The Wild Heart Blog

If you’re like me, and looking for a FREE ADVENTURE, you should check out “The Gear Junkie’s Choose-Your-Adventure Sweepstakes.” The sweepstakes — sponsored by Lazyman, and REI Adventures — will award a randomly-drawn winner their choice from one of five professionally-guided winter adventure-travel trips in early 2009.

To sign up, the web address is www.thegearjunkie.com/sweeps

In addition to airfare and the all-expenses paid trip, the winner will be outfitted head-to-toe with all the essential gear from REI, including backpacks, apparel and hardgoods like snowshoes and ice axes (depending on the adventure).

The winner and a travel companion will pick between one of five REI Adventures trips, including:

• Mount Washington Winter Climb
• Sequoia Winter Mountaineering Clinic
• Yosemite Snowshoe Trip
• Ice Climbing Basics in New Hampshire
• White Mountains Hut-to-Hut Snowshoe

Attending the winter adventure with the winner and a guest will be The Gear Junkie, Stephen Regenold, a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist and founder of GearJunkie.com.

After the adventure, a party sponsored by Lazyman will celebrate the weekend’s accomplishments with music, food and drinks - with participants having “earned their lazy.” Finally, participants will receive additional gear for the chosen adventure from Adventure Medical Kits, Bear Naked Trail Mix and Wigwam, co-sponsors of the sweepstakes.

For more information, visit www.thegearjunkie.com/sweeps

I just signed up for this, becuase I already plan on climbing Mt Washington, but how awesome would it be to win the trip!!

For some time I have been living life day to day wishing and hoping and blaming my past for where I am. Instead of seeing where I am going and who I am becoming. A simple shift has taken place in my attitude over the past couple of months, and life along with my mindset, is changing and becoming more enjoyable and more rewarding. As my thinking has changed, so has my world around it.

I live for adventure and what it brings. Passion, inspiration, excitement, vitality, are the components of a great adventure. Adventure is more than an activity; it is a state of mind, a way of life. That state of mind is an attitude that helps us face the challenges we have to deal with, the new and different ways life presents itself, the unknown of what lays ahead. In this way we find ourselves and discover who we are, and what we are made of.

I expect to do big things in my life time. I plan on climbing Everest by the time I’m 35 and I plan on opening my store within the next year. I also hope to purchase my second home within the next year and to expand my horizons, both socially and finically. A matter of fact, my first mountaineering trip, will be this winter when I climb Mt. Washington. All of this starts with my own thinking. And in my mind, it is already a done deal. I’ve gone over and over what it’s going to feel like that first day in my store and what it will be like to stand before God and take in the stars from atop Everest and hear that quite still and hear the mountain speak.

So, come a long with me while I blog about this journey.

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” - Albert Einstein

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” - Henry Ford

“You create your own universe as you go along” - Winston Churchill

“All that we are is a result of what we have thought” - Buddha

“Ask, and it shall be given, seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” - Jesus