Connections, Part Deux: Heroes

It's a rare occasion that we get to spend time with true heroes. Or that we are even connected to them, however remotely.

Almost a year ago, I posted this message in my blog. Seven days shy of that anniversary, I'm reading about Louis Nolting again. The son of the buyer for our top shop, he was presented with the Distinguished Flying Cross.

You can read all about it here as there is no description I can offer that even comes close to the tale you are going to read.

Connections

Business and pleasure.

Coworkers and friends.

Life.

It all becomes intertwined. The line of business associate and friend gets blurred over time. People I talk to on the phone are not strangers or disembodied voices, we talk bikes, we share stories about our families and we discuss life in general.

These connections, no matter how tenuous, become so important and so routine. On Tuesdays, I call Bob every morning. I generally expect to see Fred a couple times a week in our front office.

There are two stories today...

...

My morning to call to my best shop in New Hampshire and possibly our best shop on the east coast resulted in me listening to a broadcast message about a family emergency. When I got through to the owner, I found out he had lost his brother.

I was at a loss for words. So I tried to get him to talk about his brother, what he did, where he grew up. Simple math puts his brother in his mid-40's. The death was unexpected. But we shared a few chuckles and did our best to forget about work for those few moments.

My heart is with you, my friend. And I reflect a bit on the fact that as I continue to grow older, it will ultimately be my friends and family I will have to say goodbye to.

"Don't stop this train..."

...

I was reminded that there was a brief moment in time when I thought about joining the military. I had just read this article about the son of the buyer at our best US dealer. His father did not sleep for days after reading the story.

As graduation from college grew close, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life and I was looking for career opportunities. I was interested in EMT and Paramedic fields but was worried they would get boring over time. As I continued to look for potential jobs, I considered the military and found a group in the Air Force whose motto was, "That others may live." That drew me in and as I began to see the training they went through, I thought if there was one part of the military branch I could go into, that would be it.

Seems like a long time ago....

Lesson Plan 4- Education

Emiko, I received a message from a person I know in the cycling industry. He is working through school, working at a bike shop and all he wants to do is continue working in the cycling industry. He is wondering how important it is for him to finish college.

D, I would be remiss if I told you not to finish school.

Finish school. While I know plenty of people who work in the cycling industry without the benefit of college education and do fairly well, you will have a better shot getting a job at the company of your choice if you approach them with a college education in your background. Beyond having a simple piece of paper that states you are a graduate, college can also help further your ability to learn new systems quickly. It shows your employers-to-be that you have the motivation to finish what you start and that you are dedicated to continuing your personal education.

I know how difficult, both from a time standpoint as well as a fiscal one, college can be. It took me ten years to pay off my college loans. But I promise you that you will have more opportunity if you decide to finish off school. Finish school.

Finally, as much as you desire to work in the bike industry now, things may change in ten years. You may want to change your career. You may be forced to change your career for various reasons. You may decide to start a new company. Do not limit your future by walking away from an education right now.

Finish school.

I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Emiko, I can not begin to stress how important it will be for you to further your education. We are, right now, faced with a shift in the paradigm of our workplace. Jobs are continuing to be outsourced over seas. Workers are asked to do more on a daily basis with less. Jobs are eliminated and those responsibilities are being shifted to those who remain. Workers are being asked to be more productive with their time as they cover vacated positions that will not be filled.

And none of this is necessarily wrong. As an individual, we will need to be able to adapt to this new way of work life. We need to make sure that rather than stagnating in a position, we continue to push ourselves to learn more and increase our value at work rather than miring ourselves in what some see to be a hopeless position.

It will be a whole new world for you and for me by the time any of this begins to make sense.

I love you. More than anything else.

Dad

The end of the season

It's funny how this happens every year. The end of the season sneaks up on me and I suddenly realize that I have both a great deal of joy and a great deal of sadness that it's here.

