length video of a speech I gave last October at the amazing Chicago Ideas Week event (I spoke right next to George Lucas!!! GEEK MOMENT!). Enjoy :) (also the longest my beard has ever been, memorable no?). https://vimeo.com/111762435
As we all placed our hands down on our Speed Stacks Timers, the tension in the air was palpable. "Neurons on the ready..." the arbiter yelled out, his words piercing through the deathly still air. Then a slight pause and...."GO!"
We were off.
Each of us chugging a pint of Kingfisher beer as fast as possible. No sooner had I grasped my own beer and opened up my gullet, I heard the slam of a timer to my left. Tsogbadrakh, the fiercely competitive memory guru from Mongolia, had chugged his down in a mere, astonishing 5.85 seconds. I glanced over at him with eyes agape, still trying to down the rest of my own drink, with beer streaming down the sides of my face like an amateur. "How the hell..." I thought ("I just open throat. Pour beer in", he later explained) just as I heard the more experienced ale-drinker John (a fellow American and first time memory competitor) slam down on his timer in quick succession. "NO!!!" I thought. I spilled the rest of my drink all over my face in attempt to hurry my chug, and then slammed on my timer. 10.97 seconds. Only a few milliseconds after Boris (the German to my left), who ALWAYS manages to beat me in almost every thing I do at memory competitions just by a hair...go figure.
Pitiful. But not as pitiful as the the three brits still drinking down their drinks across from me. Ben, Jake, and Phil poorly representing their country. Shame on them.
This was what the 2014 World Memory Championships culminated in. After three full days of memorizing for hours upon hours, from morning "till evening, we all deserved a bit of a drink and some silly antics. We had discussed possibly inducting a few new members into the KL7 club, but were unclear about some of its specifics (if anyone but Ed Cooke can induct, if the 49 digit number has to be memorized pre or post pint, if a kiss on the cheek is allowed or if it has to be a full-on snog, or if this club is even a real thing or a joke). Anyways, we opted for a straight up speed drinking competition. And then we ate Indian food...in China. Trust me, it was easier that way. I had had an authentic Haikou-ian Chinese seafood the night before and I quickly learned that I never wanted to try that ever again. So Indian it was.
Oh right, there was an actual competition too...let me talk about that. I came in tied for 8th (apparently that means 9th? I don"t get how the stats work), which was totally unexpected for a few reasons. For one, poor practice. Ever since I won the US Memory Championship back in March, I decided to take my first training break in 5 years. That one month turned into seven before I decided to get serious again. And I never got too serious about it unfortunately. I definitely was not ready going into this competition. Second, jet lag/lack of sleep. I missed my first connecting flight, which resulted in me getting bumped a whole day later into Haikou, China. Which gave me a grand total of 5 hours of sleep before the 3-day competition started (and that was after flying for over 30 hours from across the globe...so....fuck me).
Day 1
I was half asleep when this day started and carrying a massive headache. My mind had no idea what was going on. But the first event was a chill one for me and one that I"m naturally pretty decent at: Names & Faces (15 minutes). International competitions usually use crazy ridiculous names, but these seemed to be a tiny bit easier than the norm. I wrote down 150 names, which after mistakes were graded, gave me a score of 125. Nice! A new US international record. Yanjaa (a relatively new female Swede competitor who rocked all of our socks off) nearly broke the world record with 185 names. She was a beast at that.
Next up, 30 minute binary memorization. I absolutely hate this event. And my mind was definitely not looking forward to reading pages and pages of 1s and 0s. Nope. I would have rather enjoyed flagellating myself with a wet bus ticket. But I forced it and managed to get through 1750 digits or so. Made a couple of mistakes and ended up with a score of 1615 digits. Not horrible, but slightly less than my PR from last year, 1655.
Lunch, and then one-hour number memorization. Last year I went for about 1800 and got a score of 1515. This year it felt pretty smooth, given my fuzzy head and extreme desire to be fast asleep at that point. But I made it through almost 2000 digits (1950 to be exact). After some mistakes, I ended up with 1555, another US international record. BOOM!
Dinner. Nyquil. Bed. Sleep.
Day 2
I woke up having slept a solid 8 hours and feeling awesomely refreshed. First event was Abstract Images (random blobs in order). I hadn"t practiced this at all but I have a pretty good system for it. I went for what I went for last year, almost 250 images, but ended up with 205. Meh.
Next up speed numbers (5 minutes of memorization). This is usually my best event and I practice this a ton, but I was seriously rusty. Anything over 300 digits would have been glorious. The first run felt great and I went through 306 digits. I had them all, except I wrote a 9 somewhere in there when it should have been a 2. And I knew it had to be a 2 too. Ah well, that happens some times. That gave me a score of 286. Decent, but not my best.
Historic dates. I matched my score exactly from last year: 49 dates in 5 minutes. Cool, since I hadn"t even tried this event since last year"s competition. Insert deep belly chuckle laugh HERE.
