Adventures? Yes…

Leave a reply

… I am still having them, but  my motivation to write about them has been low.  Sometimes we all need a break from blogging.  A summary of adventures, in rough chronological order over the last two weeks:

Country swing dancing at the local cowboy bar.  Gotta give them credit, the band (County Line) was ripping.

Cowboys just love to dance.

Plenty of hiking and trail running on a few of the local trails now open for the season, including my first trip up Mt. Jumbo.

Mt. Jumbo is finally open for hiking!

Lots of contracting work.  Crawlspaces, gas piping, big power tools, the works.  Feels good to start to figure some of it out.

It is strangely gratifying to put a 6" hole in the side of someone's house...

This is how you prevent a gas leak, before you turn on the gas...

A little rock climbing on a day of unlikely weather.  I was glad to get into Kootenai canyon and start identifying a few projects for the season.  Steve is a beast.

The rope hangs, after two whippers on the crux...

And today, a little backcountry skiing at Lolo Pass with a new partner.  Many thanks to Jake for hiking a lot, never complaining, and making some good looking turns.  Glad we could make the most of a “variable” day!

The weather couldn't make up its mind on Lolo Pass today...

Today was not a powder day, but might have been everything else.

Stronger?

Leave a reply

I’ve been training for most of the winter.  After putting on a few pounds of tasty and cheap Colombian food last fall, I’m back to feeling fitter and lighter than I have in a long time.  Knees to elbows, kettlebell squats, and deadhanging on my ice tools- long garage sessions have made me sweat.  I’m feeling strong ice climbing, and am excited to get even stronger rock climbing.  That said, one of the things I love most about the mountain sports is that there is always, always, someone stronger than you.  People who are just on the next level, and it seems like I’ve been running into those people a lot lately.

Friday, I enjoyed a long session at the rock gym getting to know more of my local community.  Good times, and my hands still hurt on Saturday morning.  Fortunately, I spent Saturday skiing instead of climbing.  We had thick mashed potato snow that made for hard skiing.  My friend Emily, despite being raised on a diet of 3% Utah powder, proceeded to tear it up with high style while I cartwheeled down behind her… (no photos as it was too wet for the camera).  I’m going to have to step my game up if I want to continue to ski with Emily, and I am looking forward to that.

Boldly we go...

I originally had more mellow plans for Sunday, but my buddy Steve and few other locals were headed out to Kootenai Canyon and I figured a day out was better than a day inside, so I tagged along- not really knowing what I was in for.  I had mt some of Steve’s friends before- skinny college kids that flash the boulder problems I project.  With some precipitation in the air, we headed for “The Sick Bay” and proceeded to work a bunch of sport climbs that were easily four or five grades harder than anything I have ever done.

Working the crux- hands crimped, heel hooked, and throwing to a huge pocket.

Yes, it was a little cold, but Cole solved that problem by climbing 5.12 in his puffy coat...

Keeping cool despite the puffy coat, just before a huge whipper.

By and large, I was rested and psyched to climb- and I spent most of my day thruching from bolt to bolt.  My friends, by and large, were hungover from St. Patricks Day celebrations and proceeded to link large sections of each climb before taking sizable lead falls.  The only way to climb hard is to get on hard climbs, and my lackluster performance leaves me itching to work at the task.  I am very grateful to have friends that are stronger than me, and sincerely appreciate their patience.  It’s good to get humbled by people you like.

I'll figure this out one of these days...

“Your real friends will make sure that next week’s you is better than this week’s you.”  (attribution withheld by request)

Stoke the Coals

Leave a reply

I haven’t been able to get out and climb much in the last 3 weeks.  For sure, I haven’t been wasting my time, I’ve been learning, getting inspired, working hard, and getting humbled, and while that is all very good and very important, it isn’t climbing and being outside as I’d like.

I hope I never get tired of this view. Off the top of Weedeater, again.

It helps though, when life sneaks up on you like that- helps you notice that when the clutter of everything else dies down for just a minute, that the coals are still burning.  Under whatever piles on top of your life, there are some of those things that are still burning.  By Thursday last week, I knew I needed to stoke the coals.  Work eased up just enough for me to take an afternoon off for another solo trip into Finley and swing my tools a bit.

Possibly the end of the season in Finley. Things are looking thin...

