7 days, 7 rides

Day one:

Desert classic.  Pima canyon, to the tank and back.   50 minutes in the setting sun.  Tires settling in, found the right pressure for the rear, still too much in front.  The green concoction seems to work well, good for porous non-UST tires.  Still so fat and slow, 30 pounds away from where I will be in a few months.  Working those climbs, re-awakening those muscles as much as I can before age and life take them away.  Familiar trail, familiar sights, familiar thoughts.  Push, shift, push again.  Get over the top.  I am happy with where I am.  Shift again, build momentum.  Life's crazy, all the twists and turns.  Another hill.  Shift, spin, grab and go.  Ride the balance, don't let it spin out.   It would be easy to overpower here, but that would kill the flow of the journey.  Feel the tension between earth and motion, understand how it works, and ride it up.  No emergency, no need to disturb the earth here.  Fast and flowy now.  Gravity is pulling but the trail is resisting.  Find your center, aim, lean her over, and find where the edges start to have their say.

I am happy with where I am.

Day two:

Desert classic, to the tank and back, slightly different route.  Same setting sun, different results.  45 minutes, out and back.  Routine?  Really? Already?  Tires better, but the back is a little slushy.  Easy fix.  Individual rocks that fight back, all day every day, are felt even less.  Almost dialed in, but I'd like to quit thinking about that.  Did I make the right choice?  I like things that matter, things that last, things that don't change or break at the first sign of trouble.  And yes, it still feels soooo good, regardless of what my micro-vision may suggest.  Perfect?  Nope.  But what is?  Can't hold a double standard on my life and what is right in front of me.  Spent too many years overly concerned with the so-called ideals that I lost touch with the now.  And the now is, quite simply, I'm getting faster again.  Don't need a therapist to figure that one out.


Day Three:

Desert classic: Pima Canyon, tank, Secret loop, tank, Pima canyon.  75 minutes.  When your usual ride starts to feel too long, go for a longer one.  Little things start to come back, like where to center yourself on a fast corner, or that big cog/big ring is a no-no.  Lost my chain twice this ride, and something started squeaking.  Think I hosed my rear derailleur.  Tires felt perfect though.  I'm such a diva.  Locked out my rear shock for about half the ride, think I'll do that more often, on this trail at least.  Am actively fighting the guilt of leaving work early and the perception of not spending as much time with the family, but the benefit of more endorphins in the system and just more good juju in general seem to be countering that.  For now.  Soldiering on.  Tomorrow, a relaxed change-up, me thinks.  Pima canyon, east-west loops, up and down Javelina, east-west loops, and back.  Maybe bring the big bike and test the Marz 66.  

Day Four:

Fuck it.  Don't wanna drive to the trailhead, don't wanna go through the routine.  Jeans, Keens, and a cruiser work right now.

I have not introduced my cruiser, have I?  Coaster brakes, 29-inch wheels, big fat black leather seat with red piping, cool grey ano frame, and nice accents.  Enjoyable on a totally different plane, like an alternate universe where fun comes before pain.  It's like a wormhole shortcut into a perfect, effortless moment of single-speed motion, comfy laid-back posture, super-hero intentions, and all the accuracy of a la-z-boy mounted in the driver position of a 76 Cadillac Coupe-de-Ville after a few shots.  4 to 16 shots, to be "specific".    45 minutes of checking out the 'hood and pushing a little extra harder just to see what happens, rewarded by completing day 4, even when I didn't want to.

Day Five:


Good ride on DC with an old friend.  Slow is just a phase, not a perpetual prison.  And, in the end, truly just a function of choices, driven by priorities.  Like anything, slow happens because you don't push the slow back.  You let it decide because you either haven't decided, or worse, decided to let it back in.  But sometimes it just happens.  Learning to push it back and not be afraid of it is a step.  A small one, but a step nonetheless.  


I have spent my life on journeys of some kind or other.  I am happiest and most productive when I am on one.  Biking, skiing, driving, educating myself or others, tour guide, writer, whatever.  The act of the unfurling journey is what I crave.  I get bored when I arrive, I am anxious when I can't leave.  Navigation is my calling.


