I Live in Iowa: Week 251

This was an incredibly busy week! I thought it might be, but it surpassed my expectations. It started at 3:30 AM Sunday in Seattle when I woke up in my rented minivan because I was tired of paying for hotels. Then a nice flight to Chicago, and three hours of driving to get back to Dubuque. Only a few people knew I was in town so it ended up being one of two nights in the whole seven day week I ate supper at my apartment.

Monday was my first day back at work and I made it through about 400 emails in between telling various people about Mt. Everest. I went out to eat with a coworker and friend for supper.

Tuesday I woke up at 5 AM to get dressed and catch a carpool to Waterloo, Iowa for a drivetrain conference at work, and it was 13 hours between the time and left at 6 AM and 7 PM when we returned. A quick run and supper, and a visit to a friend's house and it was 9:30 and I was tired.

Wednesday was day two of the conference in Waterloo and then in the evening I bicycled 50 miles at 20 miles an hour with a large group. We had a burrito after, so another night eating out.

Thursday I slept in. I couldn't help it, I was doing a lot. Not to mention doing Mt. Rainier last weekend, which I still need to write a trip report about. I managed to get in a nice run on Thursday, more than 25 minutes. We went out to eat again, because of the rain our boat trip on the river was canceled. It's worth mentioning all of these events involved different people. There is some overlap, but quite a few  different individuals.

Friday was another day in the Dubuque office. I finished going through my 800 emails. Then we went rock climbing at Pictured Rocks State park after work near Monticello, Iowa. I decided then, on the spur of the moment to do a bicycle ride the next day, so...

Saturday came at 4:30 AM to get ready to bicycle 100 miles, which is 16 more than all the previous rides I had done this year combined. It went really well, I ended up leading our group of 4-6 people for maybe 50-70 miles of the trip because I was not doing the two day option. We averaged 17.3 mph, which is quite fast considering the hills, we regularly were doing 19-20 on the flats. I had my last supper in town, with friends, and then off to sleep.

My Sleep this Past Week

Next week, Kansas!

I Live in Iowa: Week 250

This was probably the most busy and least climactic pre-expedition week I have had yet. I mean, I packed my calendar all the way to 10 hours before leaving, so I was busy, but on the other hand the extent of big new gear I bought is a new camera, headlamps, and HEAT electric foot warmers. I have everything I really need. I didn’t buy any new clothing. I even left a bunch of expedition quality stuff behind, like extra shirts and a soft-shell jacket, my old double plastic boots, my overboots, gaiters (not that I ever really wear them), and even my trekking poles. That dawned on me Tuesday morning here in Nepal, I forgot my trekking poles! That being said I only really use them for downhill skiing. I don’t feel like I really need them until my backpack gets over 60 pounds, and honestly, it just doesn’t get that heavy for any of the stuff I normally do. 

The work week was a little busy the first part of the week and then pretty quiet the last few days as I wrapped up everything. It’s different this time because while I will return to Dubuque for a week, I’m not going back to my old job, but taking a new job. Someone made a joke they were going to escort me out, and it was funny because I was a tiny bit expecting them to. 

It’s always strange at work when I send the Everest email. I get 20 replies from people about how cool this trip is, which I find a little embarrassing. I send the email so that people aren’t left hanging when they have a question. Personally I get frustrated when people leave the company or take two weeks vacation without letting anyone know because it can take more than five minutes to track down the new person that has the answer. 

Running, I’m not sure on my mileage, probably 80+ miles with 50 of those being on Saturday. I’ll write a separate race report for the Mad City 100k 2016, suffice it say I had a good experience. I learned a bit, I executed the plan rather well. The first 2/3rds of the race went great, but I just didn't have the base in me to bring the last 30% of the race home at sub 7 minute mile pace, or even sub 8 minute mile pace. I will probably run it next year, now that I have a much better idea of the course.

Saturday night two of my married friends had a going away party for me and for them. They are moving to the quad cities so we will not see them quite as often as we do now, and of course, I’m on my way to Everest at the moment. It always feels really strange to celebrate leaving for an expedition. I feel like we should celebrate when I return. 

I’m not going to do weekly updates while I am in Nepal, because I am not sure how often I will be able to get Internet access, it may just be one or two posts a week, or five, I’m not sure. I just don’t want to commit to something that ranks pretty low on the priority list the next eight weeks. On the other hand, I did get the unlimited text messaging option from Delorme for my InReach SE so expected a higher volume of tweets and maybe a couple blog posts from my sister based on our texting conversation back and forth, and her being able to scan the Internet for other relevant new and links related to Mt. Everest 2016.

View of the Rising Sun from My Yak and Yeti Hotel Room

I Live in Iowa: Week 249

Sorry for the delay in not more blogging. I've simply been preoccupied, and well, to be honest, I'm not sure what to say. Sometimes I feel like I build these things up, and in my head, it's not really that built up.

