A Day at the Races and other tales

Day Cramp has once again come and gone. As supreme dictator for it this year (holding all 3 leadership positions) I spent a lot of time on it, but it worked out well in the end. Last year we had 80 kids participate between two camps. This year we had 240 or so kids participate in one camp. The camp was also nice because it was just one day, not three and the weather was a perfect sunny and 70 degrees.

The key difference besides being shorter was that it was held at Road America, a 4-mile race track here in Sheboygan County during their June Sprints weekend which attracted about 400 racers. The kids did the usual BB guns, archery and craft, but also got to visit the Winner's Circle, Race Control and Paddock area (this is where the race teams set up shop) and get in the cars, check out the engines and talk to the drivers. Happily it turned out well, but only by luck. We were severely short staffed with only 11 staff out of an ideal 30 or more staff. By the time camp finished on Friday I went home and slept a solid 12 hours.

We'll be repeating the event again next year and possibly expanding it. We might also be partnering with Camp Jeep when it comes here in August to do some outdoor demos on cooking, camping and the like.

With camp done we're in the final June 30 membership and money push. Yea. I'm looking forward to that being done.

The upside is that I leave on my annual road trip on Saturday bound for DC and Virginia. Hopefully the flooding in DC has subsided some by Sunday when I get there otherwise that could be interesting.

I also made positive movement in getting a loan through my bank to pay off two of my credit cards and close them before I got in a bad spot. Without going into details I am a much better steward of other people's money than my own. Thankfully my banker friends were able to help me out and put me on a road to being better behaved.

Anyways, I'll post my next issue for debate before departing on my journey.

What to do in during a tornado warning?

Seek Shelter, nah...Run Away, that's weak....

The correct answer is to go outside to see if you can spot a funnel cloud. Oh yeah, don't forget the camera to take pictures. This is my answer to the question and is what I did on Sunday night when I heard the tornado siren sound. Here are some of the pictures I took. It was awesome to watch the clouds as they boiled and grew to ever greater heights and the range of ominous colors as the sun struggled to shine through gave a surreal glow to the affair especially when the bright blue sky showed through. The sheer speed at which the clouds surged into new formations was stunning. The photos don't do justice to spectacle the sky put on. If this happens in OK a lot it might almost be worth living there for a while. There did not end up being a tornado in our area although one did strike a Milwaukee suburb with no fatalities.

The Rest of the Trip

My last post related to the joy of a flat tire on the road to St. Louis, so I figured that it would be appropriate to sketch in the rest of the trip which went much smoother. The conference was People Management 1 and focused on management challenges especially in relation to our profession and each person's personality.

There is a lot of time spent in the professional training spectrum on personal growth and awareness. In the first level course everyone completes the DiSC profile of their personality. I personally came up a high "D", not quite uber-dictator, but close enough. For my last course it was a coaching profile that went well for me, apparently I am a decent coach at least that's what my survey respondents said. This class focused on the LS1 and LS2 Lifestyle Inventories. The first is the self-evaluation which we did in class, the second is the data from five surveys that others complete for you. The key to the whole thing is the system of comparing the data to see where you might have stumbling blocks (known weaknesses) or blind spots (unseen or unadmitted weaknesses). This was okay for me as I had only two blind spots and I knew them, but choose not to recognize them (oppositional and perfectionistic...). The chart actually translated alright for me since it was basically a high "D" again.

We also did an inventory on preferred communication styles and worked through a system of team problem solving (think group therapy). Overall the course content was good and I enjoyed the class. It most certainly has given me a lot to think about and came at a good time for me personally.

The best part about the class was more the people than the content. I knew the instructor from previous courses and think he's a swell guy (De Tan Nguyen) and had been in class previously with 3 of the other 13 participants. All of us had been in our jobs at least 3 and 1/2 years so we could relate reasonably well. The only one who annoyed me to any great extent was my roommate who seemed socially stunted--he liked to argue stupid things for the sake of it and is addicted to pop culture, oh yeah he snores too. He survived the week as I chose to avoid him outside of class the last two nights. I kept busy going out after class. Monday night was at a comedy club, Tuesday was watching the NBA game with a group in my room, Wednesday was downtown St. Louis, Thursday was at the sports bar watching the game. I was not in before 12:00am any night and up at 6:45am each morning.

