Blog
I know I've been posting one video after the next, but hey, videos are cool. And I have a ton of video things to share. Here is the segment of when I was on the Oprah Winfrey Network earlier this year, memorizing movies and such:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ycE5Ydb3U&feature=youtu.be
If you're curious as to how I taught the host how to memorize all those films, read the blog post here.
Up next for the Peak Freaks team: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joo6h9Xf4gU&feature=youtu.be
Up from Base Camp to C1, then C2 to sleep. Following that, up the Lhotse Face to C3 for a tag and return. Last year, I remember climbing up from C1 to C2 being one of the toughest days of the whole expedition. I don't know what it was that day, maybe the low air pressure mixed with the intense heat and the "boringness" of the moderately slopped route; I'm not sure. None of us, not even the Sherpas, could take ten steps before we had to stop and gather our breaths. We eventually made it, and the second time we went up from C1 to C2, it was a heck of a lot easier....just that first time killed. Such are the pains of acclimatization, I guess.
Anyways, Peak Freaks are well on track with their climbing schedule. Other teams have made it up to C1 and C2 as well. The Lhotse Face (the big wall that shoots up the mountain to the shoulder of Everest after C2), is still being fixed with ropes by the Sherpas. Should be ready in the next couple of days for teams to climb up.
On a more serious note, two Sherpas died last week. One from altitude sickness, the other from falling into a crevasse. Both very different circumstances, but both equally sad. It's good to stop and remember that the Sherpas are the real heros on these mountains. People climb for this and for that, and although it may sound impressive, nothing comes even close to what these Sherpas do. Every day they put their lives on the line just so that they can make money to support their families. Without them, no Western climber would be climbing Everest. Not one.
A close family friend of mine passed away a year ago today while I was climbing Mt. Everest. I didn't find out until two days later though when we were back at Base Camp having just slept a night at Camp 1. I was in Gorak Shep (the closest "village" near Base Camp that offers food and slow/expensive internet) trying to enjoy some basic luxuries. It was a hard day for me, but it was interesting to go back and read my diary entry of April 20th, the day he died. Please excuse the horrible grammar and poor writing. Here goes:
"OMG, what a boring day. The weather outside was a windy whiteout, so Kevin and I just stayed in the tent. Had lunch at noon. Napped. Did some card memorization. Tried to learn how to do mental square roots. Failed. Anyways, Kevin cooked all our water, haha. Then we cooked our meals. I had Spag Bol - pretty yummy I must say, for a boil-in-a-bag - and a minestrone soup to start. I set up this sweet rig with my boot laces to hold up my iphone above our heads while we lay and watch. We watched "Inception." Went to bed at 9ish.
Ok, so the 20th was today. Thus far, it's been a waiting game. It's beautifully clear outside but the winds (which were forecasted for 30mph) are around 70mph. No joke. Hurricane style. It's a good thing our tent is last in the row, we get all the protection. Someone's campsite north of us got demolished. Jagged Globe's site, which is next to us, is gonna be gone by the end of the day for sure. IMG apparently went up to C2 already but turned around. The wind is crazy, and snow hits your face diagonally - it hurts. Reminds me of that one day on Mt. Rainier when we had to build our camp by walking backwards to avoid being slapped in the face by the sleet and snow. I can see the beautiful Lhotse Face and what I think is the South Col. The Western Cym is awesome. The rock faces on the sides are so inspiring; like a painting. Anyways, it's 9am. I was just outside taking pics, cutting snow blocks for snow walls, helping the Sherpas tie down the tents, then came back inside. Hopefully we get to go up to C2 or at least part way up.
So Kevin asked if we could climb up a bit but Anjel, our guide, said no. I asked again around 2:30pm since the winds had died down slightly and he said yes! Finally something to do. I would have been so pissed having to just waste this climbing cycle. Luckily Kevin and I got to trek up 150 meters (a little more than 1/2 way to C2). It was just us in the Western Cym. The sun was on our backs and the trail was ours. Amazing. No one was there. We crossed some MASSIVE crevasses. Fewer than the Ice Fall, but deeper and more awe-inspiring. The rock color of Nuptse on our right was brown, black, and yellow. Reminded me of a painting in that famous Talkeetna, Alaska pizzeria. We got up to this one crevasse which was 5 ladders strung together! Banana ladders. We opted to take the 15 minute walk around them (too windy). Scary but cool. We carried on for a bit longer, then sat for 15 minutes to breathe in the 6150 meter air (higher than Denali). It was beautiful - the best was that it was only us. No. One. Else.
We headed back down, which took about 30 minutes, and then cooked our meals. I had Chili Macaroni (which was again, super yumz), Kevin had some mediocre Penne Veggie Sausage thing. Then boiled some warm water for our sleeping bags. That's the key to sleeping well. Warm water bottles. Then bed at 8pm. Started getting windy again. Did some memory training just before it got dark. Anjel told us we would go up an hour if the weather was better in the morning."