I ran 79.7 miles last week with two good long runs and a solid interval workout. I'm calling it an 80 mile week. That makes it one 90 mile week, one 80, and two 70s with a slew of 50s and 60s for consistency. Overall I've had very solid training since January, which at this point is a really good sign. This coming weekend I am racing the USA Track and Field 100 kilometer (62.1 mile) championships in Madison, Wisconsin. I am not in great shape (by my definition) but I am in good shape, and honestly good shape is enough to do well.

For years making Team USA was my big running goal, and I did it! The world doesn't end though after being on a team USA, and inevitably more opportunities for competition come up. I always thought that the 100k would be my race distance, it was just the situation that the 24 hour race was at a good time for me. In other words, I'm going to run my heart out and try to run the most consistent race I ever have Saturday, but if something happens and I don't reach my goal for the day, that's okay, my happiness doesn't depend on it. Although, my happiness to some extent may rest on knowing the best of myself was expressed.

Work is going well. It's strange going away both to Mt. Everest and then to Kansas. I am leaving a bit of a knowledge void as I leave. I think I have done a good job of communicating everything that my coworkers need to know, but inevitably there will be questions they don't have the answer to. The real benefit, which I don't think anyone fully realizes yet, is how much responsibility I have transferred to one of our new employees. I learned several months ago he was capable of doing good work so I have worked to coach him into even better work, and he is doing excellent! When I leave and questions arise, he will have the answers.

Knowledge transfer is always a difficult thing. People, everywhere to a varying extend, like to retain a small piece of critical knowledge because of the fear of being replaced. It seems like people want to retain enough where they can still be promoted, but provide some measure of value that their peers or reports do not have. I have to be sure to fight this tendency in my own life. I prefer to give information overload so that people can see how messy the decisions really are. This definitely scares people at times, when I mention a number of negatives and problems, but we will never address the risks if we don't admit them.

Speaking of risks, yes, Mt. Everest beckons. I packed this past weekend. I need to buy a new Nalgene (I only have four) and a headlamp (I only have three, but lost my favorite one). I'll blog more about that later.

I Live in Iowa: Week 248

Well there were a couple highlights last week. For starters I visited my grandparents, uncles and an aunt in Minnesota over Good Friday and Easter. I go visited only a few times and year and I had not been over since last fall. Family is the kind of thing you only get one of so make the best of it. It's funny too, because I'm kind of the outsider, at least this past weekend I was, I feel like my family wanted to confide in me more than usual. Maybe it's just that I am finally getting old enough for the adult conversations. 

We only worked four days because we get off for Good Friday, which is awesome! I will tell you what, a day of paid holiday a few times a year is really nice. I started my first project for Coffeyville this past week. It involved spreadsheets and data! I got to use numbers! But seriously, you would be amazed how little math is used in engineering.

I ran 90 miles this past week including the longest training run of my life, 32 miles, at 6:57 pace no less! It's really nice to get back to the kind of volume that I feel I really thrive on. You just can't be a top long distance runner on 40 miles per week. You can do really well, I know a guy that ran a 2:21 marathon off of basically swimming pool training, but not your best. 

Mount Everest approaches. I need to pack this week, and finish tying up some loose ends.

I Live in Iowa: Week 247

Why can't we just "be"? Why can't we have below average days? I had a good week this week, but that doesn't make it all good. 

Work was fun, going up to Grand Rapids and trouble shooting a new issue, better than expected. I am always afraid when I go to the field that we will not find any issue, and those are the difficult conversations. "Well, this is how we designed it, this is how it is supposed to work." So when we plug in our computers and see something we have never seen before, it's a sign that yes, something is wrong.

Certainly, it would be best if none ever fail, but that is not the world we live in. I can only imagine in automotive a few months after production starts the warranty claims start coming in, and the shear volume must be overwhelming. 

The point is, the space shuttle and everything in space really has redundancy built in. That is, if something fails there is a parallel system to do the job. However, making two systems where only one is needed doubles the cost, and on the shuttle they used seven computers for some functions. In my business we have very little redundancy. It's a cost thing, how many people have two hot water heaters or two dishwashers, just in case one fails?

I ran 69.8 miles, which might as well be 70, but I like to imagine I don't exaggerate my accomplishments. That included a long run and two workouts, one being a 2x12 minute hill climb. You run uphill for 12 minutes hard, it's not easy, or pretty.

Everest preparations continue. Saturday I had lunch with my parents in Madison and then spent $200 on food for my expedition, because it is important to not go hungry on a two month expedition.

I am Moving Back to Kansas!

I know right?! This probably comes as a bit of a shock to some people. My high school friends are probably thinking, ‘the kid that left to go to school in Massachusetts?’ My Dubuque friends are probably thinking, ‘Great, he’s leaving too.’ My Colorado friends are probably thinking, ‘Seriously, Kansas? Why doesn’t he move out here already?’ My Massachusetts friends are probably thinking, ‘Kansas, Iowa, what’s the difference?’