Day Six:

Papago.  From the house.  A fast 45 minutes and a whole new section of trail discovered.  Funny, just the ride through campus and up Mill ave. is almost as entertaining than the dirt part.  I must look like a fool to the kids I pass by, the old guy riding his over-priced mid-life-crisis bike.  But I don't even care in the slightest, which I guess makes me an -eccentric- old guy riding his over-priced mid-life-crisis bike.  I'll keep on turning those cranks and enjoy the buzz of the knobbies on the concrete.  I'll not worry about the annoying creaks coming from my under-lubricated seatpost.  I find myself thinking of my kids and family and how much they mean to me.  I love the state of mind I'm in when pedaling, that's the mental place where I want to be when I leave this life.


Day Seven:

FINS.  Fantasy Island North Singletrack.  Not bad, but nothing I'd call flowy either.  Fun, but in a different, more deliberate and raw kind of way.  Like an amateur musician's first composition, got so caught up with each measure and note that the idea comes out distorted when played at normal speed.  Maybe we rode it in the wrong direction, everyone seemed to be going the other way.  Ah, that's it, we were playing the record backwards!  No wonder it sounded like devil music.


Was good to ride again with Dan and Rick.  I got Dan into mountain biking about 5 years ago and created a monster.  It's good to see, I'm glad I turned him on to it.  Rick and I hadn't ridden together in about 2 years prior to last Sunday at SoMo.  Feels good to be riding with old friends again.  4 years of monumental changes seem to be coming full circle.  I was in such a stable yet miserable place then, like the song was playing but terribly out of key.  I still look forward to retirement and the RV and traveling the country but I'm in no hurry to get there now.  The thought of the next few hours, the next few years and decades, if not the whole lot of my time left, hold enough potential to keep me in that state of wonder, that place I want to be always, at the end, and beyond.  I perceive things now that I would have missed, things that will live on just because I notice them now.


7 days and 7 rides wasn't just a goal, it turns out.  It was a prescription.    

Winter's here already?

Out of 13 blog posts in 2011, only 3 published.  My, what a year of unfinished business, but then again, what a year of change.  New job, new house, new Jeep, and Amy and I are -finally- engaged.  I say finally because in hindsight, though we've been together almost 3 years now, it should have been 17.  But hey, that's old news, what's important now is what's next.  And now that winter's here....

Skiing has always been part of my life.  I started when I was 14, and being a Phoenix native that's a pretty odd thing.  But nonetheless, I spent the better part of the 10 years between 1996 and 2006 getting in anywhere from 10 to 45 days a year.  I even got this crazy idea back in 03 and decided I needed to telemark, so I spent the better parts of 03-06 buying tele equipment and teaching myself the art of the soulful turn.

You know, free the heel, free the soul...

Fortunately for the aspiring telemarker in me, I lived in northern Indiana at the time and had a ski area 20 minutes from my house.  At least, it was called a ski area because it had a lodge, lifts, and snow, but the two bumps in a farmers field are hardly what I knew as skiing, having grown up skiing the Rockies.  But nonetheless, it afforded me the opportunity to drive to Swiss Valley every night after work for a couple winters and do laps, refining my technique and getting the feel for the tele-turn.  3 minute ride up, 30 second ride down.  Repeat until 10pm. 

And it was great.  Each of those winters I got one or 2 trips back west to ride "real" mountains and had the legs all tuned up and ready to go.  No 2-5 days getting my legs in shape for winter, they were already where they needed to be to handle days of deep-quad burning tele-turns.  I even ventured into "the backcountry" a few times in central and northern Michigan and once in Flagstaff.  Nothing extreme or avalanche-prone, but an opportunity to slap some skins on my skis and do some climbing and winter camping. 

Moving back to Phoenix in late 2004 and re-kindling my love for mountain biking sort of killed off my skiing a bit, to where I have only gotten about a day or 2 a season the last 6 years.  But, for reasons I can't yet explain, the bug is back to make some turns, and do it often.  However, this time around, I don't have a nifty ski area just out my backdoor to tune up my legs.  I knew this, after a year or 2 back in Phoenix, which is why most of my telemark gear has been sold off replaced by traditional Alpine and an an AT setup. 

