Scenes from Yet Another Weekend Hike

After last week's hike in Oklahoma, I wanted to take Ryan (my 6-year-old boy) on a day hike to see how he might hold up on a longer walk/backpacking trip in the woods--We went to "Fossilmania"--kinda freaky-looking fossil hunters hanging out in a convention center selling each other fossils for 100 bucks apiece (Overheard: "That's an incredibly intact Megaladont, Phil!") . I paid my $1 for a grab bag of 10 common fossils for Ryan, who was thrilled. Then we went back to Dinosaur Valley State Park nearby in Glen Rose, TX and looked at dino tracks frozen in the river and hiked on the trails in the Texas hills.

You may remember a similar "Ryan being chased by a T-Rex" picture to this from a previous post, but we couldn't resist...he's a ham, isn't he?

Tucked away at the trailhead by the Paluxy River is this oak tree--I practically expected it to speak to us--it has great character, doesn't it?

This is Ryan crossing the river along the "main" (large rock) route--later, he kept taking gradually smaller and smaller "side" routes on the tiny rocks until he finally fell in (I knew this would happen and brought an extra change of pants and shoes).

Below: our photos on a bench at the top of the hill we were climbing later that day...

Leaving the trail, we ran across this armadillo, who stood still long enough for me to fish my camera out of my backpack. Total wildlife spotted today: 1 deer, 1 snake (!), 1 armadillo. Ryan crashed out--I think maybe next year he'll be ready for a longer hike...

I promise I'm turning my blog into Field & Stream -- It's just the topic at hand for the last week...

Don't believe I was the only one who spotted this...

"And now, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court...or is it Supreme Chancellor of the US Court?"

I think we really have dodged a bullet...

Re-Living the Oklahoma Hike

There's a scene that comes to mind from the Tennessee Williams play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Brick Pollitt is lying on a couch holding a crutch, and his "no-neck monster" niece asks him why he was jumping the high hurdles in the middle of the night.

He answers, "Because I used to jump them, and people like to do what they used to do after they've stopped being able to do it." I've caught myself thinking that this is exactly what I'm up to--at a rock concert, trying to stay up all night, playing basketball, even looking at pictures. I recently had another moment where those words came back to me...

This weekend, my brothers and I took my dad on a backpacking trip that we all did individually as younger kids. Ironically, although we all were very active in camping through Boy Scouts, we had never all been camping together. Since several of us are married and we don't all live in the same town, my brother Don thought it might be a treat to take my dad on the same trail that he hiked with all of us individually over the years. For Father's Day, we announced our intentions to put together the trip that we would arrange the logisitics and do our best to shoulder the burden of the weight. Dad seemed to like the idea.

Anyone that knows my dad also knows that, even if you carry his tent, food, and water, he can still locate at least 30 pounds of crap to stuff into his aging, green backpack--so much that the old seams finally burst at the end of the first day--he grinned and said, "Well, maybe this is the last trip." I knew when he said it that he meant for himself, not just for the pack.

We had driven down on Friday night and, after the four-hour ride through traffic getting out of Dallas, through the empty streets of tiny towns in Southern Oklahoma, where my Dad and brother, Patrick kept violently erupting in excited pointing exhibitions every time we passed a gas station with a new, lower price per gallon (the first time one of the passengers urgently pointed out the window, I winced when I glanced over, half-expecting to be confronted with an RPG-wielding terrorist).

The final hour of the trip was a gut-wrenching, brake-smoldering climb-and-coast through winding mountain roads, during which my headlights silhouetted at least eight deer on the side of the otherwise unlit road, and an unfortunate possum met a grisly end.

Patrick and I set up our tent in the pines of the Ouachita Mountains in the Kiamichi Wilderness, and in the morning we were awakened by the crisp air, the crickets chirping and...

honk, honk, honk....(echoing and continuing)

Dad had slept in the car, which had automatically set the alarm and now we were sounding a burglar-alarm revilee across the Kiamichi...I reached up, grabbed my set of keys hanging in the top of the tent, and pressed the button to turn off the alarm...about 10 times before it actually worked. To Dad's credit, he said he suspected it would go off and waited as long as he could in the car before getting out.

Patrick scrambled eggs and made breakfast burritos with tortillas and coffee--I could tell already that the food on this hike was going to be better than anything we ever experienced as young kids--we would normally have oatmeal, trail mix, and Cup-o-Soup--pretty much gross, dehydrated food. I think all of us were interested in seeing how we held up to our previous physical standards. I would have to say that I've changed the most since I last hiked, 17 years ago. I've grown over four inches taller and weigh considerably more. Don has recently been exercising every day and has gotten lean and mean, so he was probably most prepared. Patrick was just married this year, and hasn't been camping in a while. My youngest brother, Noel, plays hockey in a league so he is physically active. And Dad is still Dad--a trooper who would go camping with us as kids even though it wasn't even clost to his favorite thing to do (which might be watching the Cowboy game on TV Sunday afternoons).

