I feel very fortunate to be considered for this campaign by FedEx.  The production team from GOOD Inc. was amazing to work with.

A good introduction to SymBiotechs USA’s new company name as well.  Introducting K12 PROSTHETICS!

Hope you enjoy!

What they did right:

1. CPR is important and can be necessary in scary situations.  This makes it boring and turns people of the newer generation off to thinking about it.  So grab their attention by using a film star they all LIKE to watch.

2. Stick with your star’s type casting.  Movie producers are very good at using actors in the way people want to see them.  They’ve already figured out what works; stick with it!

3. Using the same subtle film techniques that make you feel like you’re inside the movie while you watch (stuff that makes you duck, cover your eyes, move to the music etc) is something lost on most commercials.  No one really likes being told everything like an idiot.  Instead, use “observation scenes” like Vinnie’s thugs pulling out the phone, turning up the music and getting into rhythm.  It’s more entertaining and it’s more memorable!

4. Visual recap with custom logos.  Genius!  Again, easy to remember and ties it all together.

5. Wrap it up.  You’ve made the sale.  People watched liked and will remember your video.  You given them something of value and now you can confidently offer your product or service in just a few short words and your viewers can take action without being treated like they’re buying a used car.

That brings me to an interesting thought: Why is it that when you go to buy a used car, the salesman’s biggest skill seams to be changing your mind (making you actually NOT want to buy a car)???  Seams to me that if someone is coming to your point of sale, they want to buy, but used cars salesmen continue to do what they’re so well known for which is pushing, pushing, pushing and changing people’s minds.  If someone was coming to me for something I want to sell, I wouldn’t want to push them, because that would be pushing them away.  I wouldn’t want to change their thinking, because they’re thinking they want to buy!  Guess I’d never make it in polyester pants!

I have to dedicate this post to my beautiful, wonderful wife, and to all the great moms out there!

I saw a license plate today that said GR8MOM.  It was on a very nice Cadillac Escalade.  At first I began to have critical thoughts a bit about the boastful plate and the flashy car, but then I realized how wonderful this was!  Here is a family with the wealth to own an Escalade, and you would expect that their value system would follow what seams to be the rest of the world, but instead, this woman is praised for, and proudly displays that her focus is on being a good mom.

It made me think about how great of mom Sara is and all the really hard work she puts into it.  Think about how much moms who are dedicated enough to that role actually do.  Now think about how little recognition there is for that role in our society!  Wouldn’t it be great if mom’s were treated like movie stars?  Shouldn’t normal stay at home mom’s be the ones glorified by the media?  On second thought, porn stars and cheating politician’s get better recognition than mom’s do by society!  Maybe what we need is to change what kind of recognition we value?

I’ll admit that I can understand why so many women want to work outside the home.  It’s easier than raising kids full time, you get more recognition, more admiration, a more clearly defined cause (think woman’s rights and equality vs. potty training + “my kids did what to your yard?” etc…).  This makes me think we should just make it more rewarding for mom’s to raise their kids as I truly believe that to be a far more important job than any other job a woman could have.  I’m not saying that no woman should work and that every woman should have kids now.  What I’m saying is that if a woman has children, there’s no way her mothering can be made up for by anyone else.  I really think mom’s are that important and that special.  It wouldn’t sound so sexist if I was saying that there was no way anyone else could replace a woman in the work place!  But that’s not what I believe.  I really believe that short of Steve Jobs perhaps, anyone in any job is replaceable!  But no one can replace a good mother in her child’s eyes.

Why don’t we give them the glory they deserve then?  Why are mother’s valued higher than Steve Jobs?  They should be!  While I may have a bit of a tech crush on Jobs because of my Apple products, I’d rather be married to Sara, and I would rather have her raising my posterity than Jobs any day and every day!

Oh how I wish for the sake of our society and our children, that woman could feel proud to be mom’s, that they felt valued for being there for their kids, even when it didn’t feel like it made any difference, and those of use with dedicated mothers of our children felt richer than kings just knowing the value of a good mom in a child’s life.

Thank you mom for all you did for me through all the frustration, tears and lack of appreciation, and thank you Sara, for being a GR8MOM to my precious sons!  I love you for it and will work harder to glorify your work!  You are the best!

