It's what happens in that six seconds

   I haven't seen the movie in years, and it's on my list of ones to watch again. But I just haven't gotten to it. Last year around Christmas time I made a real effort to find some old movies that I wanted to get. One of those was Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry. It's an old Peter Fonda movie with a girl, a bank robbery, and fast cars in chase scenes. I was 9 when it was made, so it was obviously one of my favorites at the time! Several years ago as an adult, I started amassing a sizable collection of videos of some of the best car chases and car racing movies of all time. I had the go-to favorites, like Bullet, the original Gone in 60 Seconds, along with Two Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point, American Graffiti, Hollywood Knights, and many others. I lost them all when my house was burglarized and the thief took the time to pick and choose which videos he did and didn't want to leave me with.
   Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry never made it into that collection, but I did get it last year for Christmas. I haven't added many of the others I lost to the new collection yet... my enthusiasm isn't what it used to be I guess. Besides, I have other movies that aren't automotive related, like the one referenced in the title of this post, that I want to see first. Do you know what it is?
   It's a bit of a cult classic these days, and Matt Modine was great in it. It featured big hair, bad acting, killer soundtrack, and a great story line like so many other movies of the same era. I think it's more popular around here because of the fact that it was filmed in Spokane Wa. and so many people who were there at the time have since fled to... here. It's a popular thing to do, really... no one intentionally stays in Spokane. They either have to, or they are just too lazy to do anything about it.
  But I digress... the name of the movie is Vision Quest, and the movie has a dynamic to it that is hard for me to put my finger on. It's got an element that makes you really want this kid to win his wrestling match... and succeed in his goals. But the best line in the movie is when Elmo is relaying his story to Louden, the main character, about the time he saw Pele playing soccer on television. There's no way I can do it justice here, so I'll just tell you to search it on youtube and you'll find it quite easily. But the line that he says, that makes the whole movie worth it...

    It ain't the six minutes... it's what happens in that six minutes.

Customer Care and Wow! Did that just Happen?

   Have you ever noticed that it is almost impossible to go back to an old job and just be a customer? No matter what type the business is, it's always a hassle in one way or another. But what happened to me yesterday still has me baffled as to what to do. Maybe the 4.73 people who read this will be able to provide me with some insight.
   I worked at a Toyota dealer here in the area, a very prominent one actually. One that truly does have a different business model than any other dealership in the country. They really do strive to maximize their customer service and satisfaction, and they are somewhat successful at it. But Toyota has a very organized customer feedback design in place and when things don't go the dealerships way, it tends to get nasty.
   When I worked there, I bought two new cars, the newest being my 2013 Camry SE. I took it in for one of the free services, compliments of Toyota Care, about three weeks ago. A couple days later, I got an email from Toyota with the link to their customer service experience survey.
   Now, having been a Toyota dealership employee before, I realize the significance of these surveys. I understand they carry a lot of weight with them, and most of the dealerships use the results of these surveys to determine employee performance based salaries and/or bonuses. I've even seen people lose their jobs over a couple bad surveys. (One in particular was a service writer who was fired after receiving two bad surveys in one day. They came from two older gentleman who got stellar service, and their cars were fixed perfectly the first time and on time. But they got into an argument  with each other, which lead to pushing and shoving in the waiting room over the presidential debate which was on television the night before.)
   I was honest on this survey, and included some very detailed explanations of my observations in the comments section. I included all the good with the bad, and I didn't lie or exaggerate about anything. When I finished, I hit the send button, returning the completed survey via cyberspace back to those individuals at Toyota that analyze the surveys, just like I've done before at least 5 times.
  This time was different. Within 20 minutes, my phone rang. It was the service director at the dealership. Let me note here that he was NOT in this position when I left this dealership before. But I have worked for him in the past at a couple different places. A couple years ago, he had a little run in with the law. He did some rehab time, made good on a career somewhere else, and then he started where he's at now about two months ago.
  It wasn't the type of phone call a service director should be making to a customer who had sub-par service experience. In fact, it wasn't the type of phone call that a service director should make to a customer at all, and expect to keep his job. (I've seen managers loss their job for less offensive conversations with customers.)
   It took several minutes for me to realize just what happened. And I don't think it really started to sink in until this morning.
  Who knows... maybe he's right. Maybe I am just an asshole.

