Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the code 321 podcast. I have Derek Cabellis with me here today. Hello, Derek.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: How are you?
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: I'm doing well.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Thanks for making the trek up to the great north here.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: No problem.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Appreciate it.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Happy to be here.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Yeah, no, great. Great to have you. So, if you don't mind, do you want to tell the folks just a little bit about kind of how you became involved in the careers you've been involved in and how you made your way to where you are today?
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Sure. Post high school, I went away to college for Biological Sciences at Clarkson University, but I very quickly found that I was spending more time with the outing club. So climbing, skiing, backcountry travel than necessarily studying calculus or chemistry. And I learned very quickly in college that just because I was good at something in high school didn't necessarily translate into that was going to fit for a college major. And after about two years of spinning my wheels, making some really good friends, and traveling around the Adirondacks, I switched to Green Mountain College, which had a major in adventure education. So you're looking at more becoming a guide or adventure educator, an instructor, and outdoor pursuits and climbing and skiing and all those good things. And I finished my four year degree there and made my way into the outdoor industry first. I started as an outward bound guide out in Minnesota for the Voyager outward bound school that was mostly canoe trips with teenagers and young adults. I spent my winters guiding for ice climbing and mountaineering in Lake Placid, New York, and I spent about four or five years doing that. And eventually I found a position at Green Mountain College, back where I had graduated from, helping to manage the student life, had a adventure program. So basically, student trip leaders that were under the supervision of a staff member, full time staff member, would be trained to take other students on trips. And there's also with the bachelor program, I was helping instruct an adjunct for those programs. And over the years, it was just a lot of living in a sleeping bag, not having necessarily the financial security you want, and seeing a lot of amazing parts of the country.
But I was looking for something that was a blend of just that, maybe some risk taking every day, no two days look the same. And eventually I was literally driving down the road on the way to Rutland, of all places. And there was this thunderclap moment where I'd done some volunteering as a firefighter in college, and I was like, well, what if you wanted to become a firefighter? There's a decent blend of it's a team sport. There's camaraderie there. There's a physicality there, and, of course, it's a dangerous pursuit.
You'd be joking yourself if you don't think it's occasionally going to be dangerous. And I was like, yeah, this kind of outdoor career is not going the direction I necessarily want. And so I applied for Burlington fire, and here we are, five years later.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah, you're doing it, man.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Trying.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: That's exciting. I didn't know you were a Pottsdam guy. Clarkson.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah, the old Potts dam. Yeah.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: My sister went to Clarkson, so I spent a little bit of time out.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: There once in a man. It was my first winter there was so staggering in how cold it could.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: You know, Massachusetts suburban white kid from Massachusetts did not adequately prepare me for the north country.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Yeah, no, our joke on the helicopters, like, when you're going to that area of New York, you basically fly to Lake Ontario, make a left. Like, fly till you see the border, and then make a. It's just. It's funny. It is cold up there, but it's a good. Like, the Adirondacks really are becoming, like, a mecca for a lot of the outdoor sports.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: I mean, Lake placid is like, Karen, I went there for the first time last year, and it really was cool. We went there the same weekend as Iron man, and it's like its own mini little colorado out there. They got a lot of outdoor shops and mountain biking and climbing, and it's a cool spot.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: I look back very fondly on my time living in the Adirondacks.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: And playing.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: It's entertaining, too, because we've talked about this before. We're seeing all these nontraditional fire recruits coming in, and Kyle and I talked a little bit about this is, you know, back in the day, you know, 1520 years ago, they saw people who came out of high school, wanted a blue collar job. They tested, took the civil service, and they became a firefighter for 25 years, retired with their pension, bought a two bedroom, two bath house, and that was that. And now we're seeing. I mean, like you said, we're seeing d one ski racers. We're seeing, like, 40 year old military people. We're seeing people like you have been out and about and done other careers and then come to the fire service. So it's kind of fascinating for that shift to happen.