Speed numbers, second trial. I psyched myself out on this one and got stuck on some images (which finally showed my lack of practice)...I didn"t even bother with the recall because it was only 280 digits, less than my previous score. Boo. Brad helped me feel better about myself by explaining how miserable it is to be online slots vegetarian (just kidding, he loves it!).
Lunch, and then the final event for the day: one-hour card memorization. I laid out the 20 decks in front of me and was hoping to get through all of them. I had a good pace through the first 10 decks but then I started second guessing myself so I spent a lot of time going back over them. That ultimately led me to have enough time to just go through 6.5 more decks by the time was up. During recall I had 2 decks which felt weird and I had to guess a little bit. My score ended up being 13.09 decks, which makes no sense because .09 of a deck of cards is 4.68 cards. How does one memorize 4.68 cards? Not sure. Anyways, Dammit!! That was a deck and a half less than last year. Oh well. Still decent, I guess.
Gross Chinese dinner. Bed. No sleep.
Day 3
Couldn"t sleep at all. Frick.
We started with Random Words (15 minute memorization), which is one of my favorite/best events. I had actually practiced a good amount here. One day I"ll go for the world record. But not today. I went for a rocking 266 words. I soon checked in with my fellow competitors and found that Simon Reinhard had written down 257, and Boris only 252. Could I win this event?? I felt pretty good about it. But nope, I ended up with a small spelling mistake that gave me a score of 255. UGHHHHH. Apparently writing "cosmetic" instead of "cosmetics" costs 10 points. I could have had gold. Oh well, silver will have to do (and it was a new US international record anyways, so let"s have a party!).
Next up, Spoken Numbers (1 digit spoken per second). I"m usually pretty good at this, but again, limited practice. Brad Zupp, another US competitor (also the guy who took my record of 101 digits in this event last year with 112) was aiming to beat his record. FYI, I was aiming to beat his record too. We get 3 trials on this one. On the first I went for 120 and thought I had it, only I confused one image and that gave me a wonderful score of 14 digits. Brad messed up too, thinking the first few digits were a countdown when in fact they were the actual digits to memorize, LOL. 2nd trial felt good until I suddenly stopped paying attention at digit #60. Okay then. I ended up with 56 digits (apparently I truly stopped listening at digit #56). Brad felt confident and managed a sweet and sexy 150 digits. Well done. I was happy for him. Asshole. I was pissed. I needed that record back. So trial 3 I went for 152 digits (I had told Brad I was going safe with 100 or so, but at the last minute I said fuck it, I"m going for it - classic Nelson). I wrote all the digits down but one image was a 50-50 guess. I felt like it was one, but I wrote the other for some reason. Damn....that gave me a less than 56 digit score (since it"s graded up to your first mistake). So Brad walked away unscathed. CURSES!! But seriously, congrats....LOSER! I"m not bitter.
For the final event, I calculated, I"d need to memorize a deck of cards in at least 70 seconds to beat my total championship score from last year. That"s quite safe for me, so I felt pretty good about it. I actually managed 69, so that went perfectly. I was super cool under the pressure. A lot of other competitors flubbed their decks, so I was sitting pretty in the top 10. That also gave me the opportunity to go for a US record in the second trial. I was going to need sub-40 seconds for that, but I was nervous, and tired as hell, so only mustered a slowish 43 seconds. I made mistakes on the recall anyways, so it wasn"t counted. Meh. Oh well. Good thing I nailed the first attempt.
So I ended up tying for 8th place. Which for some reason, in the standings they have me down as 9th, behind the other guy, who has 8th, even though we have the same score. WAT? Anyways, overall, a great competition. A bit strange, being in a random unheardof town in China, but still cool. Maybe next year I will actually train.....and drink my beer in less than 5.85 seconds.
I (Nelson Dellis) was followed around for a couple years (2011-2013) by a certain film-maker (Ana Overgaard) and here is the final result. A short documentary called "Ace of Diamonds" (since when I memorize cards, I am the Ace of Diamonds). I don't know why she was so interested in capturing my story, but she did, and here it is. Over the past year it's been selected for numerous film festivals and even won Best Documentary in one of them. Sweet! If you have a few bucks to spare, download the film and learn a little about me (I helped create the XMT) and memory sports as well:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/25579
Hey there, it's been a while. I've had a quiet little stint over here as things have settled (post USA Memory Championship win back in March and the XMT in April). But in other ways it's been incredibly busy on the book writing front.
For those of you who don't know, I sold my book (finally after trying for a few years) to National Geographic publishing and have been working on the manuscript furiously for the past 6 months. The title is still not 100% decided upon yet, but you can bet your bottom dollar that it will have some of the following words in it: remember, memory, and memorize. Just saying!
It's going to be a pure how-to book, i.e. how Nelson Dellis memorizes anything and everything. If that interests you, you can buy it March 6th, 2015. We've got an amazing artist doing all the illustrations (one of the reasons I chose Nat Geo as my publisher is because they were all on board with my desire for lots of pictures - after all memory is all about visuals and pictures), so this book is not only going to read great, it's going to look friggin' fabulous.