Thankfully... it's over

Yes, it's true.

   The year 2013 is almost over, and I for one, couldn't be more happy. It started off as being this "year of change" for me... continuing my education, expanding my career in a new direction (Not nude erection... say it out loud.)
   It turned out to be a mediocre year of waste for me. A year that reminded me the hard way that not all businesses are as tactful or as ethical as they appear to be from the street. I was reminded that an employer will tell potential new employees anything in an effort to make a buck. They do their best to make it appear that they have their best interest in mind, and they even occasionally make a half-hearted effort to make it look like they give a crap. But the truth is that so very few do. It's really sad, but it also explains a lot of things too.
  I'm not going to go into a rant about the economy, the employment rate, etc... I'm not mad. I'm disappointed, but not mad. I will tell you all (The three people that may or may not still be reading this) that I was the fool who believed in them. In fact, I did it twice. In one year.
 
   Is it 2014 yet?

Downhill Doors

We were all young... fourth grade at the time I think. It took all 8 or 9 of us to carry the 60 lb. door up the snow covered hill, which took most of our lunch hour.  At that age, we all walked clumsily and probably looked awkward in those big rubber boots and the coats our parents bought us so big they would last three seasons. I can only imagine the trouble we would have been in if Sister Ellen Marie found out where we were and what we were doing. Holy crap...

   I heard that one of the older kids got the idea after seeing someone else take a car fender down the hill at incredible speeds, but apparently that didn't have the optimum shape, or the durability that was needed. But a Kelvinator refrigerator door was perfectly shaped, and durable as a freight truck. It really was the perfect sled for high speed downhill action, and this group of 10 year old hooligans was about to find out what high speed sled riding was really like. In fact, I highly doubt any of us have traveled that quickly on a sled since that day. The added weight that the refrigerator door had over the cheap red plastic discs when sent down a very steep hill (nearly 45 degrees in one place) really got it and its occupants moving!

   The foot long horizontal handle was removed which left a small indent in the door and two small holes... minor and insignificant given the size of the door. The smooth painted surface was slightly curved which made it strong enough to hold us all in the snow without denting. It didn't have the optimum seating arrangement. I barely remember what the thing looked like now, but I do remember clearly that it didn't have anything to hold onto.

   We nearly accidentally let it go down the hill by itself as we tried to get everyone on. It's slick surface on the compacted snow moved as easily as marbles on a granite counter top. Once we got on and a couple people started saying they were ready, it was game time... and little hands in big mittens started paddling us to the edge of the hill in what is now Gutknecht Arrowhead Park in Bel Ridge, Missouri. Back then it was still private property, and we would have surely been asked to leave if we were seen in this large front yard with two large ponds. But since the owner was gone was gone at work during the daytime, we were somewhat safe.

   Once we got the door over the edge, the rate at which we accelerated was unlike anything we had experienced. I can still remember the sound of the air rushing past my face as we went from 0 to get-me-off-this-thing in just a few seconds. I can still remember thinking "This is way too fast" immediately followed by "We aren't even close to top speed yet!"

   The steepest part of the hill, which is more down than it is flat, is only about ten feet long, but on this off-white behemoth of a sled, that was plenty of room to get moving at speeds that no child should ever endure on his catholic grade school lunch break. I remember at one point, just about when I thought we couldn't go any faster, I realized that there were no brakes, and no driver. We were now at the mercy of gravity, and I didn't see any sign that this was going to be good.

   At the bottom of the hill is one of two ponds on the property, and the winds had blown most of the snow off the thick ice on this day. When we got to the bottom of the main part of the hill, heading for this place I routinely fished in the summers, I expected us to slow down a bit, but we didn't. I almost think the wind was with us... we kept going at what was surely several hundred mph. One or two of my classmates had jumped ship near the top of the hill, and there were 6 or 7 of us left on this flat rocket and heading straight for the thick ice where I learned that I don't play hockey well. The bank of the lake is about 24" above the water level on this side, and the snow drifts added to the difference. When we hit the edge of this rise, we all left the surface of the door, and nothing kept it flat as it traveled through the air with its passengers hovering above it. The door landed on the ice on one of its edges just before we all bounced off it as our butts slammed down from outer space. Bodies went flying, screams rang through the air, and I can still remember the sound of the thick nylon winter coats as we all skidded across the icy surface like human curling stones. The only brakes we had were our cotton gloves and mittens, far from sufficient.