We sat and had our luxurious hot breakfast and I snapped pictures while a frosty dew fell all around us in the crisp morning air. I packed up my tent and snapped this daddy longlegs spider (harmless). The air smelled like crushed pine needles--a smell that brought back memories that I hadn't thought of in a long time...

My job for the trip was to confirm the logistics of the maps. It was a little awkward to call someone that I haven't seen in almost twenty years and ask them for a favor, but that was what my task for the hike was--I looked up our old Scoutmaster on Google (love Google) and it even had his cell phone number listed. He told me a book to get (Ouachita Trail Guide, by Tim Ernst), and even invited me to come to a Boy Scout meeting to make sure I had picked out the directions properly (I went to the meeting and that was a story itself). I felt very prepared.

I'm including a copy of the map, because somebody need to Email Tim Ernst and tell him that it's wrong. That was my one thing to do, and I got it wrong (not my fault!!!!)

We were supposed to put in a car at Forest Road 6031, off Highway 63. We left Patrick and Noel and our packs at the Pashubbe Trailhead and drove up and down highway 63 for well over an hour, stopping at any break in the trees that may look like Forest Road 6031--Finally, in a leap of faith and after realizing that we were dramatically behind schedule, we tucked the car in a grove of trees where we thought we would emerge at the Kiamichi River Trailhead (marked 6032--there were several unmarked Forest Roads along 63, spaced out along the highway). If it wasn't the right place, Don and I agreed that we would hitchhike along 63 until we got to the car and go back and pick everyone up. This kind of bugged me off and on during the trip--Were we going to see our car when we got off the trail?

When we got back to our backpacks, we took a quick group picture and started off--and I promptly got us off the trail immediately--the trail was blazed with blue paint, and I missed a faded blue mark at a switchback and took us in a circle around some trees before Don found the next blue mark. Again, my usually impeccable navigation duties seemed to be faltering a little.

Once on the trail, we were doing pretty well. Don took the lead and set a pretty quick pace up the switchbacks along the hill. The trail was rocky; much rockier than any of us seemed to remember. This continued until the last 2 miles of the hike at the end of the day. After a couple of hours, our legs felt hammered--balancing from tiny, softball-to-shoebox sized rocks put a strain on the tiny support muscles on the sides of your legs instead of the normal, large muscles you use for walking. The nice part about the rocky terrain was that there were several beautiful rock formations cascading down the mountain as we climbed--huge glacier boulders that we sometimes had to climb over.

Then the trail headed uphill--steep! By the time we reached the top of Wilton Mountain, we were gassed and broke for lunch.

We sat down and Patrick broke out the first meal for Dad. Don, Noel, and I brought our own trail meals, but Patrick took care of my dad--and boy, did he! He started to make a sandwich with cheese, mayo, the works (which is really unheard of, for good reason, in backpacking). As Patrick offered Dad a choice of flavored water, chips, and condiments, I started wondering exactly what kind of smorgasboard he had going on inside his backpack. I teased him, asking "Hey, Pat--do you think you could whip us up a chocolate bundt cake?" Little did I know that, not only did he pack steaks in a light cooler for us as well as a lightweight metal grill to cook them over the campfire that night, but he had also baked a chocolate cake and put it in an uncrushable container for dessert that night!--Patrick and his magic food-pantry backpack became an amazing phenomenon that we all uneasily watched all weekend...and benefitted from.

Again--all these things: sandwiches, steaks, cakes, grills--backpacker sacriledge! I felt naughty just participating in it...

As we sat in awe catching our first glimpse of Patrick's chefery, we were startled to hear voices approaching. It's hunting season out in the Kiamichi, so I was a little worried that we might encounter people with guns in the woods, but these were two merry hikers with hiking sticks who stopped to chat for a moment. They had also bought the book by Tim Ernst, and were also gassed by the climb to the top of Wilton Mountain.

Suspiciously eyeing the remains of a sandwhich tossed into the firepit, the larger of the two men reminded us to make sure we left the trail clean when we left. This could have been interpreted as out-of-line, but I thought he was right and we picked up the fire pit and tried to leave no trace of stopping there. We ran across the two guys several times on the trail, and I nicknamed them "Siegfried and Roy", which made us laugh every once in a while when we would wonder what they were up to.

