a snowy mountain tops with a meteor in the sky

Rising into the Unknown

Life is a journey, let’s chase the summits and relish the adventure all along the way.

latest adventure posts

Grit

10 years ago at the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. I’m proud of all of my kids for different reasons. They all have very different personalities.

Whenever people start a conversation about which of the five senses is their favorite, I’m baffled because there's only one that really matters to me. My sight. I'm not a foodie and could go without eating if there was a pill to replace food. I do like hearing, but there are a lot of annoying things that come with that. Smelling is 50-50 to me, and I will admit that parts of touch are important. But nothing comes close to seeing.

Honoring Martin Luther King Jr

The third Monday every January commemorates the life and work of the American civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Although workers across our nation generally have the day off, the best way to honor Dr. King’s legacy is to consider the holiday a “day on” with community involvement instead. Clayco’s Black Resource Group (BRG) and marketing team created this flyer to showcase events that people can attend virtually or in person in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, including a day of reflection and service, volunteering, community celebrations, and more. BRG’s mission is to help provide a path toward equal opportunity and ensure that Black employees feel safe and welcome in their workspace. I strongly encourage you to attend any of the events listed to join us in creating more inclusive and equitable communities.

2022: A Year in Review

This past year was filled with big ideas and even bigger achievements. As we enter 2023, I’m reminded of the importance of hard work, human connection, and building our society back better. I’m humbled to see how much growth has happened throughout my 38-year tenure at Clayco and the remarkable impact on the communities where we have built projects across the country. Clayco has evolved from a company I established as a college dropout into an industry powerhouse. The best part of our work is the impact our team has had helping our clients along their journey and watching our team members achieve their goals.

Minnesota’s bid for the 2027 Expo

The World’s Fairs have an incredible history and have given us some of the world’s most remarkable inventions, including the telephone, live television, and clean energy cars. The first modern World’s Expo was Britain’s Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Remembered as the Crystal Palace Exhibition for Joseph Paxton’s magnificent iron and glass structure, it was an enormous success. Since then, World’s Fairs have focused on innovation, technology, and cultural exchange, with themes offering a glimpse into utopian futures. The World’s Expos gave rise to a number of widely-recognized global landmarks like Seattle’s Space Needle, the Biosphere in Montreal, and of course, Paris’s Eiffel Tower. Constructed as the entrance to the 1889 World's Fair, the wrought iron tower – built from 18,000 pieces of metal and named after engineer Gustave Eiffel – was a technological masterpiece of construction. It has since come to symbolize France and is one of the most iconic structures in the world.

Theaster Gates Debuts First American Exhibition Survey

As an admirer of art and social justice, it’s great to see my friend and revolutionary artist, Theaster Gates, reaching new heights in his career. Gates debuted his first major American museum survey at the New Museum in NYC that commemorates the people who shaped his worldview. “Young Lords and Their Traces” is an exhibition honoring the radical thinkers in Gates’ life, his hometown of Chicago, and the U.S. as a whole. He is a visual artist, urban planner, and self-described “artist, bureaucrat, and hustler.” Gates creates multimedia projects, installations, and performance art that confront issues of social justice, racial inequality, and poverty across America.

ADVENTURE

Building Buttercup

a fence in a field with trees in the background

I can’t describe the powerful emotion I felt at this moment, for everything lost and gained in my whole life. It was a spiritual experience, from my heart.

ADVENTURE

Climbing Capitol Peak

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Adventure

Adventure is in my DNA

Ever since I read the stories of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, I’ve looked at all of my life as an adventure. Listening and learning from my father was amazing story in history over the course of 40 years taught me that adventure was in my DNA at conception.

I’ve always been able to keep calm and have a level head and every situation I can remember. The only exception of this rule is that I don’t believe a person should not panic if they’re drowning. I would definitely drown panicking.

Beyond that all of life’s twists and turns good and bad ecstatic or heartbroken all add up to the different color crayons in your crayon box. That was a quote from my dad upon hearing some shocking news about my own colorful life.