Member-only story
I Used To Climb Mountains
Now I’m happy to walk 10 minutes
When I was 26, I lived in Colorado. I was going to graduate school in Fort Collins. Just 10 minutes from campus was the Front Range. Several times a week I’d go to Horsetooth Mountain. The tallest peak in this open space is a little over 7,000 feet. There are 29 miles of trails in this 2,886 acre park.
I’d either go hiking by myself or with a friend, for several hours. I was probably hiking 15–20 miles per week. Thanks to the elevation, this was a great workout, as the trail head was at 5,000 feet. So if we climbed to the top of Horsetooth, that was a gain of 2,000 feet.
This was my normal hike during the week. I often went with my friend John, who I met in the computer lab.
I helped him debug a program he was having trouble with. I used to be a whiz when it came to writing C++ code. So that started a long and good friendship. He sorta became like my big brother. He’d look out for me on our hikes, carrying moleskin and band-aids in case I got blisters and extra water and a spare bagel since I never brought any.
I helped him whenever he had problems with his simulations and fed him whenever I cooked yummy things. It was the least I could do since he carried my water and bagel on our hikes.