As for what's coming up in the next few months. Not quite sure. Right now I've only got my book on my mind. But, there will be a Kilimanjaro climb early 2015 as mentioned before. Information for that will be coming soon. I want all of you readers out there to come join me and climb for memory!
April 26-27th saw the first ever annual XMT competition, held at the Dart NeuroScience building in outer San Diego, CA. The 2014 XMT went on without too many hiccups, and boy was it entertaining. More than I ever would have expected. I mean I guess, with the top 16 competitors in the world all under one roof, and a big prize fund, how could it not be?
DAY 1
A week ago today, the first ever XMT (and first head-2-head-style memory competition) began. My day started early, getting to the venue to set up all the laptops, make sure all signs and posters were up, and that everything was working smoothly (fingers crossed, praying to the wifi gods!).
As competitors and spectators started to trickle in, I started getting a little nervous, not sure how this first day of competition would pan out, how people would receive the event as a whole, and if the bloody software would work as expected! But I knew that once the first round of events had gone through at least once, we would be good to go.
Johannes Mallow started things off against Gunther Karsten (who doesn't really compete anymore but made a special appearance) in words. It went off without a hitch and Johannes won 35-27. Not bad. The next few iterations went totally fine, then came names, which also went fine (although scores were a bit low). Cards came next, and while nobody had really hit their stride yet, Ola Kare Risa managed the fastest time so far with a deck in 41.46 seconds. Then finally numbers came around and Jonas von Essen did a quick 20.95 seconds to memorize a 60 digit number perfectly. YES! We were through.
The rest of the day worked pretty much like a well oiled machine, cranking out match after match. We had 96 matches to go through, and while at times it did feel like a long stretch near the end of the day, people seemed to be liking the flow of the competition (in the future, the idea is to have 4 matches play at a time, which will improve the flow and speed of the first day considerably). Some of the most notable moments/matches:
A great first day for the books! Not too many problems. Only one match had to be reset and a few scores didn't get entered as they should have. But it was all fixed on the fly and I think for the most part no one noticed.
DAY 2
As for day 2, we entered it in full stride, feeling a lot more confident having had the first day under our belts. But now we were introducing something that had yet to be fully tested, Surprise Events. I had run through each of them a few times on my own and felt fairly confident about them, but they were tough to come up with. Initially I had a ton of ideas for this part of the event, but then I had to consider skill level, language, and other factors of the competitors to make it all as fair as possible. That totally nixed the majority of my ideas, so I had to plan a bit more carefully. Anyways, I settled on a few that I thought were fair and interesting enough.
The Quarter Finals were exciting. Especially the match between Ben and Jonas. Ben had just squeaked in the day before and was fighting for his life. You could tell. He was totally on his game. But going up against Jonas isn't easy and in the end Jonas came through. Mark also pulled an incredible upset over the favored and higher ranked Ola (4-1).
In the Semis, Simon coasted through easy over Mark, but Johannes beat Jonas in what was (in my opinion), the best match of the competition. Jonas was up 3-0, needing just one more win to move on to the finals. But somehow, Johannes battled back and brought it back to a 3-3 tie. The final event between them would be Names, an event that both are quite good at. The score during that match was low and hovering around 10-10. Johannes put in a name that got him up one 11-10. Jonas entered an incorrect name but then moved his cursor to the correct face for the previous name he had entered. Everyone held their breath thinking his was going to also type the same name there.....but he didn't. Time expired and Johannes was the winner. PHEW for him!
The 3rd Place match had Jonas as the favorite, and he ended up coasting to victory 4-0. I guess Mark couldn't gain any rhythm there. Simon, on the other hand, in the Finals, had all the rhythm in the world and was flirting with going completely unbeaten on day two. He was absolutely solid on every match. Johannes eked out a victory near the end there and some of us were wondering if he was about to pull a second come back. Simon laid that question to rest when he memorized 43 words over Johannes' 35 in the final match, claiming the Extreme Memory Tournament Champion title for himself.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Overall, the tournament went a lot better than I expected. Everyone had such great things to say (especially Simon, who walked away with a total of $32K! Well done!). The exciting thing now is seeing where this thing goes. Simon Orton (co-creator) and I are already scheming and what's definitely for sure is that there will be many other XMT competitions to come!
The word on whether this year's Everest season is over or not is yet to be decided. It will ultimately (and rightly so) be decided by the Sherpa community on the mountain in the next 4-5 days. In the meantime, there are a few ways you can help out the Sherpa families who lost someone dear to them in the recent avalanche:
1. The American Alpine Club - They've set up a Sherpa fund where you can make any size donation: https://americanalpineclub.org/p/sherpa-support-fund
2. Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation - Using gorgeous photos of Sherpas and the Everest region taken by some of the most well known mountaineer/travel photographers in the world (Jimmy Chin, Cory Richards, Renan Ozturk, to name a few), you can buy a print for $100: http://sherpafund.bigcartel.com/products
Help if you can!
