Kilimanjaro Day 8

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.

Kilimanjaro Day 7

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!

Kilimanjaro Day 6

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!

Kilimanjaro Day 2

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)

Kilimanjaro Day 1

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.

2014 - The Memorable Year

Happy New Year! Some of you might have already caught a glimpse of my project for 2014 here: http://tech.co/new-years-resolutions-entrepreneurs-entrepreneurs-2013-12. But let me re-explain it for you guys.

I'm all about memories. It's what I value most and it's also what I believe makes me one of the best memorizers in the world. I use my memorable experiences to help enhance my memory. A lot of people don't know this about me, but I make a big effort to remember my life events. I journal a lot, I go out of my way to make moments memorable, and I write/reminisce a lot too. But I want to take it further.

Let me first make sure all my readers know that I do not have any sort of Super Autobiographical Memory (like, at all). I remember and forget life events just as well/poorly as anyone else. But I do feel that there are things I can do (given my learned memory skills) to mimic as if I did have that kind of memory, even if only a tiny bit. So 2014 is going to be my little experiment. Here are the rules:

1. Everyday in 2014 (January 1st - December 31st) I will commit the following to memory:

• 1 world news event (doesn't have to be a headliner, just something that happened that day and that can be looked up and verified when I recall it)
• 3 life events (3 things I found important from that specific day that I want to remember)
• My location (city)
• Weather (nothing crazy, just whether it was rainy, cloudy, absolutely freezing, a hurricane, etc.).

2. I'm not allowed to review these memories by looking at anything, it all has to be in my head.

3. I have to make the effort to make each day count. Go for adventures, try new things, make life MEMORABLE.

3. Each day, I will write the 3 items down (my life events) on a small piece of paper, and enter them into a "piggy-bank" (something I can't open without breaking it). That way, at the end of the year, I'll have some way to demonstrate that I actually remember every day of the year (by having someone break the piggy-bank, choose random strips of paper, and test me).

That's pretty much it. Simple. Just remember life at the end of each day (I would prefer to not even write ANYTHING down at all, but I'll need some way to verify it at the end of the year, hence the piggy-bank idea).

Onwards to 2014!!

Ace of Diamonds

I'm in Boise, Idaho. Yup, that's right. Drowning in potatoes (well, snow and cold rather). Anyways, I'm here for the premiere of a good friend of mine Ana Overgaard's short documentary about me called 'Ace of Diamonds.' It follows my journey over the past two years conquering and failing memory and mountains. Most of you all know my story, and I've probably beaten it to death in all of you by now, but Ana really does a phenomenal job of stitching all the high and low points of my journey into one seamless, engaging film. For those of you in the Boise area, it will be playing at the Egyptian Theatre, which is located in the heart of downtown Boise. Tickets are $10 and the show starts at 7pm and will be followed by a Q&A with me and Ana.

Check out the trailer below:
http://vimeo.com/76103884

Well That Didn't Go As Planned...

Ok, so I"m gonna let out a bit of stuff about the competition. First off, my goal this year was to beat the 2012 Nelson <--- that guy was a guy you did NOT want to mess with. I had trained a ton in the past 3 months and was hitting PRs like crazy, so I was expecting to do better than last year. Here are my comments/results in order of events:


1. Names and Faces - This one is always a crap shoot. I"m really good at it but my scores can vary depending on the kind of names they provide (80-110 points). I ended up on the lower side with 87....which was still decent enough to pull 6th place, but not better than last year"s 101. I was slightly bummed but also knew that that could happen. They were really tough names. To give you an idea, at the USA competition I can typically score 160 names no problem (Bob, Steve, McAllister, Joe, Bradshaw, etc). So to barely scrape 90 points just gives you a taste of the difficulty.


2. Binary Numbers - I"m not so great at this one (only because it"s the one I practice the least). That being said, I bested my older score of 1515 digits in 30 minutes with 1650 or something like that. Yay. Doesn"t come close to the top scores (near 4000) - but I"m okay with that. Happy that"s over. No more binary for a year!


3. Hour Numbers - I can do 1800-2000 digits in an hour. I wanted to go for a solid 1800. In the hour I got through 1840 digits and thought I knew them pretty well. During the recall I had a few holes in my mind, so I knew I"d hit some penalties, but I thought I"d hit about 1600. Nope, it was 1482 (which is the year the Hunchback of Notre Dame takes place in....and it bested my previous year"s score of 1350ish). Not stoked but was somewhat happy with this. Other people got some ridiculous scores over 2000. Impressive as hell!


4. Abstract Images - Beat my score of last year by 30 or so points (232). I went for 250, which is 5 pages of random blobs. I thought I nailed it, but clearly made a few mistakes. No worries. 232 was still good enough for a top 10 finish in the event. Yay!


