1: Never reveal everything you know. 2: Never use your training experience to justify bad behavior.

And what I want is for me to influence as many people as possible to do better than yesterday, so that tomorrow will be better than today. I’ll get to that later. I have plenty of time. First, some background. This story begins about eight years ago with me and a friend, Matt, at a rock-climbing gym in New Jersey.

🏊‍♀️ 🚲 💪

We were climbing a new route called “The Last of the Wild Horses.” The route had a lot of cruisy sections and a lot of climbing where the footing was less than ideal. It also had an overhanging section, known as “The Last Chance.” This overhang was a dangerous spot; many people could only get to this point by falling several stories from the roof. I began the climb, and when I reached the overhang, I discovered there was a good foothold on the roof above. I continued up, and when I reached the top I knew that this would be my last chance to stand on a ledge and hold on to the rope.

The section above was probably no more than 12 feet high, but there was no way I was going to attempt going over the ledge without roping. I got down to the ledge, and I didn’t really know what to do. I had climbed a lot of routes in the past, but none of them required me to rappel the final step. I looked around and saw that a few people were still on the ledge. The next guy climbed up to me, handed me a jump rope, and said “here, you need to learn how to use this, too!”