I enjoy working with good friends. In fact, as we discussed tonight after a CHL game, it's not really work at all when we are out there with the good guys. We make the calls, we giggle, we flap our arms around like a flock of sea gulls. We take some grief, we make tough calls and we always learn just a little bit more about this game we love.

Being out there on the ice with our buddies is a joy. For those few minutes, some of which can feel like days, there is nothing else in our world other than the game of hockey. We watch each other's backs, cover each other's lines and work our butts off for those sixty minutes of hockey.

We are students of the game. We expect to learn a little bit each game. We learn each other's working traits, we learn the player's idiosyncrasies and habits and we learn about our judgement of the calls we make. We are often our own toughest critics. We watch game tapes to see what we missed, how we could better position ourselves and where our vision on the ice is lacking. We discuss those tough calls and non-calls in the locker room between periods or on the ice during breaks. We learn to adjust for each game.

At the same time, despite the fun we have every game, I look forward to the end of the season for time at home with Hope, Emi and Gibson. Hockey takes me away from my family, it makes me miss certain moments at home and it sometimes gives me long drives in the car by myself.

Would I prefer to stay home with my family or go work a game? Every time I get scheduled, it's an honor that I am working at this elite level. And I say yes to the games. Every time I leave the house or skip going home all together and leave from my office, I miss precious time with my wife and daughter. I certainly hope that the time away, doing a job that I love, is acceptable to my family.

Hope understands and is more than willing to work with me on my schedule. But I fear that Emi would somehow grow to resent the sport that pulls her father away from her a few nights a week. I want her to appreciate what hockey means to me, I would love to see her play but most of all I hope that she inherits at least a little of the drive toward athleticism that I have, whatever the sport.

It's late. My family is now asleep. I worked a game that was played brilliantly by the two teams and was lucky enough to work with my mentor and great friend. I got to work with an up and coming referee that I hope to see to go on to the next levels of officiating. I got to have fun. And I appreciate that I get to work in this great league with great friend who are great officials.

Good night, I apologize for the rambling-ness of this posting tonight. Forgive me my sentimentality, my grammatical errors and any mispellings.

The Alumni Fund

Many, many moons ago, I worked for the Middlebury Alumni Fund while I was a student at said college. I made many calls, plead for a great deal of money and ended up calling some of my friends who had graduated ahead of me.

KT got one of these calls yesterday and she quickly wrote me an email wishing it had been a call from me. So I put together what I thought would be a good script in order to get a pledge out my fellow Alums.

It is as follows:

KT, I'm calling you today on behalf of Middlebury. You remember Middlebury, right? We educated you, housed you and fed you well for the four years you attended.

Well, I hate to tell you this, but Middlebury is in a bit of a pickle these days. Our endowment is not quite as large as some other private colleges. Plus, with the downturn in the economy, we are now facing a bit of a shortfall with our budget for the next eleven years.

We know you are in a position to donate at least $25 dollars to Middlebury this year. We have your financial records for the past ten years, your tax records for the past five years and your police records for the past four years. You really are not in a position to say no to a $50 dollar donation but we don't want you to feel like we are trying to extort money from you. That little incident that occurred in Pittsburgh two years ago really is worth at least a $75 dollar donation, especially if you don't want your family and best college friends to find out. I mean, really, getting busted plagiarizing on your report for why cock fighting really isn't an inhumane treatment of animals is a little over the top, don't you think?

Don't forget that your donation goes a long way for current students at Middlebury. They will continue to be coddled, graded on a curve, and given close in parking spaces in order to cut down on the long commute from their dorms to the student fitness center. These are all incredible reasons to donate $100 this year. Not to mention that your donation of $150 will help the school continue to place quite high in national rankings due to graduate satisfaction.

Shall we go ahead and ring up a $200 donation on your credit card tonight? We have that number too, you should know.

Did I mention we need to build a new practice rink for our National Championship hockey teams? KT, your name would go quite nicely over the door to the rink. That little international incident you had in Finland would be all but forgotten should this become the KT Ice Arena.