Telemarking is great fun but only if you're in shape to do it and have the legs, which on average takes 3-5 days to regain every winter.  Without the luxury of 30-40 skiing days anymore, I had to turn to the dark side.  I had to lock down my heels.  No more soulful turns.  No more knee bent close to the mountain and and grinning ear to ear as my tasseled sherpa hat's tassels blew in the wind behind me.  No more conceited happiness as I comfortably walked around in my boots at the lodge or in camp.  No more smug glee as I carved my beautiful turns beneath the ski lift, believing I was the top of the snow-sports food chain.  Nope.  I had returned to tier-2.  I had to put on my training heels.

Well, to quote Andrew McClean, fix the heel, fix the problem.

And until I can live somewhere that will allow 30-40 days a year again, I'll probably keep the heels locked down.  Sure, I'll lose all credibility with the counterculture, patchouli-smelling, anti-resort crowd, but sorry guys.  A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do to get some turns, and this man's just going to have to man up and admit it:

I am an AT skier.

Full Circle

And here I am.  Full circle, living a life that I should have started 18 years ago but couldn't, at least not until now.

2 and a half years later, after the seemingly impossible happened, and it just keeps going.  I may have purged myself once, but the bones were and always will be a part of me; and now, more than ever, I know its for the better.

Rebuilding a life takes more steps than I thought, and makes me appreciate all that goes into building a foundation.  For one thing, time.  Time to see all those dimensions that only come out with the changing of the tides.  I'm well aware of what doesn't work, and maybe I've grown a bit cynical, but I don't care anymore.  Sadness is to the east now, and easy to see.  At our age, it's just an artifact of our childhood, but you can only entertain it for so long, if you clearly intend to do nothing about it.  I don't want any part of it;  what energy I have left is better spent elsewhere.

Yet some still seem to thrive on it.  Can't let go.

Well fuck them.

I've spent enough time in my own rabbit hole and the ones of those I love to find it interesting anymore.  Oh I'll traverse the sea of human drama again and again for the rest of my life, most likely, but I'll certainly not drift in it.  Just knowing what's on the other side of the Sargasso Sea is enough for me, and I can accept that getting to the new world and back requires tenacity, courage, integrity and patience.

Tenacity, courage, integrity and patience.  I know the meaning of the words.  While I feel young, happy and carefree again, I have the perspective of time now.  Makes for an easy way forward, with simple truths that don't need explaining:

Yet requires a watchful eye that knows how to keep out the demons at the gate.  

For my Amy

from The Dream

Love is not love until love's vulnerable.

She slowed to sigh, in that long interval.

A small bird flew in circles where she stood;

A deer came down, out of the dappled wood.

All who remember, doubt. Who calls that strange?

I tossed a stone, and listened to its plunge.

She knew the grammar of least motion,

She taught me one virtue, and I live thereby.

She held her body steady in the wind;

Our shadows met, and slowly swung around;

She turned the field into a glittering sea;

I played in flame and water like a boy

And I swayed out beyond the white seafoam;

Like a wet log, I sang within a flame.

In that last while, eternity's confine,

I came to love, I came into my own.

-Theodore Roethke

Question for leaders

As a potential leader, there are many questions that could be asked to determine your capability or capacity. The one I've never heard is this:

Aside from the people you've led and/or directed...of all the people you've mentored, who are you the most proud of?

It's my bet that many so-called leaders would be caught off-guard by this question because, in their quest to achieve personal goals and improve themselves, the notion of mentoring probably never caught their attention.

Begin

I started a new job this week.

I have Australia to thank.

I forgot how the cleansing and inspiring feeling of starting a new job can feel. 8 years is too long for me to stay with a company. I know my generation gets crap for "job-hopping", and for awhile, I was determined to buck that trend and be a gen-x'er that didn't change jobs every 18 months. Well I've proven I can stick it out and don't just look for a new job so I don't have to deal with the long term mess I've created. Spent 5 years at one company, almost 7 at the next, and part of my brand was to consistently leave things in better shape than I found them.

So now on to the next challenge.

Like the subject of the Australia excursion, this is a small operation trying to deploy a major software system. Except this time, it's not to enable a mainframe to be shut down, its to position themselves for growth. Additionally, they don't have huge corporate resources to tap into...they are on their own, relatively speaking. Which means them investing in me is not a trivial decision. It also means I can't call in airstrikes if things get too dicey. They expect me to deliver and be 100% accountable, unlike my old company, which was big and unwieldy but could afford a wide margin of error. No, this is the real deal, but the type of challenge I am discovering I am drawn to.