New video coming soon!
Quick update on my last post. The Peak Freaks team made it safely to Camp 1 and are on their way up to "touch" Camp 2 (21,500 ft.) for acclimatization. Then they'll come back down and sleep at Camp 1, then retreat all the way down to BC the following day for some much needed rest. Camp 1 to Camp 2 video coming soon!
Here we go, folks. It's about to get serious on Mt. Everest. Peak Freaks is gearing up for their first trek through the treacherous Khumbu Ice Fall. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NliMLaT56aM
Straight out of Base Camp (17,500 ft), climbers will encounter this beast of an obstacle. A near 3000 ft. vertical climb through massive ice blocks the size of apartment buildings, unimaginably deep crevices (that widen as the season progresses), and the constant threat of thunderous avalanches. The Sherpa Ice Doctors are assigned one job throughout the whole season, and that is to make sure the fixed ropes through the Ice Fall are safe and fluid. They wind thousands of feet of rope and dozens of ladders all through this maze of ice and cracks so that climbers can make it through as safely as possible to Camp 1, in the Western Cym.
I know I don't make it sound very hospitable, but it really isn't a place you want to linger in for more than you have to. It's often talked about the most dangerous part of the mountain on the South side (which is a bit counter-intuitive since there are still plenty of dangers higher up on the mountain). Because of the Ice Fall's danger, some teams at Base Camp even avoid climbing through it for the first few weeks and train on nearby peaks instead. Peak Freaks does this to an extent. They push their climbers to sleep and acclimatize on the summit of Kala Pattar, a trekkers peak one hour outside of Base Camp that nearly reaches the height of Camp 1 (19,900 ft). Other teams will use Lobuche East, another peak further down the valley (20,100 ft).
As I understand, the Ice Fall this year is looking great. I remember last year people saying it was the best it had ever been. It took Sherpas between 2.5 and 3 hours to get through it, the fittest climbers 3-4 hours, the slower climbers at most 5-6 hours. I'll be interested to see the times for this year. I've heard horror stories from past seasons of it taking people as long as 10 hours to get through....
Teams will often wake up very early to start climbing through the Ice Fall (3-4am), that way the ice and snow is solid and firm and there's no sun to make things melt and shift. Peak Freaks make their push tomorrow morning and will spend the night at C1 to acclimatize. Boil-in-a-bag meals and melted snow for everyone! Always a good time. If any of them can read my blog (I doubt they can), a few words of advice: avoid the Punjabi Vegatables at all cost, it's like vomit in a bag. The Madras Lentils and Bombay Potatoes are winners, and if you can score the Macaroni, you're golden :)
Other teams, like Russel Brice's Himex and Eric Simonson's IMG are still working on their Lobuche East acclimatization rotations. Alpine Ascents, among many others, are still in Base Camp, but preparing to start climbing up to C1 very soon. If you want the full list of team positions, check out Alan Arnette's very detailed blog posts!
Teams are rolling into Everest Base Camp this week and since a lot of people back home don't really understand what Base Camp (BC) is or what it's like, I decided to put together a little video to help with that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRuxrpjn5MM&feature=results_video&lr=1&ob=0
As you can see from the video, BC is a pretty rocky place and sits on top of a bunch of moving ice. Throughout the two-month expedition all the different teams' BCs will shift and change tremendously. I remember last year when I first pitched my tent, all was flat and smooth, but two months later my tent was sitting on a little hill with melted glacier rivers streaming on either side (like a moat). Also, take note of the fancy toilet set ups. Not bad, right? FYI, these kind of toilets get you pretty good at taking a dump while squatting (I've heard that it's the healthiest way to take a dump actually, which is probably why it's the pooping posture of choice in the East). Enough of that....you can see that BC has a cozy feel. The shower tent is pretty glamourous, I'm not gonna lie. And even though that little shower nozzle thing doesn't look like much, it's an absolute god-send. Peak Freak's dining tent is awesome, warm, and filled with movies, books, and games, so no one gets bored. The Sherpa cooking/dining tent is clean and a pleasant place for the Sherpas to hang out in, which translates into good food, healthy climbers, and most importantly, happy Sherpas.
This year Peak Freaks camp had to be built in a different spot from where it usually is. The BC from last year (the one from the video) is now a big boulder field. Nice. In other news, the route through the Ice Fall is complete with ropes and ladders and apparently Camp 2 has been staked out as well. So, all is going smoothly. From reading other blogs, it seems that either most teams are in BC already or are arriving there today or tomorrow. The teams, once arriving, will spend about a week getting accustomed to BC living, acclimatizing to the thin 17,500 ft air, and participating in the Puja, which is a ritual performed by each team before climbing to appease the mountain gods on Everest.