Let's get that donation going.

Seth
Middlebury College
98.5

A bachelor weekend in review

Tonight, i got to play hockey. And I felt strong and young...I was pulling away from other players with very effort. I was completing tape to tape passes to guys who didn't even expect to receive a pass but who were in perfect position to head up ice or shoot. I was making it look easy and I was feeling pretty good about myself (except for my backhand). My legs felt light and I didn't slow down as the game progressed.

But I suppose my legs will always feel light when I have spent the morning skiing at Loveland. 2 inches of fresh which had wind loaded into 5 inches at higher elevations. It was a bluebird day, the wind was low and the temps stayed in the 20's. It was a perfect day to ski and I'm happy that I had such a wonderful first day of skiing in over a year. And I was lucky enough to spend my time following Dave as he led me all over his mountain.

Perhaps my back stayed loose as I was playing hockey because I had spent all afternoon hunched over cleaning the stove, running the vacuum around the house and moving a great deal of furniture as I rearranged the bedroom (hey, the wife is gone, I can do whatever I want).

Or maybe I was feeling so strong because I had reffed two pro hockey games this weekend (Friday and Saturday night). Those skates certainly get my blood flowing!

Now that I think about it...I'm pretty worked from the weekend. I may need to hire a personal masseuse.

One more day

I have but one more day left to be at home with the family full time. It is hard to fathom leaving this little child, this wonderful wife and heading back to work. It has been such a pleasure, such a blast and such an experience learning what little I know about parenthood over the past two weeks.

We've had the pleasure of company. So many of our friends have stopped by to look in on us, to meet Emiko, to share in our joy. And we appreciate all of them. It has been quite the experience. Two friends have done more than their fair share of looking after us. Cheryl has stopped by to help out and look after us. Molly has been here since before day one, looking after the house and Gibson. I can only hope that they both realize our eternal gratitude for all their help. I hope they know that we love them both dearly. As I write this, I think of Molly kicking us out of our living room last night and sending Mom and Dad to bed as she looked after Emi. True friendship.

Which makes me think about family. We live many miles and hours from our parents and siblings. Our aunts and uncles, cousins, everyone, they are all so far away. We rely heavily on the help of our friends, who have in their own right, become our family. Surrogate aunties and uncles all. But it makes me sad to think that our family is so far away that they will only be afforded a few weeks of visits in the months and years to come.

This is something I'd love to change. I'd love to have both our parents living close by where they could feel free to stop in and visit any time they would like to. The only way that I see this happening is for us to move back to Maine. And as nice as that would be, I can see right now that it won't happen. We have come to love Colorado. We have come to see it as home. Everything about this state suits us and we hope now that we can pass this "joie de vivre" along to our distant family and hope that they come home to us.

And now I find I have strayed far from my original topic. One more day. I question how to fill it up and make it special as our last day together. I can cook dinner. I can do a little more work around the house. I can make sure mother and daughter are comfortable and prepared for my absence. We can visit with our friends, unencumbered by the need to focus on work.

But you know what I really want? Just to hold Emi while I sit next to Hope with Gibson at our feet and pretend that the day will not end. We can all take a nap together. We can all take a walk together. We can just be. And we can hope that we will all have one more day.

"That was close"

I spent a great portion of today working around the house. No, really! I did!

I vacuumed the entire garage. As some of you may know, our garage has been a bit non-functional since the flood. An entire room plus new baby furniture is currently stored where we used to park Hope's car. Then the torsion spring broke on my side of the garage and I have been a bit remiss in fixing it.

So...I cleaned the garage and moved all the stuff from Hope's side to my side. Then I parked my car on her side. Yup. I figured I did all the work, why not park inside again? I even vacuumed out her car too. Cleaned the windshield. Cleaned the dash and all the other plastic parts of her car (it's a Saturn, so there was a lot of plastic!).

