Katie is a distant friend of mine from high school, and after we ran into each other this last summer in our hometown of Rapid City, SD, I invited her and her husband, Jeff, to write for our blog. These two have an awesome story to share about their love for each other and love […]
Ann’s crazy about organizing her stuff. She can literally spend hours doing nothing but moving things around. Everything she owns has a place…everything! If I set something down and leave the room, it’s usually gone when I get back. In fact, some of our biggest fights have been over me not putting things back in […]
The morning sky is overcast and grey, but despite the drop in temperature, I still feel sweaty in my bright orange jumpsuit and helmet. I anxiously review the sequence of the dive flow in my head – “exit, get stable, find Aaron…” – when the gust from the door opening shatters my train of thought. […]
I let out a loud grunt as I pulled on the jumars with all my weight. The haul bags hardly moved. The hardest part about wall climbing is hauling all your gear up, and even though I had set up a mechanical advantage (three feet of pulling equals one foot of lifting), it was still tough. Since we were planning […]
Last January Ann and I looked over our expenses for the previous year. This is easy since we buy absolutely everything on credit cards, accruing massive amounts of frequent flyer miles and points. After assessing our transactions from 2011, we saw that there were many areas for us to cut back on our spending. We […]
Have you ever gone on a backpacking trip or a weekend climbing outing and realized you forgot something essential? I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that there have been a handful of times where Joe and I forgot to pack something we really needed in order to make a trip more enjoyable…like the time […]
Joe had his first article published by Shout! Outdoor Lifestyle Magazine earlier this month. We hope you enjoy hearing about the beginning of our love story! “Joe, the rope is stuck!” I hear over the two-way radio clipped to my harness. My heart sinks. We chatter back and forth and I realize that someone is […]
By Guest Writer Richard Freud I always believe in meeting Joe and Ann is not a coincidence for me. I still remember the first time when I met them in small restaurant near the college. I picked up some topics about politics. I didn’t expect they would respond. Actually most of tourists I met are […]
Humility…I sure wish I had more of it. Whether you are trying to climb huge rock mountains or trying to overcome something in your marriage humility is a quality that you must posses. Pride kills many mountaineers and destroys a lot of love stories. My pride has already done quite a bit of damage […]
By Guest Writer Steve High Those that know my wife and I best were blown away several months ago when we told them that we had purchased tandem skydiving tickets for each other for Christmas. “Adventurous”, “thrill seekers”, “risk takers” are not words that people would typically use to describe either of us. From the […]
There is something deep, profound, and transcendental about packing up the house that I grew up in. I am flooded with emotions as I dig through my closet and discover different little objects that I have held onto. To anyone else these things look like junk or childhood toys but many of them represent different […]
I remember the day we met Richard for the first time. Joe and I were having lunch with our Chinese friends, Stephanie and Jack, at a tiny little dumpling restaurant in Guilin. As soon as Richard arrived and started talking, we were quite impressed with how well he spoke English. We all had a wonderful […]
“Watch me here!” I yelled. The moves were hard, and the desert sun left me soaked in sweat that kept bleeding sunscreen into my eyes. I was uncomfortably stemming across the two walls of the chimney. I tried to spit the dirt out of my mouth but I could still feel the grains of sand […]
Joe and I have had a blast writing twice a week for the last year. It’s hard to believe how far we have come. God has blessed us so much. It is a tremendous honor that anyone out there follows our adventure journal. Knowing that people read our stories has helped keep it alive. We […]
There are a lot of things God did not make me. He did not design me to be a doctor or an engineer, nor did He design me to cut down big trees or run for president. It’s easy to list the things I’m not. It’s really hard to define who I am with a […]