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think ultimately, obviously, it took me longer to get from point a to point b, where I'm at now. But on honest reflection, I think that journey made me better at the role I'm in now, both in terms of just learning myself, learning my limits. The physicality aspect of one of my favorite parts of being an outdoor educator is the woods are very equalizing. We're all cold, we're all tired, we're all hungry. It affects us all the same. So you have nothing but kind of your own grit and your own skills and ability. And I learned so much through those experiences that I think have set me up for success now.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember, like, one time, a long time ago, you and I were sitting at the kitchen table at one of the firehouses, probably station two, and we were just talking about just life stories, because that's how we are. And I remember one time you told me the story about driving a van full of kids down the wrong road with a canoe trailer.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: And having a hard time backing it up and just how difficult that was and how long it took. And one of the things I keep thinking about is, like you said, stories like that just accentuate how those life experiences. If you can make it through an experience like that and not lose your cool and blow your top off at a bunch of kids, then later, when you're in the fire department and you need to position the aerial and it's difficult for you, you have that life experience to pull from. You're not some 19 year old kid that's never had a challenge in their.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Life, I'll tell you, trying to back up a canoe trailer in a 15 passenger van with like eight teenagers screaming and laughing at you, and it's a crummy single axle canoe trailer. So you hit one pothole. Now the canoe trailer is facing the wrong direction. So you back up 2ft, pull forward 5ft, get the canoe kit trailer straight. And it's like, oh, man, if you could figure that out, not explode.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah, right. It's like a family guy where he's putting the boat in the water for sure. But it's cool to have those experiences and have a little background. And with the new style recruit academy that Kyle and I were doing when I was over there, it really allows space for those servant leaders, those unofficial leaders, to kind of rear their head and help with it, because you have people from all different levels of experience. One of the things Kyle mentioned, our last podcast was being on the hiring committee. They asked know, talk to us about a stressful situation. And some people are like, oh, I was five minutes late to school one day, and that's the most stressful thing they can think of. And other people are like, yeah, they left me behind on a mountaintop and whatever. So it's cool to watch that blend of recruits kind of find their way. And people like you are a great example of the nontraditional not right out of high school and really bring a huge asset to the job.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And also not to discount some of the younger folk coming to the job. And I try to be very honest with some of the young guys. And young. I'm 37. I'm talking about some of the guys are, heck, not even 21 years old. And just thinking where I was when I was 2021, I couldn't have done this job at that age. And good on them for being able to perform and do the job at their age. It just speaks to their character.
But it's interesting. And I think, as an institution, certainly stronger for the blend. The mix of people, the mix of experiences.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah. No, it's super cool. I was thinking about this the other day. I was talking to my wife about how being assigned to the ambulance downtown and just being, like, just having some drunken person screaming in your face, just screaming at you in a tight metal box, that gave me working through those things every night for a few years in a row gave me the ability to learn how to control my own emotions. And so then when I have my daughter and she's having a rough night and she just is just fighting it, I have that place to pull from. I know what my body does under stress, and I know how to manage that. And so you've done a lot of these outdoor adventure sports, and can you talk a little bit about how maybe some of those experience shaped your ability to compartmentalize your thought process and be productive in times when you're heightened and stressed?
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Sure.
And it's actually funny, this kind of came up just the other day, reflecting on my own interview process to get the job. We're just about to ramp up a hiring committee process in just a few weeks here. And one of the questions, obviously, during my interview was, how do you handle stress? Like, what's a moment? You had a really stressful situation. And the example I used was, there have been times ice climbing. Ice climbing is kind of more inherently dangerous. I'm talking about, like, lead climbing, not just top roping for anybody in the audience who knows the ropes trailing down below you to a belayer, and you're climbing up the ice, and it's a fickle medium. And the rule is, basically, you cannot fall your crampons, your ice tools, you're covered in pointy bits that just want to snag the ice and snap your leg or spear you. And there's times where you get scared, like, truly, you're more fatigued than you planned on. The ice was steeper, or it's colder than you thought, so you're desperately trying to get purchase points in it. And I joked with some friends of mine that, for me, I called it the voice kind of in the back of my head where it was like, you're getting amped up, you're getting scared, you're getting pumped out, you're shaking in your boots, 20 below zero, and you're dumping sweat because you're so scared. And a fall could have significant real world consequences in terms of permanent injury or death. And that voice just kind of comes from the back of your head, and it's like, hey, you're going to get hurt. Take a deep breath.
Place a piece of protection, if you can, or climb to a protected stance. Focus on what you're doing. Keep moving.
