Funemployment

Apparently my last post is "vague". The backstory is that I was presented with the opporunity to spend 10 days on the Grand Canyon or 21 days. I opted for 10 days over 21 days out of some insane sense of duty and commitment to my job and employer. Said employer laid me off 2 weeks after my return from the Grand. I was lamenting the fact that they didn't have the foresight or mercy to lay me off before my trip so that I could have done the full meal deal.

So I'm done. My third layoff during the holidays in 10 years. What will I do? According to Cameron's amazing voice mail (which will be saved on my phone and listened to if the luster of joblessness starts to fade), "you get to do whatever the f*** you want; dude, you got a hallpass." For now I'm doing a lot of coffee shop sitting, hanging with friends and family, reading back issues of Fast Company, walking, riding, hiking, napping, Yoga, and contemplation. I tried to file for unemployment insurance but there are so many people doing the same thing that the site has been clogged to the point of crawling at rush-hour speed. After waiting 12 minutes for the second page to load I decided to postpone it until some insomniatic night.

If you've been following Western Slope Exile for a while you may remember this quote. "We're outsourcing not only our manufacturing, but our entire economy. And I'm right in the middle of it collecting a pay check off of the whole deal. Sometimes I'm too scared to honestly ask myself if I'm the problem or the solution." Ironic that the funding for my job was created in part by the "savings" from the relocaction of US manufacturing to China....and now one year later that job has been outsourced to China. In my place, in China, there is a director, mold engineer, developer, and and QC inspector (most likely for about the same cost as one of me). I'm all about being "value added" (ick, I almost threw up every time one of my old bosses used that term) but it would be a little difficult for me to offer all of those services, especially all at the same time. I often predicted that development jobs would eventually be outsourced but truly believed that I had at least 5-10 years left. Last July I sat outside the shoe mine on a perfectly sunny day, straining through a particularly uncomfortable, awkward send-off BBQ - watching about 70 of my co-workers get kicked to the curb in the name of "survival"...their jobs sent away 7,000 miles to feed a machine that could, if unchecked, one day consume us. It sucked. If felt like I was going to puke. I felt culpable just by asociation, by the nature of my job...and now I'm on the way to the unemployment office. You play, you pay. The hand that feeds you can be the hand that slaps you.

So what now? Since I was technically outsourced I have access to great government benefits for reloction and education. No bettter time than a recession to go back to school. It's an option. Working is cool too. Eventually. My thoughts include change, sustainability, domestic manufacturing, the blending of the nuts-and-bolts side of project management with identification of product opportunity and creativity, meeting real needs and not perceived needs, positive marketing rather than fear based motivation; remote, lean, and integrated product teams that include not just the typical business unit model (which inlcudes the stereotypical product line manager/narcicist, designer/wanker/primadonna, developer/anti-visionary/calendar janitor) but creaters who can shape shift from napkin sketchers, to supply chain managing activists to caffiene cranked late night spec sheet writers, to guerilla marketers, to sincere advocates of the connection between the sewing machine and the person who buys something and expects it to work, to decent people who don't set aside values for profit, to the saboteurs of the Big-Box distribution channel and healers of specialty retail on main-street.

Love>Fear

"Job Affected"

At least the bastards could have laid me off before I left for the Grand Canyon. I'm actually looking forward to taking a break, seeing friends and family, and skiing. Stay tuned for further adventures and for how I'm going to figure out ways to make some mo-nay and do some more wall staring.

Flickr Site for GC Photos

Go here for more!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32100525@N03/

You'll have to cut and paste until I find out how to make the link thing work.

The Grand

I have a hard time believing that one week ago I was hiking out of the Grand Canyon. As I sit here watching winter settle into the North Fork I can't help but to be struck by how far away The Grand feels. How quickly things like budget, grocery shopping, career, and the tedious b.s. of life have asserted themselves. How little meaning they all have in scope when it comes to chasing the reality of adventure.

The Grand is big. Bigger than photography, bigger than words and journals, bigger than John Wesley Powell, the National Park Service, and Ed Abbey combined. The only thing that rivals it is imagination.

I went in with very little information and few expectations. I'd heard things about the scale, the eddy lines (arghhh, so true), beauty, and ancient nature but I purposely didn't do much research. I wanted to discover.



Lee's Ferry on a Sunday night.



Justin Tearing Up 24.5

GC Whitewater is pretty understanding at first. It starts off with some doable class 1-4 (GC Rating System is 1-10, not I-VI) and gets progressively bigger each day. The upper canyon is all about T-ing up, figuring it out, and learning that the current is pushier than anything you can imagine. If you're not on the way somewhere before you get in the rapid then you aren't going to make it there in time for it to count. Which is where the emphasis on hitting things straight comes in. If you can't get where you need to be then hit it straight and hit it hard. That pulled me through the first couple of days until my shoulders loosened up and I remembered what a ferry angle was. We shared rowing duties between everyone. The big rapids went to the vets, then some less gnarly stuff went those of us who have rowed but not for a while, then the wave trains and flat water went up for whoever felt like it. It was awesome to see people who had never rowed navigating their first serious whitewater; and fun to see some of my guiding mentors tear it up on the big stuff. I only did the first 7 days of the trip...but there's certainly some stuff in the upper canyon big enough to flip a boat and then some. I got schooled on House for sure and caught a big piece of a big hole. It was an ugly line and big wake up call but we made it out upright with everyone in the boat. That's a successful run in my book.