I was content with stopping there as we were becoming pressed for time because of a rodeo my nephew was riding in. We really wanted to be there for that and it was an hour away from the gym and I was so drenched in sweat that I probably smelled worse than the horses we’d be seeing. We were about to leave but we found that the kids had tangled several ropes on another wall and pulled one down. I got the tangled ropes back to normal and tied the loose rope to my harness and climbed an odd 5.9 on a corner to set it back up in it’s proper place.

After getting down, Sara turned into the old coach from Rocky! “Back up and then down climb it and that will be another pitch” she encouraged. I gave her a look that said “really?” She simply said, “well, go on!” So I did. I only made it up again and didn’t down climb. I did the math and let Sara know that I’d just reached 1760 ft. “How much more would it take to reach 2000?” she asked. Two more 120 ft routes I said. As you can probably guess, she made me do those two as well, but what you don’t know is that she made me do them fast! “We’re going be late” she pushed. Don’t un-tie or anything just do them both back to back. I took one rest on each route but in the end I did it. I climbed 2,000 feet in one day, with 19 pitches climbed in all. That’s the same vertical footage and the same number of pitches as the entire route we’ll be climbing in one week on El Capitan!

Yes, I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of my wife and grateful for her support and for all the support of everyone else who has belayed me (Curt, Bart and Erin). I know that El Cap is a different challenge and that it will be more challenging with all the gear and no comfy padded floor to come down to after every 120 ft + carrying all the food, water and equipment, but I’m very comfortable with the idea of doing it over three days. I haven’t felt this ready for something big I’ve been talked into ever! The last thing I really had to prepare for was the LIVEstrong Challenge and I wasn’t ready for that at all! I did finish though and I will finish El Capitan as well!

After all the climbing we went to the rodeo. Sara pointed out that it was our third bleachers event this week, “all with people trying to kill themselves” she pointed out. After the World Superbike Championships and the demolition durby, it was fun to watch our nephew ride sheep in the ‘muttin bustin’ and then to see the other events but what I liked the most was, the true American spirit that was there.

I was reminded of some pretty great things about America. The “quick cowboy prayer” offered at the start of the even was sincere and heart felt. I remembered that we are a nation that was founded on good Christian principals (and with a lot of help from God) and that some of us still trust in Him. After that, the flag was brought in by two girls on horses and after listening to Trace Atkins sing about how we’d kid everyone else’s tooshies, we listened to the National Anthem with our hands over our hearts. I remembered my friends who do the tooshie kicking, and the sacrifices they make, my good friend Garrett who rode an IED to a new life as an amputee, and others who return with all their limbs but never become as stable as Garrett is emotionally, all so I can live any life I want too!

I saw a skinny little boy hoist a 50 gallon barrel up to his dad on the other side of a 5 ft fence for the barrel races, and remembered that America was founded by by hard working strong people, who got that way by starting young. I saw dad’s proud to the brim of their ten gallon hats, of their son’s and daughters. I remembered how important family is in America.

I have to say it’s been a great day!

Now I’ve decided that I need to start liking country music. The whole cowboy way just seams to be more in touch with God, country and family and it shows in their music more than in the kind of music I like. Just a thought resulting from a great time with my brother and his family, and my family at a good ol’ country rodeo!

Now I’m really tired. My awesome wife is going to give me a massage and then I’m going to sleep in the valley of the dead until church tomorrow!

Last night I rushed to the gym after spending the day with the family at the Word Superbike races in Tooele.

I got there just after 7 pm and bouldered around a bit to get warmed up while I waited for belay slave Curt to arrive.  He got there as I was resting from 5 V0’s that I had just flashed while feeling a little belittled by several comments from other climbers as they told me how “awesome” I was.

I really don’t like being told that I’m great for doing very mediocre things with a prosthetic leg.  It’s been very hard for me to stick to 5.8 and 5.9 grades with only the goal of building endurance for El Capitan to keep me motivated.  The temptation to push for hard grades is always nagging at me, especially at the gym where so many people are watching the guy with one leg climb.

I even had a guy walk past me before I even started climbing (I was just sitting there after putting my climbing leg on) and say to me, “dude, you’re the biggest bad a$# I’ve ever seen!”  And that’s just for sitting there!  Imagine how cool I’d be if I had Prana pants on!!!