The short of it is I will be staying with my current company which has a factory just outside of Coffeyville, Kansas where they design and build transmissions and axles for heavy off road equipment. I will be moving there after I get back from Mt. Everest. The full story is a bit longer, and while I have told parts of it to a number of people, I haven’t told the whole thing, so here we go.

Coffeyville in relation to Wichita, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Fayetteville

Way back in time, 2008, 2009, I was working on my master’s thesis on finite element modeling of heat treating a ring gear for a transmission. I learned that I find gears and transmissions quite interesting. However, thanks to the Great Recession, no one was hiring engineers for that kind of work. What eventually got me started in industry was that I had finite element experience. So I started my engineering career doing structural finite element analysis, which is actually not what I did in graduate school.

About a year ago, when I started my current role, as what I call a Drivetrain Systems Design Engineer, I made my first trip to Coffeyville. We visited during the L series production launch after I had spent the better part of three months working overtime in the factory trying to get the machines to meet our quality specifications. It was a very stressful time for me. I was fixing numerous issues, but you fix nine, and miss one, and you still have a big problem. So the three days we took to drive down, review the testing, and then drive back were almost like a vacation. Very relaxing to get away from the grind and stress of the production launch. 

Later in the summer of 2015 we were working through some issues and I started asking some detailed questions from the engineers in Coffeyville. At that point B.W., a notorious recruiter, tried to get me to apply to a job. Since I was so new to my current role I didn’t even really consider it. 

Then in the fall of 2015 I was traveling quite a lot, and much of that was last minute travel. It felt like I was going from one problem to the next, and I did not actually have the capability to fix any of it. I was, or have become, something of a middle man, organizing meetings and getting people to talk to each other, but not really solving any problems myself, or dare I say, not even making the decisions about how to solve the problems. Or I was the middle man speaking for the company, doing work for the company, but providing a short term fix to more deeper issues, often as a result of a supplier’s error. It became frustrating. Certainly it was still fun overall and there is a lot of satisfaction helping the end user get back and up and running after a problem, but it’s a different perspective. For example, spending most of a week replacing a transmission that failed for the same reason a transmission failed last week, the view from the field is, ‘why haven’t we tried to fix this yet?!’ However, from the office, you don’t know if one or two failures is all that we will ever see, or the start of a much larger issue, so it’s not as big of a deal. That disconnect between the end user and the person who has the authority and ability to make a change is really frustrating when you see it from the view of the end user. I mean, it’s why Toyota and Honda are so successful in automotive in the USA, because there was a time in the past when their cars were simply more reliable.

In January I visited Coffeyville again, and my Dubuque co-worker made a joke about how I wanted to move there, and I didn’t refute him. So a week or two later B.E. from Coffeyville sends me another job opening and gives me a phone call. Once again I say I’m not particularly interested in that particular job. So he asks, "what it would take to get you interested enough to apply for a job?" I describe some of my current frustrations, and what I would be interested in (gear design, learning about the details of drivetrain, some travel, but not 60% of the time…) and he says that something along those lines will be available soon. 

The next week I head off to Germany, and travel with S.W. a drivetrain senior staff engineer who is working on a technical career path for his position. You see, there is a bit of a disconnect right now between the technical side of the business and the people side of the business in my company. If you stay on the technical side you will most likely only be promoted two or three times in your whole career, but on the people side you could conceivably be promoted something like nine times to make it to CEO. So there is a movement within the company to develop a number of technical career paths, drivetrain being one of them. Yes, the people side, the path to CEO is always going to have more steps, through VP and Senior VP, but the number of highly paid people on the people management side is huge compared to the technical management side. The problem is that after a couple years of working, when people in their late 20s, like myself, realize where the long term opportunity is, they flock to the people management side. It leaves us with a technical deficit as we don’t have the volume of people to understand the technical details we need to understand to innovate. As a specific example, coming from a materials science master’s degree it frustrates me to no end how limited our materials knowledge is as a corporation. To be specific on the structures side, we use basically two grades of steel on all of our internally welded parts. Two! It makes our machines heavier than they need to be.

Anyway, he showed me the technical career path for a drivetrain engineer, and the experience you can’t get in Dubuque, is the actual design of gears, seals, and bearings, which you do get exposed to at Coffeyville.

On top of that, several of the discussions we had in Germany in January no one sitting at the table was able to answer. We argued about two different oils for an hour, and at the end we still could not agree to use the new oil. I want to know that kind of stuff, what makes two different oils so different?