1 month into the job I'm discovering the principles of project management apply pretty much the same, but the principles of politics are magnified 10 fold. Fortunately, I'm good at the politics part, always have been. But this situation puts a a premium on the currency of results, which are universal. That's a healthy environment for me.

So far, it has been a near-perfect engagement. This is what I do well. This is what I want to do, going forward. Adding value, saving money, and providing the expertise that small and mid-sized companies need to grow and compete with the oversized, bloated industry leaders.

In hindsight, I do not favor the established Wall Street darlings, but I do admire what they have accomplished, at least while they were still owned by their principles. I do not favor the companies that are so big that they are simply extensions of the government they are in bed with. I do not favor the companies that have lost their founding vision, and I certainly do not believe in the east coast establishment. I do not believe in the ones that ask for "sacrifice" or "service" in this time of recession, for pay cuts and benefit reductions. For 10-400 million dollars a year, I expect all of you to predict a recession and plan accordingly. To quote Ayn Rand, "The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master". Dear Fortune 50 CEO's: For 10-400 million dollars a year, I expect you to predict the future. So, if you had to lay off anyone due to your lack of planning for the recession, you should be fired for incompetence.

Small business thinks differently, and they are closer to the tangible fundamentals that matter. Want to know why America has "lost" its business edge? Look to Wall Street and the artificial rules they have implied (through consolidation and acquisitions) to Main Street. Look at any company with a proper noun in it's name and see if they are still running the company. Ford, Hewlett-Packard, Sperry, Garrett, Bendix, Westinghouse, Heinz, etc. Sold out? That's NOT where I want to be. Eventually, however, I'd like to take the lessons I learn back to big business, if only to remind them how disconnected and inflexible they've become.

I recently came across a fairly large company that didn't do what everyone else did during its industry boom a few years ago. Their approach was, "Yeah, we could gouge our clients like out bigger competitors, but we value the relationship. And we want to be remembered when this boom dies down." Well they have been, but the principals of their less-ethical competitors were still rewarded, and are probably retired and laughing now. That is something that is very wrong with the system we live in. Reward for short-term, non-sustainable gain needs to be taxed at 99% and the proceeds need to go back to public programs and the small and mid-business that are genuinely trying to do things better. No one should be rewarded or protected for simply being the biggest or the strongest. A tax structure that protects the biggest or strongest simply for the status quo is unjust and wrong, and should be challenged, changed or overthrown.

I hate to see the "establishment" win. I hate to see the same old thing produce the same old results and come out on top. That indicates a lull in evolution while someone has a temporary advantage. An advantage should be fleeting and real, not lucky and protected. For example, I hate to see old-school college football programs win using old-school techniques and formations. I love it when the Oregons and Boise States and BYU's and TCU's of the world win. They don't have the good ol' boys network to rely on, yet they STILL beat the "best of the best". Take Boise St. vs. Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.

The little guys may not win all the time, but they should be given the preferential opportunity every time. They should not have to fight for equal treatment. They should not have to "respect the uniform" of the Ohio States of the world. They should have a place at the table based on their results alone, and if they perform, should be rewarded. If they get creamed, they should go back to the drawing board, but the established winner should not be accoladed any more. The bottom line is, when the "big guy" wins, it is always with additional, inequitable resources...where's the honor in that?

My course does not overly respect the veneer of tradition or the authority of experience. I've seen "30 years of experience" simply represent 1 year of repeated lucky experience (times 30) too many times to put too much credence in just time.

Results are what matters, not "results".

Anybody on top can produce "results". It takes a real producer, a real competitor, to produce real Results.

And that's where I want to be. Recognized and rewarded for producing actual value, actual Results with a capital R, and not for doing what a billion other monkeys could do, if only given the chance. If you suspect you are a monkey, if you suspect you are just lucky and in the right place at the right time...you probably are. On the other hand, if you can clearly articulate your value proposition, every minute of every day, and it doesn't get stale, then you are a true contributor and not just feeding off the fears of the powerful but ignorant. I cannot feed off the trough of corporate waste. Employment there is like eating McDonalds for every meal. Sustaining and good on the surface, but deadly in the long run.