At this point I think it's hard for anyone to NOT have heard about what recently transpired on Everest. While I am not there this season, a lot of my good friends are (both Westeners and Sherpas). Thankfully none of them were caught in the massive collapse that occurred on the 18th near the top of the notoriously dangerous Khumbu Ice Fall (Although Mark Horrell and the Altitude Junkies team were on their way to the base of the Ice Fall when it happened. Read here).
To get an idea of what the Ice Fall is like, watch some of my footage from 2011. It's a complex labyrinth of crumbling snow and ice and moves up to 6" per day, hence it's incredible danger. Nearer to the end of the video, you'll see roughly the region where the avalanche happened (where the crevasses start to get wider and the ladder bridges get longer):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NliMLaT56aM&noredirect=1
According to Alan Arnette's blog, there were at least 16 deaths, all of them Sherpas. This is one of the biggest tragedies to hit any 8000 meter peak. That it happened on Everest makes it that much more of an attention grabber, since so many climbers flock their each season. In 2012, on Manaslu (another 8000m peak), there was an avalanche that took the lives of 11 people, but the recent Everest avalanche trumps that one by quite a bit. More than anything, it has woken up the Sherpa community who are now demanding a number of things from the Nepali government before they consider getting things back moving on the mountain. And things won't move on Everest if the Sherpas don't. They are the reason ANYONE can climb this mountain.
Will the mountain shut down for the season? Already some teams have packed up and left. Alpine Ascents, who had Sherpas killed in the avalanche, already announced that they would. Also, the Discovery Channel wing suit jump has also been nixed. Will more follow suit? For one, the Sherpas will dictate whether or not climbing will resume. If it doesn't, the season will end most definitely. In fact, the Sherpas have put a 7-day ultimatum on the Nepali government. If their demands are not met, the season will be cancelled. Here are some of their demands (taken from this Himalayan Times article):
• Increment of immediate relief announced for avalanche victims • Provide 1,000,000 Rupees (~$10,000) each to families of deceased • Set up a memorial park in the name of the deceased in Kathmandu • Cover all expenses for treatment of the injured • Provide 1,000,000 Rupees (~$10,000) to critically hurt who cannot rejoin mountaineering activities • Set up mountaineering relief fund with 30% of royalty collected from issuing permits to different mountains • Double the insurance amount to the mountaineering workers • Provide additional chopper rescue to mountaineering support staff if insurance fails to cover the cost • Provide perks and salaries, except summit bonus, through concerned agencies to Sherpas if they want to call off climbing this season • Manage chopper to bring logistics and equipment from different camps if mountaineers decide to abandon climbing this season • Don’t take action against SPCC Icefall doctors if they refuse to fix ropes and ladders on the route this season • Let the expedition members to call off this season’s climbing if they wish
If the season continues, teams will have to decide whether they want to continue despite the tragic losses. From personal experience, I can tell you that climbing doesn't feel dangerous until it does. When you see an avalanche first hand, or worse yet, a dead body, you suddenly go through some serious priority setting. What is climbing Everest really worth? For me, it caused me to turn around twice. And I don't regret it one bit. I'm sure there will be many climbers who end up doing the same in light of these recent events. It will be interesting to see what ends up happening.
Sherpas are one of the friendliest, most hard-working, happiest, strongest group of people I have ever met. It's a tough thing to swallow, recognizing the extremely dangerous work they do for us paying clients. We climb because we have the money and the desire to do something big in our lives, a rather selfish endeavor. They climb because they have a family they need to take care of and some because it is the only high-paying job in the area. I mean, check out this frightening infographic 
. Hopefully the above demands can be met. It's the very least that they deserve.
Yes I am!
And it was a close one too! But I stuck with it and kept as composed as possible and made it through till the end.
The whole day I felt incredibly calm, which was a big difference from last year where I was a right old mess. I don't know why I was like that last year. Maybe it was because of the film crew that was there or maybe the pressure of trying to win a 3rd championship in a row. Either way, this year felt totally different. I didn't have anything to prove, I just wanted to go out there and enjoy myself.
Right out of the gates I set a US record for the most Names & Faces memorized in 15 minutes, a whopping 193! I'm pretty sure that record will stand for a while because most people hate names, don't bother practicing, or just don't get very good at them. 175 was the previous record. Michael Glantz got 169 and then under that was Saira Kothari with 152. Great scores, but after that, the next highest one was 118. Big discrepancy.
Then it was Speed Numbers. For the first attempt I went conservative and landed at around 306 digits, but I had a blank for one set of images so I knew my score would be 286. Not bad, but not great. The second attempt felt much more fluid and I ended up with 350 digits, with a possible mistake. It ended up being two mistakes, which took my score down to 310, which was enough for a new record! Usually I'm miles ahead of everyone on numbers, but this year there were some really beefy scores trailing me. Alex Mullen with 258 (amazing), and Livan Grijalva and Lance Tschirhart both with 220.
