If testing\u00a0personal resolve\u00a0were an Olympic event, yesterday I was Michael Phelps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It started simply enough.\u00a0 They were predicting high winds, so I set out of Needles by 7:00 am to ensure that I would be off the road before 11:00.\u00a0 See, where I come from, wind is a pretty logical and predictable friend.\u00a0 It works like this.\u00a0 The sun comes up.\u00a0 It heats the land.\u00a0 Between 1:00 and 2:00, the cool air moves from over the water and onto the land.\u00a0 Viola.\u00a0 Sailors and windsurfers can practically set their clocks\u00a0by the wind.<\/p>\n
Apparently\u00a0it does not work this way everywhere.\u00a0 No, out in these parts they have (visual cue – I am using modified jazz hands here) new-fangled wind rules.\u00a0 At exactly 9:50 am, a strong southwest wind began to blow.\u00a0 Now, whatever Irishman wrote that ‘wind at your back’ stuff, never rode a scooter.\u00a0\u00a0While they are fairly controllable in a head wind,\u00a0a gust from any other angle and it morphs from a scooter into a sail.\u00a0 I made it to Williams feeling a little closer to God.<\/p>\n
Checking the conditions for the next day, I learned that there would be more of the same.\u00a0 If I was to make it out in the morning, I would need to be on the road even earlier with the added benefit\u00a0of riding in 41 degree weather.\u00a0\u00a0 Wanting to save time in the morning, I went to gas up and check my tires.\u00a0 Returning back, the winds were a good 30 mph and I, wisely I thought, went to set my manual parking brake.\u00a0 Upon\u00a0engagement, the brake handle came off in my hand.\u00a0 Seriously.\u00a0 Four years of engineering school and a career as a product designer, and I could not get that brake to release.<\/p>\n
What happened next is the subject of the following post.\u00a0 For the purposes of this\u00a0one we will fast forward 4 hours.\u00a0 I am back in my room with some of the best interviews to date on my recorder.\u00a0 It is late, but I was so excited to write that I fired up the laptop and started in.<\/p>\n
But it\u00a0was not to\u00a0be.\u00a0 Vista and my security software decided they were no longer compatible.\u00a0\u00a0A break up, if you will.\u00a0 Again, over 25 years in the PC industry and I am useless.\u00a0 See a theme?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enter Derrick Kikuchi.\u00a0\u00a0In keeping\u00a0with our Olympic metaphor, Derrick is the Jesse Owens of friends.\u00a0 There is not a single significant event of my adult life that\u00a0has not felt\u00a0his love and impact.\u00a0 Three hours\u00a0on the phone\u00a0debugging and managing a woman-on-the-verge, Derrick had identified the problem and fixed it from 800 miles away.\u00a0 Words fail.<\/p>\n
So this was my day.\u00a0 Facing a precipice and finding miracles.\u00a0 Oh my.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If testing\u00a0personal resolve\u00a0were an Olympic event, yesterday I was Michael Phelps.\u00a0 It started simply enough.\u00a0 They were predicting high winds, so I set out of Needles by 7:00 am to ensure that I would be off the road before 11:00.\u00a0 See, where I come from, wind is a pretty logical and predictable friend.\u00a0 It works […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hwireroad.org\/2008\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}