Just came back from St. Louis where I was kindly invited to the Washington University in St. Louis's Memory Lab to participate in various memory studies.
What an amazing experience! While most people whom I talk to about memory are usually very interested in the topic of memory, I have never been around so many memory "nerds" all at once (I use that word in the most endearing way) who are as knowledgeable and passionate. It was such a nice breath of fresh air. WUSTL is apparently (and I was unaware of this before I went) THE memory research center in America, and their Alzheimer's research is second to none. I felt honored and privileged to have been asked to participate in their program.
I can't go into any of the details of the tests since there are some memory friends of mine that will be going there to do the same tasks over the next few months, but I will say this: it was absolutely mentally exhausting. People often ask me if memorizing a lot, for long periods of time, makes my mind feel "heavy" or "full." The answer is no, never. But, over the past two days, going through all those long, arduous memory tasks, and then sticking me in an fMRI machine, my mind ended up feeling like spaghetti squash. It was probably a result of having to focus for so long more than having to memorize a lot though, but still, I was mentally exhausted.
I won't know the outcome of my results for a while, but I do know that for a lot of the tasks, I was able to max them out (not always easily though). Some of the tasks were very interesting and some were totally bizarre, but the areas of memory that each tested were fascinating to learn about once the tast was completed. It was also nice to be able to talk about the little things that have fascinated me throughout my journey to becoming the memory champ with others and have them actually care and be scientifically interest.
Bottom line is that WUSTL is doing some incredible stuff and I'm hoping to work closely with them on projects down the road. There was even a light-hearted discussion about the possibility of them hosting a memory competition of their own some time in the next year, which I think would be a superb idea. So we'll see!
Oh yeah, Ben Pridmore participated in the same study last year. He also participated in a cool advert for the Bilbao museum. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vkRodmW2K8&feature=relmfu
Here we go folks. NO MORE MEMORY TALK....for a little while anyways. How about some Mt. Everest action?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2gCSK_Zc-I&feature=youtu.be
This is a video from my climb last year with Peak Freaks. Most people think you approach Everest straight from the bottom and voila, there it is just towering above you. But in actuality, it takes a pretty lengthy, 8-day trek through the lower Everest valley to reach the "base" of the mountain (the mouth of glacier). That means hiking through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, while spending time in the fascinating Sherpa villages along the way. To give you an idea what all climbers are currently going through, watch the vid!
This blog's focus will now turn to the 2012 Everest season, which is well under way. I'll post some news as it comes from as many of the teams climbing over there as I can, but I'm a huge supporter of Peak Freaks (since I climbed with them last season and will be climbing with them again next season), so I'll be mostly relaying their info.
The team flew out to Lukla from Kathmandu as planned on April 1st. The first flight (holding most of the climbers) made it, but the second flight (holding mostly trekkers) had to touch down in a small village below Lukla called Lamidanda. No worries though, because Roger was with them (I climbed with him last year, he knows his stuff) and has been guiding them up to Namche Bazaar (11,500 ft) where the whole team is now reunited. Tomorrow, they set off to Pangboche!
As the season progresses, I'll be releasing more segments of my footage from last year's climb so I can, in a way, re-live what's currently going on over there. Stay tuned!
One of the best apps I"ve found for memory training (totally unrelated to memory competitions) and keeping my memory challenged is a sweet little app called "Memneon".
I spend a lot of time daily practicing the memory championships events: numbers, cards, names, words, etc. But it can all get very repetitive (YAWN). So, I like to branch out from time-to-time and try new things. When I heard about this app, I decided to give it a try. I was hooked instantly. It"s different, fun, challenging, satisfying, and mesmerizing.
The game concept is simple. It"s basically a board of neon colored blobs that light up in different patterns (depending on what style of game you"ve chosen), for a certain amount of time, and you need to remember where on the board they helps explain how the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) coverage expansion, new benefits, and market reforms will impact individual market health affordable-health.info premiums in 2014. were lit up and in some cases, what order. Sounds simple, but the patterns get more complicated and the speed increases. As the 2012 USA Memory Champ, I highly recommend it. It"s a great daily exercise for your memory to keep it active and sharp!
You can find it easily in the iPhone App Store for $0.99 (Only a dollar! Come on!). Download it here! It"ll keep your brain stretching. Also, and here"s the coolest part of it all, 30% of each purchase get"s donated to Climb For Memory"s cause! So get the app now, share it with your friends, start exercising your mind, and at the same time you"ll be helping fight Alzheimer"s by donating to Climb For Memory!
I won! For the second year in a row!
I feel so happy (and somewhat relieved) that my hard work paid off. The media attention I've been getting has just been incredible; one article after the other. My phone has not stopped ringing either. Also, the following that has come quickly in pursuit has been overwhelmingly awesome. Many of you have reached out to me, and I will be getting back to you as soon as I take a moment to sit down and breathe (which is now). A lot of you have asked how you can help out with my charity's efforts. Well, you can start by going to our charity's donation page and making a contribution: www.climbformemory.com/donate
Let's go through the whole competition through my eyes, shall we?
