It’s been hard lately. The stresses of building a solid organization that can stand the test of time; the stresses of funding years on the road; the stresses closing down life as I know it have been overwhelming. Do you know why? Read more »

At our core ADVphilanthropy is all about relationships.  Every aspect of what we do revolves around us interacting with people, whether it be individuals, groups or organizations.  And our ability to build healthy relationships that foster positive change is not only key to our success, but is also our “mission” in a nutshell. Read more »

Most of the time people hear about our trip, our mission, our dream and LOVE the idea. They are enthusiastic and encouraging, but we’ve all ran into the people who believe it’s their job to protect us from the dangers of the world, protect us from the tragedy of failure. Let’s call them the dream killers. Read more »

How did we get here? After all, this started out as a random plan to strap a paraglider on a motorcycle and ride around California and maybe Mexico for a few months. My buddy Matt wanted to do a similar thing but with climbing gear. We decided to join forces and the next thing we knew, we were committed to years riding from the Arctic circle to southern Argentina and building a world changing philanthropic organization as we went. So, how DID we get here? Read more »

We were stoked. We rallied out to Brevard, up the dirt road, the Honda Element bouncing and skidding through the curves. We couldn’t wait to climb! We jumped out of the car  and started throwing gear onto the ground to sort what we wanted for our climb. Read more »

You’d think the choice of which climbing ropes to bring with us would be easy. I mean, we climb cliffs, we need a good rope. The problem is space and weight. We can only carry so much stuff on our bikes. Many routes only require one rope to get up and down, but longer routes stretch a full hundred and fifty feet or more. The math is easy – one rope won’t get us back to the ground.  It’s imperative for expedition climbing to have two ropes. Read more »

One of the early challenges I identified was my total lack of fitness to handle the rigors of crashing motorcycles, climbing rocks and sinking out in the wilderness on my paraglider. My blog post, Back Fat pretty much sums up where I was at.  The key word is WAS. The reason is CrossFit. Read more »