It’s taught me some mental discipline and focus though and I’m sure that’s going to help on the big wall.

So, with only two hours to climb, I had a goal of climbing 1200 vertical feet again after one rest day.  My first go on the wall was 5.7 with all left foot moves which made it feel considerably harder for me than the 5.8 I’ve been lapping.  I climbed up to the top, down  climbed to the bottom foot hold and climbed back to the top without resting on the rope or getting off the wall.  I could feel the pain in my left hand fingers already.  Already it was a little hard to hang on.  I stayed tied in after Curt lowered me and shook my arms out for about a minute before taking a second go.

My hope had been to bust out three reps in quick secession while I was fresh.  The unfamiliar route and my aches from Saturday quickly made it evident that I wasn’t fresh to begin with.  I abandoned that route and took a bit of longer break.  About 5 minutes this time and I got on familiar 5.8.

I broke out two reps on that and after shaking out a bit I went for a third.  Halfway down my down climb portion I came off the wall.  I really couldn’t hold on and I didn’t want to injure myself so I had Curt lower me for a rest.  At that point I had 50 feet of bouldering and now 540 feet of route down.  Almost half way to my goal of 1200 feet and I had an hour and 15 minutes left before closing time.

Normally (all two times I’ve done a lot of vertical footage) I’ve stopped for lunch at about halfway and I’ve always taken a bit of rest time to belay and chill between laps.  This time that wasn’t an option if I was going to get anywhere close to my goal.  I pushed for two more laps in quick secession and had 7 reps down with 25 minutes before closing.

I pushed for another rep after a few minutes of resting and finished my 8th rep in 5 minutes (not bad for 120 feet of climbing).  I told Curt I wanted to rest for a bit before I went for rep 9.  I figured if I was on the wall when the closed they’d let me finish.  I busted out my 9th rep with 5 minutes left before 10:00.  I waited a few minutes before an employee walked by and overheard my plan to do one more rep.  “Hurry it up guys” he said to us as he walked by, so I jumped on the wall and went for number 10.  I made it up and half way back down before I hit the down crux.  The same place I’d come off before.  Giving it all I had I tried to hold on but I couldn’t move from those holds without falling off the wall.

“Just lower me” I called down to Curt, and the night was done.  After adding up my successful reps, my bouldering and my half reps, I came out at 1150 vertical feet.  So close to my goal!  My comfort is that I did this in two hours, still being quite sore from my 1200 feet the other day and It surpasses what I’ll actually be climbing on El Cap during each full day there by a few hundred feet.  In addition to that, the climbing will be mixed aid climbing, free climbing and jumarring, and this was all free climbing today so I think my fingers will have a bit more of chance.

I’m off to the gym again this morning to try to get another 1200 feet in today.  Then 1200 tomorrow and then some serious rest for this battered body!  I’ll know for sure that I can do it at that point.  I’m already 100% confident that I can handle it but after this week I’ll feel like can handle it with at least some ease.  I’ll know that it’s not going to totally kill me like the LIVEstrong Challenge did when I did that.  I finished the ride, but I wasn’t ready for it, it was 40º and pouring rain the whole time and the last five miles I was fighting cramps in my calf.  That was miserable.  I know I will finish the climb and reach the top of El Capitan, but I want to be happy when I do.  I want to still love climbing!  I’m getting pretty confident that I will.

Ps, this was written on Tuesday, May 31 and posted later when I was able to get internet working for a brief moment.

My wife, Sara, is absolutely amazing!  After cleaning the whole house today (which yes, I did help with) the forced me to go to the climbing gym and to take her with me.  Our last attempt at teaching her to belay didn’t fair so well.  Mostly because I was short on patience and wasn’t paying much attention to her way of learning.  Today Sara proved herself FAR beyond expectation!  Not only did she belay me nearly perfectly for over 1200 feet of climbing (I’m  counting the four feet I had to climb again from my only fall.  After 1180 feet I literally could not hold on and I slipped off a hold, but I am glad I pushed myself to max failure), she also climbed more than I would have thought she could at this point!  I’m really seeing the potential of us all being a great climbing family.  Sara has it!  It’s coming out now.  She’s never really had the chance to find it before but now that we’re back in Utah and I’m climbing a lot she’s falling in love with it and I can see that she’s got what it takes!