I woke up at 7am, having slept incredibly well and having eaten some phenomenal Salmon and Broccoli the previous night (at the same restaurant I've been going to for the past 3 years pre-competition). Showered, popped some BrainStrong DHA Omega supplements and handfuls of blueberries into my mouth, did some push ups and handstands, then was off. Walked down 3rd Ave from 25th St. to 14th….the EXACT same 15 minute walk I took last year, listened to some adrenaline-pumping music and finished it off with some laid back 90's hip-hop for some swag. I must say that for some reason I wasn't exactly "feeling it"….I actually was feeling incredibly nervous and I couldn't manage to shake it.
Either way, I walked into the ConEdison Building (where the competition is held each year) at around 7:45am, saying hi to the usual folks, Paul Mellor, Tony Dottino, Karen Pinson, some of the regular judges, etc. Had a quick talk to a future dangerous competitor Luis Angel, and then gathered my stuff to my seat. Of course I was put in the front row just to the side of Ronnie White....never fails! Sometimes I wish I could go back to 2009, where I was relatively unknown and was seated way in the back with no distractions, haha.
After meeting some more people and answering a lot of interview questions, I watched a scene from "The Art of Flight" on my phone to get my adrenaline going….perfect. I was good to go.
Names and Faces I've come to love this event over the years. It used to be my weakest event, but now i'd consider it one of my strongest. I was hoping to break the US record of 175 names (set by Michael Glantz a couple months ago), but as usual, the competition pressure slowed me down a tad and I only managed to get through memorizing about 180 names (10% of which I typically forget or spell wrong during recall). Writing them down during the recall felt easy and I sped through most of them, no problem. When all was done and said, I had written down 174 names. A few were guesses and a few were spelled wrong for sure, so I knew no US record was at hand, but definitely a personal best of about 150.
Turns out I got an extremely disappointing score of 64 points. I was shocked, and in 25th place. I knew I had done better than that though....there was no way I had made more than 100 errors. So I demanded the judges to review my paper. They did, and low and behold, they had left off a "1" before the 64. My score was 164! Well really it ended up being 162 (they found some extra points they had given me that were in fact, mistakes). Still, 162!! A personal competition best for me and enough to win the event.
Speed Numbers Feeling re-energized and in the lead, I was pumped for this event. I really felt like I was capable of doing close to what I had been doing in practice (which was between 300-360 digits). Breaking the 300 digit barrier would really be a big statement, not just to the US competitors, but also to the world. This event allows for two trials. The first, I totally froze. Camera men were in my face and moving all around me and I couldn't focus. I ended up with 176....a decent safe score, but very disappointing for me. Second round was much smoother and I felt a lot more relaxed, pulling through with 323 digits (made one mistake, so my final score was 303). A new US record! I was surprised that no one scored in the 200s. Was expecting Ronnie White and T Michael Harty to have done that. I guess next year...
Poetry My worst event. I hate memorizing text and poetry and I'm honestly naturally so bad at it. But, because of that weakness I trained especially hard for it and it showed. I won the event with 233 points (one point shy of the US record), beating out the Hershey High School poetry beasts. I couldn't believe it.
Speed Cards My best event. I was so pumped for this because honestly, this was the event I had trained for the most. Last year I set a US record of 63 seconds, but in practice over the past year, I had been consistently getting sub-40 second times. Breaking the 1-minute barrier for cards in competition is equivalent to breaking the 4-minute mile barrier for running and if I were to do it, it would be a huge step for the Americans in the memory world.
I didn't do it.
I hate excuses, but honestly, it really was the external factors that messed me up. The first trial I was speeding through the deck at a blinding rate when I suddenly hit a....Joker? Joker's are supposed to be removed by the judges before hand and my shuffled deck seemed to be the only one in the room that was left with Jokers...great. Seeing the Jokers threw off the story that I was creating in my head as I flew through the deck. So I lost track of where I was and had to start again. I also had to search the deck for the second Joker so that it wouldn't mess me up as well. Wasted a good 40 seconds on all of that and ended up with a time of 1m37s. Absolutely horrible. I didn't even get the whole deck right. I flipped the last two cards.
Tony pulled me aside and apologized and asked if I wanted to redo the memorization backstage. I should have said yes, but something in me felt like that wasn't fair. It's always easier to memorize in private and I wanted to prove that I could do a sub-minute memorization under pressure.
The next round I was going perfectly fast through the deck until one journalist came up to me and took two flash photographs IN MY FACE. Tony and Karen typically do a great job telling the media to NOT take photos during memorization, but it was out of control; the media had absolutely no respect for my boundaries. It honestly felt like they were the Paparazzi and that they really didn't care what they were doing as long as they got their shot. Kind of sad. Anyways, I knew the deck solidly, but I slowed down tremendously when the flashes happened. My time was 1m27s. I hadn't scored that bad in a year and a half. Luckily it was still good enough to win the event and keep my speed cards record from last year.