This whole time I’m getting closer to 30 years old, and realizing that I have been in Dubuque for nearly five years. The longest I have ever lived some place is six years in Kansas, followed by five and a half years in Massachusetts, followed by five years in Iowa. It’s hard to describe, but there is a bit of an itch to move after being here this long. I don’t know that I will ever live one place more than six years. Maybe I will, I am slowing down as I get older, or rather time is moving a little faster. There is just a feeling that I have “done” the area. I’ve been to the attractions, I’ve ate at the restaurants, I’ve had the deep discussions with my friends, I’ve run on the same roads hundreds of times, I’m just ready for something different. I think military brats understand this really well, but since I don’t come from a military background, I only have a couple friends that grew up with military parents and understand this.

So the job was posted, I talked to D.F., my future supervisor, about it for a half hour one day when she approached me to see if I was interested, and it seems like what I would like to try. I’ve never really been recruited like this before, by three different people, and it makes a big impression on me. The lesson to be learned is recruit others, because it’s flattering, and you can get the person you want easier if you ask him or her, rather than wait and hope for applicants. I applied on the last day the job was open, went down for an interview. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming, something I have enjoyed about smaller towns. Tangent for a minute, something I have found in small towns is that people are often more accepting of trivial differences than in large cities because they cannot go get new friends or shop somewhere else, whereas in a big city, if you don't like someone you just quit associating with that person. I was fortunate enough to have the job offered to me, and I accepted it. It’s a little complicated with Mt. Everest 2.0 happening this spring, but my new supervisor was very accommodating and I will simply move down there when I get back. 

There are a couple other things that played into my decision. My running I think could benefit being down there. To quote John L. Parker, “Liquori said you need to be bored to train well, so that your workout becomes the most interesting part of your day.”  Coffeyville is not the most bustling place in the world, and I’m actually counting on less excitement in my life outside of work so that I can run more. Also, while I will be getting to travel a fair amount in this new role, which I like, it won’t be nearly as much as I have traveled the last year, which was too much to run well. Plus, the average high in January is 43F, which means far less running on snow and ice, which are not fun. I know that my running career, at it’s truly top level, only has a handful more years, maybe 10 years, but quite possibly only 3-5 years, whereas my engineering career (or other career if I were to change…) has 30-40 years.

Dubuque is about 12.5 hours from Denver, not counting stops, and there are a lot of stops on a drive that long. Coffeyville is about 9.5 hours from Denver, not counting stops, and those three hours make a big difference. 9-10 hours of driving is a long afternoon and evening, 12-14 hours is a whole day. Plus, when it comes to mountains, I’ve never been to the Ozarks, and I would like to explore those. 

My sister recently moved to Memphis from Milwaukee, so I will be closer to her now from Coffeyville than in Dubuque. 

Talking about my career, in the broadest sense, there are benefits to taking this new opportunity. It shows that I am willing to relocate, and to be honest, quite a few people are not willing to relocate because of family, or the hassle of starting over making friends and getting into a routine. In fact, at work one person even called me “brave” to move there! Also, basically anything I do in traditional engineering in the future will benefit by the experience I am about to gain. Whether I go into people management, or dare I say, even work for another company, long term this experience of the details of drivetrain design will only benefit me. (For the record, in the four years that I have been with my current company I have only applied for one job outside of my company, and that was in January, with NASA to be an astronaut candidate, along with 18,300 others for 8-12 open spots.)

I don’t know what the future holds. After all, there is a chance I die on Mt. Everest next month and this is all irrelevant, although I like my chances of survival there. I don’t know how long I will stay in Coffeyville, but I am house shopping and not planning on renting like I have in Dubuque. I suppose one more thing to say about how long I might live there, Coffeyville is actually where my company develops hybrid and electric vehicle drive systems… and I bought a Honda Insight with a dying hybrid battery, in large part because I wanted to get more familiar with hybrid vehicle systems.

Just to give a preview of what you might expect from me the second half of this year, I expect I will visit Mexico and Brazil on work trips, two countries I have not visited yet. Of course, don’t expect me to divulge any of the technical stuff. Changing subjects, anyone want to run the Ozark Trail over Thanksgiving?

I Live in Iowa: Week 246

Wow! What a week?!

Work was actually quite calm. I was in the office all week, at least every day this week. I have been working on this little project, a hydraulics project and I think that some good progress was made this week. Sure, I had some setbacks too, but that is part of the design process, and it's way better to realize my errors early rather than later in the development process.

Running was a mix. I ran 50 miles, but I took two days off and only ran 20 minutes on another day. It started on Sunday I ran 24 miles, and while I started out really well, around 7 minute pace the first hour, soon after that I began to slow down, mile 10 really was where the pain started. It was more of a just plain exhaustion feeling than nutrition or an injury.

