My earliest memory is being in a snow hole, aged two-and-a-half, with my dad somewhere up a mountain in a blizzard. I don't know what my dad saw in me - I was a geeky kid - but he had that philosophy: prepare the kid for the road, not the road for the kid.

I have been to Switzerland a handful of times, and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to climb.

I feel very lucky to be able to call my hobby my job, yet it doesn't feel like one.

I am at a climbing area called the Wendenstock in Switzerland. This area has some of the best quality multi-pitch climbing I have seen on limestone. There is about a two-hour approach on one of the steepest grass slopes I have ever seen. The setting is amazing.

The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you, I am just amazed by that.

For there is a price ticket on everything that puts a whizz into life, and adventure follows the rule. It's distressing, but there you are.

Summer is meant to be for travel, for exploration, for leisure, but sometimes budgets and schedules dictate otherwise.

Moving is easy, exciting, an adventure - when you're young. Later, not so much. I love Massachusetts, my old home. Sometimes, late at night, I even study the real estate ads in my old hometown. But it's not even a fantasy. My parents are both gone. The world I left doesn't exist anymore. Neither does the person I was.