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XMT 2014 Recap

April 26-27th saw the first ever annual XMT competition, held at the Dart NeuroScience building in outer San Diego, CA. The 2014 XMT went on without too many hiccups, and boy was it entertaining. More than I ever would have expected. I mean I guess, with the top 16 competitors in the world all under one roof, and a big prize fund, how could it not be?

DAY 1

A week ago today, the first ever XMT (and first head-2-head-style memory competition) began. My day started early, getting to the venue to set up all the laptops, make sure all signs and posters were up, and that everything was working smoothly (fingers crossed, praying to the wifi gods!).

As competitors and spectators started to trickle in, I started getting a little nervous, not sure how this first day of competition would pan out, how people would receive the event as a whole, and if the bloody software would work as expected! But I knew that once the first round of events had gone through at least once, we would be good to go.

Johannes Mallow started things off against Gunther Karsten (who doesn't really compete anymore but made a special appearance) in words. It went off without a hitch and Johannes won 35-27. Not bad. The next few iterations went totally fine, then came names, which also went fine (although scores were a bit low). Cards came next, and while nobody had really hit their stride yet, Ola Kare Risa managed the fastest time so far with a deck in 41.46 seconds. Then finally numbers came around and Jonas von Essen did a quick 20.95 seconds to memorize a 60 digit number perfectly. YES! We were through.

The rest of the day worked pretty much like a well oiled machine, cranking out match after match. We had 96 matches to go through, and while at times it did feel like a long stretch near the end of the day, people seemed to be liking the flow of the competition (in the future, the idea is to have 4 matches play at a time, which will improve the flow and speed of the first day considerably). Some of the most notable moments/matches:

  • Just before the mid-day break, Johannes hitting a cards score of 32.59s, then Ola just after hitting a time of 30.40s! One personal best after the other!
  • Boris screaming out the loudest German curse word I've ever heard after getting a really fast time on numbers and thinking he got everything correct, when in fact he swapped two sets of 3. Andi ended up winning across from him, going slow and steady.
  • Johannes getting the best time of the day in numbers with 16.57s!
  • Simon getting the best time time of the day in cards with 26.32s!
  • Jonas and Simon going for some really fast times in numbers (15s and 14s) with nothing to lose as the leaders in their groups (they missed a few digits).
  • Watching Simon attempt a near world record cards attempt at 21.95s (missed a few cards).
  • Watching Ben and James battle it out for the last slot for Day 2. James missed it by 7 cards.

A great first day for the books! Not too many problems. Only one match had to be reset and a few scores didn't get entered as they should have. But it was all fixed on the fly and I think for the most part no one noticed.

DAY 2

As for day 2, we entered it in full stride, feeling a lot more confident having had the first day under our belts. But now we were introducing something that had yet to be fully tested, Surprise Events. I had run through each of them a few times on my own and felt fairly confident about them, but they were tough to come up with. Initially I had a ton of ideas for this part of the event, but then I had to consider skill level, language, and other factors of the competitors to make it all as fair as possible. That totally nixed the majority of my ideas, so I had to plan a bit more carefully. Anyways, I settled on a few that I thought were fair and interesting enough.

The Quarter Finals were exciting. Especially the match between Ben and Jonas. Ben had just squeaked in the day before and was fighting for his life. You could tell. He was totally on his game. But going up against Jonas isn't easy and in the end Jonas came through. Mark also pulled an incredible upset over the favored and higher ranked Ola (4-1).

In the Semis, Simon coasted through easy over Mark, but Johannes beat Jonas in what was (in my opinion), the best match of the competition. Jonas was up 3-0, needing just one more win to move on to the finals. But somehow, Johannes battled back and brought it back to a 3-3 tie. The final event between them would be Names, an event that both are quite good at. The score during that match was low and hovering around 10-10. Johannes put in a name that got him up one 11-10. Jonas entered an incorrect name but then moved his cursor to the correct face for the previous name he had entered. Everyone held their breath thinking his was going to also type the same name there.....but he didn't. Time expired and Johannes was the winner. PHEW for him!

The 3rd Place match had Jonas as the favorite, and he ended up coasting to victory 4-0. I guess Mark couldn't gain any rhythm there. Simon, on the other hand, in the Finals, had all the rhythm in the world and was flirting with going completely unbeaten on day two. He was absolutely solid on every match. Johannes eked out a victory near the end there and some of us were wondering if he was about to pull a second come back. Simon laid that question to rest when he memorized 43 words over Johannes' 35 in the final match, claiming the Extreme Memory Tournament Champion title for himself.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Overall, the tournament went a lot better than I expected. Everyone had such great things to say (especially Simon, who walked away with a total of $32K! Well done!). The exciting thing now is seeing where this thing goes. Simon Orton (co-creator) and I are already scheming and what's definitely for sure is that there will be many other XMT competitions to come!

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Sherpa Support

The word on whether this year's Everest season is over or not is yet to be decided. It will ultimately (and rightly so) be decided by the Sherpa community on the mountain in the next 4-5 days. In the meantime, there are a few ways you can help out the Sherpa families who lost someone dear to them in the recent avalanche:

1. The American Alpine Club - They've set up a Sherpa fund where you can make any size donation: https://americanalpineclub.org/p/sherpa-support-fund

2. Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation - Using gorgeous photos of Sherpas and the Everest region taken by some of the most well known mountaineer/travel photographers in the world (Jimmy Chin, Cory Richards, Renan Ozturk, to name a few), you can buy a print for $100: http://sherpafund.bigcartel.com/products

Help if you can!