Huge Positive Splits, Not Good

As you can see, that's not at all how you want to split a run. Monday I ran 20 minutes, Tuesday I came home and laid on the floor. Wednesday I came home and laid on the floor again, so my coach suggested upping the iron, through meat mostly. I took my iron pill and ate some steak and starting Thursday my runs have gone really well. It's strange how a little mineral, like iron, can make a huge difference if you are just 50 mg or maybe 100 mg short. Plus, rest is good too, and I struggle to rest unless I really feel bad, which I did.

So Friday I go into the office, bringing bagels, for a co-worker's birthday, doing my work, on the hydraulics problem, when at 10 AM a different co-worker announces, "I bought a car in St. Louis!" and now he was trying to figure out how to get there. He blanket asked, "Anyone want to go to St. Louis with me?" and I said "yes" just like that. I had three vacation days to use by this coming Friday, and no plans to use then, so I figured, nothing really needed me the rest of the day in the office, might as well go help a friend pick up his car.

Beginning a Road Trip

It was fun! We drove five hours down to St. Louis, I went for a run, bought a fast food dinner and drove his pick up truck back, getting a speeding warning as I got back into Dubuque. Yes, I am thankful I just received a warning, because the officer had every right to give me a ticket. So I got back to Dubuque around 11 PM, spent all of $13 on food and drinks, helped a friend out and used a vacation day.

What does this week hold?! We shall see... Some big news actually, not that Everest wasn't big enough last week.

I Live in Iowa: Week 245

It was a nice week up in Timmins, Ontario, for the most part. I managed to "run" 60 miles, if you include the 10 I cross country skied on Thursday afternoon, because at least up there they still have snow. I also got in a workout on the treadmill and a 1 mile indoor track race, in 4:54.92 thank you very much!

Work is always hard to talk about, because it's not really my intellectual property. So why was I up in Timmins, aside from being there for work, which is mildly obvious. Although, they do have really nice cross country ski trails, and I hear the ice fishing is really good. Well, I was up there because we had a machine with an issue we had to trouble shoot. It's interesting as I spend more and more time in the field I learn about all sorts of corner conditions that in the grand scheme of things are small, but when you are there in person looking at it, oh my it becomes so much more than a corner condition.

You can't test something to infinity. At some point you say, 'we've tested enough, we're going to production!' However, there are very interesting things to learn after you go to production, things you didn't learn during testing. Things that I think you might never learn during testing. For example, on prototypes, someone watches every bolt being tightened, but in production there is a range of new tools and far less supervision, so each bolt gets less attention. How much attention does every bolt need? It's a good question, and not a simple answer because some bolts are more important than other bolts.

Other than the trip to Timmins, and the race Friday night, I had a pretty quiet week. I have spent much of the last few days just catching up on sleep. 5:30 AM flights... no thank you.

I Live in Iowa: Week 244

Work:
Location: Dubuque, Iowa
Hours: 40-45 or so
Stress level: Low
Project: Axle plumbing
Meetings: Below average number

Running:
Miles: 54
Workouts: two, tempo and fartlek

Socializing:
Friday: Out, Copper Kettle (Winter token party night)
Saturday: Bicycling in afternoon, in for evening

I Live in Iowa: Week 243

It was a nice week this past week. I just ran my second 70 mile week in the last 16 months. WOOHOO!! 70 miles per week is when things really start to click, that's when I feel my fitness really coming around. Injuries are not fun. Let us hope I can keep this positive momentum. I did a long run, almost 20 miles, the longest long run I have done in quite some time. Also a little fartlek in there. Not to mention I went cross country skiing and ice climbing too this past week. No pictures, sorry, I was solo for that stuff Monday night at Governor Dodge State Park in Wisconsin.

Speaking of Monday... As I mentioned before, my uncle Denis died a week and a half ago. His viewing was Sunday and the funeral was Monday. Wow, talk about emotional. This is the first person in my parents generation to die. I have my parents and then three aunts and three uncles, well now two uncles. He was 65 and 11 months old. It is just so close to home.

My first time being a pall bearer, but probably not the last.

I worry for my aunt and my cousins, their life has changed, and will change. It will not be easy. Please pray for my family.

Work was good. I wasn't in the office Monday, and my generous coworkers signed a card expressing their sympathies. I know it was not a big deal for them to sign their names, but it means a lot to me. Men are often bad at expressing sympathy, and a card is a nice little way to say without words, 'I get it.'

Tuesday I was scheduled to fly down to Tulsa and drive to Kansas, but my original flight had a mechanical so they rebooked me on a different flight. Then that flight was delayed getting out of Chicago, so we waited again. Then that flight had a mechanical, actually a low hydraulic accumulator, so we deplaned, and I decided to drive to Kansas. I only had about four hours of sleep Tuesday night, before waking up before dawn to finish the drive. My meetings went well, very well. Then I flew back to Moline Wednesday night uneventfully.