The rest of the day went much smoother--Don led most of the way and each of us had a nice time hiking with different groups of people. Going downhill, even though it was rocky and composed of 33 switchback trails, was much easier going and the trail leveled out at for the last several miles--we passed Siegfried and Roy who were setting up their tents a campsite that we would have probably comandeered since it was getting dark and we got such a late start. We decided to push on to our destination, which we calculated as about a 10-mile hike for the day, with a five-mile backtrack the following day to the "car" (we were hoping and praying).

Noel and I got to the campsite and started the fire immediately, so we would have coals to cook on when Patrick and Dad got to the site--we knew they were at least half an hour behind. Don came shortly afterward and we both set up our tents while it was light.

I had sent out an Email to all the guys warning them about Giardia, which is a parasitic cyst that is common in water due to rodent feces. I told them that if we didn't bring in enough water, we would have to drink out of the "possum potty" (Kiamichi River which is known to have Giardia in it). Our projected campsite was on the banks of the Kiamichi, so one plan to keep from having to tote in liters and liters of water for overnight on the trail was to bring just enough for one day, then purify the water from the river for drinking and cooking. We've done it before and it's no big deal, but I'm glad that wasn't our strategy this time: the river was completely dry due to drought! In fact, there were pockets of unnaturally blue, milky, stagnant water that I'm glad we didn't have to consider drinking an of it.

We sat around the campfire, feasting like kings on steak, potatoes with butter and cheese, and chocolate cake and telling stories about camping in years past. Dad was quiet, but I think I caught him smiling a little...I hope that, even though he was exhausted, he had a nice time. I brought my nice camera, my luxury item of the trip, to see if I could capture some nice shots--one of my favorites was of my brothers, Patrick and Noel, and my dad sitting close to the fire--Don took this one of me.

A dog howled in the distance--enough to later give me a bad dream about a dog eating my entire backpack, which I had left outside the tent. Other than that, I was warm and toasty and slept soundly there on the banks of the river--I kidded my dad and Patrick: "If you guys have to get out of the tent in the middle of the night, I wouldn't go more than five steps--that sixth one is a long way down..."(the bank of the river).

At about Four AM a front moved through and the wind shaking the trees sounded like a freight train coming through the forest--Noel said he thought someone had opened the floodgates of the river--I woke up from my dream about the dog and started wondering what weather the front would bring--but beside the wind, it wasn't bad at all, and we got up, had a hot breakfast (there's a funny story about one of my brothers who was decidedly not pleased that his oatmeal was ruined because it wasn't warm enough, but I won't name names...) We passed Siegfried and Roy yet again on the trail, and I even sneaked off the trail a ways to catch my version of an "Abbey Road" photo of my brothers hiking by in a row in the thick cover of the forest.

When we got to the end of the trail--voila! We had guessed right and the car was there. Thank God. We were all in good spirits as we bundled into the car and the rain that followed the front moved in and soaked our packs as we drove to the beginning of the trail to pick up the other car.

The ride back always seems like it takes a lot longer than the ride to get there. We had a little miscue where Patrick, who was seemingly asleep in the back of my car, slinked off when we stopped to get gas and was highly offended that we drove off without him there. In fact, when he called my Dad's cell phone, my dad leaned back toward the empty back seat and said, "Patrick, what are you doing calling me?" To me, it was one of those Hitchcock moments of hearing my dad, glancing at the empty seat, and the sinking realization that I had abandoned my brother in an Oklahoma gas station...followed by hysterical laughter. I'm not sure if we were able to convince Patrick that it was humorous.

But we succeeded in revisiting the trail from our younger days, and this time, we did it in style.

Photos from our Hike

My brothers, Dad, and I went on a backpacking trip this weekend on the Ouichita Trail in southeastern Oklahoma. If you would like a preview , enjoy! Otherwise, I'll follow up with a description of the great trip later this week.

Disappointed People

I get this report that, if I get very curious, can tell me how people came to find my blog. It shows the search that they typed into the search engine. Sometimes, when I see what they typed and what they ended up finding, it makes me giggle a little.

(My sister, Nicole, also did a blog about this and there were some really funny searches like "Lesbian Bath House" and "Crack cookies"--she wished the searchers good luck...)

Here were some funny ones that I can recall:

1) "Hippo" and "Teamwork"--Yeah! My blog posting came before Animal Planet's website!

2) "A Poem about Birches"--not so funny, I guess; okay, here's one "Big Game Hunter" and "Halloween Costume"--? Come on, man, what a lame Halloween costume that would be...

3) "Latte' investment plan"--They were probably very disappointed to hear me say "Take your paws off my Starbuck's Venti Mocha, you bean-counter weasel!"