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Everest Avalanche

The dangerous Khumbu Ice Fall.At this point I think it's hard for anyone to NOT have heard about what recently transpired on Everest. While I am not there this season, a lot of my good friends are (both Westeners and Sherpas). Thankfully none of them were caught in the massive collapse that occurred on the 18th near the top of the notoriously dangerous Khumbu Ice Fall (Although Mark Horrell and the Altitude Junkies team were on their way to the base of the Ice Fall when it happened. Read here). To get an idea of what the Ice Fall is like, watch some of my footage from 2011. It's a complex labyrinth of crumbling snow and ice and moves up to 6" per day, hence it's incredible danger. Nearer to the end of the video, you'll see roughly the region where the avalanche happened (where the crevasses start to get wider and the ladder bridges get longer):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NliMLaT56aM&noredirect=1

According to Alan Arnette's blog, there were at least 16 deaths, all of them Sherpas. This is one of the biggest tragedies to hit any 8000 meter peak. That it happened on Everest makes it that much more of an attention grabber, since so many climbers flock their each season. In 2012, on Manaslu (another 8000m peak), there was an avalanche that took the lives of 11 people, but the recent Everest avalanche trumps that one by quite a bit. More than anything, it has woken up the Sherpa community who are now demanding a number of things from the Nepali government before they consider getting things back moving on the mountain. And things won't move on Everest if the Sherpas don't. They are the reason ANYONE can climb this mountain.

Will the mountain shut down for the season? Already some teams have packed up and left. Alpine Ascents, who had Sherpas killed in the avalanche, already announced that they would. Also, the Discovery Channel wing suit jump has also been nixed. Will more follow suit? For one, the Sherpas will dictate whether or not climbing will resume. If it doesn't, the season will end most definitely. In fact, the Sherpas have put a 7-day ultimatum on the Nepali government. If their demands are not met, the season will be cancelled. Here are some of their demands (taken from this Himalayan Times article):

• Increment of immediate relief announced for avalanche victims • Provide 1,000,000 Rupees (~$10,000) each to families of deceased • Set up a memorial park in the name of the deceased in Kathmandu • Cover all expenses for treatment of the injured • Provide 1,000,000 Rupees (~$10,000) to critically hurt who cannot rejoin mountaineering activities • Set up mountaineering relief fund with 30% of royalty collected from issuing permits to different mountains • Double the insurance amount to the mountaineering workers • Provide additional chopper rescue to mountaineering support staff if insurance fails to cover the cost • Provide perks and salaries, except summit bonus, through concerned agencies to Sherpas if they want to call off climbing this season • Manage chopper to bring logistics and equipment from different camps if mountaineers decide to abandon climbing this season • Don’t take action against SPCC Icefall doctors if they refuse to fix ropes and ladders on the route this season • Let the expedition members to call off this season’s climbing if they wish

If the season continues, teams will have to decide whether they want to continue despite the tragic losses. From personal experience, I can tell you that climbing doesn't feel dangerous until it does. When you see an avalanche first hand, or worse yet, a dead body, you suddenly go through some serious priority setting. What is climbing Everest really worth? For me, it caused me to turn around twice. And I don't regret it one bit. I'm sure there will be many climbers who end up doing the same in light of these recent events. It will be interesting to see what ends up happening.

Sherpas are one of the friendliest, most hard-working, happiest, strongest group of people I have ever met. It's a tough thing to swallow, recognizing the extremely dangerous work they do for us paying clients. We climb because we have the money and the desire to do something big in our lives, a rather selfish endeavor. They climb because they have a family they need to take care of and some because it is the only high-paying job in the area. I mean, check out this frightening infographic 4ac10d977. Hopefully the above demands can be met. It's the very least that they deserve.

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I Am The 2014 USA Memory Champion!

IMG_1453Yes I am! And it was a close one too! But I stuck with it and kept as composed as possible and made it through till the end.

The whole day I felt incredibly calm, which was a big difference from last year where I was a right old mess. I don't know why I was like that last year. Maybe it was because of the film crew that was there or maybe the pressure of trying to win a 3rd championship in a row. Either way, this year felt totally different. I didn't have anything to prove, I just wanted to go out there and enjoy myself.

Right out of the gates I set a US record for the most Names & Faces memorized in 15 minutes, a whopping 193! I'm pretty sure that record will stand for a while because most people hate names, don't bother practicing, or just don't get very good at them. 175 was the previous record. Michael Glantz got 169 and then under that was Saira Kothari with 152. Great scores, but after that, the next highest one was 118. Big discrepancy.

Then it was Speed Numbers. For the first attempt I went conservative and landed at around 306 digits, but I had a blank for one set of images so I knew my score would be 286. Not bad, but not great. The second attempt felt much more fluid and I ended up with 350 digits, with a possible mistake. It ended up being two mistakes, which took my score down to 310, which was enough for a new record! Usually I'm miles ahead of everyone on numbers, but this year there were some really beefy scores trailing me. Alex Mullen with 258 (amazing), and Livan Grijalva and Lance Tschirhart both with 220.

Poetry felt great. It was a pretty smooth and easy poem with lots of capital letters (always amps up the score). I wrote down 230 points and knew I had two rows that were incorrect, so I ended up with a score of 208, still enough to beat out the poetry master, Michael Glantz. PHEW.