But today's entry isn't about my work or all the cleaning I did (I even repotted my aloe). It's about the visit I had from one of the neighbor's kids. He wandered in with the typical slackjaw question: "What'cha doin'?"

Generally, my disdain is thinly veiled. These are the kids who now have a four-wheeler track around their backyard. The "parents" brought in rocks and ramps and routed it over their picnic table. These are the kids we can hear wailing on the far side of the fence. This is the family who purchased a dog and leave it in the backyard all the time. The smell of pot and various masking agents often waft into our backyard when we are grilling or enjoying the quiet of the night.

Today, I decided to try and be a touch more patient with the younger of the two boys. He began batting around the tennis ball we use to mark where Hope is supposed to stop when she pulls into the garage (if you haven't seen it, it is hung by a hockey lace and nudges the windshield when she pulls in and stops). He was having fun, I could clean around him and he wasn't a nuisance at all.

Then, I heard the step-father calling for him. He went zipping out to explain where he had disappeared to. Not much later, he showed up inside our garage again. He said, "That was close." I, in turn, asked, "What was close" without thinking to much of the comment or the question. His reply was to the effect of, "I almost got a spanking."

Wow. I'm not sure quite what kind of parent I will be. But I'm fairly certain that I won't be the spanking kind. I never want my child to be afraid to see me or to come running out of fear of physical retribution. I'm certain there will be times when Hope and I will have to mete out punishments or groundations but I can't fathom ever feeling the need to spank our child-to-be.

So. One would hope the story was over now. But it isn't.

He began playing with the tennis ball again. Then his older brother showed up. The two played for no more than 15 seconds before they began arguing about the ball. I walked out to throw more trash in my can and the youngest began screaming and ran out of the garage. The oldest came out slowly afterward and ran for the street with a smirk on his face.

My assumption is that violence begets violence. If it is ok for Dad to smack a child, then it is certainly ok for a brother to emulate his father and do the same. Now, being an older brother, I certainly know and remember that siblings fight and sometimes punch. But I can only hope to set an example for our child that will let him or her understand that such violence is unnecessary. I hope someday our society and our world can follow suit.

Returning to the sanctity of my garage, once more devoid of the neighbor's children, I continued about my business all the while mulling over these thoughts. It was a little while later that I noticed the tennis ball was missing.

I still have not found it.

Just another day in the office

I saw a really cool thing yesterday afternoon.

We had a group of children and their parents, numbering around 40, take a tour of our factory at the end of the day. They are all on a cycling team which runs criterium practices on the road loop here in our business park. As they returned to the front office after touring the factory, Jared Graves happened to be hanging out working on his laptop.

The throng was introduced to Grubby (Yeti's nickname for Jared) and he began fielding questions from adults and children. This is nothing special or unusual (to us). Grubby is here at the factory every few months. He is a friend of ours and has stayed at my house for extended periods of time. He has been on the Yeti Factory Race team for several years and is always a contender for the podium in DH, 4X and Dual Slalom events. In August, he heads off to China to represent Austrailia during the inaugural Olympic BMX race.

Wait.

The Olympics.

Grubby, to us, is just another one of the guys. He rides faster than all of us but we laugh, kid around, talk trash and wrestle with him. We forget that he is one of the elite few who has the opportunity to compete at the highest level. In the eyes of this tour group, Grubby is a demigod.

I stood at the back of the group to listen and watch. When they finished and went on their way, I walked over to Grubby and thanked him for being so friendly and accessible. We talked about how even he forgets what being an Olympian means to so many people.

As I left our office, I was reflecting on how incredible it is to have an Olympian in our midst. And I overheard parents who were still outside our office effusively gushing over what an incredible experience they were just witness to. I was left with the thought that while it was just another day in the office for me, it was a day that may define the athletic aspirations for the children who had a chance to sit and talk with a young man who has Olympic gold within his reach.