4) "Black girl and white guy"--hmmmmm...a little disturbing that I was a winner in this search--I guess this entry will now put me at the TOP of that search list...

5) "Drumbeats"--Tons and tons of hits on that, and I can almost hear the collective disappointment when people realize this isn't a music-related blog (I did play drums in high school) Photo evidence provided here-->

A little Ringo-ish, right? (Ringoesque?)

There are lots of others. It's really funny that most of the time the search "hit" is very tangential to the point I'm trying to make. Maybe I should try being less obtuse.

First Posts

Sometimes when I'm bored or trying to escape awful, work-related tasks I'll click on "Next Blog". People's first blog postings are kind of funny to read. You know, somewhat predictable (don't read mine-I'm sure it's lame).

One I new blog that I read last week very idealistically laid out the author's promise to never bore people with the mundane inner-workings of his life, and then a very specific promise to never include haiku.

Wow, I thought. My face grew flush. Is this some famous euphamism that I didn't realize exists? Am I, by definition, lame since I do throw in an occasional haiku? (This is rhetorical, by the way...)

So, here's why I do that--it's kind of tongue in cheek. I don't consider myself to be an overly creative person, and it helps me to have a framework and a limited number of syllables to express a complete thought. So sue me, you self-righteous jackass!

A Night at the Movies

Driving home last night, somehow the conversation turned to my blog.

"If one of my friends wants to read your blog, is that cool?"

"Uhhhh, which friend?"

"Oh, I don't know, (names a friend)"

"Isn't her husband some kind of Grand Wizard of their church or something? I don't want to feel censored."

"You never write anything that bad, do you?"

"Gee, thanks for reading!" (both laugh). "You know, maybe that's best left alone right now."

"You ought to write a blog about the human leg I saw under the car last year."

"Maybe you ought to write a blog about that--you can post it on mine, if you want. Besides, if I write about it, I'm going to write how it was fake!"

Background: Fran SWEARS that she saw a human leg dragging under a car last year on Halloween (hello!). She even called the police and everything, which is probably why my property taxes are going up this year. Later that day, our brother-in-law, who was a fireman, told us that a person jumped from a bridge over a highway downtown, and got run over so many times that body parts got dragged all over the city. I tried to tell her that there are so many practical jokesters, including incredibly resourceful ones, that you can pretty much never believe what you see anymore.

This week is our 14-year anniversary. On someone's anniversary, my mom likes to dramatically and sarcastically say, "(x) years of wedded bliss!", the same way one might say "(x) years of living hell!". But I must say that, in my case at least, it's been a great 14 years (OMG), and there's not much I would change (our topic at dinner last night).

So, we got a babysitter and went out to the movies for the first time in a long time, just Fran and me. Fran chose Elizabethtown, which definitely had a chick-flick feel to it, but it had a nice theme about finding meaning in life after a guy has a disastrous business failure, which kind of hit home for me in light of my recent thinking. When we walked in at the front of the theater, there was a couple whom I believed were escaped mental patients, because they had their infant and 2-year-old with them--Obviously I love kids but I was ticked that we had waited for months and months to go to a movie for a nice quiet time and certainly didn't want to hear kids screaming...

It may just be that I was overjoyed to be spending a night out with Fran, but I just loved the movie--I even got a lump in my throat when watching the main character's flashbacks of spending time with his dad when he was a boy, and hoped that Ryan has nice memories of growing up. When the movie was over, I leaned over to Fran and said, "Great, huh?"

She paused, then said, "Well, it was okay." She pointed out that the movie was a disjointed collection of ill-fitted parts. Damn it, she's right! Then I felt like I should have been a little more discerning instead of happily clapping at the pretty colors like a lobotomized monkey.

----

I've been fighting (and losing the battle with) this lousy cold for about a week. Friday, I laid on the couch and drank hot tea and watched movies (okay, I checked my work Email 4 times, too), but it was the first sick day that I took in 10 years! I've now restarted the clock on the "Iron Man" streak (2 days so far).

Two weird things: One of the conditions of my cold is the complete absence of taste or smell for about five days. The other is that I was watching The Matrix. There's a scene where Cypher is eating a steak and says, "I know that this steak isn't real, it's just that my brain is telling me that it's juicy and delicious. But I don't care."

I thought to myself, " I know this food really would taste good, but my brain isn't receiving any signals telling it what it tastes like. And I really do care quite a lot!"

I had this weird, out-of-body thought that maybe I'm lying in my Matrix pod somewhere and one of my little hose-connections, the one for taste and smell input, has somehow come unplugged.

Help! Somebody plug me back in!

Dialog of a Backpack Purchase

"I'm still high bidder--but there's still a couple of hours to go..."