On Wednesday we rearranged our schedule to have the afternoon off so that we could go downtown. I ended up as a ringleader and one of two drivers and somehow responsible for finding where we were going. The first stop was the Anheuser-Busch tour. Yes, I toured a beer plant. It was neat. We got to see the clydesdale horses, part of the factory and free samples (I declined, but did taste a Guiness with a dark chocolate shot in it). The horses have a really nice stable area and the whole place was amazingly clean. The tour focused more on the history of the company than on how beer is made, but it was well done. After everyone had their samples and I got a hat, we headed to the Arch navigating by sight to get there. It was cool and the Opening of the West Museum underneath the arch was neat. I did not go up in the Arch as it seemed like a waste of money. We walked 15 blocks (after much debate) to Union Station for dinner then headed back to the hotel where several of us moved to a local bar for the rest of the evening.

Thursday evening was notable because we were at Ozzie's Bar which is owned by Ozzie Smith (some great Cardinals baseball shortstop) and Michael Jordan was there watching the game with Ozzie and Charles Oakley (another basketball player). I was amused watching the folks drooling over his presence and trying to get by his guards to see him. One of the few successful people was a classmate who is a frat brother of his and previous acquaintance. I was more entertained by the Miller girls trying to get people to drink Miller in a Budweiser city, were I one prone to drink, I would have allowed them to convince me...

On the way home Friday I stopped at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, IL. It is very well done and has some neat presentations, one of which I couldn't quite figure out how they did the effects. The Civil War exhibit was one of the best I have seen including a neat animated map showing the battle lines as they moved and the major battles and campaigns of the conflict. I could have spent more time there, but needed to head home to sleep.

The trip was good and tiring as usual. I'm looking forward to next spring when I am due to go to the next course and possibly attending it in Portland, OR. We'll see if I can make that work.

Tires and Tribulations

I will return soon to the promised series following up on the Government post from last week. In the interim I've been busy and am in St. Louis right now at a BSA management training. The experience thus far was getting here.

I drove here as it was cheaper than flying and decided to drive down Sunday so that I could take some time getting here. This was a good idea. About 30 miles north of Bloomington, IL, my car started making a loud racket and handling badly. Crap! I pulled to the shoulder and found that the rear passenger side tire was flat. No big deal, I'll swap it out with the spare. It was a doughnut, but thought the other tire was still salvagable. Then I pulled it off and found that was not the case. I had gotten a screw in the tire and then a blowout (about a 2 inch hole in the "corner" of the tire) and then drove on it to pull to the shoulder and put a nice series of holes in the tire wall. It was well and truly dead. I figured that I might still be able to get a new tire on Sunday and called Pontiac Roadside Assistance to find a nearby shop. The only one was WalMart, which I hate, but I swallowed my pride and went there at 60mph down the freeway.

I got there only to find that the tires on my car are not a common size yet (225/50 R17). So I had to find a room in Bloomington for the evening and was thankfully able to cancel my reservation in St. Louis without a cost. I awakened early Monday and found a tire shop with my tire size in stock. Downside was that the new tire was $230 and no one in town carried the tire that matched the brand. Now I have a $230 tire on my car that does not match the other three.

Lessons learned:
--Low Profile Tires are harder to notice going flat while driving
--The tires are bloody expensive and rare
--WalMart Associates can actually be helpful
--Always have plastic to cover problems and allow time for them to happen

The frustrating part was that this is the first flat tire I have ever had on a car I own. That's 4 vehicles and over 200,000 miles of driving. Thankfully I got my practice last year at Thanksgiving with Barry on changing tires quickly.