Remember way back in 2012 when I received the mysterious box from Columbia Sportswear, informing me that I was a part of their inaugural OmniTen?
{I can barely remember that far too.}
Since then, my journey with Columbia has been a whirlwind! First, we went to Havasupai for the Season #1 trip. I jumped off waterfalls, hiked into canyons, and most importantly, met the man I will marry.
But the fun continued! Columbia announced the mysterious OmniGames this past January and all four seasons were flown to Park City to compete in this secret event with our randomly-chosen teammate. Caleb and I found buried avalanche beacons, built bomb-proof snow shelters, competed on a high ropes course, zipped down ski runs and built a blazing fire in the middle of a blizzard. Not only were we having a blast, but we competed too: the top 5 teams won a trip to the Kingdom of Jordan!
After it was all said and done, Caleb and I finished in second place, securing our spot on the trip to Jordan in April. Words can’t even express how excited I was before the trip and how thankful I am today. Jordan was not on my radar before, but I am beyond fortunate to have experienced such a fantastic country.
But wait…I’m not done yet! Before heading to Jordan, we discovered that Columbia would be making a documentary of the trip. No, they weren’t talking some low-budget, two-minute clip that would be finished the following week. Instead, they hired a producer who brought his own film crew to make a legit, one-hour documentary!
It took some adjusting on my part, but Pedro and his team followed us around Jordan, capturing random moments on camera. The pulled us aside for impromptu interviews and always managed to be there when I did something incredibly stupid! In hindsight, I wish I was more eloquent on film but I was so enamored with the surrounding environment that I could barely string together coherent sentences. And who could blame me?!
Good thing we had Casey along! He works in Hollywood and is way more accustomed to this film thing than I am! I want to be like him when I grow up!
All of this buildup is to tell you about my adventure last week: Columbia flew the ten of us out to Portland, Oregon, the location of Columbia HQ. It was a crazy quick trip—I flew in on Wednesday morning and returned via a 6am flight on Friday—but so worth it. True to form, we all packed in as much as we could on the agenda. We hiked a beautiful 6 miles on the Oregon coast {I’ll share those photos next week!} and explored Cannon Beach, but more importantly, we had front-row seats to the premiere of I Am #OmniTen!
Y’all, I can’t even tell you how weird it was to see my face on the screen! {Side note: I should really be better about cutting my hair!} I do a fair number of gear reviews but that’s entirely different. Seeing all of the film snippets pieced together made me smile, groan and laugh all at the same time. In fact, it actually made me remember events that I had completely forgotten!
I wish I could say that I had a link to the film to show y’all…but alas, I do not. On the bright side, Columbia is releasing it online near the end of the month, so when it’s available, I will definitely let you know! You know, so you can carve an hour into your Friday night to sit down and laugh at me….!
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21 Comments
so cool! and such an awesome opportunity for you, congrats on the whole thing.
Thanks Christy! It has been such a crazy couple of years with Columbia; so thankful for it all!
That is so cool – can’t wait to see video of all those great adventures!
Can I make one comment about the new blog style? It looks great on the website, but when it shows up in my feedly feed, all I get is the first line and then I have to click over to the website to read the rest of the post. Small niggle, I know, but I prefer being able to read the whole post right there in the feedly feed. Is that something that you can, like, “switch on” or something? (I clearly know nothing about how these things work, but if there’s anything you could do to make it easier for those of us who read in that format, it’d be super appreciated!).
I know! I had someone point that out to me as well… I don’t know if you’re running WordPress Heather but I found a plug-in that fixed the problem in seconds if you’re interested.
Hey chicas!
You know, it’s actually not a problem– it was intentional. The way I had it setup before, I had two full posts on the landing page which meant you could see the entire post in Feedly or BlogLovin or whatnot. Unfortunately, it also meant that I had no way of knowing which posts were interesting to people because my Google Analytics would just show that people came to JustAColoradoGal.com. They could read the posts from the homepage without having to actually click on the individual post, which meant I had absolutely zero feedback as to which ones were getting the most clicks, thus the most interesting. I ignored it for a long time but it really started to irritate me because I wanted to know which posts bombed and which ones were a (relative) success. Downside: it means that you have to click over from the readers too, which wasn’t my intention. TOTALLY makes me look like I’m whoring myself out for clicks!
Beth:the plug-in you were talking about…is that something that would fix it for readers but still leave it the way it is on the homepage? Do y’all know if those two things are mutually exclusive? I’ll ask the gal that designed it for me, but I suspect it’s one or the other.
Ha, so I just subscribed (to my own blog, yes) but I use BlogLovin. Looks like nothing has changed on there and when you click on it, it still shows the full post. So my guess is this is just Feedly? Argh.
It might be a Feedly thing but I know Google Reader (oh how I miss you!) used to do the same thing until the plug-in. (And dude, I’ve always subscribed to my own blog to see how it looks. lol)
I tried Bloglovin, but I didn’t love it….
I totally get the analytics thing (even being blogless myself, I get why you’d want to know), but I’ve found myself starting to NOT click over to most of the blogs that appear that way–it’s silly that the internet age has convinced us that one extra click is too much, but hey, I’m just being honest here! So, I’d worry that people weren’t reading at all, or that I’d lose readers. There are a few blogs I’ll still click over to (yours included, hence my commenting), but there are a few I’m just going to delete from my feed because they’re not interesting enough to put in the extra “work.”
Haha glad I made the cut! I definitely understand your point. I’ve always been a click-through gal so it doesn’t bother me, but I understand. I have my designer looking into the plug-in Beth mentioned above since it apparently is just a thing with Feedly (go figure!) It’s such a catch 22– I want to know what people like so I can continue to write in an entertaining manner but to do that, I irritate some. Le sigh 🙂 Regardless, I appreciate the honesty!! Hopefully I’ll be able to solve it to make everyone happy!
I came here looking for the link. I stayed for the story.
🙂 Thanks Paul!
Wow, what an adventure! Looking forward to seeing the video!! Excited for you!!
Thanks Somer! I’m looking forward to watching it again too 🙂 We received advanced copies but I haven’t had the time to watch it since I got home. Hoping to check it out this weekend with my parents!
I love seeing the same story from all the S5 #Omniten but told in so many different ways. I am truly excited to see the movie.
Agh! Have others posted?! I haven’t seen any but I haven’t actively searched either. Gonna go check now…!
Seriously can’t wait to see the movie!
Curious to hear what you think!
Sounds fun! Looking forward to the movie!
Thanks Tina!
That is crazy! I always hate seeing myself on camera even when it’s seriously a nothing video. They are making a documentary about my school for PBIS and the cameras drive me insane – they did a whole bunch of private interviews but our principal didn’t ask any of the knocked up teachers to participate so once again, pregnancy perk for the win. Sad that we can’t see the video yet!
What?! Why no pregnant interviews?!