The kids are amazing as well.  Both the boys have incredible natural form.  They’ve got the form and technique I’ve always admired and tried to emulate from the smoothest and best pro climbers.  I have to say that I’m pretty excited!

I’m also excited to be back to training again.  I didn’t intend to miss any days but with getting sick and having a once in a lifetime chance to do something great for my parents anniversary (a bathroom remodel that took us longer than expected) I am sad to say that I’ve missed at least four training days.  My last training day was very disapointing ending with only 480 vertical feet climbed (this was while I was sick) so I wasn’t sure what to expect today, but I set a goal of 1200 feet before I reached the gym.  I’m proud to report that I reached that goal.  The last few climbs where pretty desperate I’ll admit, but I didn’t fall once until the very last 20 feet.  I tried my best to hang on but I literally reached ‘ultimate failure’, when your body has been pushed to the very limit of what it is physically capable of even though your mind it telling it to keep going.  This is good because it lets me know that I pushed myself as hard as I could today.  It’s also good because you achieve your best strength development after pushing to this point, so ya, I’ll be climbing 3,000 on Monday!  Well, maybe not, but I expect to do at least 1200 again if the gym is open for Memorial Day.  If not, I’ll be jumarring for hours with a full pack in Rock Canyon to make sure I’ve got my system all sorted out and to get the quad really pumping.

I may even set up a hauling system and practice that a bit to make sure I’ve got the hang of that too.  Lurking Fear is known for having brutal hauling and we’re stretching it out over three days so we’ll have more stuff to carry than some teams would.

Well, having just climbed one days worth of the Nose (El Cap’s tallest route), I’m feeling pretty good.  Sara’s drawing a bath right now in the jet tub and she’s even hinted at the posability of breaking out the massage table tonight (for her no doubt, still I can hope!), so, with a clean house, and sore but strong feeling body, and a great, great wife, I should sleep well tonight, enjoy church mañana and be ready for more on Monday!

I haven’t climbed since then.  I’m really trying to get this illness knocked out!  I have been able to build more of the climbing wall and training facilities in the basement and will soon have a 4×8 campus board with multiple sized campus rungs and holds.

…A fine example of how hard it is for me to get these posts up.  I started writing that this morning around 7 am.  I’m just getting back to it now after 10 pm.  I have been gone since 8:50 am today.  I left late for my first appointment because just as I was about to head out the door I got a phone call, then my two older boys came down and needed breakfast and a diaper change.  I got to my appointment ten minutes late and it’s been a rush from then on.  Just got home and have been trying to get the kids in bed.  Luckily for me, Sara has taken over that job and I can type for a minute.  She’s still trying to get them to stay in bed and they’re still trying to swindle treats out of her.  It’s 10:16 pm and Sara just hit three in the count down to trouble!  This is the life of young parents (or ‘early parents’ I should say.  We’re not young anymore).

…Getting back to it again after putting the kids to bed a second time (and getting them more food and water etc…)

Hope to get things going better in the second half of the week.  Will keep you posted in typical late fashion I suppose.

Today didn’t turn out to push me much physically but I did have to free solo half a pitch to get the knotted end of my rope back after someone pulled it half way through the chains we’d left it through for the kids to top rope.  With six kids around that was bound to happen.  It was an easy climb and I felt safer than climbing a ladder so that wasn’t a real big deal but for me, it felt like I was getting some mental training in today.  It’s one things to climb a thousand feet in the gym on top rope, and another thing to lead a climb outdoors on a wall you’ve never touched before.  Even though today and the last Friday have fallen far short of great amounts of climbing, they have been great at building my mental confidence and comfort on real stone and new routes.

I have had to lead every route I’ve done outdoors since I started climbing again, and I have on-sited each route with no falls as well.  With the majority of the challenge I am up against being mental (and that doesn’t take away from the fact that we’re climbing a 3,000 foot monster!), I’m feeling good about these outside days.  I’m going to try planning more trips to granite and some trips to any really slippery routes up American Fork Canyon on the limestone.  I talked with Jeff Pederson the other day and he told me that Yosemite is like glass!  With all the climbers that go there I can imagine it being pretty smoothed over by now.