"I think this is a bad idea."

"Look right here: it says 'Used once. Like New!' ...and look at the picture--it looks brand new!"

"There's no way they'll get it to you in time--you're leaving next weekend!"

"I'll just tell them that I need it by then."

"What do they care? They already have your money! Besides, how do you even know it's going to fit?"

"I went to REI and loaded it up with weight and tried it on. It fit great! Plus it's the color I want. My old backpack is an ugly orange color--looks like I've got one of those street pylons strapped to my back or something."

(not laughing) "Ha ha. I still think it's a bad idea"

"What, Ebay in general?"

"No. Cutting things this close to your trip, Mr. Sarcasm. So, hey, how many bids have there been?"

"I don't know--something like 10 or so."

"Someone will come in at the last minute and outbid you--it always happens to me that way."

---an hour later----

(Fran, calling upstairs) "Are you still winning?"

"Don't know--let me check real quick. It ends in an hour or so....No, some dude just outbid me."

"Well don't bid on it anymore--just go to REI and get a new one! That way, you know you'll have it."

My son, Ryan, walking in, tears welling in his eyes: "Dad, I really wanted you to get that one!"

"It's okay, Ryan--I'll get this one, but I'll get it from the store."

"But I wanted you to win..."

"Hey buddy, even if you win, you still have to pay for it."

I put him to bed.

---Forty minutes later-Twenty minutes to go on the bid---

I can't believe that guy waited until the very end and outbid me. I'll bet a bunch of people have driven the price up by now...

No way! His bid is standing at $1 over mine!

(Fran, calling up from downstairs): "Mike, Do Not bid on that backpack--they'll never get it to you in time!"

How did she know I was looking at it? (I hit the "refresh" button....20 times)

That guy is going to have to pay the "Mike Tax" for outbidding me! I'll raise him up a couple of bucks, the bastard!

---Ten minutes to go---

Enter a bid for $2 higher

What?! I'm the highest bidder? He only overbid me by $1? What an idiot!

---Time ticking, ever so slowly...---

One minute to go and I'm still the high bidder--here's where everyone comes in and goes bananas outbidding me up to a number that is ludicris.

5
-refresh-
4
-refresh-
3
-refresh-
2
-refreh-
1

delay

I won! What a great deal!

Now let's see if I get it on time! UPDATE: Got it with a week to spare! Yeah!!!

Teachers--Leave these kids alone!

I went to have lunch at school with my son Ryan last week. These poor kids.

They only get 25 minutes for lunch, and the teachers make them take a restroom break in the middle of that time. Additionally, they don't get to select who they sit with--they just have to sit in order as they get their lunch and get to the table.

Then, during the entire lunch period, there is a teacher with a bullhorn walking around barking orders at the poor urchins.

"Who dropped their apple on the floor!?"

"Please pick up any trash from the floor around you!" (And here's Ryan picking up other people's trash, putting it on his tray--which I told him not to do any more).

"You must be food-focused!" (This terminology, which I believe they invented, is making me crazy--I think it will lead to years of counseling for overweight kids in years to come.)

"Please stop talking" (The last 5 minutes, they must eat in silence).

As a parent, I'm allowed to come in and eat with my child any time I want, but it is clearly not well- appreciated. I'm given a wide berth by the roaming, bitter lunch monitors--I feel like a big chunk of kryptonite (more like wolfsbane) sitting on the table--the kids in a 1-2 person mini-region all around me are safe from direct harrassment since I make such an imposing witness.

Then I was awakened: "You can not eat your ice cream until you have finished your hamburger!"

------flashback-----

(screaming): "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat!?"

Yep. I told Fran (and later my anonymous commenter, who also picked up on it right away), and we died laughing.

One of the coolest, stoner-like things I have ever done is go to a Pink Floyd concert...but the rest of the story is: I was working at the concession stand with boy scouts to earn money for a trip. But the 2nd part of rest of the story is I sneaked away during the concert and watched the band and the laser show for 2 hours. The 3rd part of the rest of the story is that I had gotten there early and ended up staying late, which pretty much compensates for shirking my duty. I even vaguely remember the set list.

Sooo--I had to explain it to Ryan (he's very bright and has a great sense of humor), which I did dramatically by imitating the song, which made him laugh. Afterward I had to promise to Fran that I would take the heat if he ever got in trouble over it at school. I actually told Ryan he was free to repeat it.

Kaitlyn does NOT want to take a nap...

So this is what she does instead...

Me and my chocolate problem...

Yes--This is a scanned-in lid of a chocolate box. Only I would be so crazy as to keep this box for 10 months, scouring the earth in search of a fresh supply, doing my best to translate French websites, search World Market locations, etc.