Random Words Having won all 4 morning events (not sure if that's a record in itself), I was in first place. My strategy for memorizing words has always been to go for 120. In training I had been practicing 100 words in 5 minutes, that way in competition, I'd have 10 minutes for review.
I nailed them.
After the 15 minute memorization period, the top 8 competitors went out on stage to recall the words. This event keeps getting tougher and we keep getting through a lot more words each year. It was tough to see Michael Glantz & Sophia Hu (both finalists from last year) stumble on words and get eliminated. I know they are typically awesome at words, so I'm not sure what happened. I was happy to see my friend Brad Zupp nail this event and make it through (last year he messed up on the first word).
Tea Party 5 audience members come on stage and say 8 facts about themselves (name, birthdate, phone number, birth place, etc). We also get the information written out in front of us. They say it on stage and then we get 15 minutes to review. It used to be that we only got 15 minutes TOTAL (including the time the audience members say their information) but Tony and Karen were giving us more time. Not sure if this was to try and get more people to wow the audience or not, but it made the event super easy. They really need to step it up to 6 people next year. I made one mistake on a little girl's hobby. I said "signing" instead of "singing"....that's my dyslexic fault. Ha. What little girl likes to "sign" things anyways? Duh, of course it was singing. But you get 3 strikes before you get eliminated, so I was safe and pulled through despite that tiny hiccup.
Double Deck Of Cards The finals was me, Ronnie White, Hannan Khan, and Mike Mirski. I had been training this event with 3 decks of cards. So 2 decks of cards in 5 minutes had become a breeze. The training paid off...I managed to get both decks in my head no problem. I was curious (and nervous) to see whether Ronnie had upped his game to be able to memorize two decks...
Turns out he didn't. Hannan was eliminated about halfway through the first deck, then Mike said outright that he had never memorized two decks of cards in his life and then bowed out after the first deck (just a side note, this kid will be a serious threat next year....just watch).
So there we were again for the second year in a row. Me and Ronnie, going head-to-head through the second deck. I knew I had both decks solid, so I was just extremely focused on making sure I said everything correctly. Even though you have the cards in your head, it's easy to slip up when you say them out loud. Luckily, Ronnie made a slight flub at the 66th card, saying the 7 of Clubs instead of the 7 of Spades and that was that. I was the winner!
I couldn't believe it. After another long year of training, my goal had finally materialized. My family and friends were all there so it made everything that much sweeter.
Not sure where I'll go from here or if I have another year of training for this thing in me, but we'll see. To be blatantly honest, I felt like I almost trained too hard. The competition felt easy and I was expecting for the competition to be a lot tighter. Hopefully people up their game next year...I really want a serious challenge (that's right guys, I'm calling you guys out. Bring it).
Overall it was a great competition with an unprecedented amount of competitors and viewers. There's no doubt that Tony Dottino, Marshall Tarley, and Karen Pinson all worked extremely hard to make the competition the success that it was. They are definitely on the right track to make next year's competition one of the biggest events ever.
Thanks again to everyone who has supported me over the last year and who put up with all of my crazy training and obsessiveness, thanks to all my supporters at the competition, and most of all, thanks to all the other competitors for being so awesome and for making this sport what it is.
Wow....what a crazy few days leading up to the USA Memory Championships it's been! This CNN.com article that came out today has brought a deluge of emails and hits to my website and blog:
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/23/us/nelson-dellis-memory/index.html?hpt=us_c1
For those of you who've visited this website as a result, first, thank you for taking the time. Secondly, if you have tried to contact me, I WILL get back to you, just after tomorrow.
And if you live in NYC, come check out the competition itself....it's a pretty incredible event and one that you could walk away from learning a thing or two about your own memory. Come watch at the ConEdison building in Manhattan (4 Irving Place, near Union Square).
Going to eat a nice filet of salmon, stuff my face with some blueberries, some Omega-3 brainstrong supplements and then
Officially booked!
Mid-July I'll be leaving for Lima, Peru to go climb one of the most breathe-taking peaks in the world, Alpamayo, which stands at an impressive 19,511 feet above sea-level.
I'll be arriving in Lima on July 18th, then taking an 8-hour bus ride down to Huaraz, the gateway to the Cordillera Blanca, a mountain range in Peru that boasts some of the biggest peaks in the world only second to those in the Himalayas. Over the next two weeks we will be training and practicing some more technical climbing skills before attempting the peak as it involves some steep ice climbing up to the summit. After that, we'll be climbing its neighbouring peak, Quitaraju (19,816 ft) for good measure (and for some sweet views of the region).