Sitting pretty in first, next came Speed Cards. I had thought about going all out and not caring whether I got a perfect deck or not, banking on the fact that I had done well enough in the previous events to send me into the finals in case I flunked the cards. But I played it safe, going for 66 seconds on the first try. It was a really good deck, I really should have put it down after one look through. I mean, it had me (Ace of Diamonds) waving (9 of Diamonds) at a mountain (5 of Hearts). When will that ever happen in competition again?? My mom was there, my bro, my sis, my dad, all my friends....ARGH! And it was SO FAST the first time through. Was sub-30 seconds for sure. Oh well, woulda, coulda, shoulda. The second attempt I went fast, but not super fast....got 44 seconds, but had 2 mistakes. Couldn't remember if Jack Black was putting lipstick on his hand or on a draedel. CURSES! My risky move there cost me the national record, and Johnny Briones snagged it from me by 3 seconds (60 seconds on the nose, the old record was 63). I've been trying to beat the minute mark in competition for years now. And although I've done it in international competitions (40.65 seconds), I really wanted to do it in the US one. No matter, I'm happy either way.

Needless to say I was first all around after all that and was moving on to the afternoon finals rounds with Alex Mullen, Livan Grijalva, Brad Zupp, Lance Tschirhart, Johhny Briones, Patrick Walsh, and Mike Mirski (in that order).

Round 1: Words to Remember

I knew this round would be tough this year and it proved to be so. I went for 140 words, which is way more than ever necessary, but I wasn't 100% sure. I can do 250 in 15 minutes, so 140 is easy. But then again, you never know....one mis-spoken word and you're out. So you need to be ABSOLUTELY sure of all your words. As I predicted, we went pretty high with the words. I believe the last person to get eliminated was on the 80th or so word. Us remaining guys asked if we could keep going to show off our memory muscles and I blanked on word 127. Alex kept going to 137. Impressive. Johnny and Brad made silly mistakes early on (Johnny said "architecture" instead of "architect" and Brad said "light bulb" instead of "bulb") while Patrick just blanked at around the 80 mark. 5 competitors remained.

Round 2: Tea Party

This event is always super easy for me, even though they've increased the amount of people to 6 from 5 over the past years. I ended up getting stuck with all the names and pets for some reason. I came out of the gate missing the first kid's name (I knew his first and last but didn't want to give up information to the person after me) getting my first strike. That sucked. But I knew I wouldn't miss anything else. Everyone else slowly racked up strikes and before we knew it, Mike and Livan were out. Lance, Alex, and I were moving on to the finals.

Round 3: Double Deck O' Cards

Ah, the famous 2010 reverse mistake made by me...came back again and caused Lance to get eliminated. We got back on stage after memorizing for 5 minutes and I started with the first card: 6 of diamonds. Instantly, Lance said something like "wait, I thought we were starting with the blue deck!?" So he had to quickly jump to a different location in his mind to find the card from the other deck. Under pressure, he wasn't able to do it and was out before he had even started. Shame, but I'm sure he'll never mess that up again! So now it was down to me and Alex, who had been cold and calculated all day long, hiding in the shadows as an underdog, without any press haggling him (because he was a newcomer). I was quite nervous, but ultimately I knew I had both decks perfectly memorized. I told myself, let me just do what I know I can do and if he makes a mistake, so be it. So I kept going. I didn't once break my focus or look at the audience, I just staying in my memory palace and I wasn't leaving until I finished. Alex ended up blanking on the 66th card...and before I knew it, I was the champion again.

At first I didn't even react, but then as I gave my speech, I kinda choked up, realizing what a journey it's been since last year. I didn't say it on stage there, but I should have, but I'm pretty sure that was my last USA Memory Championship. I always wanted to win 3 times and I always wanted to leave on a high note. It doesn't get any higher than that.

So there it is. I can now put that behind me, and start moving towards the bunch of other projects I have on the horizon.

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The Memorable Project - End of Month #2

A quick update here on The Memorable Project.... It has been a rough month (with regards to the success of the project), and even though it was a short one, I found myself busy with a lot of other things. Namely, training full-on for the USA Memory Championships (in 28 days from now), working on my book, and planning my slow take-over of the world :D

As I said previously after month #1, it seems easier for me to remember the news events rather than the 3 life events. I've since moved to using flash cards, and those have helped tremendously. But I think more solid review sessions are the way to go and the true key to success in this project. That might not be truly feasible until the memory competition is over when I can focus on this project 100%. Until then, I'll keep on making my life memorable and logging in information daily, doing light reviews whenever I can.

In spite of all the difficulty memorizing this stuff, I'm having loads of fun planning and mapping out new and interesting things to do each and every day. 2014 has already been an awesome year so far and it's just getting started!

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The Extreme Memory Tournament

XMEMO2014-originalAlmost two years ago, I took a trip to St. Louis to participate in a memory study at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). They were doing a battery of memory tests on mental athletes like myself and comparing the results to "regular", un-trained, folks, as well as trivia experts who had also gone through those same tests. At the time, Ben Pridmore and Boris Konrad (two of the best competitors in the world) had participated. I was the third. It became clear to me that with the Psych Department at WUSTL and their funding source (Dart NeuroScience), there was an opportunity for something new, different, and bigger. In my head, ever since I started competing in memory competitions, I had realized that, in my opinion, it wasn't being done correctly. Memory sports has been around for 20+ years and it still has yet to take off, which is weird considering we live in an age where mental fitness is such a hot topic. In the second half of 2011, I reignited my love for Tennis (a sport I had played a lot in my youth) and got to thinking one day while watching the US Open Finals...why is Tennis so captivating to watch? There isn't much variety in terms of action if you really think about it. Two guys, one ball. A serve, a forehand, a volley, a backhand, a slice, and that's pretty much it. Back and forth it goes, for hours. But that was exactly it, the reason Tennis is so interesting is because it's so simple, easy to understand, and a true battle between two people, who are giving it everything they've got to win.

