The Beginning

This is a place for me to post summaries of my outdoor adventures including photos.

I got started in the outdoors as many do as a boy scout in a very active troop that went hiking, camping, backpacking, and navigated canoes down local rivers. In eighth grade I went on a long backpacking trip to the Philmont Scout Ranch (http://www.philmont.com/ ) in New Mexico that opened my eyes to how much I like being outside. After graduating from High School with a 4.0, I attended Pacific University where I was very active in the outdoor program ( www.pacificu.edu/outback/ ) after hurting my back in a match that effectively ended my 14-year career as a wrestler. Having always been an athlete, I needed to find another physical pursuit that would match the intensity, training and discipline required to be a wrestler. I found mountaineering and backpacking to be just such a pursuit. One summer I hiked the entire Oregon section of the Pacific Crest Trail (500 miles, 33 days) and the next summer I went on a 6-week road trip backpacking and climbing in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

Throughout college, I guided fellow students on hiking, mountaineering, rock climbing, rafting and sea kayaking trips. It was the best jobs I have ever had and the job that has paid the least financially! After graduating from college with a computer science degree, I got a job at a construction accounting software company called Bidtek. As a bachelor living alone for the first time with a real job, I had some interesting but generally lonely and depressing times for about a year and a half. The thing that always kept me sane was that I had a backpack packed and ready to go in the back of my car so that when Friday afternoon rolled around I could head for the hills. It was also at this time that I really started focusing on fitness and racking up different climbs and routes throughout Oregon and SW Washington. In perhaps the best shape of my life, in one season I climbed Mt Hood, Mt Adams, St Helens, South and Middle Sisters. In the case of South Sister, it was the 14th time I had reached that summit and on Hood, I set my personal record of just over 3 hours from the car to the summit.

Just before we switched over to the new millennium, I got a call from an old friend and my future wife. Just 6 months after I had all but given up looking for her on the internet, she found me….on the internet ( http://www.classmates.com/ ) We had met riding the bus together when we were eight, been friends in high school but never dated and obviously never forgotten about each other. When you get married and have children your previous life ends and your new life begins.

The first order of business in my new life was finding a new job. While the Nasdaq had already crashed down from its 5000 point height, there were still stories all around me of people getting Dot Com rich. My first venture in this arena was a company called Handyman Online Inc. We matched (over the net) qualified contractors with homeowners looking for work to be done. I started the week after my honeymoon and the business folded up 9 months later a victim of trying to expand (with VC money) faster than its customers arrived. My stock options became….worthless. Next up was wine.com where I was intrumental in developing software to handle the fulfillment of orders that did not come fast enough. After 14 months, the Portland office was closed which was a convienient way of laying off most everyone and my stock options were rendered…..worthless. Wine.com is now based in the bay area and if you would like to use my software, just go to http://www.wine.com/. Next I went to my third startup in as many years, QuikTrak Inc. ( http://www.quiktrak.com/ ) and developed our product called Revoquest. I remain there today as the Database Administrator and we are not a start up any longer! The advantage of working at startups is that you are building something new and having to wear many different hats. The disadvantage of startups is that you are building something new and wearing different hats all without much support. The result is long 50 – 100 hour (yes I have worked 100 hours in a week) work weeks including weekends. The end result of 4 years in this environment was that I was tired, I had gained 50 lbs, I felt like I had not got to see my family (my wife and two girls) very much (although I was doing a great job supporting them financially) and I was physically unable to climb big mountains.

Last year, things started changing. The Revoquest product matured and had an adequate customer base, so we could start hiring additional people and I was able to scale back my work week to 40 to 50 hours a week. In addition, I finally got fed up with my lack of exercise and got back into the gym. The result has been a re-emergence of the old Abram and thus my reason for creating this site. Over the past few months I have lost 33 of the 50 lbs I gained and started getting outside again. I will use this site to document my outdoor adventures and my journey from a overweight computer programmer back to a hard core outdoor athlete. I plan to share with you the news from my adventures (including photos), and information about my training plan.