No Friday

I spent this afternoon at the Small and Special Conference, a “tiny conference for small business owners & entrepreneur hopefuls”. I was interested in the speaker lineup, particularly Garagiste founder Jon Rimmerman, knew one of the main organizers, and have had several ideas for small businesses (which will likely incubate more while Meagan finishes school).

The event definitely did not disappoint. All the speakers were entertaining and informative, and I definitely left with a refined focus on what I might aim to achieve.

Highlights for me included:

* Eric Levine - his Cellar Tracker software sounded really cool and I’ll definitely give it a shot to replace my Google docs wine spreadsheet. The story of how he started his business was also something I could potentially see working for me.

* Joe Manfield - his custom art engraving business was really fascinating. He can create beautiful laser etched designs in tech gadgetry (e.g. iPhones, laptops), wood, and Moleskine covers. I wasn’t expected to be interested in this one and was pleasantly surprised.

* Rachel Venning - founder of the sex toy shop Babeland - hers was an interesting (and remarkably humble) story.

* Jon Rimmerman - I wanted to see the man who, via his wonderfully woven tales of vinous delight, has parted me with a fair deal of cash (and cellar space) in exchange for some bottles of wine and an education. His story of founding and running Garagiste was really compelling - the passion, dedication, and honesty that come through in his wine offers were just as apparent in person.

* Andrew Bennett - he is a former Microsoft employee who started a small business called Deneki Outdoors, which operates fly fishing lodges in several locales. His comment about “working 50 weeks a year in order to get two weeks pursuing your passion” was something I could definitely relate to and stoked a few ideas of my own.

* Steven Bristol - co-founder of Less Everything, an online competitor to QuickBooks. As a longtime Quicken hater who is finally about to give up the fight in favor of Mint.com, I found his well-justified vitriol against Intuit welcome. I also liked his principles in creating a worthwhile business and product.

The emcee of the event, Jackson Fish Market’s Hillel Cooperman, was quite entertaining, if a tad long-winded at times. The venue, the Georgetown Ballroom, was a great space.

All in all, an afternoon very well-spent.

I’ve been doing a lot of road and mountain biking lately, more so of each than I can remember doing. (Ming has chronicled his rides this spring, and I think I’ve been on all but the Bainbridge Island ride.) A few of my friends are training for the STP and some are just trying to do more mountain biking. So I’ve been doing a lot of both. In fact, I finally upgrade my MTB to a dual suspension Trek Liquid that I bought off Craigslist . I love it.

On Sunday, we rode in the “Peninsula Metric Century“, a 100k (62 mile) organized road ride on the Olympic Peninsula. We got the 7:35 am ferry from Fauntleroy to Southworth and after registering, proceeded to hit the road. With a few errant detours, we ended up topping off at 70 miles.

The first few miles were uneventful - there was a bit of a range in pace among us (Robert leading the charge on the early hills), but we largely kept together.

Things got interesting around mile 30 or so. We had just stopped and were preparing to descend a large hill and gearing up in the hopes of having our momentum carry us up the following ascent. Unfortunately, the chain of the rider in front of me derailed shortly after we started, causing him to abruptly stop and causing me to veer into him.

I wasn’t able to stop quite in time, but I was able to slow down enough to make a somewhat graceful dismount, ditch the bike, and run off my momentum into the field on the side of the road. I believe Donald referred to my movements as “gazelle-like”.

I thought this would be a minor issue, but apparently ditching the bike caused me to bang up the rear wheel, leaving it with a fairly profound side to side distortion. After loosening the brake cable, it could rotate freely, but barely cleared the brakes and chainstays. It seemed stable enough, so I continued riding, but carefully since I effectively had only one brake.

Around mile 38, someone had a spoke tool, and after a lot of finagling, was able to get the wheel a little more in true, but still quite distorted. In fact, briefly it was worse, causing me to think that I was going to have to wait for the “sag wagon”.

We fixed it and we pedaled on, and a few miles later, I heard a pop in my rear tire. It seemed fine at first but shortly after the rear wheel was deflating. Awesome. Fortunately, it was just a flat, so we fixed that, and carried on.

Around mile 47, we arrived in Gig Harbor and stopped at Old Town Bicycle, which was right on the route and close to one of the break areas. After about half an hour, one of the techs replaced two spokes and trued the wheel as best he could, stating that the rim was pretty much damaged beyond repair. Amazingly, he didn’t charge me at all - I wished I lived closer to the stop so that I can repay the favor with more business. If you live in Gig Harbor, you should go to Old Town Bicycle.

Fortunately this was the last of my mechanical troubles, and after quickly fueling up at the snack pit, we continued on. There were a few rolling hills leaving Gig Harbor, but lots of good downhill too, and as opposed to some of the previous road rides I’ve done, we powered to the finish, as opposed to crawling to the ferry crying.