From that moment forth, I realized that memory sports was missing that very same set of elements. What memory sports was, at least up until then and well, still now, was an exam - A long, all day (sometimes 3-day) exam. People staring at sheets of paper with loads of information etched onto them for long stretches of time. YAWN. At least the official USA Memory Competition had part of the day on stage in an exciting set of elimination rounds. But it wasn't completely exam-free.

I asked the researchers at WUSTL if they would relay the message to Dart NeuroScience that I was interested in creating an exciting, totally different, memory competition. The response was immediate and positive. We had a few meetings to decide on dates, logistics, budget, and within months I had a blank canvas for a memory competition sitting in front of me.

There were a few things I knew about what this competition would be. For one, it needed to be a tournament, not a competition. It needed to be head-to-head, one match at a time, similar to a tennis match. Second, it needed to have a lot of prize money (a. to lure the best competitors in and b. to increase the stakes and make everything that much more meaningful in competition). Third, I was going to do this right, and to do it right I had to make sure I had the input (and approvals) of the top mental athletes in the world.

After many many months of thinking, tweaking, testing, brainstorming, and stressing, we all (me, WUSTL, Dart, certain top memory competitors) started to see something take shape. I won't go into all the details of this tournament here, but instead, mosey on over to the freshly designed website and learn for yourself: www.extremememorytournament.com.

The competition is a couple months away and is looking to be awesome. Stay tuned for more news and updates as the event date approaches (there is a blog on the tournament website).

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The Memorable Year Project Update - End Of Month #1-

First let me say, I'm home! Yay, I'm home! Made it back safely from Kilimanjaro a week ago and have been getting back into the groove of things for 2014. There are a few things on my plate now, the big one being the memory competition I'm organizing in April (more on that soon, or here if you want a sneak peek), and the next big one being my 'Memorable Year Project.' That's the one where I'm memorizing every day of this year, remember?

It's the end of January, so that means 1 out of 12 months are memorized. CHECK. So how did it go? Well, it was bloody hard. The writing it down once and never reviewing it part (other than thinking about it in my own head) has gone right out the window. It's just too much information to keep track of off of one glance. And, if this is only with one month's worth of info, imagine how I'll feel by November! GAHHH!

No matter, I'm committed to see this through till the end. I am reviewing more constantly and making these memories stick. Hopefully in a few months time, I'll have a knack for it and it will become a lot easier. What I've realized is the most difficult part about all this is remembering the personal memories I choose. I can remember the weather, location, and world news event super easily, but it's tough recalling the 3 things I did that day...not sure quite why, but maybe because they are always so random. One day I was doing something epic like summiting Kilimanjaro, the other day just eating a chicken sandwich.

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Kilimanjaro Day 8

20140119-190025.jpg We have some summits here!!!

Team Supreme (that's us) bolted out of the gates at midnight on Saturday (a.m.), on a full-moonlit night. The weather had been hail all afternoon and cleared up to absolute perfection just as we left. We couldn't have asked for better weather and the moonlight was so bright it made our headlamps as necessary as nipples on a breast plate. Lovely.

We were pumped. We scarfed down some stale toast and porridge (ameliorated with some copious amounts of sugar and/or Milo), then packed up and left at midnight, on the dot. On the DOT!

8 out of the 9 of us suddenly found ourselves on the way up to the Roof of Africa ('ol papa Bill decided to sit this one out. Smart man, knowing his limits). For the next 7 hours we plodded up the mountain, negotiating rocks and skree. At first, doing well, chatting up a storm with a bazillion "would you rather" questions and debating which Bill Murray movie is the best (definitely 'Groundhog Day' for me). Then at about hour 4, everyone shut up because the altitude was starting to make some of us puke, develop severe head-pounding headaches, and question just what the hell we were doing.

I've climbed much higher and much more dangerous peaks, but I will say that climbing 4000 feet of elevation in 7 hours when you aren't really acclimatized is no joke. I must admit that I was suffering near the end because of that. I had one of the worst headaches imaginable. Either way, that isn't something to stop me (nor anyone else from our awesomely strong team, for that matter). We all pushed through.

As we approached Stella Point (the lower summit at the rim of the volcano crater) at about hour 6, the sun started to rise and coat the whole mountain with one of the most beautiful orange-reds I have ever seen. On our last switch back, I finally saw the sign for Stella Point and about a dozen people surrounding it. I let out a resounding "YES!!!" and marched upwards with a new sense of purpose.

Everyone else followed in line moments later, and we were soon hugging it out like men celebrating a winning touchdown. Aaron, who carries one of the most prophetic ginger beards I've ever seen, even managed to pull through despite puking a few times on the way up. Props to him. His beard-brother (a British fellow from another team carrying an equally prophetic, yet less dense, ginger beard) followed shortly and their beards gave a high five. I believe time stood still at that precise moment (and I'm pretty sure some kittens lives were spared as well). Quite a sight.

