The Kindness of Strangers...

Just a quick note: I'm borrowing the title of my post here from a great This American Life episode.

Work has kept me incredibly busy lately. Though I've been (promoted?) to Director of Marketing, I still have many of the same duties at work as I did before. I'm not going to go on about work here, but we have a lot of new equipment that has had me generating loads of promotional material for it as well as learning how to operate some of it. In the last four weeks I probably skipped about a dozen lunches which mean I missed numberous opportunities to go for my lunch time slogs. I'm hoping (it's really more like praying) most of that is behind me now.

What I want to talk about most is the OVERWHELMING amount of encouragement I've received from complete strangers. Well, actually, I'll let them tell you. Here's email from a couple of people I met on the Oklahoma River Trails.



And this one,



I was almost moved to tears to read such kind sentiments. Knowing that I might inspire someone to try climbing a mountain like Rainier is an awesome feeling. And having someone who spent a few minutes to find out what you're doing only to turn around and volunteer to hike up Mt. Scott with me as I drag my tire is about as good as it gets!

Say what you want about the "Fly Over" states, but I wouldn't trade the people here for the world!