To this day, still climbing. That voice, it's just, I don't know, some deep part of the brain that just takes a high stress situation and focuses it, because I've seen similar things happen in my own brain on high stress medical calls where I remember very vividly the first time I did CPR as a volunteer. And it was just, okay, the first couple of compressions were gross. Feeling the bits of the cartilage breaking up. I was like, you're supposed to do compressions, bud. Just keep doing compressions. Just focus on that for now. And it's just that kind of whatever part of my brain chemistry that calls me into outdoor sports just allows that compartmentalization. And during that interview, they're just going on and on about this climbing and being scared, and then this voice and seeing some of the folks in the hiring gourd kind of nodding along, talking about just being objectively terrified and just stomping it down, putting it in a little box, like, yes, I'm terrified. We can't deal with that emotion right now because there's more pressing concerns of survival. Let's get to a safe stance and then safely decompress that box at another time.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think, like you said, having those mechanisms to know how and when you're going to be able to off gas some of that stress. We talk a lot about.
There's an old Navy SEAL saying that people use a lot that's like, look around, take a breath, make a call, which is just about regulating yourself. It's like, get in touch with where you are in space and time, control your breathing because that's connected to your entire body and your mind and then make a decision. And we deal with that all the time in the fire service. And Nate Perkins, one of the Burlington guys, that was my officer for a while there, one of the things he always said that I really liked know we talk know going in these fires and how it can be inherently dangerous and unsafe and two, and two out and all these other things that we talk about in the fire service. And he always know one of your best assets to safety is being really good at your job and being effective. Like if you go out and you stretch a hose line effectively, you get water on the seat of the fire, you extinguish a problem and then you get out of the building after your search is complete.
That's a mechanism of safety. Because if you make mistakes with your hose line stretch and you can't get water, and the fire is growing and the smoke's banking down, and now you're looking for victims, but you don't have adequate water. Like all of those compounding factors lead you into being unsafe. Whereas I can imagine with being a climber, just trusting yourself that you have prepared yourself adequately to the point that you're going to be successful at the task you put yourself in front of doing.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Well, it's so funny you mentioned that, because when I was a climbing guide, a big thing I would always mention, especially first time clients, or clients I'd had over the years that are going from, say, being top roped by myself or whatnot, maybe going into multi pitch climbing, and now they're looking to get into lead climbing themselves, you are your own first piece of protection.
And for folks who maybe not are super savvy with climbing or whatnot, when climbers talk about protection, if it's rock, typically it's things you slot into the cracks to basically catch the rope between yourself and the blair and keep you from plummeting to your death. So too, on ice, you have little screws that thread into the ice. Those are your pieces of protection and your physicality, your physical strength, your ability to stay calm, your ability to move efficiently and smoothly, you are your own first piece of protection. And in the world of, say, mountaineering. So snow climbing, you have your crampons and you have your big mountaineering axe, and there's all sorts of different footworking techniques and mountaineering axe techniques to climbing different pitches and steepness of snow slopes, but it was the same thing. We go through this whole long lesson of what do you do if you fall on snow and how you use your mountaineering axe to self arrest, how to slow yourself down and catch yourself from plummeting. And I was always trying to be very intentional with my students.
The best way to catch yourself from that fall is to prevent it from happening. Oh, yeah.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: And that's really fascinating. I keep drawing parallels in my head to the idea of these weather windows, because something that we deal with a lot in flight medicine is we can't do much if we're in the air and we get caught in a storm. But what we can do is we can pour over the maps, we can pour over the weather. And there's kind of like a joke, especially in New England, about, like, oh, there's like, one little wisp of cloud in the sky. The helicopter is not flying. I saw one snowflake. And we do fly, like, IFR instrument flight rules, where we can go in and out of the clouds depending on the temperature. But we do a lot of looking at the weather every time a call comes in before we accept it. We take anywhere from a few minutes, as long as it takes for the pilot and the crew to take a look at what's going on with the weather. Because when you're flying 160 knots an hour in the air, and all of a sudden a snow squall moves in and you lose your visibility, and the rotor blades freeze up. That's a lot harder to fix than seeing a snow squall on the map and saying, let's go by ground. And I think I hear a lot about these climbers, and I love climbing films. I watch all kinds of climbing films everywhere I could find them. And one of the things I always talk about is how intense these weather window discussions are about they're looking for months and months to try to plan these trips. And then there was one I watched, and the guy goes down to Patagonia, and he's there for three months waiting for a weather window. He literally lives in this guy's house. Every morning he wakes up, he checks the weather. Nope, not today. And he goes and has his tea and carries on.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: And shears the sheep. And then the next day, he wakes up, and finally, that one day, they're like, hey, you have two days of sunny weather, and every once in a while, they make the call. They get halfway up, and it's not sunny. And just having that mentality to say, this is my best shot. But pulling from your experience, and I got to imagine there's times when you're climbing, and you're like, I really want to summit this mountain. And you have to be able to say, you know what? It's not going to happen today. It's not a good choice. And I think that parallels to the fire service. There's times where it's like, I really want to go in and search that room, and you look at it and you're like, I'm just not going to happen right now. We got to do some things first. We got to wait it out. We got to get some water on it. And have you experienced that yourself, coming to terms with weighing risk versus benefit? And how does an outdoorsman approach that?
