In the later part of 2011, when Alexis Hamilton approached me about managing the tour for Portland Opera To Go, I was not in particularly fantastic shape. I had been running for pleasure, but had no structure to my fitness. 3 months before the project started last year, I was challenged to a vegan diet regime by my best friend and his wife, who were planning on cutting all animal products from their diet. Now, this worked fine while operating out of Portland... about a month into the tour, I had fallen off the the proverbial "meatless wagon," and welcomed cheese and meat back with open arms (and satiated tummy).

Fast forward to the summer of 2012:

From August until late September, I found myself working on a completely different tour. I was hired by a publishing company out of New York, working as a distributer. The tour's main function was to set up poster fairs at college campuses, with the intent of providing freshmen with art to hang on the walls of their dorm rooms. With POGO, we are lucky to get to return back to Portland throughout the tour. No so with this poster tour. For 6 weeks I was living in hotels from NY to Chicago. Now, there's nothing wrong with hotel fitness centers, but the drive to go to the gym after a 12 hour day at a poster sale is another matter. Also, the company provided us with a meal per diem that had to be spent or returned. There was much consumption of steak and lobster, creamy soups, fantastic desserts, coffee and pastries... 

I gained a few pounds.

Spending time on college campuses, you meet a lot of college athletes. We would hire many of them to unload our truck, paying them in posters. One of these fellows introduced me to Crossfit.