Our mission wasn't done yet though. We had 45 more minutes to the true summit, which was visible from Stella point but on the complete opposite (and slightly higher) side of the crater. So we plodded on.

As the sun rose higher and made everything even more beautiful, we increasingly struggled. Every new step was more painful than the one before it. It got even more painful hearing people who had already summited, pass us on the way down saying in a way-too-jovial-for-how-i-was-feeling kinda way, "you're almost there!" and "you can do it!" I ignored them and kept on, focusing rather on the beautiful scenery around me. It was right then that I was reminded why I do these climbs. Moments like that just remind me how amazing this planet is and how tiny and insignificant we all are. It puts your life into perspective in a flash. There's nothing else quite like it.

We powered on and finally we found ourselves at the true summit of Uhuru Peak. HELL YES. We all hugged, danced, and celebrated. I memorized a deck of cards (more on that later), while others took pictures of flags and random trinkets they had slogged up there. I can't say this enough, but what a fucking beautiful day it was. Stunning.

Young Bill and I headed down together after spending about an hour on the summit. We agreed to try and run down the mountain as fast as possible (for shits and giggles) with one of our guides (whose name was, wait for it.....Nelson. Yup). The way down was one of the most fun descents in recent memory for me, and we basically skree-skied it down, zipping by everyone (even porters) while sliding and spraying dirt all around us. We made it down in impressive 53 minutes. Ha! 7 hours up and less than an hour down. Amazing. I should have GoPro'd the whole thing, but I forgahhhht, DOH!

Everyone else from Team Supreme followed down to High Camp a few hours later and we rested, rehydrated, ate, and then headed down to a lower camp (this time at a leisurely pace). We all slept like babies and arose to our final breakfast, followed by an amazing singing of African mountain songs by our lovely 32 guides and porters (which sounded like Paul Simon's "Graceland" album, it was that good). We then shot down the rest of the mountain in about 3.5 hours where we bathed in the sun, drinking Kilimanjaro beers as we waited for our bus back to town.

An amazing trip, with amazing people, and an amazing new experience and more importantly....a new memory. I loved that every morning Zack (one of our team members) would shout out, as he firmly secured his Scottish plaid, newspaper-boy cap on his head: "Let's go make a memory!"

And so we did.

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Kilimanjaro Day 7

Up to the last camp today folks! We'll be sitting somewhere above 15,000 ft. Then resting a few hours before we wake up at 11pm, stuff our faces with porridge and stale toast, then BOOM, shoot up to the summit (19,000 ft and change). Should take about 7 hours at a slowish pace, then I'll do a little dance on the summit (might actually try some burpees or memorize a deck of cards - we'll see how I feel), then head 2 hours down to the next camp feeling like a boss, craving a big African beer.

Our team is strong. A couple were feeling the altitude yesterday, but after today we'll have a better idea if all of us will be making it. I happen to think we all will. We passed this woman yesterday, probably in her mid-50s, but quite overweight (no idea why she is on this mountain in that shape), and hours later she showed up at camp (albeit partially carried by two porters). So if she had the will to get through yesterday's pretty steep climb, I don't know what excuse anyone can give to give up at this point. Ha!

Onwards!

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Kilimanjaro Day 6

I've jumped from day 2 to day 6, I know. Sorry! I thought there'd be more cell service out here but I was wrong. I mean get with it Africa, even Everest had service...geez. We've been climbing for the past three days solid and it's been quite nice. Nothing crazy hard, just long slogs. Reminds me a lot of the Everest Base Camp trek. Only a few more days until we go for the summit (Friday at midnight). Everyone on our team is doing great so far. We're having tons of fun and the bathroom jokes have settled in comfortably over our dinners as they usually do on mountain trips.

The weather has been incredible too. All day it's either sunny or slightly misty and then when we get to camp it just becomes totally sunny. Last night we played around with our fancy cameras, taking night exposure shots while writing things in the sky with a flashlight. Super cool!

Anyways, tomorrow things get a bit more serious as we'll be starting to sleep over 4000 meters. I'll try to check in when I can, but obviously it ain't easy. Best thing to do is follow my satellite tracker (linked in my previous post).

Out!

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Kilimanjaro Day 2

Had our debriefing this morning with our four local guides (one of them was named Nelson! Oh yes, Nelson^2). All looks good. The rest of the team arrived as well and now we are one big happy fellowship (since we are nine...or maybe we are the Nazgul?) Everything looks good to go. We leave tomorrow at 8:30am for the park gate to the Machame Route (which is, from what I gather, not the easiest but one of the easier routes on the mountain). The first day is supposed to be hot and long (18 km), but we'll end up at around 10,000ft once the day is through. So that's already some decent elevation.

I'm so pumped for this! I'll try to send out blog posts if at all possible, but in the event that I can't, you can follow my progress here:

https://share.delorme.com/NelsonDellis

POLE POLE! ('slowly, slowly' in Swahili)

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Kilimanjaro Day 1

Damn, it's bloody hot!That was my first thought. My next thought was Well duh, I'm in Africa and near the equator. What did I expect?

