JT: I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro when I was in 9th grade. Water School, a charity, wanted to raise money for access to clean water. Each climber raises a certain amount of money for the number of meters or feet they climb. I went with a group of eight or nine people, including my dad.

How would you describe your experience?

JT: Mt. Kilimanjaro was really interesting and tested my physical and mental limits. Challenges were just getting up every morning and realizing that I had to walk another eight hours in the cold without slowing everyone down, as I was the youngest there. Everyone else was in their 30s or 40s.

What is your most vivid memory of the climb?

JT: The summit day. It was 3 AM, and I didn’t want to drink or eat anything, which was obviously not the best idea. So I sat down under an overhang and forced myself to drink half the bottle.

That’s when I remembered that a lot of the times when people sit down, they don’t find the strength to stand back up and continue hiking. It was in the middle of a snowstorm and completely dark, except for the occasional lightning strike. But I decided that it was now or never and I didn’t want to not make it to the top.

What was the worst part of the climb?

JT: It was the massage that we all got at the end. When they massaged our calves it hurt a lot! Most of us were screaming.

How did you and your dad get the idea of matching tattoos?

JT: Initially, I just wanted a tattoo, it wasn’t even a Kilimanjaro tattoo. I was in Pennsylvania and I saw a guy with an om tattoo, which is a Sanskrit symbol. I decided I wanted one and my dad has always been against tattoos but he’s always been for yoga and peace. I decided to pitch it to him, telling him it would be small and no one would see it when I was doing business and he decided it was a good idea. But then we ended up getting something different and that’s how we got the matching tattoos.