My company sent me a gift basket last year for Christmas--it was incredible. But the Foret Noire chocolates in this box made me fall out of my chair and roll on the floor...Anyone who knows me, please don't attempt to picture this...

Not cut out for the Fantasy World

I have always considered myself a big fan of (American) football. Growing up in Dallas in the 1970's the Dallas Cowboys were my childhood idols. I remember wearing a shirt with Charlie Waters on the front to elementary school. It was a weird time warp last Christmas when my wife and I ran into Charlie at the mall and Fran asked if she could give him a hug--okay, that bothered me a little bit, actually. Fran has this bizarre knack of running into celebrities...another blog for another day.

I even had a very funny experience when I was a teenager and traveled to Washington, DC. I was riding on the Metro and must have had a shirt on with a Cowboys emblem or something like that--a well-dressed woman carrying a briefcase looked at me, pointed her thumb downward, and with a look of disgust, "boo'd" me! A thirteen-year-old, obviously from out-of-town! Crazy, huh? The adults who were guiding me around had to point out to me that it was because of my shirt, and it took a moment for it to sink in that everyone on earth wasn't a fan of the Dallas Cowboys. Seriously, it's possible that I had never met someone who wasn't by that point in my life!

So...when we get older, we get wiser, right? Nope. I was in an airport last year and knew the Cowboy game was coming on, and stopped to watch it. Yes, assuming that everyone in Massachusetts would love to watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Philadelphia Eagles (in short, no). I had to chuckle and remember my Metro ride 20 years earlier and thinking that my antique, Geocentric-ish (hey, I somewhat worked in a Copernicus reference!) view was somewhat comical.

There's this game that some guys play, called "Fantasy Football". You choose players that you think will perform the best throughout the season and, every week, you compare stats with other guys. It was kind of a fun way to talk about football every week, and no one got too serious about it.

I started this with a group of about 4 guys, about 10 years ago-lasting about 3 years, and we did it just for fun. The rules were loosely organized and he had a great time. At the end of the "season", a winner was declared (not me) and we went on with our life.

About five years ago, I joined this new group of guys that had known each other for years and years. They invited me to join their Fantasy Football League--they all put in $20 or so.

I knew I was in trouble when they scheduled a draft day--lasting 5 hours! I sat in a room with 12 other guys, including one guy on-line from Santiago, Chile and thought, from the moment that I arrived "What the hell am I doing here? What a colossal waste of time! These dudes need a life!"

Turns out, I had joined this hard-core group of guys who lived for football! They had purchased analysis packages of the entire NFL league and had charted out drafting scenarios with fallback positions, etc. I had my list on the back of a Dunkin' Donuts napkin...

Since I had committed to doing it, I stuck with the group and drafted, etc. It would be too embarrassing to just walk out when I realized that I wanted nothing to do with this nonsense. I had just gotten a new job that was requiring tons of time and there was no way I could keep up. Additionally, the "League Manager" instituted an internet program for us to change our teams around each week (like if a player got injured you could substitute another one, or if a team had the week off, you could "play" another player). I guess, after my 2nd week, I forgot my password and couldn't get back in to change my lineup. By that point, I had lost all interest.

It was funny, though. Almost unpredictably, my "team" would be good some weeks and bad other weeks. Some of the guys would really get into it--taunting each other, talking trash, making trades with each other, etc.

About week 8, one of the guys who seriously doesn't have enough to do in life did a spreadsheet analysis of my team performance and figured out that I never changed my team around (the funny part was, I had beat him that week). The nutless bastard reported me to the League Manager! (By the way, this is the guy who, the following year, I nearly let drown in the Kenai river as related in my blog entry Alaska!).

I was then kicked out of the league for not taking it seriously enough! Yeah, what a great group of guys, huh? (really, they're okay--just a little silly about this thing).

As it turns out, I really just like the Dallas Cowboys, and don't care too much about studying the statistics, etc. of the whole National Football League and all of it's players. I just want something to do while I eat nachos on the couch and drink coke...

I was there when the music died....

First, I must confess that, at one point at least, I knew all the words to Don McLean's American Pie, you know:

So bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singing 'This'll be the day that I die. This'll be the day that I die."

(Typed this from memory).

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"Hey, wow! Is this thing on?"

I stood in the engineer's booth at the radio station where my brother works. It was last week, toward the end of the week, and I took a break by stopping by to see him. His job is to...well, I guess I don't understand exactly what his job is, after all. It's one of those things where he's supposed to watch this massive twisted tangle of gnarled cables and readout screens, and if he sees smoke at any point, he's supposed to call someone who is responsible for bringing in a fire hose.

