Cape Town

“When someone’s in their season, you can’t touch them.” – quote from one of the Baltimore Ravens fans in Episode 3 of Tailgate32

Well my week started off pretty lousy when I woke up to hear that the Patriots had lost to the Ravens.

Oddly enough I was thinking of just this quote, and how ironic is it that it comes from a Ravens fan. It’s true though; that notion of being ‘in the zone’ or just ON. Flip the switch.

Then I went to the gym and had something akin to my worst nightmare happen, almost.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. And when it rains, it doesn’t just rain, man …. The skies open up.

This week has been manic for me, with the kickoff of our cross-function al team meetings, a director being in town, trying to spend a good amount of time after CrossFit on mobility in preparation for this weekend’s competition, being literally fully busy with sales, and trying to hire some new staff.

Recruiting is very stressful, and honestly the hardest part isn’t finding good staff, the hardest part is that you can’t hire them all!

I also had the real pleasure of a kickoff company positioning/strategy session with the woman who is doing the content strategy for our new web site, and with a PR firm that we will bring on at some point. I sometimes cannot believe how excited I get over the opportunity that’s out here, but then I get pulled right back to reality by my inbox and the day-to-day.

There is so much work to be done that it would be overwhelming if I thought about it, or if I wasn’t loving it. I love that I can do everything from sales to marketing to reading some Cisco whitepaper full of acronyms like RAN and RAG and EPC and EAP. Well, at least I now at least know MNO, WISPr, and AP by heart. Progress of a sort, I suppose.

It’s like a CrossFit workout where if you think too hard about what’s coming, you’ll screw yourself up in the head. A competition is coming and I am having mixed feelings about it. On the one side I love to compete. On the other side, I absolutely hate it. It’s exhausting, and I don’t mean physically.

But I’m definitely not bored.

Take Tuesday: breakfast with my beautiful friend Sam, customer calls, interview a sales candidate, some business development with a consulting company, more sales, a massive attempt to follow up on things started last week in Joburg, CrossFit, mobility, martial arts, and then partying with rock stars.

Well, if by partying you mean hanging out in the back by the braai to as to avoid the cigarettes & alcohol, then I guess you have it.

As I said, not bored. Quite frankly, after today, a bit giddy with excitement. I think we’re about to add some awesomeness to our team, and I just love our core team. Rudolph says we’re like a family, and this is what Helen said before I joined.

Skyrove’s not a company, it’s a family. I suppose if you’re going to have organisations take on the personality of their leaders I suppose there are worse traits to take on than my excessive dedication and loyalty. It makes me happier than anything to hear that the cross-functional teams, and vision for how we’re moving forward are motivating the technical staff. I can kind of see it, but not ready.

This must be what a coach feels like. I can’t wait to spend more time doing it.

• “It will switch once you are at the starting line” – Chris
• “I just pretended I didn’t hear that. It didn’t make any logical sense so I ignored it.” – Ellie
• “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” – Ellie
• “It’s impossible to be stressed in Cape Town.” – Grant
• “It’s a Ruckus mess.” – Rudolph
• “You have to get over your fear.” – Adam
• “Once people are motivated you can get them to do almost anything.” – Adam
• “Lose work because you’re too expensive.” – Illana
• “You’ve acquired the nickname Chicken Jesus?” – Ellie
• “You realise you’re talking to your complete opposite, right?” – Mike
• “I know what offload means.” – Ellie
• “I’m getting a little emotional.” – Rudolph
• “I’ve seen his house. This will not be a problem.” – Tim
• “I hope it doesn’t involve the Federal Government, although it looks like it could.” – staffer at U.S. Consulate
• “I haven’t met that person yet.” – Grant

Johannesburg

 

 

You should have seen the look my cat gave me when I left Monday. She knows what the suitcase means.

So, a weekend in Cape Town where I mostly worked, as usual, punctuated with some snatch technique practice on Saturday morning, Sunday hike up Lion’s Head with, and Sunday brunch with Rika in Camps Bay. It’s nice to have open gym back! I’m starting to do more video analysis of myself to see what exactly is happening on my Olympic lifts. Sometimes you catch things you already knew, and sometimes you learn new things.

But this week is really all about Johannesburg. It was less manic than my last few trips, because I was up there for most of the week and so rather than trying to pack four meetings into a day it was only doubles and triples. Good stuff though.

There was this one meeting that was a bit amusing in retrospect because I don’t really attach too much importance to any one meeting but still when it starts off on a less-than-positive note where someone starts off by joking that he doesn’t know why he’s in the room, then winds up being the most engaged in the discussion … well, just from a human interaction standpoint those things are fun. You’re not going to win them all, but if I said it wasn’t partly about the winning I’d be lying.

So since I can’t really talk about what I did in Joburg, I can talk about my feelings about it. I may or may not have called it something along the lines of a ‘charmless’ place. Some parts of it are, to be fair. And just like the Bay Area, the traffic is lousy!

But there are many lovely aspects: the farmland on the drive to and from Lanseria, the thunderstorms in the afternoon, the jacarandas in the spring … but you know what else? It’s actually the feel of the place. It has a certain energy to it, and a dynamism, that’s only befitting the commercial capital of South Africa and probably sub-Saharan Africa.

Driving around Sandton is intimidating as anything because the drivers are aggro like Miami, intersections aren’t well labelled in advance, all the roads are 3-5 lanes wide, and at rush hour they are packed, so if you’re in the wrong lane and you miss a turn, you’re literally looking at a 15-20 minute delay, which is not something that my normal schedule can accommodate. But once you learn the roads, and there really aren’t THAT many, you’re in much better shape.