I spent Friday banging my head around in the crawlspace, but I knew the weather on Saturday was not to be missed.  Grateful to have my friend Jamie to call, he and I made solid plans to head back to Mill Creek. As promised, the weather was unbelievable, and the climbing was ready to fire.  T-shirts were only required to prevent sunburn.  I don’t remember the last time I had looked forward to rock climbing quite that much, or as much as I do as I writing this.  Jamie is another solid climber who loves to “get on it”- pushing me to be the stronger, braver climber that is still learning to explode upwards.  We climbed much hard than I expected, and I’m pleased to say I was able to redpoint a number of quality sport routes.

Grateful for another solid partner to enjoy the sun with.

Fitting that Jamie and I finished Saturday with other new friends enjoying the warmth of a bonfire and the light of the full moon at a party just north of town.  The coals are hot, and further climbing adventures are in the works.  Life is good.

IWD

2 Replies

My last post was about how hard my job is sometimes.  I’m a white, able-bodied, well educated male living in the United States.  In every job I get, and most of the human interactions I have- the truth is, I probably couldn’t have it easier.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I need to recognize so many of the incredible women that have been some of my most important teachers, mentors, role models, climbing partners, friends, and inspirations.  To my Mom- thanks for setting the standard of womanhood so damn high, and to many many others, thank you for meeting and exceeding that standard.  I am unbelievably grateful there are too many to name in this post.

Some men might accuse me of putting women above men or furthering some measure of male-guilt about the position we’ve put women in.  I’m looking for nothing other than unbiased equality and fair recognition, things we are a long way from yet.
(Note, this holiday is NOT official in the USA, but IS official in such “notorious” places as China, Afganistan, and Uganda)

Silver Wattle. Traditional IWD gift. Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acacia_dealbata-1.jpg and Eugene Zelenko.

“I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us.” (Louisa May Alcott)

Hard Knocks

2 Replies

I answered a call from the office this morning in the cold, damp crawlspace that I’ve spent most of this week in.  My colleague asked how it was going- I replied, “if you had told me how much stuff I would screw up on this job before I started, I wouldn’t have believed you.”  I realized over lunch- I must be attending the school of hard knocks.

If it looks like a maze...

When you are 6’1″ tall and working long days installing ductwork in a 4′ tall, 4,000 s.f. crawlspace, knocking your head into a floor joist every once in a while is to be expected.  Along the way, this project also managed to knock out my design skills, planning ability, and a good portion of my self-esteem.

My position is as a project manager, responsible for everything that it takes to make a job happen (including making a profit!).  In this case (and with a lot of help!), I met the client, wrote the proposal, designed the system, ordered the material, scheduled the job, and installed the system (with the install team).  The process is far more integrated than most other firms, but we believe that leads to higher quality, better performance, and greater profit.  I’m new to the job, and new to contracting, and none of the above really has all that much to do with my past experience, which involved managing very different types of engineering projects.

22" diameter ductwork is all custom. Don't forget anything, because it's 55 miles back to Missoula.

We aren’t quite done yet, but we are almost all the way there.  Fair being fair, I made no truly major, work stopping mistakes, but every day there have been significant errors that have come to light- some piece of gear I didn’t order, some task I didn’t follow through on. When you are actually trying to build a functional system, every error is glaring.  Day 1, we ran into all sorts of issues- shipping delays, forgotten plans, miscommunicated orders.  On my first day of my first big job, I figured I could shrug it off and keep going.  Day 2, missing fittings and layout changes, ok nothing fatal, but that’s low style Skander…  Day 3, order of operation, co-ordination failure, error tracking nightmares.  The mistakes kept coming, almost to the point of humor and pretty much my worst nightmare from a project management standpoint.  Suffice to say, it has been a valuable education in hard knocks.

For everything though that went wrong, none of it seemed to impact the amount of satisfaction I got out of getting to install something that I designed.  It reminds me of one of my favorite NY Times pieces.  I have an incredibly forgiving and good natured boss working with me (but letting me take responsibility for the mistakes) and helping look in the mirror at my work.  We joked about the fact that I have a degree in science from an expensive private university, and yet the real bread and butter of business and design still involves getting down in an unfinished crawlspace and knocking your head around.  It’s been a hard week so far, but also supremely satisfying.  I’m taking tomorrow off, but back again on Friday to wrap things up, stay tuned.

Humbled, with checklist in hand.

“The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love), pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.” (Wendell Berry)

Do the humble work.