Finally a little more excitement for the week, I went to an indoor track meet at UD Friday night and watched a couple people I know set personal records, and even a school record. On Saturday I went to Deadpool and then grilled at a friend's house before playing a board game for two hours. When I list all of the stuff off, it amounts to a pretty packed week.

My hope for the near future is no more deaths in the family for a bit.

I Live in Iowa: Week 242

The big news of the week is my uncle died on Thursday. He was a few weeks shy of his 66th birthday. He had Esophageal cancer that was discovered in September. Cancer... it's a killer.

It's been over four years since my grandma died, and this is the first person in my parents generation to pass. It's close to home.

Work was really nice this past week. Most of the time the past year I have been bouncing from one fire to the next, fortunate to get maybe six hours a week to work on designing anything. This week I spent 20+ hours designing in Creo, our CAD software. I didn't get a whole lot done thanks to learning how to use SAP, but progress is progress. I also came up with an idea for the next generation of the project I am working on.

Running went well, a nice medium long run and light workout, 56 miles total. A total that I have racked up in three days before is a good week at this point. 

Saturday I went ice climbing at Wyalusing State Park in Wisconsin and had a great time! All the pictures are on my friend's camera, but it was a good day out for sure. Plus, with the sun out it felt far warmer than 11 degrees Fahrenheit. 

One step at a time.

I Live in Iowa: Week 241

This was another good week. What are some of the highlights?

Work went quite well. It was unfortunately a busy week, not a great week for warranty claims. It's funny, statistically, three failures in one week, out of a population of 800, from three different causes doesn't mean much, but it sure raises emotions. That wasn't the good part of work.

I had a direct conversation with my supervisor about my career. I tend to let things (problems) build, until they become legitimate problems. Wanting to avoid conflict, I think many of us do that. Then it all comes to a head and what we get upset about, is only a small part of the reason we are upset. It is good to have those conversations. The icing on the cake was Friday, most people were out of the office, so it was quiet, and I had a full day to get work done. Usually I am just bouncing from one fire to another, and having a chuck of time to sit there and work through actual design is really nice.

Running was okay, 46 miles, running all seven days. I did my first workout in weeks, maybe months. It was 2x2 miles with a 10 minute jog between, and I averaged just under 6 minute pace, which I will take at this level of fitness, in fact, it was slightly better than I feared it might be.

A few weeks ago I bought a Garmin FR235, and I like it, you can be sure I will post a review of it in the next few weeks after I have some time to learn more about it.

Saturday, I went ice climbing! Governor Dodge State park is just an hour away, I knew they had bouldering, but I didn't know they had ice climbing. One of my climbing partner friends just shelled out for ice tools ($200 a piece!) and he suggested we go. I do have eight ice axes and ice tools, but no real set of ice tools. It was a good afternoon!

Stephen's Falls at Governor Dodge State Park Wisconsin

I Live in Iowa: Week 240

This very long week started off in Germany, sore from skiing in Austria. After a short run my friend and I went on an English speaking tour of Dachau concentration camp just outside of Munich. I need to write a post about that separately because it's important. If we don't remember history we are doomed to repeat it. In fact, the upcoming generation, they are too young to personally know WW2 veterans, because most veterans are dead, so there is, in my opinion, greater danger of the world being susceptible to something similar again. The problem with history is that the relevance fades with every generation. I'm getting ahead of myself, another post.

Work went quite well. On Monday I was in Passau visiting our supplier, and learned a few key pieces of information, which explain why we have been having some of the failures we have been having. It was a nice visit. Overall the company is extremely good, that's why we use them.

Tuesday was a flight back to the US, and then the rest of the week I worked in the office. Part of the time with SAP, which I already mentioned I am not a fan of because it confuses me.

Running is on the upswing, which these days I worry is as good as it gets. I ran 55 miles, running all seven days. No workouts but a nice 14 mile long run at a decent pace. Oh it feels so good to run lots of miles. Unfortunately time spent running, or running miles, is a way I feel more comforted and validated by my training.

I spent a few hours on Saturday at my friend's house bouldering, and helping him make the bouldering cave bigger! It's pretty awesome, the kind of thing I wonder if I should have bought a house five years ago and done the same thing.

Building a Bouldering Gym

I Live in Iowa: Week 239

Well, I was hardly in Iowa this week, but I wasn't in one constant place all week, a total of four different hotels, so I'm claiming Iowa. Plus, it's hard to be a resident of a country when you speak so little of the language.

Monday morning, instead of a national holiday, I traveled to Chicago in the -21C or -4F weather for a flight to Germany. These flights are the hardest. You take off in the afternoon, and arrive in the early morning, having barely slept at all are thrust into another day, except this day in my group we are expected to work. Thank God for coffee!

Tuesday afternoon was full of a technical meeting, and dinner with our hosts. It was actually one of the more productive and attentive first days I have had in my three trips to Germany. Maybe I'm getting used to it.