Probably a little more complex than that.

So I was listening to this talk show that was coming over his network, and his job at that moment was to be sure that the "spots" (revenue-generating advertisements) played on time--he was supposed to check off the empty boxes on a clipboard as they played. Clipboard in hand, he grinned at me and dramatically put his hand on one of the hundred or so dials on the ancient-looking board, right next to the computer monitor that looked like it hadn't been wiped down since the invention of the UNIVAC.. He started rattling off a lot of jargon about a second "backup" channel that was playing the exact same thing at exactly the same time, then flipped the switch and watched me for a reaction as....the same commercial kept playing.

"Yeah, we're really not supposed to do that..."

Good thing I didn't know what the hell he did, although I feigned being impressed. I was too busy watching the amplitude graph go up and down and thinking of the movie "Contact".

"Hey man, don't get in trouble while I'm here!"

"Are you kidding? Nothing ever happens..."

I remember him telling me about when he took a couple of days off and the new guy forgot to play all the spots for about 3 days--that was a catastrophic moment that all the veteran employees remembered--like one of those things that everyone can relate to: "Remember that week where that guy (what was his name, again?) forgot to play the spots?"

He grinned and flipped the switch back. The spots ended and a guy started droning some conservative rhetoric. My mind's eye saw a cheap grey suit with a striped fat tie and a sock drawer at home that was organized by color with everything matching and running in rows like cornfields. Narcolepsy struck immediately and I lost the urge to ever vote again.

Then my ears started ringing.

Nope, it was some crazy interference coming out of the board. My brother flashed into action, picking up the intercom and paging someone. He turned to me and said "I've never seen this happen before..."

Awkwardly, I said: "Hey dude, I'm outta here--I'll let you get this taken care of..."

"Okay!"

As I walked out, I saw someone running into the booth (I guess he forgot to bring the fire hose). I kept thinking to myself "I sure hope I didn't kick a plug or step on a cable or accidentally brush against a key or something" (I've been known to be slightly clumsy...)

I talked to my brother today and hesitatingly asked if they had figured out where the noise had been generated--he told me it had originated at the broadcast point, so it didn't have anything to do with him.

The funny part was that several conspiracy theorists called into the station thinking that the government was broadcasting interference over the program's airwaves to either mask the message that the program was trying to deliver or subliminally insert counter-programming into their subconscious.

That's what that whiskey and rye will do to you...

What Happened to You?

I feel like I need to generate a public service announcement in the form of a personal story. It’s about a bewildering experience that I had at about the age of 29. First, I have to give a little personal history (sorry):

Despite dark childhood baggage, I feel like I’ve led a relatively charmed life. I was an Eagle Scout, near the top of my class in high school, member of the National Honor Society, and had a great work ethic from earning my own money since the age of about eight by delivering magazines and collecting aluminum cans for recycling.

I always had nicknames like “All American Boy” and “Captain America.” I really tried hard at everything I did, carefully toed the line, steered clear of drugs, drinking, etc.—in short, I was very idealistic and academic about life.

At every job I had, I rose to the top. I worked at a grocery store from the time I was 15 until I was twenty-one, meticulously learning every job in the store and being able to fill in wherever I would be most useful—I clearly remember shaking while I walked into the bosses’ office and asked for a raise—my parents told me that I had to. I had been taught how to be a cashier, but I was being paid entry-level wages, and it had gone on for about three months. The boss, a neighbor who lived a couple of streets over, was a very hard man and there was a very good possibility that I could be fired on the spot, as had happened to several of my friends who “stepped out of line” in any small way. Instead, he gave me a 40% increase, exactly what I asked for (and, the next Saturday, literally had me scrub the floor of the store with a toothbrush for seven hours in retribution).

When I was eighteen, I started working full-time in an office (yes, I kept my job at the grocery store part-time in addition to going to college full time—nobody ever believes my resume’ because my job dates don’t line up quite right). Again, I was promoted immediately, and then again to become the youngest supervisor, at age nineteen, in the history of the company.

I had a wise boss, a woman named Bobbie, who knew the ways of the working world despite having several personal problems at home and living in practically impoverished conditions. Her insight was like magic—she was always right about interpersonal decisions, staffing moves, production, everything. She had told me, “Sorry, kid, but your age is going to cut into your credibility. I’m going to give you this job, but you are going to have to act so mature for your age that nobody can guess you’re still a teenager.”

I did as she suggested, and it worked flawlessly. As fate would have it, I met my wife while working for that company (she was also working there).

