Rigger Lee Interview: The Enigmatic Adventurer
Enigma 1. An obscure speech or writing 2. Something hard to understand or explain 3: an inscrutable or mysterious person.
If ever there was a man that fit the definition, it would be the BASE world?s Rigger Lee. He will tell you that he is an open book; however for many he fits the bill. I set the interview in motion with a standard 58 question document for this series of profiles and what I received in return where some of the most intriguing answers. In Lee, you will discover a man who claims to have set no goals and yet has achieved a great deal in his lifetime.
Lee?s story begins in Irving, Texas, while he has spent most of his life referring to his mother?s home in Euless as his residence for the purpose of collecting his mail. His partner at ?the shop,? friends and family have grown accustomed to Lee being ?away? from his home base for 6 or more months out of the year. Lee is known to have packed up and disappeared for a month or two at a time, ?wandering about the country.?
Lee?s enterprises managed from ?the shop? include a sign store, rigging loft and T-shirt company. A current project is constructing sailing covers, but he still thinks of ?the shop? as being more of a ?hangout? for when they ?aren?t out playing,? than as place of business.
A 37? Endeavor, ketch rigged became the latest addition to Lee?s toys to make his fascination with sailing came full circle. The recent purchase is docked in Houston, Texas. Lee explained to me his reasoning behind the sailing fascination. ?A friend of mine had bought a 16 foot Hobie. I had been out with him on that a couple of times, and pretty much, I was hooked. The Hobie was too much fun and with it a sense of freedom that comes with sailing. There is no motor and it beats the hell out of paddling.? He went on to elaborate, ?I had spent a month on Lake Powell with a kayak and sailing sure beat the hell out of paddling 250 miles with the wind blowing. I developed an interest in sailing prior to even those experiences. I recall taking a ferry across the North Sea. Standing by the window and gazing at the waves changing as we left the mouth of the harbor. I have the same emotions when I am in the mountains, the desert or flying. You couldn?t imagine three more different environments and yet they bring forth the same feeling. I suppose it is all about being beyond the boundaries of civilization and societies rules. I am leaving behind all of the false entrapments and regulations that are supposed to insure my safety at the expense of my freedom. I don?t know what it is exactly, but I do find that I enjoy it as mus as I do the other adventurous sports that I participate in.?
Lee doesn?t have an iPod filled with music; instead he thinks the first thing he loaded onto his was a book on tape. Books are a part of his life. While stranded in the Arctic with a disabled snowmobile, he read a book by Tanya Abbie titled ?Maiden Voyage.? He is also quite a fan of Captain Joshua Slocum?s books. As one of his reads he listed ?West is the Night,? by Beryl Markham; the story of a woman raised in East Africa who in the 1930s, became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. I sensed that the solo adventurers and explorers in the books Lee read would consider him a kindred spirit.
Lee was a 19 year old college student when he was baptized into the world of skydiving. As a high school gymnast he had always wanted to give bungee jumping a try. During the fall season of his sophomore year of college he signed up for bungee jumping from a hot air balloon at the local small airport outside of Dallas, Texas. When he arrived on the following Saturday, the wind was too intense for the balloonist to tether the balloon for the bungee jumps. Lee instead ended up meeting with skydivers at that same airport before leaving with his refunded check in hand. The skydivers were more than willing to have him spend his money with them and he made his first tandem jump that day in 1991.
Years later while working for John Stanford at the Adventure Loft he was introduced to BASE jumping and his first BASE jumper, Ernie Long. Ernie and two companions had come to the shop in need of a tail pocket being sewn onto a new Raven3 canopy. Ernie had both feet casted and the men were struggling with Lee?s assistance to even get him through the door. Apparently, as best as Lee could piece together the story, Ernie had a mishap out in Moab Utah. There was talk of ?a worn out canopy, a cliff, and being able to see the ring on a woman?s hand as she waved from the bottom. Then there was the problem with a boulder being in the landing area.? A whole new world had opened up to adventurer Lee.
He hadn?t begun his career as a Rigger yet, but was dead set on learning about BASE. He built himself a rig and headed off to Bridge Day, with 4 to 5 hundred skydives already in his log book. He located some help at Bridge Day in packing the rig that he had built and made his first 2 BASE jumps. Lee returned home hooked on the sport when all he initially ventured to West Virginia for was to learn about the equipment and technology. When I asked Lee what BASE jumping has contributed to his personal growth, he shared this: ?It?s led me into worlds I would never experience otherwise.? One of those ?worlds? is Baffin Island. For those of you, like myself who know very little about Baffin Island, here is a little data snippet.
Baffin Island, 69?00`N 72?00`W, is the largest island in Canada and the fifth largest island in the world, with an area of 507,000 km