   I think we left the rocket ship there on the frozen lake surface, not far from where we found it before we drug it up the hill. We all laughed, compared notes verbally about how amazing that was, told each other repeatedly about how far we flew while we were in orbit, and assured each other that "I" was the fastest of all.

   We knew our time was running out, and we need not push our luck any further. I'm sure some of us actually thought that Sister Ellen Marie could hear our screams from the school playground, two blocks away. If she was paying attention, I really think she could have. We made our way back through the short stretch of woods and sneaked back up the small uphill driveway onto the school property. We all brushed off our catholic school uniform pants and our jackets to make sure we weren't wearing any signs of having just made sled riding history.

   From my mother's kitchen window I can see this particular hill... and I think about that ride often whenever the topic of crazy sled rides comes up. I just wish I knew where I could find a Kelvinator.

Great guy... but glad he lost...

  I know... I'm a hypocrite, but I'll be honest here, since no ones reads this anyway.
But as much as I loved seeing Alabama lose to Auburn, I hated seeing AJ McCarron losing. This guy, as much as I dislike the Crimson Tide... he's one of the finest human beings to walk this earth. And he will no doubt go on to do great things in whatever career he chooses.
  It's one thing to overcome the odds as a child, and excel in a sport as physical as football when you weren't supposed to be able to walk again as a kid. But to do it, with the integrity and the unselfishness that he has is awe inspiring. I'm man enough to say that I couldn't do it. Not the way he does.
  If you know who AJ is, but don't know what I'm talking about... do a quick search of him and add the name Starla Chapman to your search. Grab some tissues, sit down and read about what an incredible human being he is.
  And just for the record... I'm still going to be backing Auburn in the BCS championship game next month.

Pencils and Pickups, and the Tapping Finger

   I was that guy in grade school that was always just a little too good at math. Like... better-than-the-teacher good at math. I admit, it does help that she was a bit on the stupid side, but what do you expect from a catholic grade school in a depressed neighborhood in 1975 middle america? It was a job to her, and she did okay. But I can assure you she didn't have a degree in math.
   I really did enjoy drawing at that age, and I was fairly good at it. And most of my teachers up until that point never did mind that I was drawing all the time, because I did fine in all my other subjects. But on this particular day, me and that witch with the short dark hair butted heads. I vaguely remember that she walked over to my desk, and I'm nearly certain she influenced her shadow to make that oh-so-dramatic entrance over my paper, littered with no. 2 lead. Her longer than normal index finger made two quick taps on my drawing as her voice accompanied in rhythm "What's that... put it away". Of course, all 44" of my hooligan frame was not about to just put it away. After all, she couldn't just say something like that in front of the whole class and expect that I would just jump. Who was I? Her whipped husband?
  So, I did the next best thing that any 5th grader would do... "Why, I already know this stuff better than you."

  Steam rolled from her head like a pipe that just burst... her face turned colors that weren't human, and her eyes quivered and her lips trembled as she fought to not hit me. She inhaled deep... and tried her best to be stern with me as she said "I want you to add the numbers... 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6... " at this point, she opened her eyes widely, and raised her jaw, to make sure she drew the exact reaction she was looking for from the rest of the class "all the way to 100. Add them up. Now.... go!" The whole class Oooohhhed and heads turned quickly, everyone looking at one another, verifying that she did indeed just say the "H" word.
 