[00:18:30] Speaker A: I think an important part of it. And mind you, I have the convenience of hindsight, right? And I think I have the convenience of being a little older and now having a family and being married. Certainly when you're younger, there's this kind of machismo aspect of I want to be the best I can. I want to get to the top. I want to climb every mountain. I want to conquer the world. And there's a certain degree of growing up. You have to have. My first few seasons climbing, especially on ice.
I spent a good chunk of time in Colorado, teaching out in Colorado for an academic internship, the end of my college years. And sunny Colorado. Right. It made for great climbing, great skiing, and I got overconfident. I was climbing way above my ability just because conditions were so favorable for it. And that next winter, I came back to the Adirondacks and I got my butt handed to me up and down the park. I came and I was like, I'm a strong ice climber. I can climb any climb in the park.
There is no ice I can't climb. And, oh, my know, it got to the point where I was hanging out with some friends of mine and I was joking. I was like, I'm having a vision quest every single time I tie into a rope. Like, I go up on that ice, I get in way above my head, and sometimes psychologically, I don't come back the same. I got so scared, and knock on wood, I never got seriously injured.
But eventually you kind of have to sit there and look at yourself like, what are you doing?
You're either going to be a bold climber or you're going to be an old climber. And certainly there's a place to be bold, but you also have to have some degree of humbleness there. And there are a lot of outdoor institutions, like I mentioned, the one I work for, Howard bound, and part of that is just this idea of how can you be confident in your abilities, but also accurately self assessed? Like, what can and cannot you do? And there have been times in the mountains where you start up and like you said, the weather starts to get fickle, and you're like, well, maybe we'll just try a little further. We'll try a little further and try a little further. And as you build experience, kind of that little nagging itch in the back of your head, you have to kind of listen to that.
Maybe just, it'd be real nice to be able to be still alive and talking about how bad that weather is at a bar, having a beer with your friend instead of frozen to death at the top of this thing. And how fortunate I have been that I'm still here, still able to climb, still have my faculties and all ten fingers and toes. I've had distal frostbite a couple of times, but I haven't lost anything yet. And just building. I think you can only build that lens through experience and mentorship.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think just the wisdom that comes with experience and like you said, the mentorship. You hear these stories about these great summits, and what you don't realize is that it's quite a process to do that. I mean, it's not like they pick up their backpack from the airport baggage claim and they go to Everest and climb.
Mean, there was one. I just listened to a podcast recently about a team climbing, I think, in South America in the andes, and they went down, and they spent, like, two months just as a team, the four of them just being around each other, getting to know each other. And there are times where they'd say, hey, we're going to go to camp two. And someone's like, I don't really think that's a great idea. And they go, okay, all right, let's look at the map. Let's come up with the plan and having that discipline to win the tortoise, winning the race, rather than the hair, just trying to sprint to the point where you aren't successful. And I think there's a lot to be said for that in emergency services, too. The old adage, which I'm sure you've heard is like, fresh paramedics out of school, it's like, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something every time, right? I had an old trick I used to do on the ambulance when I was working 911, where if someone needed a cardioversion, the first thing I would do would be put them on some oxygen while I'mixing up my meds, because obviously, hypoxia is one of the first causes of arrhythmias. And half the time, the arrhythmia would go away once you oxygenate them. And it's like, people are like, oh, man, why did you do that? Why don't you just give, like, the adenosine? It's like, because it's so low risk. And I've done this enough to know that it's not going to harm them. It might have an impact. And now we're out of the woods, like, just that, taking a second. It's so tempting just to drop that magic elixir and fire it in there and fix it. But then if you miss something and it's not actually what's going on, you just made things ten times worse.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Right? It's so funny you mentioned that. Just the idea of sometimes less can be more. And sometimes if you can do the small tasks, the simple tasks, really well, then over time, the bigger picture becomes so much easier.