5. Speed Numbers - YES! I"m most happy about this. I did 339 digits perfectly in 5 minutes. That"s my best Speed Numbers score in all of my competitions EVER. I have been waiting to get a number close to what I actually do in practice. Here it is. Now I can put that to bed and start pushing higher for the 400s. Johannes Mallow broke the world record by 1 digit (501)....so amazing.


6.Historic / Future Dates - Was disappointed with my performance here. I had been practicing this a ton and was getting around 70 dates pretty consistently. My pacing out of the gate was slow for some reasons and I could only get through 50 dates during the competition. I made a couple mistakes so I got a score of 48, which was one less than last year"s 49. ARGH!


7. Hour Cards - Was aiming for 18 decks, but got through 16.5 safely. I was 100% sure I nailed them all. I spent hours checking over my recall sheets for mistakes, but it all looked good. They said casino pa natet I only got 14.5 which I challenged (you can challenge scores and have them re-check it), but for some poorly organized reason, they promised to check my cards but never did. Not cool.. Anyways, 14.5 was better than last year"s 12.5. So, a win for me.


8. Random Words - My favorite event. I went for 232 words in 15 minutes and frustratingly got blanks on a couple words, which caused some penalty points, giving me a score of 182 (which was still quite good and better than my score last year)....bummer but not too much of a bummer.


9. Spoken Numbers - One of my best events. But for some reason I froze and I don"t know why. I couldn"t do anymore than 78 digits in a row (they say the digits out loud, 1 per second). I can usually do over 100 and sometimes 200. We had 3 trials, but I was mostly rubbish in each of them. Congrats to my buddy and fellow American, Brad Zupp, for solidly memorizing 112 digits. So sweet!


10. Speed Cards - I absolutely bombed here, which is so unlike me. I guess I was just off my game at this point. Not really sure what happened. The worst part is I went "slowly" with a "safe" time of 1m15s. I started weirdly over-thinking things in my head switching things that I initially had correct during the recall. Grrrr. At this point I was just going safe so my overall total score for the whole competition would be better than last years. I messed up the first attempt so the second attempt I was like, "just nail it, who cares how fast/slow you go".....so I did it again safely in 1m09s. But...again....confused myself during the recall, swapping 2 cards. So it was another botched trial. I got very minimal points as a result and it caused me to have a lower score (by 100) than last year.....


*BANGS HEAD AGAINST WALL*


I might be too hard on myself (definitely), considering I finished 12th overall out of about 100 competitors from around the world. But for me, that"s not good enough. I know I"m better than what I did. Anyways, failures are what I thrice off of anyways....so onwards to the next competition.

2013 World Memory Championships

Here we go again. My second World Memory Championships. The competition is being held in "London" (Croydon) this weekend (30th, 1st, 2nd). I had initially told myself after last year"s that that would be enough, but something keeps drawing me in. I guess the pull of seeing where I stand in comparison to the world"s greatest is too much for me to ignore. A few months ago, I found myself quite out of mental shape. Cards I had kept up religiously as usual, but my training for numbers and all the other disciplines had kind of fallen to the wayside. It bugged me, but for some reason I couldn"t really get in a groove (I keep blaming my post-Everest recovery, but there was only so long I could ride that train). Anyways, somewhere between then and now, I started getting back into things. And as of late, it"s been non-stop, spending tons of hours practicing. My numbers are back to where they used to be (super happy to see that) and I"ve actually improved in some of the more obscure disciplines that show up at the WMC (namely historic dates, abstract images, and spoken numbers).

I"m excited for this competition because I feel absolutely zero pressure. Last year it was my first true international competition and I wanted to set a precedent. That, and I was set on gaining the Grandmaster of Memory title (which I did). This year, my main goal is to out-perform the 2012 Nelson. If I can do that, I"ll place higher and well....that would be pretty cool. Ha.

A few quick predictions for myself (I do this to better hold myself accountable, but please don"t hold me to them :D):

Day 1

Names & Faces - Ok so this year I trained a ton with the international names. You may be thinking, "Oh, I can memorize names...pshhh" but nope, not these names. The WMC folks tend to take the most complicated Asian first name and the longest, nearly unpronounceable Indian last name. And then they stick it on a picture of Brad Pitt. Not easy. But I"ve been practicing with super tricky names and gotten a lot better. Projected: 100-110 ; Hopeful: 120 .

30-minute Binary - I hate this event. Always have. I never have the patience for it. Last year I botched it pretty bad scoring a measly 1300 digits or so. That sounds like a lot, but it"s not. With binary digits, you can compress them so that a lot of binary digits group together to make just one image. People do like 4000...yeah, WHAT?. My issue in the past has been that I lose track of where I am in the never-ending sea of 1s and 0s. With so many of them, the whole page starts to look like a Magic Eye picture. Yikes. The plan for this year is to use a ruler to go line by line and a transparency to help line up groups of numbers better. Projected: 1500-2000; Hopeful: 2000 .