Wednesday we had more meetings, and then traveled north to Erlagen, for meetings on Thursday and Friday. The itinerary for this trip was complicated. People from three countries attended in person and there was a different group of people at the discussion every day. It was pretty great actually. I was afraid that this was going to be the beginning of the end, but the more we talked and toured, the more confidence I have in our partner's capabilities. Sure, there are still challenges, but we are more on the same page than not on the same page.

Friday afternoon, as we made our way back to München I drove and both of my supervisors took some rest, and I managed to get up to 142 mph, they were awake at that point. The thing about the Autobahn is while you can theoretically go really fast, and people do go over 200 mph on occasion, most of the time there is so much traffic that doing 100 or 110 mph is about all you are going to do. Once you get to 120 mph, around 200 kph, you will inevitably end up stuck behind someone going 90, and at that speed you have to hit the brakes when there is still 200 meters between you and the other guy.

Saturday I took advantage of my first ever free weekend in Europe to go skiing in the Alps. Specifically I skied at Skiwelt Wilder Kaiser starting from Söll, Austria.

Somewhere in Austria

An Actual Igloo Behind Me

My coworker gave me a ride to the ski resort, about a 2 hour drive in a snow storm. Then I took a bus, a train, and two subway trains, plus some walking, to get back to the hotel in a four hour phone free extravaganza. We depend on our phones so much for navigation these days, I enjoyed doing things the old fashion way without international service on my phone turned on.

Overall a poor week of running. Two days off and only 24 miles total, but I did bike on one off day and skied until I was exhausted (5 hours) on Saturday. Still a good week, I don't seem to be injured, my hip is not healed 100% yet, but it's coming along.

It was a good week. 

I Live in Iowa: Week 238

Oh what a week! I suppose nothing really that crazy or interesting, at least as far as people get surprised about for me. For example, work was relatively tame. I say that, but I still didn't get to promote a couple parts I have wanted to promote to the next stage of development for two months now. Other things came up, like meetings and organizing agendas. Planning for an international trip always requires a lot of work. As I gain more experience and responsibility the duty of writing the agenda falls more and more to me as well. It's not what I thought I would spend so much time doing as an engineer, but I enjoy it too, the opportunity to direct the discussion.

Running was on the up and up, ran six days, 49 miles, and my hip is getting worked out, slowly. I had a massage this week and I have been working on stretching and strengthening my legs, and my longest run was 12 miles, which is just great! I've learned that being on the up swing is a huge positive, I don't take it for granted. 

Rock climbing in Madison on Saturday, including going to Buffalo Wild Wings during a Packer game, when I had no idea it was going to happen. Then two other things began, and when they are more official I will let you know. 

I Live in Iowa: Week 237

A bit of traveling last week, a bit of running, and way more time than I care to admit binge watching Breaking Bad. I spent three days driving down and back to Kansas to talk about work. Pretty interesting though, we can have virtual meetings for weeks, but we solve more in 80 minutes of face to face than three previous weeks. 

Not sure on my running mileage for the week, but it was probably north of 30 miles. I'm coming back! A couple days off, and some self massage and I think my hamstring injury is on the decline.  

The temperature has turned cold for the season. However it was warm enough to rain, which means it's really slick now. Not good for cross country skiing or running, but good for indoor cycling. Also, good for indoor rock climbing at my friend's house!

I Live in Iowa: Week 236

I spent the week in Colorado, at least parts of five days. It was nice, although the whole trip was clouded by blowing an engine, which I still haven't finished detailing the story. I managed to run 25 miles, ski 12+ miles and then try and climb a mountain, Atlantic peak near Quandry. I followed it up with a trip to Madison to return a rental car and a few hours with a nice young lady. 

Certainly a good week, but it was all dampened by blowing the engine in the minivan. No one wants to do that. Well, that's more than a tweet, I'm exhausted, I'm going to bed at 7:45 PM again, good night.

I Live in Iowa: Week 235

Ahhh Christmas! Family time, quiet time, and another opportunity for thanksgiving. Certainly this was a good week for me.

The week didn't start out the best as I re-pulled my hamstring on Sunday afternoon while running, and had another set back. I had a massage Friday night and felt so much better after that I pushed my recovery a little fast. It was muddy and my feet were sliding everywhere on unstable ground and my hamstring was being extended while it was trying to contract, and the weak muscle fibers tore. Not a great day.

The next day I began working for three days this week, and was surprisingly productive. I will be traveling the first and probably the third week in January and we're trying to get everything done we can before those trips so that they are as successful as possible. I also had the chance to have lunch with my boss's boss's boss's boss who I didn't really know. It's interesting, the three people up the chain from me are all engineers, or at least have an engineering education and background. This person in the hierarchy comes from an accounting background, which initially was a little disappointing because we engineers like to experiment and see what is possible and do cool things simply to see if we can. On the other hand accountants get excited about profitability and good quality statistics and a solid business, which can seem a little boring from my perspective in research and development, but as I thought about it more we really need people like that in our organization to balance out the crazy ideas that the engineers try to push.

