SLRHS

I think it is incredible that I still feel very strong feelings of friendship for a lot of people I went to High School with, even if we don't see each other much.  Basically, if you're one of those guys (or girls) I hung out with a lot from 92-95, then a bit less from 95-99, then a bit less than that from 99-Present, I still think you're awesome, and I still really appreciate how you helped make me, me.

...Wild Canyon Games...

It is real important to me to capture this right now - the way I feel about the recently concluded Wild Canyon Games is phenomenally hard to explain, but I'm going to do my best here, and hopefully people will stay with me.

Trust me, when I write blog posts I think about all the possible negative things people can say and think about the things I write, and it sorta consumes me, but i want to be really accurate with these feelings because the fact that this post can potentially live forever really excites the dormant genealogist in me.

The Wild Canyon Games are a Nike sponsored event that take place in the Oregon high desert - a place until this weekend I had no idea existed, but a place that owns a huge, huge memory in my life now, and I feel like I owe it a lot, as weird as that sounds.

The Wild Canyon Games (WGC) took place over the course of 3 separate days, with various events which I'll do my best to explain, and of course you can always visit the Wild Canyon Games website to see more details.

We arrived in Portland on Thursday night, June 2nd...that feels like an absolute eternity ago, mostly because the "we" in this paragraph were me and some coworkers, only about 3 of them I knew well, and the remaining were essentially complete strangers.  The comparisons to me living my own Survivor in a way are really plentiful - it just felt a lot like a giant game for a few days.

I started on Tuesday of last week at TomTom, a new career venture and a whole new industry, "new" was the theme of my last week, and the newness of the faces at the airport of my teammates really was something pretty intimidating, but I was as much excited as I was nervous.  But I feel like I'm not explaining the games well.

The weeks leading up to the event I looked at the WGC website and felt it was all sorta lacking in logistical information, it didn't really explain to me what the events were, and now I can see why. It was 36 hours of physical mayhem - events in these games ranged from insanely hard (.25 mile completely WAY uphill run) to a one mile swim at 7AM in a freezing cold lake or even tame ones like a 300 yard sprint through grass as part of an overall relay race unlike anything you've ever seen.

The games are a masterpiece, the event management is phenomenal, and the site for these games, a Young Life camp buried deep in Oregon is a setting unlike any other piece of earth I've ever been to.  TomTom asked me to be a part of this, and while it was intimidating, I can't imagine a better way to meet the crew and meet the culture, and I have to say I am incredibly impressed - not against my preconceived notions, but mostly as compared to what my fears were.

We landed in Portland and slept in a hotel nearby, then left the next afternoon 3.5 hours or so out to the Ranch where the games were taking place.  Upon pulling into the facility, we first passed the giant lake for the mile swim - buoys as far as the eye could see, and just a massive expanse of rock and cliff around it, a desert that was more inviting than Arizona, with a challenging swim venue nestled into it its nooks and crannies.

As we drove into the camp, we were greeted with what we were told would be "dorms" for camping, but happened upon some brand new better-than-camp style sleeping arrangements, which we shared with a really friendly team from Nike, who sponsored the event and sponsored some of our gear as well.

We had our introductory dinner (lasagna and sandwiches in grab-n-go boxes, and made ourselves comfortable at the expansive camp area. I don't want to go into detail on this camp itself, but it was basically an amusement park - waterslides, wall climbing courses, disc golf courses, wiffleball fields, giant basketball complex, and ice cream diners, it was just immense, and everything a kid could ever want they could have.

The most amazing thing was this place was dry - no alcohol of any kind - and also no wireless connectivity - we were all just there, we all just had to take each other in, all of our flaws and personality quirks and differences, but overall there was SO little in the world of conflict at this thing, it was entirely harmonious, and the setting is responsible for nearly all of that, I believe that completely.

We all went to bed terrified of our next day's adventure, but excited. The day would begin with a 2 events that were to occur simultaneously.  The 2 events were as follows:

Triathlon-

1. 1 Mile Swim in a lake (I did this one in 36ish minutes, not sure of exact time, but I was thrilled. I think it may have been a .92 course, but my zigzagerific style def. made up that .08, no questions asked.
2. 15 Mile Mountain Bike Ride from Hell 
3. 10K through the campsite, on pavement, gravel and dirt.