So begins my new enlightened approach. Will I be tempted to suckle on the corporate teat again? Sure. But knowing is half the battle...and now I know what to avoid, just like after reading that first book on nutrition. I know what lasting value is, what it feels like, and when it's being cheaply substituted for short term gain. Australia woke me to something I've known all along...If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. (Aussies have a way of cutting thru the BS that I admire) So far it has done me well. I am reminded of a quote that is permanently affixed to the refrigerator..."Be bold, free, and truthful." - Brenda Ueland

And thus, I begin.

Next

I quit my job this week.

I have Australia to blame...no, thank.

In almost 8 years at my company, I learned how to apply every aspect of what I learned in school and in my previous jobs. In other words, I learned how to push paper, check boxes, and say the right thing, to the right people at the right time. But what I couldn't escape, and what bothered me, was the fact that I got paid, every two weeks, regardless of what I did. I could work 10 hours a week or 80, and I'd get the same check.

I like working 80 hours a week. As long as I'm compensated for them, and they mean something. This thought caused me to delve deeper into what I was doing with my career, and more importantly, with my life.

While I was in Australia, I had purpose. I worked hard. I knew if I missed a day, I would be missed. I had a clear objective, and I put my career on the line to achieve that objective. It was a tough one. It was a classic underdog situation. Deploy this system, in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the resources usually available for a project like this. And I did it. I nailed it. I spent only 66% of the budget I was given, and I did it on the date I said I would. It was the most satisfying project I had worked on since my first two years with the company.

Then I came home.

Back to the grind. Back to approving expense reports, reviewing proposals, creating documents that are never read, and coaching the 7 other people on my team on how to do the same thing. Back to leading a team that with one exception, didn't even work in my city. Back to endless virtual (online) meetings where decisions were made and never followed through on. Back to reviewing decisions made 2 years prior and re-hashing the same excuses for why development was delayed. Back to raising a red flag and being told "shhhh! We need to maintain our relationship with our preferred (offshore) vendor!" Really? I questioned them charging us 25K to change 2 lines of code! "Shhhh! Just go back to pushing paper!" Back to working with people that had mastered the system, but were clueless when it came to actually getting results. "Oh, missed another deadline? Well, it was much harder than we thought. We should push the date back. My team is working hard, but it's just soooo hard." And when their director and VP BACK THEM UP, despite clear plans and deadlines that were agreed to...and prove to be just as spineless and slippery...

Really?

I could play the game. Heck, I've done it myself. I know how it works. In a salaried, institutional world, it's first about protecting your back, then protecting your boss' back, then your employees...then, if you have some time, actually doing something. Government employees understand this game well. Unfortunately, it extends beyond just government. I think most large, established companies...after working almost 12 years for 2 of the Dow Jones companies...are no better or efficient than the government that they are in bed with. When we look at government wastefulness and inefficiency, we should also include in the same breath the big businesses they have "bailed out". They are just as incompetent.

So I quit. I'd had enough. Bold move? Absolutely, especially with no real job prospects already lined up. But I like to think fortune favors the bold. And there was a sort of chuckling satisfaction, during my exit interview, as I informed the HR representative why I left and that I didn't have a job lined up. I just didn't want to work there anymore, and damned be the consequences.

I've pulled some pretty gutsy moves in the past, and this has to rank up there with the gutsiest.

But I have that same feeling of peace, that same feeling of purpose, that I have had in the most lucent moments of inspiration in my life. This is no different. Life is about to change drastically, again, and I'm just going to ride that wave until the gods put me on the shore I'm meant to be on.

It's an extension of the core concept I have come to internalize these last few years:

Be what you are, and do what you say.

Metaphorical tangent...Chemicals and compounds, are a result of a complex set of sub-atomic interactions that occur under certain circumstances. The most stable compounds are the ones that occur naturally, or are ideally suited for the environment they exist in. I'm still not 100% sure what I am, but Argon and even enriched Uranium have a purpose.

My purpose is evolving, but I'm pretty sure I've got a handle on it. I know what I'm good at. I know what I suck at. In fact, I almost think I'm ready to decide on what I want to do when I grow up. And money doesn't matter anymore. I've run the educational and institutional gauntlet. I've lived the dream, had the giant house and nice cars and lots of disposable income....but it means nothing, if you're not living a life of purpose.

I have the vision. I've proven my integrity. Time now to pursue not my dream, but my purpose.

Stay tuned.