I am going to pedal my exercise bike for an hour every night this week and also I am going to do 15 squats each night with a bunch of weight on the bar. One reason is that I gained 4 lbs on the salmon fishing trip to the Kenai River in Soldotna, Alaska and I want to lose it quick, and the second reason is that I am climbing Mt Adams on Saturday and I want my leg muscles toned up for the grind up that 12,700 ft mountain. I am still in pretty good shape from my bicycle trip to Portland, Maine and I have ridden the exercise bike regularly and often since then so I think I am going to make it to the top. I have climbed Mt Adams a number of times over the years, and my observation is that making it to the top is mostly mental rather than physical. Climbing Mt Adams is a choice, but many major challenges that come into our life are like climbing a mountain but we didn’t choose them, they just showed up in our life. Some people conquor the mountains that come into their lives, but most do not, they quit. Just like climbing Mt Adams these major life trials are overcome mostly by the way we think. The way we think when we hit the very steep grade at the 10,000 foot level up to the false summit is what determines whether we make it to the top or quit. Our flesh that is programmed from birth for comfort starts screaming at us in our thoughts as we hit the grind at the 10,000 foot mark. I decide before I start climbing what I am going to choose to think when my flesh starts complaining and whining. “I can make it to the top of this Mountain as long as I don’t quit, just one step in front of another, it won’t be long now and I will enjoy the great feeling of being an overcomer, you can do it Duke, one more step, one more step, be a winner, it will feel so good being on the top knowing I made it.”