One-hour Numbers: Regular decimal numbers, for one hour. Last year I went for 1700 digits or so and ended up with a score of 1350. I wasn"t happy. I know I can do a lot better. Projected: 1700-2000; Hopeful: 2000.

Day 2

Abstract Images: Haven"t gotten a whole lot better at this, only slightly. Last year I did pretty much as expected. This year, I"m hoping to break the 200 point mark. Projected: 220-250; Hopeful: 250

Speed Numbers (2 trials): Ahhh, my favorite. Yet one of the international disciplines I have for some reason sucked at in competition. Not sure why. I practiced a ton on paper with exact replicas of the competition papers. I think that will help. Projected: 300-340 digits; Hopeful: 340-360.

Historic Dates: How many fictional events tied with a year between 1600-2100 can you memorize in 5 minutes. This event is surprisingly tough. But I"ve gotten a lot faster and confident. Projected: 50-70 dates; Hopeful: 70 .

One-hour Cards: Exactly what it sounds like, 1 hour to memorize cards. How many decks, actually. Last year I went for 20, but only made it through 17, and made mistakes leaving me with 12.5. Yuck. I need to get a solid 18 or I"m going home. Projected: 18 decks; Hopeful: 19 decks.

Day 3

Random Words: My favorite and best event I"d say. I"ve been making tiny stupid errors more often though and I don"t know why. Hopefully I"m more on point come competition day. Projected: 200-240 words; Hopeful: 240 .

Spoken Numbers (200/300/400): There are three trials here. First is 200 digits spoken 1-per-second, then 300, then 400. My goal is to hit 100 perfect on that first try and then go all out on the next two attempts. Projected: 150-200; Hopeful:200 .

Speed Cards (2 trials): How fast can you memorize a deck of cards? I"ll see how I feel at this point and how many points I need to win out over the people around me. I"d love to break the 40 second barrier in competition. Projected: 45 seconds; Hopeful: 35 seconds.

So there you have it. I"ll keep you posted!

In the mean time you can follow the results right here:

http://www.world-memory-statistics.com/competition.php?id=wmc2013

Everest Video V!

Finally, the last video of my 2013 Everest series. With this video I'll be closing up that awesome chapter of my life. 2014 will have a lot of new climbs, kicking off the year with Kilimanjaro, then Manaslu in the fall. Then if all goes well, back with Altitude Junkies on Everest in 2015. This video took me a long time to put together, but it's also probably the one I've put the most into. I was very careful in choosing the shots and how to edit it all together. I played with a bunch of different songs, but I'm super happy with the ones I finally settled on. I think they set the mood just right. Most people see mountain climbing as this incredibly extreme experience, but as you'll see in the video, a lot of it is calm, slow, and peaceful. It's just me and the mountain; me battling the elements and my mental head-game.

This will wrap up anything climbing related for 2013. On to the next year!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNDGRs_0glQ

Kilimanjaro Climb 2014

In what I hope becomes a yearly Climb For Memory trip, I will be guiding a trip up the tallest peak in Africa: Kilimanjaro (organized by Peak Freaks - the folks I climbed Everest with in 2011). If you happen to be interest, check out the details below. The trip starts on Jan. 11th, 2014 and will be about 7 days long. You know you've wanted to do it...come on! Kilimanjaro Jan. 11, 2014

Everest Video IV!

Here we go again...things are finally starting to move. You may have noticed how little climbing we did in this expedition. Yup...in fact we ended up climbing for a measly total of 7 days, the rest was all resting or non-technical hiking days. Crazy right? That's the way of the North Side of Everest. Enjoy! Love this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X20bFDunbRw

Setting Up Memories

One of the nerdiest things I do is plan/set-up memories. They usually work best when reading books. To me, a lot of the books I choose to read become a huge part of my life. I remember exactly when I first read "Lord of the Rings", "The Hobbit", "Godel, Escher, & Bach", "The Feynman Lectures", "Open", etc. Most of those I just picked up and started to read, and in turn, they became staples of my existence. For example, I can remember the first time I opened up "Gödel, Escher, & Bach" - I was taking my then-girlfriend to get her molars removed. I sat there in the waiting room, totally engrossed by the first chapter. And "Lord of the Rings", one of my favorites, was before and during Christmas in 2002.

