Living Simply 102

Steph
First, congratulations on not only all of your notable achievements but mainly for simply living life on your own terms. Any serious advice for a would be dirt bagger concerning the decision to pack it all in (job, societal expectations, blah blah blah…) and get busy living? Thank you for your time.
Josh

Hi Steph,
I’m right on the verge of graduating from college and am ready to not get a real job. I’d honestly like nothing more than to be able to skydive and rock climb all the time. I was wondering how you managed to make it by all these years as a climber and still managed to finance skydiving and survive. Did you just say fuck it and go all out for what you wanted or did you kinda plan how you were gana do it? I’m sure being a bad ass has helped at least a little.

So, along the same lines, do you think investing time in a full time job puts enough hindrance on your performance that it’s not worth working a full time job, or do you think the amount of time you can actually be out there doing this stuff is so limited that it doesn’t hurt to work that much?
thanks
-Vince

Dear Josh and Vince,
This is always the ten million dollar question! Climbers have a lot of ways to pull it off, but my experience has always been that climbers either work in restaurants or work construction, save up all their money, and then live on the road for a while. Eventually they get tired of living in their car and eating ramen, and do something else. Guiding has its pluses, but it is really hard work with long hours, doesn’t pay as well as it seems like it should, and somehow seems to make it challenging to keep the psyche for personal climbing.

I started skydiving two years ago, and one thing I was in absolute shock about was the money associated with skydiving. I grew up as a dirtbag climber for my whole adult life, and climbers have no money. As in, N.O. money. As in, two hundred bucks often has to last for a month. I lived in my car for most of my twenties, because I couldn’t afford to rent a place and still travel. I get sticker shock when I go to a rock gym and it costs $15 to get in, and it nearly kills me to pay for camping. Skydivers need airplanes, and airplanes cost a lot to fly. Moneywise, it’s a whole different reality. So yes, when I started skydiving, I was at a point in my life where I just didn’t care. Otherwise, there is no way I could have dealt with the expense, emotionally. It does get better over time, and especially when you start BASE jumping, which doesn’t cost anything once you have gear. But skydiving has a really high price of admission, when you first start and need to pay for training, and gear, and all of that, and it does keep costing money every time you jump.

Oddly enough, there are people in the skydiving culture living the dirtbag lifestyle and managing to skydive all the time. Naturally, I was curious to know how they pull it off, when skydives cost $25 a pop. And of course, being always trying to figure out ways to make things work, it slowly dawned on me that a climber who wants to climb all the time and who likes skydiving too could combine these worlds and have it made.

See, I worked 4 to 5 days a week waiting tables when I first moved to Moab. I worked late and often went in early, and was lucky to clear $3-400 a week in the high tourist season. I had mornings for climbing, but was usually pretty tired. And I had to work the full 8 month season in Moab, to keep the job. A skydiver who goes through all the official levels of certification (A license to D license) can fairly quickly start working as a video shooter for tandem skydives, or as a tandem master. It would not be cheap to start skydiving and acquire a D license (which takes 500 jumps), but one can start working at a drop zone along the way, packing parachutes, doing coach jumps, or shooting video. This way you can stop paying for jumps, as well as making money.

If you work as a tandem master, you spend about 15 minutes with each person you jump with, and that person is super happy and having the time of their life. You are also doing a skydive every time you do a tandem jump. And you can show up at any drop zone in the world, and almost immediately start working. I would say that every good climbing area in the world is located within a reasonable distance from a skydiving center.

As a tandem master, in one weekend, a person can make double what I made in a week as a waitress in Moab, and probably triple, especially if they work at a high-volume drop zone. If they work at a small drop zone, a tandem master often shoots a hand camera during the jump, which doubles the pay right there, and of course there are usually tips. Then they can spend the whole rest of the week climbing or jumping or whatever. Also, working and hanging out a drop zone is fun, all the time–a LOT more fun than sprinting around a restaurant until midnight five days a week…. This person would totally have it made!

Just an idea…
Steph