Poetry felt great. It was a pretty smooth and easy poem with lots of capital letters (always amps up the score). I wrote down 230 points and knew I had two rows that were incorrect, so I ended up with a score of 208, still enough to beat out the poetry master, Michael Glantz. PHEW.
Sitting pretty in first, next came Speed Cards. I had thought about going all out and not caring whether I got a perfect deck or not, banking on the fact that I had done well enough in the previous events to send me into the finals in case I flunked the cards. But I played it safe, going for 66 seconds on the first try. It was a really good deck, I really should have put it down after one look through. I mean, it had me (Ace of Diamonds) waving (9 of Diamonds) at a mountain (5 of Hearts). When will that ever happen in competition again?? My mom was there, my bro, my sis, my dad, all my friends....ARGH! And it was SO FAST the first time through. Was sub-30 seconds for sure. Oh well, woulda, coulda, shoulda. The second attempt I went fast, but not super fast....got 44 seconds, but had 2 mistakes. Couldn't remember if Jack Black was putting lipstick on his hand or on a draedel. CURSES! My risky move there cost me the national record, and Johnny Briones snagged it from me by 3 seconds (60 seconds on the nose, the old record was 63). I've been trying to beat the minute mark in competition for years now. And although I've done it in international competitions (40.65 seconds), I really wanted to do it in the US one. No matter, I'm happy either way.
Needless to say I was first all around after all that and was moving on to the afternoon finals rounds with Alex Mullen, Livan Grijalva, Brad Zupp, Lance Tschirhart, Johhny Briones, Patrick Walsh, and Mike Mirski (in that order).
Round 1: Words to Remember
I knew this round would be tough this year and it proved to be so. I went for 140 words, which is way more than ever necessary, but I wasn't 100% sure. I can do 250 in 15 minutes, so 140 is easy. But then again, you never know....one mis-spoken word and you're out. So you need to be ABSOLUTELY sure of all your words. As I predicted, we went pretty high with the words. I believe the last person to get eliminated was on the 80th or so word. Us remaining guys asked if we could keep going to show off our memory muscles and I blanked on word 127. Alex kept going to 137. Impressive. Johnny and Brad made silly mistakes early on (Johnny said "architecture" instead of "architect" and Brad said "light bulb" instead of "bulb") while Patrick just blanked at around the 80 mark. 5 competitors remained.
Round 2: Tea Party
This event is always super easy for me, even though they've increased the amount of people to 6 from 5 over the past years. I ended up getting stuck with all the names and pets for some reason. I came out of the gate missing the first kid's name (I knew his first and last but didn't want to give up information to the person after me) getting my first strike. That sucked. But I knew I wouldn't miss anything else. Everyone else slowly racked up strikes and before we knew it, Mike and Livan were out. Lance, Alex, and I were moving on to the finals.
Round 3: Double Deck O' Cards
Ah, the famous 2010 reverse mistake made by me...came back again and caused Lance to get eliminated. We got back on stage after memorizing for 5 minutes and I started with the first card: 6 of diamonds. Instantly, Lance said something like "wait, I thought we were starting with the blue deck!?" So he had to quickly jump to a different location in his mind to find the card from the other deck. Under pressure, he wasn't able to do it and was out before he had even started. Shame, but I'm sure he'll never mess that up again! So now it was down to me and Alex, who had been cold and calculated all day long, hiding in the shadows as an underdog, without any press haggling him (because he was a newcomer). I was quite nervous, but ultimately I knew I had both decks perfectly memorized. I told myself, let me just do what I know I can do and if he makes a mistake, so be it. So I kept going. I didn't once break my focus or look at the audience, I just staying in my memory palace and I wasn't leaving until I finished. Alex ended up blanking on the 66th card...and before I knew it, I was the champion again.
At first I didn't even react, but then as I gave my speech, I kinda choked up, realizing what a journey it's been since last year. I didn't say it on stage there, but I should have, but I'm pretty sure that was my last USA Memory Championship. I always wanted to win 3 times and I always wanted to leave on a high note. It doesn't get any higher than that.
So there it is. I can now put that behind me, and start moving towards the bunch of other projects I have on the horizon.
2 days until the USA Memory Championship! For those wondering how much time I spend a day training for this competition and how I split up my time during any given day, look no further (Big thanks to UK-based information designer Tiffany Farrant-Gonzalez for helping me create this!):
Hey guys! Finally pictures for Everest 2013 are working (I know right??) and also for my recent Kilimanjaro trek. Have a look: Everest 2013
A quick update here on The Memorable Project.... It has been a rough month (with regards to the success of the project), and even though it was a short one, I found myself busy with a lot of other things. Namely, training full-on for the USA Memory Championships (in 28 days from now), working on my book, and planning my slow take-over of the world :D
As I said previously after month #1, it seems easier for me to remember the news events rather than the 3 life events. I've since moved to using flash cards, and those have helped tremendously. But I think more solid review sessions are the way to go and the true key to success in this project. That might not be truly feasible until the memory competition is over when I can focus on this project 100%. Until then, I'll keep on making my life memorable and logging in information daily, doing light reviews whenever I can.