You can mess yourself up. Say you don't, you don'tie into the rope correctly, or you don't fasten your harness correctly, and you can do it thousands and thousands of times, but you miss it. You do it wrong the one time, and then real world consequences there, especially as an instructor with students, or you're with someone new in the mountains, and you need to have that confidence in each other's ability, and you only get that through that repetition of like, okay, well, they can tie and dress their figure eight knot on their harness correctly, so at least we have that. We have a foundation to build off of that trust.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I took a climbing trip up in Acadia, and I was just up there for just a solo trip, and I saw this mountain guide service. I was like, oh, just hit these guys up and see whatever. And they had some private climbing tours. I was like, cool. So I went out with this guy, and it was just me and this other guy, super squared away climber, and it was wild because I'm not like a crazy climber, and Acadia is not that hard. There's nothing too crazy there. So I wasn't that worried about it, but it was just him and I, and we were doing multi pitch sport climbing, and so I would lead, and then he would lead, and as I was doing it, I was like, does this guy want to spend some more time with me to make sure that I'm rigging his ballet line properly? Because we just did it. And I talked to him afterwards, because when you're at the top, you just kind of eat your lunch and hang out, because that's like the culture of the outdoors world.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: And he's like, no, man. It looks like I'm laid back, but everything you're doing, I'm watching. I'm watching how you put your harness on. I'm watching how you rig the line. I can climb and watch you.
It's not like I just was blissfully ignorant, and I was like, man, that's so fascinating because I was so task saturated that I was focused on my, I wasn't worried about what he was doing. But like you said, I mean, these adventure things, you're relying on each other, you're relying on yourself and trying to have that culture where you're able to take a step back. And some days, maybe you're just not in the right headspace to make that climb. And you got to be honest with yourself. Like, I really want to do this, but maybe it's just not today 100%.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: And I've climbed with a lot of folks, and sometimes you get to the base of a climb, you look at it, and you just get bad juju, and it's like, do you want this lead? No. Why don't you take it? Well, I don't want it either.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Want to go back to the parking.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Lot, have a beer? Let's go back to the parking lot, have a beer. And some days, it just is what it is. Now, certainly when I was guiding, I was like, all right, well, somebody paid to be here, so it doesn't matter. But, and there's strategy there, too, of, you're always operating well within your call it scope of practice, your physical ability to not fall or not put yourself in harm's way because you were responsible for a. Yeah, yeah, I remember I.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Was climbing just in Bolton with one of my buddies who's from mountain warfare, so he's very military style, which is a little different than what I've learned through the fire service and through traditional rock climbing. And I remember we were doing some sport climbing, and I was belaying him from the bottom, and he was climbing up, and I noticed that he took, like, an extra long distance between the two anchors, and he was getting ready to hook into the next one. And I was, like, doing the math in my head. I'm looking at where he is, where his next hooked anchor is, and then where the ground is. I'm like, that seems like that's wider than I'd like it to be.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: This math ain't math.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: When I climb, I always think about how far would I comfortably fall without snapping my spine in half? And if I'm looking down, I'm like, I don't want to fall that far. I put anchor in.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: And he was doing that, and I was, like, trying to think because I didn't want to distract him because he looked like he was getting fatigued. But I also didn't know if he realized how far away the anchor was. So I, in my head, recited it, like, three or four times to try to get the timbre of my voice and the tone right. And I was like, hey, just food for thought. And I tried to say it just like this.
