Adam Anonymous's Blog

One of my best friends for the past 35 years is rapidly deteriorating.

Each time I visit, I’m stepping into a difficult new reality. I enter his house. I climb the stairs. And then there he is. Sitting in his space-age mobile chair, in the center of his sunlight-filled living room. His head is tilted and he’s doing his best to smile at me.

The disease that took hold of him has destroyed his body. He can’t talk. Any movement is difficult. And yet his mind is still fully intact. He’s still in there–...

A few weeks ago, my best friend of thirty years and I went down to Central America for a weeklong surfing retreat. We didn’t know what to expect from the organized vacation and were a bit surprised when we found ourselves grouped with five women, all between twenty-five and thirty-two. Three were other clients, and two were the guides/instructors. As nice as that was, I knew I was now going to be overthinking my every move for the week.

On the second day of the trip, we were all bouncing down a d...

Dear _________,

You and I are not close, and we haven’t had much of a relationship throughout your life. Therefore, it might seem odd that I’m sending you this letter as you are about to get married. But what you do not know, is that you and I are bonded. Deeply bonded.

You see…..there was this guy who tortured me from grade school through high school. He was very difficult to have as a friend, was constantly making fun of me, and always telling me...

Surfing is beautiful. Learning how to surf though, is anything but. Like a monk you humble yourself to the power of the ocean every day you are out there learning. At times it is violent. It bashes you. It smashes you. It tries to drown you repeatedly. You willingly take the hits, over and over again. You keep coming back for more. Why? Because when you get it right, and you’re standing on your surfboard riding the wave, moving on it, carving on it, absorbing it into your legs and body, it’s the...

Lack of deep friendship is a brutal kind of poverty.

A billionaire who had read my book, wanted to have a drink with me. We met in a pub downtown and both ordered a beer. The conversation opened up with the subject matter of the book and after taking the topic as far as we reasonably could, we moved onto conversations around normal life. We talked about business, our mutual love for skiing and the Yankees. Regular guy stuff.

We’re both in our mid 50’s and had a good chuckle together on how our joi...

Excerpt from my book ‘Seek the Risk’:

After finishing film school, my father, a beatnik folk singer, came back to NYC in the early ’60s to try to make it as a musician….

I went to see the new Bob Dylan movie last night, ‘A Complete Unknown’ and I thought it was fantastic. This was due in part to the movie having special meaning for me because my dad was an integral part of the early 1960’s folk music scene in Greenwich Village NYC.

My dad arrived in the city in early 1961, rented...

My dad recently died, and he had a lot of stuff. Stuff that now has no purpose and is taking up space. One of his things was the bicycle that he used to get around the city. It was his primary mode of transportation when the weather was good.

This bicycle is not a good one. He may have even found it on the street years ago and fixed it up to use as his towny. The frame itself was from the early 80’s, but it had been Frankensteined over the years with a mix of parts from a range of qualities. Some...

I’m flying down the mountain on my snowboard through a heavily treed slope in the national forest. I’m in total command. Confidently zipping in between the trees, popping and porpoising, the snow spray from each turn sparkling in the sunlight that is filtering through the evergreens. Life is perfect. I’ve got it all figured out. As I pass a denser group of trees, I do a hard heel-side turn around the end of them and shoot into what I expect to be an open field of snow. My world goes black……..

I’m...

I’m just off the continental divide, free-soloing at an elevation of 12,000 feet, and 800 feet up a big piece of rock. Next to me is my current climbing partner. We’re casually standing on a two-inch ledge, about five feet away from each other. His body is sideways to the rock, one hand gripping an exposed edge, arm fully extended, his other arm dangling below him as he’s leaning over the void. We’re both looking down at my former climbing partner who’s 20 feet below us muttering to himself. He’...

I’m just off the continental divide, free-soloing at an elevation of 12,000 feet, and 800 feet up a big piece of rock. Next to me is my current climbing partner. We’re casually standing on a two-inch ledge, about five feet away from each other. His body is sideways to the rock, one hand gripping an exposed edge, arm fully extended, his other arm dangling below him as he’s leaning over the void. We’re both looking down at my former climbing partner who’s 20 feet below us muttering to himself. He’...