Alex, you know, we've asked this question of almost all the people we've had on the show.

Do you remember the first time you went climbing?

So I don't technically remember the first time I climbed in a gym.

I mostly remember the photos of me as a five-year-old climbing at the Rocknasium, this climbing gym that opened near my

home. But I went there once, I believe, on one of my sister's field trips or something random

through school. And basically, I enjoyed it enough that when a climbing gym opened in Sacramento

in my hometown, my parents took me because they knew that I liked it from the one time that I'd

been. My father would take because they knew that I liked it from the one time that I'd been.

My father would take my sister and I and bring snacks. You know, basically I could make a day of it because if we're going to pay day use and we're going to be there, you know, we're going to like

be there for the afternoon to hang out, have a good time. So, you know, we'd have like a candy bar

and some sandwiches and we'd off be at the gym for the afternoon like having this excursion.

Do you view indoor climbing differently than you do climbing outdoors? I mean, I love going to the climbing gym. I love climbing. And in a lot of ways, the climbing gym is the most distilled and

sort of simplest version of climbing. You get all the joy of the movement with none of the hassle of

equipment and worrying about safety and evaluating risk and dealing

with weather conditions and all those kinds of things. It's interesting, you know, I think if you've

gotten to the sport, even in like the last 15 years, it's kind of hard to understand, like,

that the first wave of gyms, they were like pretty, you know, like they had their flavor, right? You know? Going into a

climbing gym 30 years ago felt dingy for the most part. I mean, most gyms were sort of tight,

dark, you know, poorly lit and just dirty. You know, they smell bad. They smell like the rental

shoes. There would be chalk dust in the air, sort of like hard to breathe, hard to see, you know, everything a little more cramp. Like things not quite up to code. You know, all just like a little gross for the most part. And then nowadays, you go into some of the brand new well-built gyms. Like for example, I went into a brand new gym in Austin, Texas,

and I walked in. It was like this enormous spacious lobby, everything super clean and white,

with tons of, you know, fresh air and natural light coming in. And I was like, I swear that a robot

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