In spite of all the difficulty memorizing this stuff, I'm having loads of fun planning and mapping out new and interesting things to do each and every day. 2014 has already been an awesome year so far and it's just getting started!
Almost two years ago, I took a trip to St. Louis to participate in a memory study at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). They were doing a battery of memory tests on mental athletes like myself and comparing the results to "regular", un-trained, folks, as well as trivia experts who had also gone through those same tests. At the time, Ben Pridmore and Boris Konrad (two of the best competitors in the world) had participated. I was the third.
It became clear to me that with the Psych Department at WUSTL and their funding source (Dart NeuroScience), there was an opportunity for something new, different, and bigger. In my head, ever since I started competing in memory competitions, I had realized that, in my opinion, it wasn't being done correctly. Memory sports has been around for 20+ years and it still has yet to take off, which is weird considering we live in an age where mental fitness is such a hot topic. In the second half of 2011, I reignited my love for Tennis (a sport I had played a lot in my youth) and got to thinking one day while watching the US Open Finals...why is Tennis so captivating to watch? There isn't much variety in terms of action if you really think about it. Two guys, one ball. A serve, a forehand, a volley, a backhand, a slice, and that's pretty much it. Back and forth it goes, for hours. But that was exactly it, the reason Tennis is so interesting is because it's so simple, easy to understand, and a true battle between two people, who are giving it everything they've got to win.
From that moment forth, I realized that memory sports was missing that very same set of elements. What memory sports was, at least up until then and well, still now, was an exam - A long, all day (sometimes 3-day) exam. People staring at sheets of paper with loads of information etched onto them for long stretches of time. YAWN. At least the official USA Memory Competition had part of the day on stage in an exciting set of elimination rounds. But it wasn't completely exam-free.
I asked the researchers at WUSTL if they would relay the message to Dart NeuroScience that I was interested in creating an exciting, totally different, memory competition. The response was immediate and positive. We had a few meetings to decide on dates, logistics, budget, and within months I had a blank canvas for a memory competition sitting in front of me.
There were a few things I knew about what this competition would be. For one, it needed to be a tournament, not a competition. It needed to be head-to-head, one match at a time, similar to a tennis match. Second, it needed to have a lot of prize money (a. to lure the best competitors in and b. to increase the stakes and make everything that much more meaningful in competition). Third, I was going to do this right, and to do it right I had to make sure I had the input (and approvals) of the top mental athletes in the world.
After many many months of thinking, tweaking, testing, brainstorming, and stressing, we all (me, WUSTL, Dart, certain top memory competitors) started to see something take shape. I won't go into all the details of this tournament here, but instead, mosey on over to the freshly designed website and learn for yourself: www.extremememorytournament.com.
The competition is a couple months away and is looking to be awesome. Stay tuned for more news and updates as the event date approaches (there is a blog on the tournament website).
First let me say, I'm home! Yay, I'm home! Made it back safely from Kilimanjaro a week ago and have been getting back into the groove of things for 2014. There are a few things on my plate now, the big one being the memory competition I'm organizing in April (more on that soon, or here if you want a sneak peek), and the next big one being my 'Memorable Year Project.' That's the one where I'm memorizing every day of this year, remember?
It's the end of January, so that means 1 out of 12 months are memorized. CHECK. So how did it go? Well, it was bloody hard. The writing it down once and never reviewing it part (other than thinking about it in my own head) has gone right out the window. It's just too much information to keep track of off of one glance. And, if this is only with one month's worth of info, imagine how I'll feel by November! GAHHH!
No matter, I'm committed to see this through till the end. I am reviewing more constantly and making these memories stick. Hopefully in a few months time, I'll have a knack for it and it will become a lot easier. What I've realized is the most difficult part about all this is remembering the personal memories I choose. I can remember the weather, location, and world news event super easily, but it's tough recalling the 3 things I did that day...not sure quite why, but maybe because they are always so random. One day I was doing something epic like summiting Kilimanjaro, the other day just eating a chicken sandwich.
We have some summits here!!!
Team Supreme (that's us) bolted out of the gates at midnight on Saturday (a.m.), on a full-moonlit night. The weather had been hail all afternoon and cleared up to absolute perfection just as we left. We couldn't have asked for better weather and the moonlight was so bright it made our headlamps as necessary as nipples on a breast plate. Lovely.
We were pumped. We scarfed down some stale toast and porridge (ameliorated with some copious amounts of sugar and/or Milo), then packed up and left at midnight, on the dot. On the DOT!
