Weather Neurosis

Jan. 27
A week ago I was Nordic skiing on wind-blown tracks, tele skiing waste deep down Tower 11 Glades, and spending 15 minutes cleaning the snow off of my car.

This week I'm sweating in a long sleeve jersey and arm warmers, cruising dry roads under blue skies.


Feb. 3 - 6 days and 3000 feet lower

Troy Davis Deserves a Fair Shake

Please take 2 minutes to watch this video. I along with thousands of other people have been writing the governor of Georgia for the past 2 years to give Troy Davis a fair trial. He has been convicted of killing a police officer. I believe that he was framed. Witnesses have recanted their testimony against him. There is no murder weapon. One of the witnesses against him has been implicated in the murder. I don't think it's reasonable at all to execute a man for a murder that someone else has been implicated for. Please consider taking action to save Troy's life. The most effective way is to take action through Amnesty International. For many this is about abolishing the death penalty. That's a goal that I'm all about; but regardless of what we feel about the death penalty, the present circumstances are about justice and the irreversible effects of execution on a potentially innocent man's life. Thanks.

I'm not even sure where to start. So much has happened. I packed up in the place in P-towne and said some tough goodbyes. Even six weeks later I still haven't fully processed what happened. I left Boulder after 8 years to move to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, made some major adjustments to my life, and believed in a company after I said that I was done believing in corporate/business entities. I'll have to write more about it later because I don't even know where I'm at.

My stuff is in storage in Denver. I got out of the rest of the lease on my apartment in P-towne. I spent the holidays on the Front Range and ended up in Crested Butte for a while.


I busted back to P-towne when I learned of a renter who wanted to sublet my place. I hated letting go of that apartment. It was beautiful and I wish that I could take a cosmic backhoe to scoop it up and take it wherever I go...but not paying rent has a positive effect on my new unemployment budget. I loaded up a U-haul and drove it over the passes, dragging the leading edge of a big storm with me. It's not fun driving a truck in weather like that. I have a new understanding and empathy for truck drivers. I rode Amtrak back to Junc-town to pick up my car. That was an adventure. Trains in the US don't run with Swiss-like precision. I think you could find a more reliable train schedule in the third world. 15 hours is a bit unreasonable for Denver to Grand Junction, but it was a beautiful ride and I don't get too worked up over matters of time lately. Going over the divide by train is something I've always wanted to do.





Then off to the Lost Wonder Hut on Monarch pass with the Rices and Ruth. Sweet, sweet times everyone! I like hut trips. I like my friends. Put them together and it's all good. The snow was a little thin. Temperatures were frigid inside and outside the hut. The wind was howling. Who cares. It was pure awesomeness to share some turns, snack on Christmas cookie leftovers, and stare up at Orion's Belt.


Kate and I snowshoed up to Lost Lake. It was a sweet day. Warm and sunny with promise and beginnings.


Off to BV to celebrate MLK. Hiking on the Midland Trail (it was warm enough to ride but the bikes are in storage and my mind is on skiing) and soaking at Mount Princeton. Best commercial hotsprings around because you get to sit in natural pools in the river. That is a sublime experience.



Back to CB to get some good quality time with Jake, Courtney, and John. Gracious hosts. Life here is good. More than good. About as good as it gets. I spend my days chilling, perfecting my kick-waxing skills, exploring the Nordic trail system and waiting for a big storm.

What's next? Who knows. Lots of resume staring. Back to the Front Side for a while. Guatemala? Tree/forward fold/plank/up-dog/down-dog - repeat. Propel self uphill/face down hill/slide over and through snow - repeat. Contemplation. Setting of Intention. Exploration of relationship. Discovery of self. Rest. Try to compose more coherent blog entries. I think I have everything I need for the moment.

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.