The first real side trip was Redwall Cavern. This thing is immense. I wish the photos could communicate it. This place is really special. We spent the first few minutes there in reverent silence. And then started yelling and climbing the walls.






I know, it looks fake





Anasazi Granneries









A couple of days later took us to another highlight of the trip. This is where the Little Colorado joins the Colorado. The LC runs bright turquoise. Brilliant.







Haloween




The Hike Out







It's tough to walk away from your friends. Six hiked out, six hiked in and the trip went on for another 2 weeks.

Parting Shots





When you're in the bottom of the canyon you can only see about 1000-1500 feet above. I found out on the hike out that there's more!

Trung

This is Trung. Trung had the foresight to put in a permit 9 years ago. Thank you Trung for including me. Thank you everyone on Team Sonic Boom for sharing, loving, tolerating, and becoming.

Grand Canyon

Arrived in Flagstaff a few hours ago. Michelle's deck is covered in dry bags and gear. We head to the put-in tomorrow morning. In a few weeks I'll have some awesome photos and stories. Go have some fun in the meantime!

Moab

Moab is a really special place. I can't believe that it took me all these years to finally get there long enough to hang out and ride. Previously I'd only passed through long enough to have my sandals stick the pavement in a gas station parking lot. Slickrock is amazing. As hyped and touristy as it is, it's still amazing. Can't wait to go back.

I pulled an all-nighter volunteer shift at 24 Hours of Moab. Ouch. That's tough to recover from. I can't imagine what it would be like to race overnight when it's hard enough to just live through it off the bike. It was complete fun though. Can't wait to go back and race it next year. I worked the regristrar booth checking riders in and out on each lap. It was fun to see the strategy, get to know the different team members, and cheer them on. You could definitely see people fall apart through the night. Some people would be so cheery and cool, even at 3:00am after double laps; some would come in and just stand and stare; some would shout and freak out. I think we all got numb after a while. I spent some time checking in Duo and Pro teams and then spent the rest of the night on the Solo table. Those guys are animals. Josh Tostado would roll in, rest a hand on the table without unclipping, scan in and out, and roll out. Lap after lap for 250+ miles. I got to see Tinker Juarez up close and personal. I'm not much to glorify people or put them on pedestals, but there is something about Tinker that inspires and terrifies me. I'm repulsed by the desire to suffer but at the same time the guy makes me want to ride my bike to the ends of the Earth. I want a Cannondale Scalpel so I can be like him. The pro and solo riders were all so chill and methodical. They would roll in at a mellow speed, take their time, chat for a few seconds. The sport class riders would come in hot, nearly running into each other, shout for their team members, fumbling endlessly with their scan cards. Interesting to see the difference. I got to see a bunch of the Boulder crew, including Dave Chase (Redstone Cyclery), who is a total local hero of the Colorado front range area cycling scene. He cut the cord on his day job to pour himself into his little bike shop that could in Lyons. Met some cool folks from the cycling industry (check out Ergon and Point6).

Moab is cool. Everyone knows that. 24 hour racing is an experience that's tough to describe. I'm registering for next year. Who's in?

Autumn!

Fall Foliage Tour

Ahh. Finally a few minutes to sit down in the comfy chair and write. I had an excellent Fall Foliage Tour. If you follow my reflections on all things Western Slope you've seen pics from previous hut trips. The same group of folks from the hut trip get together every year to rendevous in Crested Butte for what we've dubbed the Fall Foliage Tour. Call us creatures of habit, but rituals develop for a reason. Several things that the FFT involves year after year: intermittent rain, laps on Upper Loop (gets better every lap even after I've done it several dozen times), hobo stew, campfires, meaningful conversation, old friends, new friends, aspen, single track, smoothies, and a new trail (The Dyke Trail this year; maybe Reno/Flag/Bear next year? ) Usually we throw in an epic ride one day but this year we had some walking wounded and took it pretty easy...but I have to feel pretty bad not to ride a bike. It seems like when I talk about all my favorite things around P-Towne it always involves bikes (or food). One thing I knew when I was thinking about moving here was that I'd be within 1.5 hours of epic dirt in CB and 1.5 hours of epic dirt in Fruita. The local singletrack was a complete surprise. Anyway, the point is that knowing that you're moving somewhere that is equidistant and accessible to two of the best places to ride on the planet, and then actually living it out - it's pretty cool.

Uncompahgre

I've been falling behind on the posts. This is from a rainy day on the Uncompahgre Pateau. The UP is a high plateau that stretches from Grand Junction to Telluride and is bisected by trails, dotted with aspen groves, and is another world. You can ride single and double track from the Geej to Montrose. I was fortunate enough to go on a market research trip to Telluride to talk with a focus group about some new winter boots (some days I write spec sheets and slave away at calendars, some days I talk to hot women in Telluride). On the way back we detoured up to the Plateau to rip the Aspen trail and what Brian calls one of the best downhill sections in CO. We set out under cracking thunder to squeeze in a hot lap before the boys had to be home to wives and babies. Got muddy and left smiling.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Rest in peace my friend. I'll see you on the other side.