He told me to do a couple multi-pitch routes a day or two before going for the big climb and said it would make a world of difference once I get on the real deal, just because it’s good to discover and get comfortable with the rock in the Valley.  He also had some great tips on what to really get ready for.  I told him I had just climbed 1080 vertical feet the day before.  He didn’t seem impressed or surprised by that at all.  He just asked how my jumarring was?  Then he told me that’s what I really need to focus on.  He said if I have things even one inch off, it will kill me on the climb.  He gave a route in Rock Canyon (Provo), to set up on and said to fill my pack with about four water bottles for weight, and just jumar up and repel down, and jumar back up etc… for about two hours, several times before the trip.  He said to tape everything once I get it adjusted to where it’s working best for me.  I’ll be doing that next week or possibly tomorrow.

That’s about that for now.  Our internet here is total junk at the moment so it’s been really hard to post these updates.  Sorry if they’re not very consistent and if they’re lacking in the photo dept.

Cheers,

jFrye

I had planned on writing a full report on yesterday, today, because I thought I’d have more energy but that’s the case.  I’m finding rest days to be very crucial to improving my endurance.  I know that’s common sense to most people but for some reason I’ve always just gone for it full bore every day of the week but Sunday (which tends not to be  a day of rest.  Rest from YOUR cares and work on GOD’S cares perhaps, but not just rest).  The rest days make me feel lazy but when I come back I come back stronger than I was before for sure!  I’m just not sure if today will have given me that same benefit.  I’m pretty knackered!

So the quick run down on yesterday is that I tried to do the same as I had the day before.  I got really sick after Monday’s workout and it settled in more as the evening went on but thanks to Sara’s Natural-path know how (our Natural-Pathic Doctor in Oregon told Sara she had practically learned most of what you would in school), I was feeling much better in the morning.  Still sick but well enough to think I could try another day of training.  I got to the gym an hour late and found myself taking plenty of time getting on the wall.  I climbed a 40′ 5.8, down climbed, and stepped off the wall.  I didn’t even have it in me to reach for the first hold to move back up.  I ended up doing that route and a couple new ones, along with two of the 30′ climbs for the day before.  Then I threw in a couple 5.9′s because I thought I could start pushing the grades now that I had climbed a days worth of vertical on the easy grades.  I on-sighted the first 5.9 pushing hard through the last four moves to reach the top and felt pretty good about myself.  The next 5.9 was on an arete and I didn’t read the beta at the bottom of the route that said to use the arete.  I made it half way up before becoming exhausted and deciding the route was super sand-bagged, so I bailed and decided I’d pushed myself enough for the day.  That’s when I looked around the arete to find that half the holds were on the other side.  I may have done better if I’d looked around and done some route planning first but oh well.

Last night Sara did more natural voodoo on me and I felt much better this morning.  I could actually breath!  I was really looking forward to resting all day and getting over this.  Spend some time in the jet tub, get a massage from Sara, watch some climbing vids…  Ya right!  We left at ten to interview a potential employee, raced off from there to get to an appointment I had at 11, then Sara had an apt at 12:30 and after that we headed straight out for interview number two, which ended up being a lot of hiking around with the kids for me while Sara conducted a lengthy interview.  Then we had to run to Target to get the kids bike helmets we’ve been promising for weeks.  Today would have been the perfect time for me to get more plywood for the climbing area downstairs but I couldn’t bear the thought!  Ya, it’s that bad.  This would have been a really mellow day for us normally, but today I wasn’t up for much at all.  I still feel really sick and my body is aching all over.  I move weird or pick up one of the kids and it feels like my abs are going to cramp.  I haven’t even been doing any ab workouts!  I guess I used them a lot more than I realized on Monday.

I haven’t had time to finish a new climbing foot for testing either.  I’ve made the fiberglass part and all I have to do is cut it out and glue foam to it, sand and shape the foam, then glue climbing rubber to it.  That just hasn’t happened yet and I’m not sure that it will today after all.  That was the only thing active I had planned today but I think I’m ready for that bath and a movie now.  Plus, I don’t have the sharpie I need to trace the outline on the fiberglass.  Boo hoo right?  Hopefully I’ll be tougher by June or I’m in real trouble!