8 out of the 9 of us suddenly found ourselves on the way up to the Roof of Africa ('ol papa Bill decided to sit this one out. Smart man, knowing his limits). For the next 7 hours we plodded up the mountain, negotiating rocks and skree. At first, doing well, chatting up a storm with a bazillion "would you rather" questions and debating which Bill Murray movie is the best (definitely 'Groundhog Day' for me). Then at about hour 4, everyone shut up because the altitude was starting to make some of us puke, develop severe head-pounding headaches, and question just what the hell we were doing.
I've climbed much higher and much more dangerous peaks, but I will say that climbing 4000 feet of elevation in 7 hours when you aren't really acclimatized is no joke. I must admit that I was suffering near the end because of that. I had one of the worst headaches imaginable. Either way, that isn't something to stop me (nor anyone else from our awesomely strong team, for that matter). We all pushed through.
As we approached Stella Point (the lower summit at the rim of the volcano crater) at about hour 6, the sun started to rise and coat the whole mountain with one of the most beautiful orange-reds I have ever seen. On our last switch back, I finally saw the sign for Stella Point and about a dozen people surrounding it. I let out a resounding "YES!!!" and marched upwards with a new sense of purpose.
Everyone else followed in line moments later, and we were soon hugging it out like men celebrating a winning touchdown. Aaron, who carries one of the most prophetic ginger beards I've ever seen, even managed to pull through despite puking a few times on the way up. Props to him. His beard-brother (a British fellow from another team carrying an equally prophetic, yet less dense, ginger beard) followed shortly and their beards gave a high five. I believe time stood still at that precise moment (and I'm pretty sure some kittens lives were spared as well). Quite a sight.
Our mission wasn't done yet though. We had 45 more minutes to the true summit, which was visible from Stella point but on the complete opposite (and slightly higher) side of the crater. So we plodded on.
As the sun rose higher and made everything even more beautiful, we increasingly struggled. Every new step was more painful than the one before it. It got even more painful hearing people who had already summited, pass us on the way down saying in a way-too-jovial-for-how-i-was-feeling kinda way, "you're almost there!" and "you can do it!" I ignored them and kept on, focusing rather on the beautiful scenery around me. It was right then that I was reminded why I do these climbs. Moments like that just remind me how amazing this planet is and how tiny and insignificant we all are. It puts your life into perspective in a flash. There's nothing else quite like it.
We powered on and finally we found ourselves at the true summit of Uhuru Peak. HELL YES. We all hugged, danced, and celebrated. I memorized a deck of cards (more on that later), while others took pictures of flags and random trinkets they had slogged up there. I can't say this enough, but what a fucking beautiful day it was. Stunning.
Young Bill and I headed down together after spending about an hour on the summit. We agreed to try and run down the mountain as fast as possible (for shits and giggles) with one of our guides (whose name was, wait for it.....Nelson. Yup). The way down was one of the most fun descents in recent memory for me, and we basically skree-skied it down, zipping by everyone (even porters) while sliding and spraying dirt all around us. We made it down in impressive 53 minutes. Ha! 7 hours up and less than an hour down. Amazing. I should have GoPro'd the whole thing, but I forgahhhht, DOH!
Everyone else from Team Supreme followed down to High Camp a few hours later and we rested, rehydrated, ate, and then headed down to a lower camp (this time at a leisurely pace). We all slept like babies and arose to our final breakfast, followed by an amazing singing of African mountain songs by our lovely 32 guides and porters (which sounded like Paul Simon's "Graceland" album, it was that good). We then shot down the rest of the mountain in about 3.5 hours where we bathed in the sun, drinking Kilimanjaro beers as we waited for our bus back to town.
An amazing trip, with amazing people, and an amazing new experience and more importantly....a new memory. I loved that every morning Zack (one of our team members) would shout out, as he firmly secured his Scottish plaid, newspaper-boy cap on his head: "Let's go make a memory!"
And so we did.
Up to the last camp today folks! We'll be sitting somewhere above 15,000 ft. Then resting a few hours before we wake up at 11pm, stuff our faces with porridge and stale toast, then BOOM, shoot up to the summit (19,000 ft and change). Should take about 7 hours at a slowish pace, then I'll do a little dance on the summit (might actually try some burpees or memorize a deck of cards - we'll see how I feel), then head 2 hours down to the next camp feeling like a boss, craving a big African beer.
Our team is strong. A couple were feeling the altitude yesterday, but after today we'll have a better idea if all of us will be making it. I happen to think we all will. We passed this woman yesterday, probably in her mid-50s, but quite overweight (no idea why she is on this mountain in that shape), and hours later she showed up at camp (albeit partially carried by two porters). So if she had the will to get through yesterday's pretty steep climb, I don't know what excuse anyone can give to give up at this point. Ha!
Onwards!
I've jumped from day 2 to day 6, I know. Sorry! I thought there'd be more cell service out here but I was wrong. I mean get with it Africa, even Everest had service...geez. We've been climbing for the past three days solid and it's been quite nice. Nothing crazy hard, just long slogs. Reminds me a lot of the Everest Base Camp trek. Only a few more days until we go for the summit (Friday at midnight). Everyone on our team is doing great so far. We're having tons of fun and the bathroom jokes have settled in comfortably over our dinners as they usually do on mountain trips.
