Fri 1/17 @ 7PM
What do you think of when you think of Mentor, Ohio?
A lily-white town on the outer reaches of the Cleveland urban area where families move so that their kids can grow up in a safe, secure, Leave It To Beaver kind of environment?
That’s pretty much accurate.
But not all of Mentor’s kids grow up craving safety, security and predictability.
There is, for example, 26-year-old Katie Spotz. If her parents and teachers ever urged her to consider a nice, stable career as a teacher or a dentist, she didn’t listen. Instead, Spotz is a self-described “adventurer.”
What that means is that she seeks out extreme physical challenges, including opportunities to break records. She’s competed in marathons, triathlons, desert runs, and distance cycles and swims. That’s the (relatively) ordinary stuff.
She’s also rowed solo across the Atlantic, a 70-day trip that made her the youngest person to do a solo ocean row. And she wasn’t just doing it for her personal glory. Her “Row for Water” brought attention to, and raised money for, the Blue Planet Network, a nonprofit which provides safe drinking water to people around the world. She’s currently getting her MA in social entrepreneurship at the University of London to facilitate her future as an agent for social change long after she’s no longer able to perform attention-getting feats of endurance.
Spotz may have come from the relatively insular cocoon of Mentor, Ohio, but her vision is global.
Spotz will be talking about her feats and how she pushes herself to such limits at Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s Happy Days Lodge. All you armchair adventurers are invited to come and share her exploits vicariously.
Tickets are $6 for adults, $3 kids 3-12. To reserve, call 330-657-2909, option 4, or go to Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s website.