Both of these peaks will be great practice for my Mt. Everest 2013 climb and they will also get me some good high-altitude experience up near 20,000 feet (which is roughly the height of Mt. Kilimanjaro, FYI).
Did I also mention that the USA Memory Championship is on Saturday? Come out if you can! It's free to come watch. It's held at the ConEdison building in lower Manhattan, NYC.
More like it's the anniversary of it winning the 2011 USA Memory Championships.
One year ago today, I walked into the ConEdison building in NYC all calm and collected, and proceeded to aggressively push for the finals and then win. It was such an awesome day for my as it was the cusp of years of hard work and training, all because of my late grandmother who suffered from Alzheimer's.
I usually would let up a bit after a win like that, but something inside me has kept me pushing harder than ever this past year. If that's even possible to imagine, I've trained harder this year than any year in my life both physically and mentally. I've pushed myself to places I couldn't have ever imagined. I want to defend my title, and I want to defend it HARD. That's not to say I will for sure win (the playoff elimination rounds at the competition are ruthless and can create some difficulties for anybody), but I feel confident in what I've trained. If someone has out-trained me, then so be it.
Either way, I'm stoked. I would love to carry the torch of USA Memory Champion for another year. For all of my readers out there, make sure to come to the ConEdison building on March 24th to check out the competition. It's really a fascinating thing to watch. If anything, go there to meet Joshua Foer, the author of Moonwalking With Einstein.
Some of you might have watched "Beyond Belief" (on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)) last night and wondered how I taught the host, Wes Moore, how to memorize ALL the Best Picture winners from the Oscars since the very first one, which was in 1928. That's 83 movies! With most of them having long-ish titles. Not only that, I had to teach him all the years for each of those movies so that he knew all of them and their associated years. Not an easy task! Here's how I did it.
I first took him to a place in Miami called Vizcaya. This was going to be our memory palace. Vizcaya is the former estate of James Deering and it was built in the early 1900s with all imported furniture and decorations from Italy. It's a magnificent location that is absolutely perfect for a memory palace. A huge house with a massive, ornate garden with all sorts of nooks and crannies perfect for storing images.
So how do you go about teaching the Memory Palace technique to someone who knows nothing about memory techniques? Easy, you physically walk them through the memory palace (Vizcaya) and create images for each of the movie titles, storing them at different anchor points along that walk.
That's great and all, but what about the years? Easy. I divided the garden into 9 different decades to cover the 20's, 30's, etc. all the way up to the 00's. That way, if he wanted to access the movie from 1946, for example, he would travel in his mind to the 40's area of the palace and then count 6 locations in to retrieve the 6th movie of that decade (really it's the 7th since 1940 would be the 1st). To make things easier and quicker to recall, every half way point of the decade (1935, 1945, etc.) we added the number 5 somewhere in the image of that year's movie. That way, when I asked him "who won in 1946?" all he would have to do is jump to the 40's area, then straight to that mid-point at 1945, then walk one more anchor point to get to 1946.
So I first did a quick walkthrough of the gardens with Wes and showed him where each decade would be. Here are the 60s, here are the 70s, etc. It was all in an order that made sensel; an order that a person visiting the gardens would naturally walk (counter-clockwise, basically).
Once he got the hang of the "journey" and got a basic layout of the grounds, we started with the creation of images for the movie titles. First the 20's. An easy one with only 2 movies since it was only 1928 and 1929. We used two loci at the very entrance of the estate: an entrance sign and a small fountain. The first movie was "Wings", so I had him picture a set of wings attached to the entrance sign which allowed the sign to take off and fly away. Next, the fountain. The movie was "The Broadway Melody". I asked him to come up with an image. He said the water kinda sounded like a melody and that it reminded him of a fountain in central park, NYC, the city home to BROADWAY! Perfect. The 20s were done.
Next were the 30s. We used the main roundabout at the entrance for this and chose 10 distinct anchor points around this area (in a counter-clockwise direction). The first, an interesting lion's face carved into a limestone wall. Our movie? "All's Quiet On The Western Front" - 1930. The lion face had an open mouth, so I had Wes envision himself placing his finger on the lion's mouth saying "shhhhh, be quiet...quiet on the western front". That was enough. Wes got it. The next anchor point was an overhanging tree right next to the lion face. 1931's movie was "Cimarron". Wes thought it sounded like "simmer on" so he imagined a pot simmering on top of the leaves. Done. NEXT!
We finished the 30's, did a quick review, then moved on to the 40's, then the 50's, 60's, all the way to 2010 which was "The King's Speech". Wes kept saying throughout the process how awesome the technique was and how easy it was to memorize things. Here were some note-worthy images that we conjured up along the way:
1941 - "How Green Was My Valley" - This was on a statue of a woman with a draping cloth over her. I told Wes to imagine lifting up the cloth and inspecting her "valley" which happened to be dyed green. Inappropriate? Yes. Memorable? Hell yes!
