Live An Adventure Podcast

The Power of Being Alive All I could think of was to move one foot after the other. I had a hard time breathing and the headache pounding me like a hammer did not help. This was a message from my brain telling me I should be on lower ground, not at 6,000 m (18,000 ft) on top of Huayna Potosi near La Paz in Bolivia. It was 3 in the morning, at midnight I had woken up and put on 3 pairs of socks, 3 pants, 2 fleeces, 1 jacket, and 2 hats to begin the final ascent to the summit at 6,088 m (20,000 ft). I tried to think of my family and friends to forget the excruciating effort I was making. I brought to my mind the image of a hammock waiting for me in the tropics in a couple of months at home. Then I stopped thinking altogether. I concentrated on walking.  After a couple of hours which felt like a couple of weeks, for a fleeting moment, I asked myself: Why in the world are you here? I answered myself immediately: because you wanted to. Yes, I wanted to challenge myself by climbi...

There's this ‘thing' we refer to as the presence of God. I'm not sure if there is another way of labeling it or a more clever turn of phrase to correctly describe it. But then again I like the phrase the presence of God: that's exactly what it is. It does what it says on the tin. It's when God is near, it's when God feels closer than the air in a steam room. It's when all this talk about ‘it' becomes talk about ‘Him'. And if we believe that God is not dead but alive, it is the most precious ‘commodity' we have. When Jesus left earth to be with his father again he said that he would leave his ‘spirit' with us. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost, our comforter. It's the ‘spirit' that breathes life into the law. Now, laws are good but we know from the whole of human history that no one can keep them all. The law is just half the story - that's all it can only ever be. The ‘bestsellers' - the ones that have the whole st...

I arrived in Madrid on Dec 19, 2007 at 3 am. The first question was: Do I pay a cab to get to the hostel or do I wait for the metro to start operating at 6am? I decided to get to the hostel. I had to crash on a couch until 8 am in the common area of Cat's hostel so I would not have to pay for the night, I had a budget to keep. Cat's hostel is a restored Arab home with beautifully intricate geometric designed walls with a fountain in the middle of the courtyard. After getting my bed in the dorm, I stepped out of the hostel and it was raining. I headed to the Prado museum trying to stay dry. I prayed for better weather. Once inside the museum, Velazquez and Goya, along with the best of 16th - 17th century art, were represented in a display of baroque and religious art unparalleled anywhere in the world. The best thing about the Prado was that I got in for free with my international teacher card :-) My friends had to pay 9 euros. By the time we walked out the rain had stopped. We...