At the finish area, I enjoyed a very delicious strawberry shortcake, as well as some bud light cans in brown paper bags that someone who we’ll from now on simply call the “Asian Jesus” blessed us with.

We caught the 3:50 ferry, and then headed back to my house for some post-ride BBQ, including chicken, steak, mushrooms, asparagus, and tomatoes. And some margaritas and beer.

The great part - it’s not even summer yet.

A few post-ride photos from the iPhone:

Post Ride Refreshment

A Tough Ride

Resting

I learned earlier this week that Souped Up Cafe on Greenlake is closing as of today, and I’ve been a little bit sad the whole week because of it.

Meagan and I have been going there on weekends since shortly after we moved into the ‘hood (North Greenlake, or the Greenlake Ghetto as I like to call it). It’s really the only redeeming place to eat within walking distance of our house.

Not that the competition is that hard:

• Jack in the Box - not so much
• Duke’s - OK and I like their patio, but the food is a little blah for the price
• Bluwater Bistro - tries to be fancier than they’re capable of
• Zeek’s - not bad, but not great
• World Wrapps - don’t get me started that they are surviving the economy and Souped Up isn’t

Oh well - being in the restaurant business is difficult and I suppose it’s hard to do well in these times. I am just disappointed that a good place is closing. There now isn’t really a good place to get coffee within walking distance. I’ll also miss the soups (their Chipotle Corn Chowder, Tomato Basil, and Spring Asparagus were awesome) and delicious sandwiches (Caprese, BGC, Panino, and Chipotle Chicken…yum).

I had my last lunch there yesterday afternoon and my last coffee with Meagan this morning. They close today. I wish the owners and staff well.

Farewell, Souped Up, we’ll miss you.

A recent WSJ article discusses issues that Google is having retaining some of their employees:

Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures. Several said Google provides little formal career planning, and some found the company’s human-resources programs too impersonal.

The logical solution to an impersonal HR department?

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested.

Awesome.

Perhaps reading a decent book on people management might be a better strategy. (I’d recommend First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently.)

I’m interested to see if their approach really works.

In what is quickly becoming an annual tradition, a few of us headed up to Whistler for the last weekend of the Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival. While we didn’t have as large a crew as last year (nor the audacity to shout at emcees during the pro photo showdown…), good times were still had by all.

The combination, in varying degrees and at different times, of Costco chicken wings, spring riding, big air competitions, red bull and vodka, margaritas, hot tubs, photo shows, Zog’s poutine, fashion shows, beer, and good friends really can’t be beat.

The Pro Photo Showdown was again awesome - all five had good entries, but the first series on handicapped athletes and the last photographer were particularly inspiring.

On Friday, we had a good vantage point for the Grenade Games V superpipe jam, so I went down to retrieve the big cameras (and some beers…), and we got some really nice shots.

The rest of the trip was the requisite mix of riding, music, eating, and partying. Till next year…

More photos on Smugmug.

The following two emails arrived within a minute of each other to a similar list of recipients:

Email #1: Bike Ride Tomorrow — Be There!

We are going to do a little ride tomorrow and you should join us.

We’d like to get in at least 60 miles, but let’s shoot for 80+

We can venture out on our own doing the south lake washington,
newcastle, issaquah, redmond, north lake washington route we did last
weekend or spice it up.

Email #2: ride tomorrow?

Tomorrow morning looks to be not too bad, anyone up for a ride?

I know you guys (well, at least some of you) are crazy long-distance
riders, but let’s keep it easy for the lazies in the crowd (~30
miles?).

Slightly different expectations.

Ride organizer #1 seems to have won out.

I finally posted pictures from Hawaii to my Smugmug. Here is a quick highlight selection:

I plan to write some travel blog entries for the trip, but since I’ve yet to do the ones for Tanzania, your bet is as good as mine for when I get around to that.

In the interim, go hit up Smugmug.

I also uploaded a video of our “epic” whale watching trip:

Lulu made a new friend today: Juno.

Juno is a six-month old pup with a lot of energy who is also under the auspices of a second year medical student. Lulu and Juno had quite the debut, finishing their day with an epic chasing session around our front yard.

Here are some highlights:

View the rest on Smugmug.

From the WSDOT Twitter Feed:

Get those studded snow tires off now, cuz it’s snowing!

While we were in Maui the past week, our good friend JJ kindly looked after Lulu. Judging from the photo updates we received from Camp JJ, it seems that Lulu and her pal Sadie got along just fine.

I’ll try to get the Hawaii pictures up soon, but in the interim, while we were gone…

(photos courtesy of JJ’s iPhone)

After all that excitement, naturally they would be hungry.

Thanks for looking after the gladiators, JJ!