You really need to hook that anchor as soon as possible, because I didn't want to stress him out, but I didn't want to not be heard, so I wanted to be very clear. And so he goes to hook the anchor, and he's probably a foot too low where he set his feet. And so he's, like, stretched on his tippy toes, and all of a sudden, I see all the muscles in his back and his arm starting to stretch, and he's starting to move a little. I'm like, oh, no. And then again, I'm like, you really need to hook that. Trying to be like. And he didn't hook it, and he whipped, and it was like, I came off the ground. He didn't hit the ground, but he came down hard enough that I came, like, probably 5ft off the ground, just trying to counterbalance him. And he was, like, upside down in a seat harness. I'm like, okay, so in the future, let's leave a little bit less gap there. And that's a perfect example of, like, that can happen to us in emergency medicine. In the fire service, you're kind of, like, in the flow, and you're not really paying attention, and all of a sudden, you're like, how far away am I from the door? This smoke's a lot darker than it was a minute ago.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, that repetition, your confidence really only comes through that repetition of knowing you're going to do it right because you've mastered that craft.
In the world of climbing. For me, people always ask, like, well, the ice is so unsecure, it's so dangerous. And, well, yeah, both of those things are true. But over a certain time, you learn this. Like, when you swing the ice tool and it hits the ice and the pick buries itself in, you get this kind of tactile feel through the ice tool, you can feel when the placement's good, and then when the pick hits the ice, it creates this kind of, like, hollow, like, thuck sound. And you can hear when a placement's good, and that comes from experience. Right. And so it becomes no longer even a guessing game. It's just like, no, I know I can hang a car off that ice tool right now because my experience has taught me that.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I watched a documentary on a climber who actually ended up dying later, because any serious climber that climbs long enough usually is put in a pretty significant situation. But he was ice climbing, and they asked him exactly what you just said. They said, how do you know about this? And how do you do it with all these tools? And he was like, they're not tools. They're part of my body. When I'm climbing and I have my ice picks and all this stuff, it's my body. I feel like I'm holding onto it with my fingertips. And this particular climber does multi surface climbing, where he climbs, like, a little bit on the ice, and then he puts his axes in his backpack or whatever, and then climbs on the rock and then goes back to the ice, whatever. And I thought that was really interesting how he's like. It's like my hands, like, I can feel it. I can feel the ice, right?
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Yeah, you become almost like an extension of the body. And the first thing that comes to my mind, I'm now assigned tower one downtown and can be an intimidating vehicle to learn to drive. It's the largest truck in the fleet. You have this eight foot bucket hanging out in front of the truck that has struck a few things throughout the.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: City, and some things have struck it.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: And some things have struck it. Yeah, that's an important note. It's not always our fault. That's right. That's an important note. And learning to drive it. I've been assigned not quite a year now, and I feel very confident wheeling that truck around the city. And it's almost like I have this sense in my brain of where the geometry of this truck around me exists in kind of three dimensions. And it's so amazing, our brain's ability to learn that it's just this amorphous. Like, I know where that bucket is out in front of the truck. I know where the tail swing is going to be behind me, just through wheeling it, and driving and driving and driving and putting hours into training and being. Trying to be as good as I can. And just how your brain adapts over time to be able to just now, the extension of yourself moving in three spaces.
Certainly the focus I've found free soloing over the years. I don't typically free solo on rock. Rock climbing is terrifying to me. My brain's broken. I love ice climbing. Objectively, the more terrifying thing that will kill you probably should be scarier, but I love free soloing on ice. The world melts away. You are just your set of ice tools, your crampons, the ice, the temperature, the woods, the route. And I've been on a couple of searches when I was a volunteer looking for confirmed entrapment and getting a little disoriented, but just having that, like, okay, focus. Think about what you're doing. Where did you come in from? Finding a point, finding a piece of furniture, finding a wall that I was able to reorient myself. Stopped and listened for a little while. Kind of, like, slowed my breathing down, found my partner. We continued searching, and just. It's so interesting to me, the overlap between the focus I found soloing and that focus you can force yourself to have while searching in pitch black.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Well, Derek, I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show today, and definitely stay safe out there. And I will not be ice climbing. That sounds terrifying to me. I'll go in a burning building. Any. You know, ever since. I think it was. Corey Sousa told me that when you're climbing, if the ice detaches, the wall you're climbing on falls off the mountainside. I just can't get around that.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: A friend of mine, he's a good, accomplished rock climber, and he says, guaranteed, every year, Derek, your climbs are going to fall down at least once a year. They're going to disappear. And I'm like, all right, well, fair, yeah.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: But so crazy. Well, I appreciate you come all the way up here and definitely stay safe there.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: No, thank you for having me. Had a great time.