After about 18 hours on the plane, I finally landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania. The flights were alright except for the second leg from NYC to Amsterdam where I was stuck next to this African man who kept telling me how much he liked to drink water. Like, he loved it. He kept yelling at the stewardess for more water. One cup wasn't enough, he wanted 5 at the same time. And then more after that. And then he felt the need to remind me of his love for water every time I was starting to nod off to sleep. He also told me that I eat slow, to which I replied 'so?' He also asked me if I was going to drink the wine I had just ordered, to which I said 'yes,' to which he responded, 'I don't like alcohol, I like water.' blank stare.

The flight from Amsterdam to Tanzania was hassle free and I was able to think without being told how good water was. We landed late in the evening so I wasn't able to notice anything about my surroundings as I stepped off the plane other than the fact that it was really balls-sticking-to-my-legs warm. Ahhh where's the AC??....You're in Africa doofus, deal with it. My bag successfully came through like hot curry and I was soon on my way with Charles, my driver, to Moshi - the nearest town to Kili.

Charles was able to teach me 6 Swahili words on the road and he warned me that he would test my memory when we arrived (I chuckled inside, does he know who I am???). The most important thing he taught me after though was mipe bia moja (give me one beer). I was set. As we neared Moshi, I could make out the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro even in the dark. The peak is just a monstrosity booming up into the sky with nothing else around it. Quite intimidating, I must admit.

The Keys Hotel is nice enough, with a quaint little courtyard where you can hang out and sip on some brewskis and a questionable swimming pool in the back yard. No AC in the room, but a fan (thank god a fan!!). It was late but I went down to the bar to order some Tanzanian stew dish that turned out to be pretty delicious. Ate it all while watching 'Black Hawk Down' which was playing on the TV, where a few locals were intensely watching....not the most welcoming movie for an American coming to Africa....Either way, it's a good movie and I hadn't seen it since it came out in theaters back in like 2001. I actually remember the date I was on when I saw it and remembered how it made me want to visit Africa (not because of the violence, but because of the landscapes, duh). I forgot how many (now)famous people there are in that film who were nobodies back then!

Anyways, I digress. That was all last night. Today I woke up having slept (inside my mosquito net) like a baby. Grabbed some eggs and bacon for breakfast, went back to sleep, met a few of the team members, then wandered into town. I've gotta say, I've never traveled anywhere in the world where they look at you the way they look at me here. I dunno if it's because I'm white, or because I'm really white, or because I'm tall, or because I'm really tall, but it feels really strange to be just stared at. Not like glanced at, I mean full on watching-my-every-move stared at. Aside from that though, everyone is so friendly and it seems that Tanzanians love American culture. I've gotten a lot of random fist bumps, peace signs, and thumbs ups, which when I volley back at them, makes their faces light up with the biggest smiles. I saw a car that had the words "Michael Jordan" stickered HUGE on the windshield, because hey, if you're gonna put some words in big block letters on your windshield, who WOULDN'T put Michael Jordan?

What's probably impressed me the most is how everyone carries things (balances things, rather) on their heads. What a talent! And I mean everything - grocery bags, picnic baskets, water coolers, etc. I guess it's more efficient and leaves your hands free to do whatever you want (like fist bump a tall American tourist). Can you imagine if everyone in America carried things like that? You'd be at say, Best Buy, and people would be walking around the parking lot looking for their car while balancing PS4s and MacBook Pros on their head. Ha!

Also, who knew 'The Lion King' was so useful! A bunch of words from it are real Swahili words. Hakuna Matata (no problem). Asante Sana (thank you very much). Props to Disney.

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2014 - The Memorable Year

Happy New Year! Some of you might have already caught a glimpse of my project for 2014 here: http://tech.co/new-years-resolutions-entrepreneurs-entrepreneurs-2013-12. But let me re-explain it for you guys.

I'm all about memories. It's what I value most and it's also what I believe makes me one of the best memorizers in the world. I use my memorable experiences to help enhance my memory. A lot of people don't know this about me, but I make a big effort to remember my life events. I journal a lot, I go out of my way to make moments memorable, and I write/reminisce a lot too. But I want to take it further.

Let me first make sure all my readers know that I do not have any sort of Super Autobiographical Memory (like, at all). I remember and forget life events just as well/poorly as anyone else. But I do feel that there are things I can do (given my learned memory skills) to mimic as if I did have that kind of memory, even if only a tiny bit. So 2014 is going to be my little experiment. Here are the rules:

1. Everyday in 2014 (January 1st - December 31st) I will commit the following to memory:

  • 1 world news event (doesn't have to be a headliner, just something that happened that day and that can be looked up and verified when I recall it)
  • 3 life events (3 things I found important from that specific day that I want to remember)
  • My location (city)
  • Weather (nothing crazy, just whether it was rainy, cloudy, absolutely freezing, a hurricane, etc.).

2. I'm not allowed to review these memories by looking at anything, it all has to be in my head.

3. I have to make the effort to make each day count. Go for adventures, try new things, make life MEMORABLE.

3. Each day, I will write the 3 items down (my life events) on a small piece of paper, and enter them into a "piggy-bank" (something I can't open without breaking it). That way, at the end of the year, I'll have some way to demonstrate that I actually remember every day of the year (by having someone break the piggy-bank, choose random strips of paper, and test me).

That's pretty much it. Simple. Just remember life at the end of each day (I would prefer to not even write ANYTHING down at all, but I'll need some way to verify it at the end of the year, hence the piggy-bank idea).

Onwards to 2014!!