The weather has been incredible too. All day it's either sunny or slightly misty and then when we get to camp it just becomes totally sunny. Last night we played around with our fancy cameras, taking night exposure shots while writing things in the sky with a flashlight. Super cool!
Anyways, tomorrow things get a bit more serious as we'll be starting to sleep over 4000 meters. I'll try to check in when I can, but obviously it ain't easy. Best thing to do is follow my satellite tracker (linked in my previous post).
Out!
Had our debriefing this morning with our four local guides (one of them was named Nelson! Oh yes, Nelson^2). All looks good. The rest of the team arrived as well and now we are one big happy fellowship (since we are nine...or maybe we are the Nazgul?) Everything looks good to go. We leave tomorrow at 8:30am for the park gate to the Machame Route (which is, from what I gather, not the easiest but one of the easier routes on the mountain). The first day is supposed to be hot and long (18 km), but we'll end up at around 10,000ft once the day is through. So that's already some decent elevation.
I'm so pumped for this! I'll try to send out blog posts if at all possible, but in the event that I can't, you can follow my progress here:
https://share.delorme.com/NelsonDellis
POLE POLE! ('slowly, slowly' in Swahili)
Damn, it's bloody hot!That was my first thought. My next thought was Well duh, I'm in Africa and near the equator. What did I expect?
After about 18 hours on the plane, I finally landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania. The flights were alright except for the second leg from NYC to Amsterdam where I was stuck next to this African man who kept telling me how much he liked to drink water. Like, he loved it. He kept yelling at the stewardess for more water. One cup wasn't enough, he wanted 5 at the same time. And then more after that. And then he felt the need to remind me of his love for water every time I was starting to nod off to sleep. He also told me that I eat slow, to which I replied 'so?' He also asked me if I was going to drink the wine I had just ordered, to which I said 'yes,' to which he responded, 'I don't like alcohol, I like water.' blank stare.
The flight from Amsterdam to Tanzania was hassle free and I was able to think without being told how good water was. We landed late in the evening so I wasn't able to notice anything about my surroundings as I stepped off the plane other than the fact that it was really balls-sticking-to-my-legs warm. Ahhh where's the AC??....You're in Africa doofus, deal with it. My bag successfully came through like hot curry and I was soon on my way with Charles, my driver, to Moshi - the nearest town to Kili.
Charles was able to teach me 6 Swahili words on the road and he warned me that he would test my memory when we arrived (I chuckled inside, does he know who I am???). The most important thing he taught me after though was mipe bia moja (give me one beer). I was set. As we neared Moshi, I could make out the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro even in the dark. The peak is just a monstrosity booming up into the sky with nothing else around it. Quite intimidating, I must admit.
The Keys Hotel is nice enough, with a quaint little courtyard where you can hang out and sip on some brewskis and a questionable swimming pool in the back yard. No AC in the room, but a fan (thank god a fan!!). It was late but I went down to the bar to order some Tanzanian stew dish that turned out to be pretty delicious. Ate it all while watching 'Black Hawk Down' which was playing on the TV, where a few locals were intensely watching....not the most welcoming movie for an American coming to Africa....Either way, it's a good movie and I hadn't seen it since it came out in theaters back in like 2001. I actually remember the date I was on when I saw it and remembered how it made me want to visit Africa (not because of the violence, but because of the landscapes, duh). I forgot how many (now)famous people there are in that film who were nobodies back then!
Anyways, I digress. That was all last night. Today I woke up having slept (inside my mosquito net) like a baby. Grabbed some eggs and bacon for breakfast, went back to sleep, met a few of the team members, then wandered into town. I've gotta say, I've never traveled anywhere in the world where they look at you the way they look at me here. I dunno if it's because I'm white, or because I'm really white, or because I'm tall, or because I'm really tall, but it feels really strange to be just stared at. Not like glanced at, I mean full on watching-my-every-move stared at. Aside from that though, everyone is so friendly and it seems that Tanzanians love American culture. I've gotten a lot of random fist bumps, peace signs, and thumbs ups, which when I volley back at them, makes their faces light up with the biggest smiles. I saw a car that had the words "Michael Jordan" stickered HUGE on the windshield, because hey, if you're gonna put some words in big block letters on your windshield, who WOULDN'T put Michael Jordan?
What's probably impressed me the most is how everyone carries things (balances things, rather) on their heads. What a talent! And I mean everything - grocery bags, picnic baskets, water coolers, etc. I guess it's more efficient and leaves your hands free to do whatever you want (like fist bump a tall American tourist). Can you imagine if everyone in America carried things like that? You'd be at say, Best Buy, and people would be walking around the parking lot looking for their car while balancing PS4s and MacBook Pros on their head. Ha!
Also, who knew 'The Lion King' was so useful! A bunch of words from it are real Swahili words. Hakuna Matata (no problem). Asante Sana (thank you very much). Props to Disney.