In fact, I started realizing that a lot of these books were becoming such epic experiences in my life, that I started purposefully saving certain books to be read at specific times. A perfect example being "The Hobbit". I wanted to read it immediately after reading LOTR back in 2002, but I knew that if I read it to soon, I would have wasted it all in one gulp. I also wanted to wait for the hope of a movie to come out later on and also, to leave some LOTR-ishness for the future. I knew I wanted it to be read before christmas; there"s something christmas-y about the LOTR universe for me. So I waited 10 BLOODY YEARS until the movie came out! Finally opened up the book last thanksgiving and spaced out the chapters to make it last until christmas. It was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life! And, it worked out exactly as planned. Whenever I think about "The Hobbit," or open the book up and smell the pages, I feel like it"s christmas. SUCCESS. Not only did I enjoy the book, but I successfully engineered two independent (and both equally and uniquely memorable) memories of LOTR books.

Recently I have been reading the "A Song of Fire and Ice" series (Game of Thrones). I JUST got to "A Storm of Swords," which is the 3rd book in the series and is hailed as the GoT book that has the most epic action in it. It also leads you past season 3 (if you watch the series on HBO). I knew it was going to be epic so I stretched it out and planned it so I would read it in the right place at just the right time. It turned out being one of the best books I have ever read and the memory was so perfectly planned that I know whenever I look back on it, I will be 100% satisfied.

I know memories should be unplanned and spontaneous, but sometimes memories can end up sucking. So why not do justice to the little ones that you know will end up being huge?

(Does anyone else do this?).

Nelson Dellis On The Katie Couric Show

In case some of you missed me on the Katie Couric Show yesterday, here is my segment in its full glory!

(I hate that they only gave me 30 seconds to recall the names. It"s not about how quickly you can recall them, it"s about how quickly you can memorize them, grrr! No worries, the segment still came out Return to most common fees navigationBalance transfer fees are fees you pay to transfer balances from one free credit score card to another. great!).

Memorable Faces

One thing that has always been memorable for me is the faces of those whom I"ve met in the Nepal/Tibet region of Everest. Whether it was just passing by them or Wave 1: Creating manageable best-data-recovery.com structures As computing moved into the commercial market in the late 1960s, best-data-recovery.com was stored in flat files that imposed no structure. actually climbing with them, they all seem to have some of the most expressive faces I"ve ever seen - always smiling, perfect teeth, deep wrinkles, and weathered skin. I wanted to share my collection of some of them. Here all 16 of the Sherpas from our expedition team this past Everest climb.

Everest Video Part III!

One of the most fascinating things to watch on an Everest expedition is the Puja Ceremony. A ritualistic prayer/blessing session led typically by a buddhist monk (or a few). Lots of chanting, bells ringing, incense burning, and alcoholic beverages. To westerners it is a beautiful thing to be a part of and it helps bring the team closer with each other and with the Sherpas. To the Sherpas it is a necessary ritual that needs to be done or else they won't climb up the mountain. It is a way of paying respects to the mountain gods.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbUFGrVFdWk

Everest Video Part II!!

Here we go continuing with the series....more to follow.... This is a tour of Everest Base Camp. There aren't a lot of videos out there showing what it's like on the Tibetan side of Everest. So, enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SupSwYAp_Ug

Everest 2013 Video Part I!!

Part 1 of my mini-doc series of my past Everest expedition. This is mostly footage I shot with a Canon-5D. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f5G4ryTkW0

What Happens After You've Climbed Mt. Everest Twice

....you plan a third attempt. 2015 y'all. Have to. Next year will be Manaslu. I NEED to get an 8000m peak under my belt. And considering I've already been higher than any other 8000m peak (aside from Everest of course), I should be able to summit Manaslu (in theory), the 8th highest peak in the world.

So what have I been up to in the past 2 months since I returned from Everest? A whole lot of everything. First and most importantly was for me to get myself back into the physical shape I was pre-Everest. That meant gaining back the 30 pounds of muscle I had lost over the course of the expedition. That came back surprisingly quickly. I'm now back up to where I was before and probably even stronger. It's amazing what the body can do. I have a big CrossFit competition next weekend, which I hope to do well in. It'll be a great way to measure how "back in shape" I truly am.

As for memory stuff, I am now in the midst of training for the World Memory Championships at the end of November. As for the US Competition next March, I'm seriously doubting whether I'll compete there again. The competition, in my opinion, was a total shit show this past year and unless things change (events, certain rules, and the overall organization and structure of the competition) then I won't be there. It's not worth my time. I remember sitting on stage in the final rounds last time thinking to myself "did I seriously just spend a whole year training for this?". There are bigger things to invest my time into.

As of career stuff, there is a ton of stuff in the hopper. Can't really disclose any of it now, but soon enough. All exciting things, so stay tuned!

Speed Cards - World Memory Championships 2012

My friend Ana Overgaard is making a documentary about me (she's been following me around for a couple years now) and she had a lot of footage from the World Memory Championships in London last year. Once I saw some of it, I just had to put together a short video for the Speed Cards event: http://vimeo.com/70529975