1963 - "Tom Jones" - This was on the steps to a small building near the back of the garden. Wes envisioned Tom Jones singing his hit "It's not unusual...." on the steps all Tom-Jones-like. Tom Jones is known for having women's panties thrown at him while performing, so I added that lovely fact to the image.
1969 - "The Midnight Cowboy" - This was on a bench near the back of the garden. Wes thought of the Naked Cowboy from Time Square in NYC. He imagined him performing on the bench but only coming out at midnight. Tada! Midnight Cowboy!
1975 - "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" - In the fountain garden, on a marble block planted in the ground. This was one of Jack Nicholson's first films. It was also 1975, so I told him to incorporate a 5 in there somehow. All he could think of was Jack from "The Shining" saying "Herrrrre's Johnny!". So he pictured 5 Jacks popping out of the marble block screaming "Here's Johnny!", like a jack-in-a-box. Creepy, but it worked.
1991 - "Silence Of The Lambs" - In the secret garden, on the right side, a set of plant pots in the wall. Wes noted that they looked a bit like heads that had been half opened. It reminded him of the scene from Hannibal where he's eating the guy's brain and his head is half-cut open. Nice! Blood was everywhere.
1998 - "Shakespeare In Love" - In the secret garden, in a little cove on the left. We pictured Shakespeare hooking up with a chick he loved. Basically, he was trying to hide from the public so he could get his freak on. What a perv.
2001 - "A Beautiful Mind" - Out on the veranda, in between two pillars. Wes envisioned a massive, gooey, slimy, pulsating brain lodged in between the two pillars. It was also a beautiful view from this loci of the Miami bay, hence the "beautiful mind".
On a whole the process was tiring, but mostly because it was being filmed and we had to redo certain shots a ton of times. When I quizzed Wes at the end he knew all the movies solidly backwards and front. If there were any that he had trouble remembering it was only because we only went through the garden locations twice before (and he had never seen the place before!). Once I reminded him of the anchor point, he knew the image and then the movie. Pretty impressive!
Every time I teach someone this method, I realize just how powerful and awesome it is. Makes me want to go to all sorts of new museums and gardens and memorize a whole new set of things, like sports history, country/capitals, kings and queens, EVERYTHING. I'll let you know what I tackle next!
Tune into the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) tomorrow night, March 6th at 9:30pm ET to watch "Beyond Belief." It"s an hour-long show about things/people that are beyond belief. This episode they are profiling people who memorize stuff, which includes me and the kids from Hershey High School. Should be good fun to watch, they had me do a ton of cool stuff for the piece, so check it out!
March is here. Marching forth as usual.
I freaking love March. March is filled with two things that I love: memory competitions and the climbing season on Everest.
More than anything to me, March is Everest month. One of the most memorable experiences I ever put myself through was my 2011 Everest climb. It was just a year ago today that I started to pack up all my gear for the trip. March 14th I won the 2011 USA Memory Championships and 2 weeks later on March 26th, I was already on my way to Nepal. To me, that trip will always be embedded in March somehow.
What a roller-coaster ride that month was.
This year's March will be a little calmer. Just a memory competition and no Everest. Next year will be ALL Everest and no memory competition (Well, maybe. We'll see). Either way, the 2012 Everest season is about to begin. I wish I could be there again, but other commitments and just plain exhaustion (I'm still mentally exhausted from last years climb, believe it or not) have made me postpone the big return climb till next year. But preparations are already well under way.
Here are a few updates for me and Climb For Memory:
1. 2012 USA Memory Competition - Training hard as usual. Competition is on March 24th.
2. 2012 Climb For Memory Climb - My previous plans were to climb the Matterhorn/Eiger, but after some more thought, I realized it made more sense to do a better-for-Everest kind of prep climb. So, I'll be going to Peru's Cordillera Blanca in July to climb the mountain picture seen above (Alpamayo). It's often referred to as the most beautiful mountain in the world (or the mountain from the Paramount Pictures intro). More on this peak later.
3. Lookout for a gala/fundraiser in April in the local Miami area. Also looking into doing an Everest-themed crossfit workout event.
Also, on a side note, since I won't be on Everest this year, I'll be releasing some footage/video (finally!) I took last year in conjunction with the progression of the season, along side some blog posts describing what's going on over there.
1. I'm in the March 2012 National Geographic magazine. So make sure to look for it on bookshelves pretty much anywhere. You can also download the issue here for the iPad (it's got some extra interactive features - pretty darn cool).
2. I just want to give a congrats out to a friend of mine, Ed Cooke, for raising $1,000,000 for his memrise.com project. This website is going to be huge. Go there and prepare to amaze yourself. You can literally start learning Mandarin in just a few minutes. The website makes it laughably easy. Read the article here.
To my readers. 5.4 million people are currently living with Alzheimer's in the US.