And while that was going on, the other 4 members of your team competed in a Geocache unlike anything I have ever seen.  Geocache teams divided up into groups of  2, and set out on foot into this massive wilderness in order to rack up as many caches as possible, which wasn't an easy feat. They were in the sun from 7-12, up and down immense hills and mountains looking for a cache of various point values.

We did these 2 events simultaneously and the scores were combined, in a really odd, but effective fashion.  That was the morning.

The afternoon was a team race of sorts, unlike anything I have ever done.  There were 7 different events that needed to be completed by your 7 team members, and having only done one of these events, I'll explain what the other 6 seemed like to me:

1. Cliff Jump - this was really a 12 foot jump off of a fake rock ledge in the water park area, into the pool. The temps were cold, but not too much of a challenge
2. Waterslide - not much to say about this
3. Adventure Course - this was a massive 3 story ropes-ish type course, where a competitor would strap him or herself in and climb up stairs and over bars, through, over and under ropes and other devices that forced balance and poise, very cool activity.
4. Cliff Swing - People were pulled back by a winch about 50 feet up into the air over 30 or so foot deep cliff, and they had to swing, and attempt to throw a water balloon into a parachute laying on the ground below, which proved to be exceedingly difficult and also extremely chaotic.
5. Zipline - There were a few ziplines that started from about 1/8th of a mile up a very steep cliff, down to a lake below.  Teammates flew down this line and attempted to throw a tennis ball into about a 5 by 5 foot floating target, when they were about 15 feet in the air...they came crashing into the water and had to swim to shore, while still harnessed.
6. Ropes Course - At least 50 feet in the air, at a very high point in the campground, a teammate had to navigate through a challenging rope course and attempt to jump 10 feet off a platform, while harnessed in and 50 feet up, to catch a trapeze - this was a 50/50 proposition
7. Blob/Iceberg -  This is what I competed in, and it started with walking up a tower, about5 15 to 20 feet up in the air. You'd walk to the end, pirate style, of this tower, and jump onto a blob - which would shoot the competitor in front of you in line off of this inflatable blob into the lake. It was a catapult of sorts, using an giant inner tube of sorts.  Once you yourself were propelled by the competitor behind you into the water, you would then swim a little less than 1/8 of a mile to an "iceberg" which was a floating wall of death, of which you had to use foot and hand stirrups to climb yourself up the wall.  This was immensely challenging given my 3 factors:
1. I have no upper body strength
2. I had already done a mile swim in the AM and I don't know how to use my legs to swim.
3. This blob had a backwards pitch to it a bit at the start, you really needed to use all your body muscle to get up it.

So the goal was to move through all 7 of those as quickly as possible - there were 4 events in group A, and 3 events in group B, which were separated by 1.1 miles or so - it was a challenge to run back and forth to these, but we had to do it.

We completed the triathlon near the bottom of the pack, maybe 80th out of 105 teams or so, but in the Challenge events in the afternoon we fared MUCH better, I think 49th out of the 105 teams, which was a big point of pride for us.

We went to bed completely exhausted, but still had the full team relay race to go.  Commencing at 7:30 Sunday morning, the relay race consisted of:

1. 300 yard sprint on grass
2. Mt. Bike course, shorter than saturday but still challenging
3. Obstacle course - which I took part in, and started strong, but ended badly with failing to climb over the 9 foot wall, and fighting real hard up the 100 yard uphill run after the bridge
4. 1/2 mile sprint on pavement
5. 1/8 mile sprint swim
6. Halfway Up a 1/4 mile steep, steep hill
7. The 2nd half of the steep, steep hill.

The event was incredible, the relay was so fun, and the games concluded after these events.

The amount of time and energy the volunteers and staff put in was nothing short of remarkable, they worked day and night, tirelessly, to ensure we had an amazing time, and we did.

But mostly I am so happy to be part of the TomTom organization.  At this point, this type of event isn't yet in TomTom's wheelhouse, a lot of first timers and rookies were taking part in a series of events like this, and it really was amazing to see how 14 people (out of an office of around 80!) can group together and perform in very challenging situations, with zero drama, zero moments of non-support, and zero doubt.

It was an inspiring weekend, from the 1 arm and 1 legged individuals pushing through immense physical barriers, to the personal accomplishment of swimming a mile, kickstarting my interest to finish an Olympic triathlon...I am taking so much away from this weekend, and I can't find what thing or what source should be the recipient of my overwhelmingly positive emotion I am currently bottling up...

Thanks for reading and just sign up next year.