Mountain Climbing

I have been so consumed by business in the last few weeks that I have not posted anything about my recent AWESOME experience climbing Torreys, one of Colorado's many mountains with a summit over 14,000 feet above sea level!

We, David Marooney, Jon Regner and myself, made a 3 day trip of it. We set out from our homes at about 9:30pm on a Friday night and finally reached a road that Jon's Accord could not travel without falling apart at about 11:00pm. We geared up and hiked in about 3 miles in the middle of the night, it was clear and there were an amazing amount of stars visible along with the most glorious view of the milky way that I have ever experienced.

THE COLD NIGHT -

We finally reached a good spot to make camp at about 1:30pm (I think). We set up camp, and after a little bickering over where to hang a "bear bag" we went to sleep in our tent snuggled up in our warm sleeping bags... that is to say, Dave and I were warm, Jon had decided to brave the 20 something temperatures in his hammock (a decision that he began to regret in about an hour after going to sleep as his limbs slowly grew numb from the cold).

Long about 5:30am in the morning Dave says to me, "you awake", to which I replied "yep, you?, and then we proceeded to wake Jon's cold stiff personage up and prepare for the mountain...

Jon and I had no idea what we were in for as we had (as we usually do) left the route planning to Dave, our resident boy scout and map buyer. I personally like surprises when it comes to adventures such as this so long as Dave lets me know what type of climbing conditions to prepare for.


THE ASCENT-

The next few hours consisted of traveling up an open field of loose soccer ball sized rocks before getting to an area that was more cliff like that we had to cross before coming to a more typical trail. A few more hours of trial and then we found ourselves on terrain that we all felt to be quite traitorous as we were straddling a house-back-shaped peak of rock looking down to the left and the right to nothing but a couple thousand feet of steep rocky slopes! We worked our way across about 30 yards of this ridge to a spot that involved scaling a rock face that was only about 15' wide but seemed to be much harder than it looked due to our fatigued leg muscles and lack of mental stamina at this point (not to mention oxygen).


THE SUMMIT -

After successfully coming across this portion, with adrenaline and excitement souring, we only had another couple hundred yards of icy snow to pass to the summit!

An amazing summit at that, by this time in the day (about 12:30) the clouds were rolling in and we could see 3 separate rain/thunder storms miles in the distance with clear beautiful skies directly over head. An experience that is worth the struggle every time.

THE TREK DOWN -

The trip down was long as we decided not to go back the way we came, climbing up is an entirely different story than down climbing. So we went back to camp the long way down the opposite side of the mountain, through a valley , up and over a smaller ridge and back down to camp through some amazing wooded areas. We met some hunters scouting for Mountain Goats and saw some very interested birds that I can't remember the name of. Anyway, it was a long way down and by the time we got to camp you could tell that the sky was about to break loose with some rain so we hurried to get our rain gear on and prepare for a cold wet night.

CAMPING AFTER A LONG JOURNEY -

We scoured the woods for fire wood and Jon built us a fire ( Dave is on strike form fire building in the woods until we get as good at it as he is I guess :) Lucky for me, by the time I got back with some kindling to use Jon had a fire going! The rain finally broke and the skies cleared as we sat around enjoying the night with some freeze dried food and good company.

All in all a great trip, probably my favorite mountain climbing experience to date. My sleeping bag kept me warm, my boots kept my feet dry and warm and we made it to the summit and back again in one piece without any injury, a successful journey!

BTW, Jon decided to join us in the tent on the second night and slept much warmer.

Piano Business

I just thought that I would let you all know that I am lovin' the piano service business! I have been doing it exclusively now for 3 week and have experienced a great amount of success in finding and serving new clients from my website and from my Craigslist.com ads.

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders as I go about building this business... it was about time that I step back to evaluate my life and take control of it once again.

I have been living the last 5 or so years in fear, fear that I wouldn't be able to succeed on my own. Fear that I wouldn't know what to do when a decision is needed, fear that I wouldn't be able to provide for the financial needs of my family.

Anyway, these last weeks have been awesome and relieving and everything that I had hoped for.

A good friend of mine always says, "if you do what you are supposed to do, you'll get what your are supposed to get", I am trying my best to live by this principle.

Back To Basics

After a long, long few months of being in limbo over what I am going to do for a living after being laid off at Carpenter's Touch, I have learned a few life defining things about myself and my goals:

1. I want peace and simplicity in life more than I want extravagant success and wealth (a huge breakthrough for me)

2. I want to do something with my hands (I am a craftsman at heart I think)

3. I want to have a deep satisfaction in whatever I do for a living more than I want a huge paycheck and status symbols (again, something that I am just coming to grips with)

4. I want freedom to spend time with my daughters and wife and also to do things that are important to me like mountain climbing (despite what I have thought for years, I am beginning to think that you don't have to be among to super wealthy to have "time", you just have to be a little more strategic, creative and committed to making it happen than the average "Joe")

5. It sounds cliche I know, but I want to be my own boss! I want to be dependent on myself, to know that if I work hard and do what I supposed to do I will be rewarded for my efforts. I want this more than I want a huge paycheck... I would gladly take a pay cut to gain control and freedom.

Those things being learned, I have decided to launch back into the piano service business. I have placed some ads around the web and built a website and have seen some pretty good success from those venues, not enough to live on but for free advertising they have done well.

I will be putting the final touches this week on the acquisition/purchase of a 40 year old Denver based piano service business that I came across a few months ago and have been in the negotiations process for a while now. Anyway, we will hopefully be putting the final touches on the deal and sealing it up this week!

This is all very new and exciting for us and I am looking forward to being in control once again... something that I have missed for a long long time.

My Invite Systems Journey

I think that I have told this to most people but just for the record... I no longer work for Invite Systems, the internet marketing company that I had about a 3 month stint with. As is turns out they were not able to honor the agreement that we had for a base rate salary + commissions on sales... something about waiting on 4.5 million in venture capital before they can pay me.

Anyway, after having to wait and wait for paychecks and then have them be only half of what I expected I decided to cut ties week before last. I still have some work in front of me reporting them to the Labor Board and the BBB.

I have fallen back on the old faithful piano tuning business and hope to see us do well with it as I really enjoy it and can make decent money all while being my own boss and in control of my own destiny!

My Piano Tuning Website.... Feedback Please

Hey guys... My piano tuning website is finally up and running! I am looking for some feedback from whoever reads this article:

The site, www.DenverPianoTuners.com, was ranked on Google last week on the first page of a bunch of search terms and in the #1 & #2 spots for "Denver Piano Tuners" (the term that I was after the hardest).

Anyway, my quandary is this: I have been getting like 75 hits a day from Denver area residents which is great! The problem is that I have only gotten like 3 leads since the site was up. Is there something about the site that is turning people off? What are your thoughts and feelings on the look and feel, the content, etc.?

Any honest feedback would be much appreciated! Thanks.