It is the 6th leading cause of death in the US 1. Heart Disease 2. Cancer 3. Stroke 4. CLRD 5. Accidents 6. Alzheimer's Disease 7. Diabetes 8. Flu and Pneumonia 9. Nephritis 10. Septicemia It is the only one of these that cant be prevented, cured, or slowed.....yet.
There are 15 million caregivers taking care of people with Alzheimer's or Dementia.
$183 billion dollars are spent annually on the disease.
Deaths from Alzheimer's have increased since 2000 by 66% (all other major diseases have decreased).
Every 69 seconds a person develops Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's is an epidemic.
Please consider signing this Alzheimer's petition to urge the President to make Alzheimer's Disease one of our nation's priority.
If Alzheimer's has affected you or a loved one in any way, please consider signing the petition above. Even if Alzheimer's hasn't affected you in any way, it could potentially. Please help.
Thank you.
I had an idea.
To make this week (starting with yesterday) the most memorable week ever.
Not by doing things I wouldn't normally do and going out my way to make it memorable per say, but more so by actually trying to memorize it and make it something I can recall to the most minute of details, years from now.
People often ask me if I have an awesome memory of my life events. Do I remember where I was on any given date in the past, what I ate, what I wore, what the weather was like, etc. The answer is, um...hell no! My memory is pretty much horrendous when I'm not trying. Well, that's not totally true. My memory of my life events has its ups and downs. Some things I can remember with scary precise detail while other things I have no recollection of at all.
But what if I could remember exactly what happened on one particular date, no matter how old I got. Would that be something I could potentially train? How valuable would that skill be?
It saddened me this morning when I tried to think of all the past birthday's I'd had (mine is coming up tomorrow), because I could barely remember anything from them. A dinner here, a surprise there, but overall, not much detail at all. I feel like that is the norm for most people. We have so many things happening in our lives, so our brain just picks and chooses the most notable moments to keep fresh and retrievable in the mind. What's curious is when you don't remember something and someone says "Hey! Remember when blah blah blah" and you go "Oh wow, yes I forgot that!" You didn't really forget it, because when that person said it, you remembered it. If you had actually forgotten it you would have said that you didn't remember (which still happens sometimes anyways). But it's fascinating that we have easily remembered memories and memories that need a cue (a friend to tell you about it), because those memories that need a cue, are actually in your memory somewhere, hiding - you just don't know how to access it.
Anyways, I'm curious to see if in a year from now, I can remember EVERYTHING from my birthday week.
So I started yesterday.
Started what exactly? Not memorizing, actually.
Reviewing.
Long term memory is all about reviewing.
The memory skills I've developed over the years are designed to get information into your brain quicker. Another common question I get is "how are you with memorizing things long term?" The answer is, "The same." While my technique gets info into my brain faster, I usually try to forget what it is I've just memorized since it's useless information. But, if I wanted to keep it forever, all I would have to do is review it. At first, very frequently (twice a day, maybe), then slowly taper off (once a day for a week, twice a week, once a week, twice a month, once a month, once every so often). Reviewing things you've memorized is what makes it transition over to long term memory.
So what if after every day (for a week say, for experimental purposes) you sat down and relived (reviewed) the day in its entirety, in your mind, remembering the sensations, emotions, colors, foods, clothes, locations, people, that crossed your path. Then at the end of a week you reviewed each of those days again. Then continued a reviewing process that tapered off over time. Would you be able to ask me in 2013 what happened on Feb 4th, 2012 and would I be able to respond with detailed facts about the super bowl score, the weather, conversations I had, the number of slices of pizza I ate, how long my fingernails were?
I think yes.
Granted this is no way to remember every single thing in your life (you would spend SO much time reviewing it all!), but I think for the more important moments of your life that you would never want to forget, it might be a way to save them in all their glory.
I should probably memorize this entire blog post. That would be a good start.
Just got back from the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The premiere of my film "Ben Franklin Blowing Bubbles At A Sword: The Journeys Of A Mental Athlete" (longest title ever) was on Friday, January 20th and apparently it went over really well (I was supposed to be there for it but I missed it because I was stuck on the tarmac at Chicago O"Hare for, no joke, 6 hours! So frustrating!).
Anyways, I was there for the rest of the weekend and was privy to online slots a few happy hour and red carpet events. People kept coming up to me saying how great they thought as part of this (see the free-credits-report.com Rating guide. the film was and how impressed they were with what I accomplished. Very cool! It was a pretty humbling experience. I never take a moment to step back and think of how far I"ve come ever since all this memory/climbing stuff started, so it was nice to take that all in for once.
We"ll see by Thursday if the film won Best Short Documentary. Can I just say that the highlight of my weekend was when actress Mary Sean Young came up to me and asked to take a photo with me. Little did she know that "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" is my all time favorite movie, so I freaked a bit.