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Ace of Diamonds

Ace Poster FINALI'm in Boise, Idaho. Yup, that's right. Drowning in potatoes (well, snow and cold rather). Anyways, I'm here for the premiere of a good friend of mine Ana Overgaard's short documentary about me called 'Ace of Diamonds.' It follows my journey over the past two years conquering and failing memory and mountains. Most of you all know my story, and I've probably beaten it to death in all of you by now, but Ana really does a phenomenal job of stitching all the high and low points of my journey into one seamless, engaging film. For those of you in the Boise area, it will be playing at the Egyptian Theatre, which is located in the heart of downtown Boise. Tickets are $10 and the show starts at 7pm and will be followed by a Q&A with me and Ana.


Check out the trailer below:
http://vimeo.com/76103884

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Well That Didn't Go As Planned...

photoOk, so I"m gonna let out a bit of stuff about the competition. First off, my goal this year was to beat the 2012 Nelson <--- that guy was a guy you did NOT want to mess with. I had trained a ton in the past 3 months and was hitting PRs like crazy, so I was expecting to do better than last year. Here are my comments/results in order of events:


1. Names and Faces - This one is always a crap shoot. I"m really good at it but my scores can vary depending on the kind of names they provide (80-110 points). I ended up on the lower side with 87....which was still decent enough to pull 6th place, but not better than last year"s 101. I was slightly bummed but also knew that that could happen. They were really tough names. To give you an idea, at the USA competition I can typically score 160 names no problem (Bob, Steve, McAllister, Joe, Bradshaw, etc). So to barely scrape 90 points just gives you a taste of the difficulty.


2. Binary Numbers - I"m not so great at this one (only because it"s the one I practice the least). That being said, I bested my older score of 1515 digits in 30 minutes with 1650 or something like that. Yay. Doesn"t come close to the top scores (near 4000) - but I"m okay with that. Happy that"s over. No more binary for a year!


3. Hour Numbers - I can do 1800-2000 digits in an hour. I wanted to go for a solid 1800. In the hour I got through 1840 digits and thought I knew them pretty well. During the recall I had a few holes in my mind, so I knew I"d hit some penalties, but I thought I"d hit about 1600. Nope, it was 1482 (which is the year the Hunchback of Notre Dame takes place in....and it bested my previous year"s score of 1350ish). Not stoked but was somewhat happy with this. Other people got some ridiculous scores over 2000. Impressive as hell!


4. Abstract Images - Beat my score of last year by 30 or so points (232). I went for 250, which is 5 pages of random blobs. I thought I nailed it, but clearly made a few mistakes. No worries. 232 was still good enough for a top 10 finish in the event. Yay!


5. Speed Numbers - YES! I"m most happy about this. I did 339 digits perfectly in 5 minutes. That"s my best Speed Numbers score in all of my competitions EVER. I have been waiting to get a number close to what I actually do in practice. Here it is. Now I can put that to bed and start pushing higher for the 400s. Johannes Mallow broke the world record by 1 digit (501)....so amazing.


6.Historic / Future Dates - Was disappointed with my performance here. I had been practicing this a ton and was getting around 70 dates pretty consistently. My pacing out of the gate was slow for some reasons and I could only get through 50 dates during the competition. I made a couple mistakes so I got a score of 48, which was one less than last year"s 49. ARGH!


7. Hour Cards - Was aiming for 18 decks, but got through 16.5 safely. I was 100% sure I nailed them all. I spent hours checking over my recall sheets for mistakes, but it all looked good. They said casino pa natet I only got 14.5 which I challenged (you can challenge scores and have them re-check it), but for some poorly organized reason, they promised to check my cards but never did. Not cool.. Anyways, 14.5 was better than last year"s 12.5. So, a win for me.


8. Random Words - My favorite event. I went for 232 words in 15 minutes and frustratingly got blanks on a couple words, which caused some penalty points, giving me a score of 182 (which was still quite good and better than my score last year)....bummer but not too much of a bummer.


9. Spoken Numbers - One of my best events. But for some reason I froze and I don"t know why. I couldn"t do anymore than 78 digits in a row (they say the digits out loud, 1 per second). I can usually do over 100 and sometimes 200. We had 3 trials, but I was mostly rubbish in each of them. Congrats to my buddy and fellow American, Brad Zupp, for solidly memorizing 112 digits. So sweet!


10. Speed Cards - I absolutely bombed here, which is so unlike me. I guess I was just off my game at this point. Not really sure what happened. The worst part is I went "slowly" with a "safe" time of 1m15s. I started weirdly over-thinking things in my head switching things that I initially had correct during the recall. Grrrr. At this point I was just going safe so my overall total score for the whole competition would be better than last years. I messed up the first attempt so the second attempt I was like, "just nail it, who cares how fast/slow you go".....so I did it again safely in 1m09s. But...again....confused myself during the recall, swapping 2 cards. So it was another botched trial. I got very minimal points as a result and it caused me to have a lower score (by 100) than last year.....


*BANGS HEAD AGAINST WALL*


I might be too hard on myself (definitely), considering I finished 12th overall out of about 100 competitors from around the world. But for me, that"s not good enough. I know I"m better than what I did. Anyways, failures are what I thrice off of anyways....so onwards to the next competition.