Untitled 1

2 Replies

I spent 13 hours today getting crushed at work.  It was day 1 on-site for the biggest job I’ve managed yet, and I got thoroughly humbled.  There is an accountability piece of contracting work that is undeniably brutal- either you planned for the job correctly or you didn’t, and when you try to install it, it becomes suddenly obvious if you made the grade or not.  It was humbling and demoralizing, and a very important experience in my development as a professional.  It was also a solid lesson in learning to let go of my ego and screw things up.  Not often do I fail to exceed expectations, but this was one of those days, and it was hard for me.  From the beginning of this blog, the point has been to “let the baggage go”- and learning to let go of my failures (once I’ve learned from them) is part of the deal.

Despite a long day onsite and long commute, I headed back into the office tonight to wrap up ever more loose ends.  It was raining when I walked home, just in time for me to hop on my bike and make it to the grocery store.  I was still in my long underwear and didn’t notice the cold liquid running down my legs as I rode.

I was tired.  I didn’t make the grade at work.  I didn’t get to workout today, didn’t take care of some personal chores, and didn’t really get any personal time.  But as I rode home in the rain, somehow things seemed alright.  Maybe that means I’ve already let go of the weight of the day, and in that there is success.

ps. the title of the post is a fantastic Sigur Ros song and fitting for the topic.  Enjoy the link.

Portland #4: In Limbo

1 Reply

The most recent adventures have pulled more on my heartstrings than my hamstrings.  About a month ago my boss invited me to join him for the PassiveHouse Northwest conference being held in Portland.  Aside from the topic matter (that has become increasingly more important to me of late), I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to see friends and spend some time in the previous home city.  About a week ago, I realized that making the trip was also likely to involve some challenging emotions.  We’ll stick to the facts first.

PassivHaus is an aggressive German standard for designing and constructing buildings with ultra low energy use and ultra high air quality and comfort.  In the design community it has a reputation for attracting some of the most zealous and nerdy folks that the architecture and engineering community can offer.  I prefer to think that the standard simply represents the next logical step in how buildings really must be designed and built. In general, folks at the conference were well behaved, very amiable, and geeked out really hard (star of the show was the guy who built a PassivHaus in Fairbanks, Alaska).

Yes, yes, this is a bunch of people standing around gawking at a window mockup-- only at a PassivHaus conference.

Close up of what all the fuss is about. Really high performance windows from Germany.

A mildly color adjusted image of a double stud wall with no thermal bridging. Nerdy as charged.

Building materials test chamber- for wind driven rain up to 200mph...

In between conference duties, I squeezed in time with old friends, and wandered in old familiar places.  I stared down some heavy emotions about careers, opportunities, friends, love, and the direction I’d like my life to take.

I miss Portland.  I miss the deep and high quality friendships that I have there.  The high salary gave me ample freedom of choice, and the city itself met much of my criteria for where I want to be.  I found two musical partners there that continue to write and perform music that I love, and loved to be a part of.  I honed my skills there in a career that is important and meaningful, and yet somehow in my gut, my life isn’t there.

I love Montana, and have ever since my first trip as a kid.  The access to the outdoors is phenomenal.  I’ve found meaningful work to get back on my feet, and live a simpler life that is more locally oriented.   In many ways, life here is better balanced, and I’m looking forward to many awesome, local adventures.  I feel honored to work with the people that I do, and am excited to be developing new skills an knowledge in the building design field I’ve done well with in the past.

I’ve found a little more peace since returning to Missoula, but my heart was in limbo for most of last week.  No doubt, I’m sticking to my commitment to Montana, but it was an interesting trip to Portland.  Below is a small bit of wisdom I picked up on the way:

John Ruskin was a wise man.

“Any pain associated with leaving something behind is usually a good sign that it was worth what you paid for it in the first place.” (George Veech)

Live Your Life

1 Reply

I spent this weekend around a conference table in second meeting with the NLC.  It was certainly worthwhile, but the long days of discussion leave me mentally drained.  Saturday after the conference I didn’t have plans but eventually found myself high above the city walking over Waterworks Hill.  I had invited friends to join me but ended up walking alone. It didn’t bother me though, I enjoyed the quiet space to reflect.

