Season 1

When I was in college, one of my roommates and I used to joke about starting a food truck together that we would live out of and drive all over the country together. We returned to the idea a lot - one of those college kid conversations that is completely untethered to reality and hellbent on avoiding the real world forever.

So when he and I started dating a few years later, and by that point he was saving up all of his money to buy his buddy’s 1970s Getaway Van to live out of, traveling and rock climbing as much as possible, my participation in this new cross-country road trip was just an oddly natural extension of that original fantasy.

With just one small problem: that I barely new how to rock climb. Undeterred though, he set out to teach me and me to learn. There developed a sort of unspoken agreement between us, that in order for me to succeed on this trip, it would be great if I could sport climb 5.12 by the time we left. By the time I officially joined up, that was about a year away.

Over the course of nine episodes and three bonus episodes, Season 1 of Buddy Check tells the story of how I learned to climb and through asking that question of over a dozen others, tells the stories of how our mentors shape how we learn. Season 1 is about the mental side of learning to climb and the role our relationships and communities play.