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2013 World Memory Championships

Here we go again. My second World Memory Championships. The competition is being held in "London" (Croydon) this weekend (30th, 1st, 2nd). I had initially told myself after last year"s that that would be enough, but something keeps drawing me in. I guess the pull of seeing where I stand in comparison to the world"s greatest is too much for me to ignore. A few months ago, I found myself quite out of mental shape. Cards I had kept up religiously as usual, but my training for numbers and all the other disciplines had kind of fallen to the wayside. It bugged me, but for some reason I couldn"t really get in a groove (I keep blaming my post-Everest recovery, but there was only so long I could ride that train). Anyways, somewhere between then and now, I started getting back into things. And as of late, it"s been non-stop, spending tons of hours practicing. My numbers are back to where they used to be (super happy to see that) and I"ve actually improved in some of the more obscure disciplines that show up at the WMC (namely historic dates, abstract images, and spoken numbers).

I"m excited for this competition because I feel absolutely zero pressure. Last year it was my first true international competition and I wanted to set a precedent. That, and I was set on gaining the Grandmaster of Memory title (which I did). This year, my main goal is to out-perform the 2012 Nelson. If I can do that, I"ll place higher and well....that would be pretty cool. Ha.

A few quick predictions for myself (I do this to better hold myself accountable, but please don"t hold me to them :D):

Day 1

Names & Faces - Ok so this year I trained a ton with the international names. You may be thinking, "Oh, I can memorize names...pshhh" but nope, not these names. The WMC folks tend to take the most complicated Asian first name and the longest, nearly unpronounceable Indian last name. And then they stick it on a picture of Brad Pitt. Not easy. But I"ve been practicing with super tricky names and gotten a lot better. Projected: 100-110 ; Hopeful: 120 .

30-minute Binary - I hate this event. Always have. I never have the patience for it. Last year I botched it pretty bad scoring a measly 1300 digits or so. That sounds like a lot, but it"s not. With binary digits, you can compress them so that a lot of binary digits group together to make just one image. People do like 4000...yeah, WHAT?. My issue in the past has been that I lose track of where I am in the never-ending sea of 1s and 0s. With so many of them, the whole page starts to look like a Magic Eye picture. Yikes. The plan for this year is to use a ruler to go line by line and a transparency to help line up groups of numbers better. Projected: 1500-2000; Hopeful: 2000 .

One-hour Numbers: Regular decimal numbers, for one hour. Last year I went for 1700 digits or so and ended up with a score of 1350. I wasn"t happy. I know I can do a lot better. Projected: 1700-2000; Hopeful: 2000.

Day 2

Abstract Images: Haven"t gotten a whole lot better at this, only slightly. Last year I did pretty much as expected. This year, I"m hoping to break the 200 point mark. Projected: 220-250; Hopeful: 250

Speed Numbers (2 trials): Ahhh, my favorite. Yet one of the international disciplines I have for some reason sucked at in competition. Not sure why. I practiced a ton on paper with exact replicas of the competition papers. I think that will help. Projected: 300-340 digits; Hopeful: 340-360.

Historic Dates: How many fictional events tied with a year between 1600-2100 can you memorize in 5 minutes. This event is surprisingly tough. But I"ve gotten a lot faster and confident. Projected: 50-70 dates; Hopeful: 70 .

One-hour Cards: Exactly what it sounds like, 1 hour to memorize cards. How many decks, actually. Last year I went for 20, but only made it through 17, and made mistakes leaving me with 12.5. Yuck. I need to get a solid 18 or I"m going home. Projected: 18 decks; Hopeful: 19 decks.

Day 3

Random Words: My favorite and best event I"d say. I"ve been making tiny stupid errors more often though and I don"t know why. Hopefully I"m more on point come competition day. Projected: 200-240 words; Hopeful: 240 .

Spoken Numbers (200/300/400): There are three trials here. First is 200 digits spoken 1-per-second, then 300, then 400. My goal is to hit 100 perfect on that first try and then go all out on the next two attempts. Projected: 150-200; Hopeful:200 .

Speed Cards (2 trials): How fast can you memorize a deck of cards? I"ll see how I feel at this point and how many points I need to win out over the people around me. I"d love to break the 40 second barrier in competition. Projected: 45 seconds; Hopeful: 35 seconds.

So there you have it. I"ll keep you posted!

In the mean time you can follow the results right here:

http://www.world-memory-statistics.com/competition.php?id=wmc2013

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Everest Video V!

Finally, the last video of my 2013 Everest series. With this video I'll be closing up that awesome chapter of my life. 2014 will have a lot of new climbs, kicking off the year with Kilimanjaro, then Manaslu in the fall. Then if all goes well, back with Altitude Junkies on Everest in 2015. This video took me a long time to put together, but it's also probably the one I've put the most into. I was very careful in choosing the shots and how to edit it all together. I played with a bunch of different songs, but I'm super happy with the ones I finally settled on. I think they set the mood just right. Most people see mountain climbing as this incredibly extreme experience, but as you'll see in the video, a lot of it is calm, slow, and peaceful. It's just me and the mountain; me battling the elements and my mental head-game.

This will wrap up anything climbing related for 2013. On to the next year!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNDGRs_0glQ

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Kilimanjaro Climb 2014

kiliIn what I hope becomes a yearly Climb For Memory trip, I will be guiding a trip up the tallest peak in Africa: Kilimanjaro (organized by Peak Freaks - the folks I climbed Everest with in 2011). If you happen to be interest, check out the details below. The trip starts on Jan. 11th, 2014 and will be about 7 days long. You know you've wanted to do it...come on! Kilimanjaro Jan. 11, 2014

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