   Before the hush that had just been laid over the room became quiet again, I looked at my drawing and without missing a stroke of the ol' no. 2, I blurted out "It's 5050."
   "No, I want you to add them up! Not guess." she yelled back, not realizing that I was serious.
   "I just did" I replied.
   Now at this point, I have to tell you that I probably wouldn't have been able to do this the way I did had it not been for a trip to the bowling alley just a few weeks earlier. My sister, a fellow math nerd, had mentioned that she had noticed that a rack of pins in consisted of four rows. 1, 2, 3, and 4 pins in each. 1 + 4 is 5, as is 2 + 3. 2 X 5 is ten. Then she showed that it works for all numbers... if their were seven row, there would be 3 combinations of 8 (1 & 7, 2 & 6, 3 & 5) plus the remaining 4. 3 X 8 is 24, plus 4 is 28. That made perfect sense to both of us. It runs in the family... numbers just make sense to us. Even to this day.
   Now back to Mrs. Morgan...
   She looked at me for a second, and I continued to explain in a how-could-you-be-so-stupid tone... "1+100 is 101 so is 2 and 99, 3 and 98... all the way up to 50 and 51. 50 times 100 is 5000, 50 times one is 50... answer... 5050"
   I went back to drawing... probably a pickup truck or a horse... those were my two favorite subjects in that era.
   She did eventually acknowledge that I was right, but she wasn't happy with me, I do remember that well.
   And for some reason... I'm pretty certain she's still not any good at math.
 
 

Boom goes the Mountain

Maybe I'm the weird one... I guess it's totally possible. But I prefer to think it's because I didn't grow up with it and go through the whole story the way the others did. But I still see it in the distance, especially on days like yesterday when the weather is unseasonable clear and sunny (although colder than normal by several degrees).

   *** I was walking back into the building, up the deteriorated cement steps, flanked by the overgrown shrubs, in the shadow of the smelly brick building with the bad plumbing... I had just come from the mess hall and was on my way to my room in the barracks when Doug and Jamie walked out the front door and Doug said "Hey, you wanna go fly over Mt. St. Helens with us? Come on... Cooley just bailed, said he doesn't want to go... come on man, it will be awesome!"***

  Mt. St. Helens is in southwest Washington, about 50 miles away as a bird flies. I vaguely remember the days in my freshman year of high school when it erupted in May 1980. At that time, I don't think I could have told you that Portland and Seattle were the two closest major cities without looking at a map. I don't even think I actually saw the pictures of the eruption on television until several days later, and then I don't even think I realized the full magnitude of what happened until 7 years later, when I got the opportunity of a lifetime.

  It was June 1987. I had recently transferred duty stations from Schofield Barracks, Hawaii to Fort Lewis Wa. At that time, Fort Lewis was thought of, at least by the troops, as a holding station for two things... people who are due to go over to Korea, or people who just got back from Germany. I actually requested the assignment there, otherwise I probably would have been stationed somewhere else. But I ended up in a transport company that had about as little significance as a military unit could have. Even the company officers, including the CO and XO told us that if our whole unit were wiped off the map by the enemy it wouldn't even make the local news. We were nowhere near wartime, I was getting out of the military myself in just 6 more weeks, and I had been keeping a short timers calendar for years already. I think I started counting down from 1000 days.

  There were hoards of losers and no-go's in our battalion. For some of them, this was their first duty station after getting out of basic training and AIT schooling. This was the only thing they knew of the military, and looking back on it knowing what I know now, I feel sorry for them. It really was much more appealing in other places. Two of those guys that lived in the same building I did were Doug and Jamie. They were both 19, had just graduated high school about a year earlier, and they both had zero interest in making any improvements in their military experience. Thankfully, Jamie's parents had the resources to do something very cool for him.

  Ft. Lewis and McChord Air Force Base were side by side at the time, and different stations. Today they are combined and have some fancy name... but I digress...

  Jamie's parents wanted him to get something out of his military experience, and they did some research on their own. And what they decided to do was too cool! There was a flight school on the Ft. Lewis base so soldiers could learn to fly airplanes. Small top wing, 4 passenger prop driven planes, and classes were twice a week in the evenings, and schedules were flexible enough to not interfere with deployment trips and such. Jamie's parents enrolled him and on this particular night, on my way back from the mess hall, Jamie's instructor was taking us on a trip over Mt. St. Helens, which was just south and east of us. I had seen it a couple times from I-5 on my way to Portland, but this particular night ended up changing my life.

  The weather was perfect on this particular evening. We arrived at the airfield and met the instructor whose first words were "You guys ready?"  We wasted no time getting on the plane, which was awesome, since I was antsy on the inside like a little kid going to see Santa. I seated myself behind Jamie, on the left side of the plane, which proved to be the better of the two sides, and had the better view for the route we took. The engine fired up and the whole thing shook like crazy... I remember thinking it was actually okay if this thing crashed, as long as we made it to see the volcano first. The interior of the plane was loud too... Jamie and his instructor both had headsets on and were talking back and forth to each other a lot, but Doug and I couldn't hear a thing. Once we got in the air, we quickly resorted to tapping each other on the shoulder and pointing to things as opposed to yelling at each other.

