My dad taught me to play bass. He's a bass player he still plays in a band in Michigan to this day. He taught me to play bass when I was about 6. I used to just go to band practice with him and whoever didn't show up for rehearsal that day I would take their spot.

Dad and mom would have preferred that I be a doctor a lawyer a scientist or a great humanitarian.

Both my mum and dad were great readers and we would go every Saturday morning to the library and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature and all of us would come with an armful of books.

One thing my dad always told me was he would make sure I always had what he didn't have. He couldn't play basketball because he didn't have tennis shoes - so I had five pairs of tennis shoes.

When I was growing up my mother would say 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.

It was tough at the time but when I was younger my Dad. I would say my Dad because without him I wouldn't have been here. I mean it was tough for me because he was really demanding. With him it was never enough you know anything I did was never enough.

When I was a kid my step dad started this business and would go out and get lost cows and stuff. He was part-time truck driver farmer and cowboy. He taught me how to ride from an early age.

My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.

As a father now I wouldn't do what my dad did because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.

I loved climbing because of the freedom and having time and space. I remember coming off Everest for the last time thinking of Dad and wishing that he could have seen what I saw. He would have loved it.