A Family of Cliff-Dwellers

My full name is Clive Brent Hope Jr.
Looking up my name in the "baby-book of names" long ago, I discovered that:

Clive means "Cliff-Dweller"
-and...
Brent also means "Cliff-Dweller" as well as "Steep."

Those are particularly apt names for someone who LOVES high places.

I remember as a younger man I really enjoyed climbing water-towers. No kidding, if there was a water tower in your town, and if I could access a way to get onto it's built-on ladder, I would climb the thing. I've climbed a lot of water-towers. Once all grown-up I was a tower safety instructor for Comcast, climbing and training others how to safely climb towers. Still today at Cox, I'm the guy that climbs the tower at work if there is a problem with our local reception.

OK. I love it.


Of course I've never been sky-diving (I would hate to go tandem) but would love to go solo!
I haven't always been so bold in high places. I used to be afraid of heights. In the town of St. Anthony where I grew up there was a modestly high bridge that crossed the snake river right in the middle of town. Everyone I knew would jump off of the thing except me. I sooooo wanted to jump off of the "city bridge" as we called it. I would just stand up on the bridge wishing I had the nerve to jump while everyone else was having a blast jumping. Finally, at the age of 18 I got up the nerve to jump and it was nirvana!
Since then I've jumped of everything I can find. Furthermore, my love of jumping has been passed down to my children. Not only do and have all of my kids jumped off various cliffs and bridges but they've done it way younger than I ever was.

Case in point: I jumped off of the St. Anthony City Bridge at age 18. Brent and Jessica each jumped off of that same bridge when they were 9 years old. Penny May set the family record of jumping off of a bridge last summer by jumping off of a cool railroad tressel in the Wood River Valley...at the age of 8!! (shown above)

As a family we've even picked up a few cliff-jumping converts along the way, Brett and Travis my son's in-law also like to jump when we go swimming too.

At the bottom of this post I have a video of Brent III and Travis running and jumping off of a bridge along I90 at milepost 70 in Washington.

That's right, we'll stop anywhere to jump off of a bridge.

Elise, Brent, Sarah, Penny and myself are shown jumping from different places in these pictures.