  The plane’s wings bounced around as we climbed in altitude. A small single engine prop driven plane climbs much differently than a jetliner does, and our trip had some moments that probably should have scared me. The shaking and rattling of the plane made no obvious concerns to Jamie or his instructor, so I did my best to ignore it all too. I also remember it being much colder in the air than it was on the ground. Not uncomfortably cold, but much cooler than I was expecting it to be.

  It didn't take long for us to get to the northern edges of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest where the destruction from the volcano's blast was clearly evident. From the air, it was as if someone drew a line on the ground and commanded the destruction to not cross this line... and it didn't.

  On one side of the line, the trees were tall, green, and looked just like the ones we had been flying over the last 45 minutes. On the south side of the line... it was a completely different story. The landscape was unlike anything you could possibly imagine. The trees, some 4 or 5 feet in diameter, were blown over on their sides... void of all branches, stripped of life and all signs it ever had any. The trees laid side by side like toothpicks, all in the same direction, and all appearing to be the victim of something more massive and devastating than anyone has ever encountered. Nothing is green. Even though the blast was 7 years earlier, nothing showed a single sign of life having ever been there. The entire surface of the one-time forest was gray and looked like the bottom of a giant ashtray.

  The images I saw on the news 7 years earlier did not do this place justice.

  There was no music playing here.

  There was nothing that resembled the peaceful outdoors.

  There was no flora and fauna.

  There was nothing harmonious.

  The landscape told the story of just how bad it really was.

  After several minutes once we crossed "the line", I realized Doug and I were no longer tapping and pointing... the instructor wasn't telling us where to look, not telling Jamie where to go, not telling us where we were... he's seen this reaction in people before. People being overcome with the awe and he understood the process their brain has to go through to sort this out. We all just looked. Well, Jamie flew and looked... but the rest of us just looked. We were still quite away from the crater of Mt. St. Helens, which was directly south of us as we came to a strange, flat plain of logs and debris which pointed all different directions. It was Spirit Lake, and the trees which littered its surface were all flat and on one plane, like you would expect the surface of a lake to look like. But there was no sign of water at all. Nothing. In 1987, Spirit Lake was still much more like a child's mud pie. It was muddy, slimy, and full of tree trunks that looked like toothpicks floating in a glass of chocolate milk.

  We went around the western side of the mountain and counter clockwise around the south of the crater. (Thus why my left side seating choice proved to be the optimal one.) We still didn't say much to each other. We looked. We stared. We looked at the steaming mound in the crater where the small mound of lava had already started to create a new mountain top for this peak which lost nearly 1/4 mile of it’s vertical reach just earlier that decade. We looked in awe at the hole left behind by the near one full cubic mile of land that had disappeared in the landslide/eruption that fateful May 1980 Sunday morning.

  It took several minutes to make our way around the crater and start to head north towards Mt. Ranier. We circled that mountain too that night... but I don't even remember anything about it other than the fact that we went there. We still didn't say much to each other. We all just looked. We were all still speechless by the sight of all those downed trees, and I know that for me, I still couldn't wrap my head around what it took to do that.

  Yesterday was one of those unusual November days in Oregon where it was actually clear enough to see Mt. St. Helens from my home near Portland. It was covered with fresh snow and was a clean, majestic white, even with its broken, topless appearance. Most don't even remember what it used to look like. I never saw it the way it used to look, only pictures and the videos I've seen in countless documentaries. When I first moved here, 20+ years ago, the local media did stories of one sort or another every year on the eruptions anniversary. They've dwindled to almost nothing now, unless it's an anniversary that is a multiple of 5 or 10.

  I tried to take some pictures of the mountain yesterday, to send to friends and family afar... I didn't get any good ones, nothing worth saving anyway. But that mountain still makes an impression on me. So much so that 33 years later, I'm taking an hour out of my life to write about it. On a Friday.

  If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it.... Wait a second... What if there are tens of thousands of trees getting blown over?

  Seven years later... they produced a unique silence.