I’ve spent more time doing things on my own lately- I think in the mood of moving to Missoula I was eager to make friends again and put myself in a hyper social situation.  Having been here a while now, and slowed down a bit, I’ve found myself thinking of what my life was like one year ago (at the beginning of this blog), and realizing that one of the goals in leaving Portland was not to “settle down”.  I miss the travel, the adventure of being on the road, and the many fun times with people, but the fact is that being in the same place has no impact on how independently I am able to embrace the adventure of life.  I’ve been thinking of my travels often recently, missing them yes, but also drawing strength from what they taught me.  I was fortunately to share experiences with many other wonderful people, but I choose the experiences and destinations based on my own intuition and principle.

It’s easy, with the rhythm of more familiar places, more regular routines, more regular people, to think that the rhythm can determine how I should spend my time.  I have no less responsibility to choose just as deliberately now.

Live your life.
Reject the notion that the rhythm will determine what you should do.
Refuse to be a victim of circumstance.
Make a deliberate choice for your actions that resonates with your own core values rather than to anyone else’s expectations.

Sometimes the adventure is deciding what to do when you find yourself in a familiar place.

“We are what we repeatedly do.” (MFT)  If you want to your life to reflect the journey you want, then treat every moment as the next step along the way.

One Mile

Leave a reply

One vertical mile… is a good measure for how much terrain I can comfortably cover in a day on my backcountry ski setup.  Skied Little St. Josephs from the parking lot to the knob today with Gwen.  We encountered every type of snow possible- ice, mush, waist deep unbelievably gorgeous powder, breakable crust, hardpack, corn.  I’m tired, and no it wasn’t a day full of face shots, but I’m not complaining.

Smiling at our first views of what we would be skiing.

A little blurry, but the wind on top was going to knock me off my feet.

Happy to be back from the summit, and ready for some powder turns.

Crappy snow on the way down was mitigated by amazing colors and views.

There is something gratifying (and desperately wrong) with starting and ending the day with your skis on your back.  Still hoping for some real snow to hit Montana this winter, but grateful for what is out there.

Red Rope Days

Leave a reply

Sometimes, you know what you should do, even if it doesn’t make any “sense.”  Thursday and Friday were good days at work, but I pushed it past 5pm last night to finish a few things out for the week.  I’ve felt over the cold that’s been slowing me down, and knew that there would be some good snow coming my way this weekend, but by Friday night I still didn’t have plan to make good use of a perfectly good Saturday.  I ended up telling a friend about all the fun I had in Bozeman, I suddenly realized just to do with today.  I could have called a partner, I could have gone to the gym, but similar to my experience in Hyalite in December, I knew I was ready for another ice solo.  Saturday would be a red rope day.

LIght and simple.

Last weekend, Drew and I had reflected on solo ice climbing- the clean minimalism, the quiet, the focus.  You don’t need much.  I probably still take more than most, but the thing that I notice most about my solo kit is my red Sterling 7mm tag line for rappelling off.  It’s light,  long enough (75m) to give me plenty of space to play, and packs down small- it’s all I really need.  Harness, tools, pons, helmet, puffy coat, and the red rope- clean and simple.

I made sure I got enough sleep, brewed a great espresso, and packed my kit quickly.  A shout out to Graham and the Cilogear crew, the 30L Ballistic worksack is the perfect bag for almost any day in the mountains.  I told my roommate where I was headed and got a move on.  The anticipation put an extra bounce in my step, and I knew I was in for something good.

100% Yes.

I don’t like rallying my car up the road into Finley Creek, but I feel badly about making partners walk an extra 1.5 miles to get to the goods.  On my own, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for some cardio.  Metallica might be the most loved music by climbers (how many route names can you think of that are Metallica songs?), and the Black album powered a very quick trip up the road from where I left the car.  35 minutes of hard effort earned my first views of the route from the trail, and 15 minutes later I was catching my breath at the base.  Weedeater is WI2+/3-, well within my abilities for soloing, and is in FAT at the moment.  Soloing is a binary activity, if I don’t feel 100%, then I go home, but there was no doubt in my head and I headed up.  Calm, controlled (and fun!) climbing in perfect weather.  Just what I was looking for.

30m of super fun.

I rapped off, took another lap with the rappel line as a backup, and then headed over to say hello to a few other folks out enjoying the day.  Respects paid, I was psyched on my climb and psyched on meeting new folks- I made very fast time back to the car.  It felt so good just to play- hiking, climbing, running around this amazing little canyon just 35 minutes drive from my house.  I love red rope days.

Not sure why I'm not smiling, but it was a gooooood jog back to the car.