To summarize those seven years as briefly as possible, I became one of the most productive supervisors and went on, when PC’s first came to the forefront, to write a customized spreadsheet program that saved the company over $250,000. This brought a lot of attention to our Dallas branch, which became the most productive in the corporation's history. Our notoriously frugal Vice President took our staff out for a steak dinner to celebrate “our” accomplishments!

Nevertheless, when it later became necessary for me to change my hours so I could finish my college degree, the company wouldn’t let me keep my job—I was demoted back to entry level, much to the delight of some. I must say that I was disappointed, actually wounded, that they wouldn’t make an exception for me despite my outstanding track record.

I held this position for three months, then I was scored as the highest-producing employee in the company’s history! I think a lot of people were surprised by this—they thought that when I was “sent down” I would get lazy or something, but I had actually gritted my teeth and was determined to overcome that unspoken negative expectation. The week after my glowing review, the Office Manager came to my desk and led me away on a special project, and I never went back to the heads-down, nose-to-the-grindstone job.

I became an in-house consultant, with the open-ended job of analyzing company performance and making improvements for maximum production and quality control. It really annoyed some of the managers that I was given my own office and whatever supplies I needed, as well as complete autonomy.

Then I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree, and started going to graduate school with the intention of applying to medical school.

I was offered another consulting job—one that I could do from home and just turn in my hours for pay. It was for a trucking company that wanted me to analyze it’s employees’ productivity and then try to determine the profitability of different contracts and potential contracts with customers.

I felt like this was my first real opportunity to be creative in business, and I seized it and poured my heart into the project. I read books about performance and production, learned several different software programs for analysis, plugged endless numbers into equations, interviewed employees for ideas, and came up with a comprehensive business plan with absolutely no formal training. I even padded my paycheck—in reverse. I rationalized that I was doing research to catch up on my lack of knowledge, so I would subtract 5-10 hours a week when I submitted my hours for payment. I thought that if I “billed” for all my time, my job might go away due to the expense. The reverse actually happened—the owner of the company promoted me to manager, then Executive Vice President. The company went from making little to no money over it’s 17-year history to being truly profitable. And the profits increased every year I was there, and the company grew. The owner had some odd quirks of redistributing money to other corporations via accountants, so it was difficult to tell exactly how profitable things were, but billings increased five-fold and profitability increased dramatically due to the processes I put into place. I was making great money and was putting in about 70 hours per week and had 2 pagers a cell phone, and an office at my home.

Then the bottom fell out of my fantasy business world. The owner, against my wishes, hired a manager who was very politically savvy and wanted me out of the picture. I got my resume’ together and found a new job, but was unceremoniously shown the door by a gloating adversary who screwed me out of a few thousand dollars before it was all over with. The company tanked within two years.

Sorry for the autobiography, but I feel like I needed to lay it out there so I can make the following statements.

You can't let your job be your identity. I'm so glad I learned that by age 29--I've seen some people who didn't learn it until retirement. If you truly learn to believe this, it will free you from guilt and stress from work that a lot of people carry around. Your job is a means to an end--it helps you make a living while you do just that--LIVE!

No corporation will have loyalty to you, no matter what you do--and I feel completely entitled to say it, because I've been a superstar performer in both a small business and a Fortune 500 company. It's a lesson that was eye-opening to me...or was it? I don't think I spotted it the first few times I experienced it--My manager at the grocery store weighed my value as an employee vs. losing me over money, and decided it was profitable to keep me. And my office job? They hesitated all of 20 minutes before telling me that I couldn't keep my job if I went part-time in order to finish school.

The reason is that it's the path of least resistance, and the most easily justifiable decision in business--the numbers "don't lie", and loyalty to an individual does not compute (seems like a Star Trek thing: the needs of the one vs. the needs of the many...not logical). In the end, it's a form of managerial laziness.

Google refuses to divulge to me who first stated that "Capitalism without compassion is a monstrosity", but I first heard it as a teenager and filed it away as a naive, idealistic thought which came erupting back to the forefront of my mind at age 29, when my job with the trucking company was over. I got another job right away for more than double the salary, but the lesson wasn't lost on me--I was using the wrong scorecard to take stock of my life.

The irony is that, in trying to fully devote myself to the company, I hit upon some good resources that came to the surface when I hit this personal crisis.

Steven Covey's "Putting First Things First"
"The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"
"In Search of Excellence"
"Social Style, Management Style"
Zig Ziglar
The Bible

In the absence of you establishing goals that are important to you, others will impose goals on you that are important to them, and reinforce them. They will make you think that meeting your work goals are the most important thing in life. And sometimes I still have to fight the urge to believe them.

I want to rework this thought--it should be a positive, affirming idea to free you from stress, not a downer about corporate anarchy. Love to hear what you think.