866: Watch Out for That Tree
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Comms an accountant, and he once said this thing to his kids, it really stuck with them because it summed up so much about his personality, and how he handled his decisions at work and with his family. He said it's his job to assess risk. It was part of his thinking even when he planned family vacations, planned vacations would take him months. He'd get travel guides, check out National Parks, he'd look for hidden gems near the parks that they could visit along the way. He'd check the local weather to make sure that we know what the average temperatures are during those times of years. Now, I'm going to ask this question as an accountant's kid. When you would put together the family's plan for the trip, was that done in an Excel spreadsheet? You know it. Pretty good, I like that. And so if I saw that spreadsheet, what would I be seeing? You'd be seeing, from left to right, it has the dates that we're going to, you know, where we're going to be. That's the mileage between each spot, the number of hours on the road, places to stay, that kind of thing. Okay, so one year, the plan was to go to Great Basin National Park in Nevada, in Hike. And whenever the family would go to a national park, they'd always like to do at least one really strenuous, difficult hike as part of the trip. And on this trip, they decided to climb to the top of Weore Peak, found research this in advance, of course. And the trail starts 10,000 feet up, and you climb 3,000 feet. The one thing that I remember reading was that they said Wheeler is susceptible to changes in weather. So I said, okay, they said, so get out early. So we got out early. We got out around 7 o'clock in the morning. Of course you check the weather forecast for the day. And I remember there was a 10% chance of thunderstorms, but later in the afternoon. So I thought, okay, we could get up there by 10 o'clock, we could stay until 11, then we could come back down. Then avoid the trouble. Correct. And so, you know, the best way he plans is we later found out. We headed out in time. It was a beautiful day, probably about in the 70s. Nice little breeze. These new kids, Marco was 20, Angela, who was 18, sped ahead up the trail, as usual. Tom and his wife Mary weren't that far behind. They're going up the switchbacks, just a lovely, perfect day, until the two kids get hit by lightning. I don't remember seeing a bolt. I just remember seeing everything flash white. This course is Angela. And I learned this family story from her when she worked here at our radio show. Basically, she and her brother got to the top of the mountain before their parents.
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