Of course, I spent Christmas, and about four days total, with my family up in Wisconsin. It's always good to see family. It is also nice to have some quiet time away from my normal routine. One discussion that came up several times this year is health concerns. We have a member of our extended family who has been in the hospital much of the fall. Similarly, none of my family is getting any younger and preparing for the future is something that can help ease the transition, whatever that may be.

A person who will remain nameless recently bought a Tesla and let me drive it. I'll post some videos of it some time soon. The strangest part about the thing is that there is no audible feedback. When I would floor the accelerator, there is a quiet winding noise from the electric motor but not the loud engine revving that we typically think of when you are going from 0 to 60 in five seconds.

Me driving a Tesla Model S.

Running started off depressingly with the hamstring issue, but ended with 19 miles and a 7.5 mile run on Saturday. So I will take it. I've been stretching actively, massaging it, using an icy-hot type oil, and trying to warm up a little more thoroughly than in the past, and it seems to be working. I have this skill and this talent at running long distances, and if I am meant to excel at it in the future, I will.

Merry Christmas!

I Live in Iowa: Week 234

234 weeks?! Assuming I only live 4680 weeks (90 years) that's 5% of my life.

Well, it was a pretty busy week of meetings at work. I'm not sure how much I actually accomplished, but I went to lots of meetings. It is hard to tell sometimes how much a meeting is worth. Sometimes the value of a single meeting exceeds everything else done in the day because of five minutes of decision making. Other times, so many people are disengaged that you have to question the point of having all of these people at the meeting.

For the record, I'm going to do a little writing over Christmas and New Year's break, so there might be a few longer blog posts here. If you couldn't tell, blogging has not been on the top of my mind the last couple months.

I only ran 20 miles this week because I pulled my right hamstring on Monday, and then again six days later on Sunday. Grrr! I mean, I've been in this injury cycle all year. 12 months without a single training week of 80 miles or more and I have only ran four races in the past year, and two of them were not pretty. The good news is I am strong, if I can only get healthy now...

I Live in Iowa: Week 233

If I were to describe this week in a word in my own head that word would be: depressing. "Why?" You ask. That is an excellent question. I have learned that reality and our perception of reality do not always line up, in fact sometimes they are downright conflicting. I think I found this week depressing because I've spent so much time traveling the last two weeks that I did not feel like I was really contributing to designing anything, which is my job. On top of that I have gotten all of the sleep I could use, and it began to affect my running. Also, the traveling I did this week was rather last minute and I suppose I went into it with a negative attitude. It went excellently, so again reality and my perception weren't exactly lining up. 

Monday and Tuesday I was in Milwaukee. Very interesting to see what I did. We were doing some testing, that went better than expected. I have learned when we are testing something that I want to be there to look at results when it is finished because if there is any issue, at all, I can help problem solve. There were no issues this time, which of course is a great thing.  However, travel began to wear on me and Tuesday I only ran three miles because I was tired.

Wednesday I went over to Waterloo for some drivetrain engineering training. The frustration I had was that I only found out about it Friday afternoon. Sure, give me less notice, and no agenda... Great start. However the actual training was really good. The hard part was watching 1/3 to 1/2 of the small class on their laptops or otherwise disengaged from the lesson. Here are interesting stories from experienced people and we're barely paying attention! The positive side was learning about a number of the innovations my company has had in the past that allowed certain machines to be possible, in particular a tractor that goes 30 mph. Unfortunately I didn't run Wednesday, because I was tired and felt a cold coming on. It may have been my first day off in 32 days, but because I was supposed to run, it feels bad not to.

Thursday and Friday I was in the office, which almost seems like vacation some days.  In fact! You could say I got a present Thursday and Friday! I won't go into details but two giant 8 x 10 foot boxes full of expensive steel assemblies from a potential supplier make for a lot of engineering fun!

I didn't get sick, in fact my runs went really well the end of the week. I did a monster workout Friday five intervals, a total of 5.46 miles in 32:12, within a ten mile run. Then Saturday morning, just 16 hours later I did 21 miles with a huge negative split. Both of those runs were made better by running on Friday with a few people from the local Loras college team and Saturday a couple people from the University of Dubuque. Running partners certainly make running better. In a way much of this year's training has been a struggle for me because I have had the least consistent training partners of any time the last five years. It's amazing how seriously one mile of company on a run makes the other nine miles feel easier.

Saturday I went out for sushi with a couple friends, nothing big, but always nice to do a little socializing. 

So the week ended really well. I was just really beat down in the middle of it, and I've learned that emotional waves usually don't change overnight but go up and down gradually. I mean, I have the best life in the world, and sometimes I just need to be reminded.