As you can tell, there was a huge gap between this post and my last post. It wasn’t because I lost interest or stopped climbing, but because I didn’t know what direction to take my blog site. I’ve been wanting to get back on the blog life again, but honestly I still don’t really know what direction to take my site. I know I want to integrate two important elements into my life: climbing and fatherhood, but beyond that I’m not too sure where to go.

So, with that being said, I think I’ll just start writing and see where this all goes.

My name is Jed. I currently live in LA with my wonderful wife and our son, Everett, and our cat, Mochi. I’m obsessed with climbing (not surprising), and have made it a life goal to try and find a career that has climbing involved. Before all that though, let me just go through my unglamorous climbing origin story:

My earliest memory of (indoor) rock climbing is with my father. I was a tiny kid (6? 7? 8 maybe?) and he took me to an indoor climbing gym. I remember this day pretty clearly. Very clearly actually. It had a huge impact on me and to this day remains one of my most vivid memories. I remember the building it was in, the road it was on. I remember the blue walls and the glass door between the front desk (that was one of those glass display types) and the climbing area. In my memory the grey mats on the floor definitely remind me that climbing has come a long way. I remember climbing on the vertical wall directly to the right of the glass door that separated the climbing area and the front desk. I rainbow climbed and my father belayed me. I got to the top and looked down, my father told me he’d lower me. I remember being nervous but not scared and once I was back down stoked to get back up the wall. This memory draws to a close here. The last thing I remember is my father challenging me to climb on only the colors and points to the one other guy in the gym (who I remember is traversing). This traversing dude is climbing a longer monochrome climb. We watch him for a few minutes in awe. It’s like he’s dancing. He’s so fluid and graceful. “I can’t do that,” I say. My dad gives me some encouragement but I refuse. He doesn’t mind, and puts me back on belay. I wish I could say I started climbing then and realized I was a climbing protege, but I was about two decades away from really falling in love with the sport.

Fast forward to 24(ish) year old me. I now live in LA and I find myself alone at home. I’m in grad school now and am in a serious relationship with my girlfriend (soon to be wife). I have a lot of friends in the area, but for some reason on this particular day everyone was busy. My girlfriend was at work, none of my seven (yes, seven) flatmates were home, all my friends were either in class or working, and I for some magical reason had finished all my school work. I had no clue what to do so I looked up the nearest climbing gym. I was shuffling through my childhood memories earlier that week and had stumbled across my first climbing experience with my dad. “I’ll need to check that out again,” I remember telling myself. “One day if I’m bored.” And that day of reckoning came. On this fateful day I googled the closest gym and to my luck there was one just 3 or 4 miles away! I hopped in my car and drove over. When I got there, it was relatively empty. The routes were taped and you had to move crash pads around in order to not die.

It was fantastic, and I haven’t stopped climbing since.