Yes, I’ve moved from being one of those clueless drivers annoying everyone else to one of the ones who ignores the GPS when it gives you a stupid way to go and gets annoyed at the other drivers for not knowing where they are going.

I think adapting to training at altitude will take longer, if it ever happens at all given how relatively infrequently I’m up there. The altitude of Joburg is 5,751 feet. It lies in a plateau area called the Highveld, for obvious reasons, although there are much higher mountains elsewhere in the country. That’s about midway between the altitude of Denver and of Colorado Springs, where you all may recall my brush with hilarious ineptitude at a couple of boxes there when I was visiting Susan a few months back.

So it’s a similarly uncomfortable experience to train at CrossFit Platinum. I row 200m and I’m winded. I am doing something that is not even that cardio-intensive and I’m panting for breath. But on the flip side, I really like the people there. Firstly, they are nice, and secondly they are welcoming: most of the girls who I know gave me a big hug when they first saw me, and the guys I know were a bit more teasing, as they tend to be. In all honesty, too, it’s great to be training with not one but three females, each of whom can conceivably kick my ass on any given workout. Developing deeper relationships with Beatrix, David, and some of the others is also great.

I was even a little bit sad to get back to Cape Town, strangely enough. There may or may not be some weekend stays in Joburg in my future. Got over that very rapidly when I got back into my normal routine of picking up groceries and heading to Cape CrossFit for open gym.

There, I got a lesson in paying attention. I was laughing at myself later, because when I woke up I just wanted to get to work and didn’t really feel like going to practice snatching even though I love Olympic lifting and the snatch in particular, but I just wasn’t in the mood. I wanted to work, and train later in the day, but that’s not how it works.

So I get there, and I’m warming up, and Chris asks me what I’m going to do, so I tell him, and he says well if he has time he should watch me and give me some tips or I can talk to this new coach who’s interning and is good with the Olympic lifts.

Now the important thing to note at this point is that I was not in a mood to be coached. I just kind of wanted to get in there, do my thing, video tape myself, but basically be left alone. And Olympic lifting is one of those things, different coaches can have such different approaches, it’s amazing, I was actually a little bit worried that this new dude would teach me yet another conflicting approach. Long-winded way of saying, I wasn’t expecting too much.

Long story short, I’m still reeling a bit. Let’s just say, I was impressed. My first full power clean after we’d been working on some things very nearly hit me in the forehead it flew so high up with so little effort. I’m not making this up, it was caught on video. So. I look forward to what happens next. It’s certainly not every day that a hot new coach shows up unexpectedly, and we have another one arriving this week. 2013 is all of a sudden looking very interesting.

In other news, the competition season diet is doing what it was intended to. Nearly all the excess weight from the travel, holidays, etc. is gone. It feels good to be healthy. I just remember that every time I want one of the things I’m not meant to be eating.

It’s also good to exercise that willpower muscle. Now to apply it to getting enough sleep. This actually hasn’t been hard, given the amount of stress … I get to 10pm and I can’t function mentally any longer.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Can’t get burned out. That’s a goal, not a mantra. Maybe a little of both.

Next weekend is my first competition since the injury. As Kim said: you either go into competitions to win, or to have fun. He’s a wise one.

• “Never be sloppy.” – Rika
• “You have interesting times ahead for you, Ellie.” – Helen
• “I think how you train is how you compete.” – Beatrix
• “This conversation, I can almost guarantee you, is happening elsewhere.” – Fred
• “You’re sitting on a gold mine here.” – Willem   
• “More than some so-called big players.” – Kian
• “Let the chips fall where they may.” – Paul
• “If you’re going to do toes-to-bar, your toes have to touch the bar.” – Julian 
• "You'd better be careful what you promise me." – Ellie

San Francisco, New York, and London

“Users don’t know what your tech back-end looks like. Focus instead on getting the user experience right.” – Vinicius Vacanti

After an underwhelming Wild Card weekend and a gloomy stay in Seattle, I was looking forward to my day in California.

This place really feels like home! Maybe because it once was.

It also feels exotic as anything. I don’t think I’d be nearly so interested in photographing downtown Palo Alto or Mountain View if I lived here.

Monday morning, my whirlwind tour started off with a breakfast with Vinny, who I think works harder than I do (if that’s possible), and Michael, who I think might possibly care about Skyrove just as much as I do (if that’s possible).

We actually did make it up to San Francisco for a meeting followed by lunch with my parents, the last time I’m going to see them for a while. Afterwards we headed back down to the Valley. San Francisco feels like a bit of a detour for me when I’m staying in that part of the world. But then again, I’m apparently a regular: I knew how to get to Cathleen’s house without GPS, and from Cathleen’s to downtown Palo Alto without hitting the highway (which doesn’t move).

Seriously, heck with the traffic. I can see why people bike to work. After a quick visit to possibly my favourite person yet in the Wi-Fi industry, we went to the offices of another one of my favourite people. Zach became even more in my favour when I discovered that he repairs and races cars in his spare time. Well, he has to make up for not liking football somehow.

In all seriousness, though, after taking an hour to bring Michael up to speed on what I already know, which I joke about but was a useful refresher for me on the details, we did a bit of a technical dive and nearly put him to sleep. But I had to understand how the thing actually worked.

It’s like puzzle pieces. Scratch that: it IS puzzle pieces. And along the way I’m making some friends. I can’t wait for London in June! The next WBA conference is going to be completely different from the first one. Including the martinis. Especially the martinis.

Dinner with a wider crew was good fun, and included a pretty expansive talk about internet privacy, and who we trusted less: Google or Facebook. It was very interesting to watch the boys debate.

I unfortunately had to leave before dessert, which gave me a good excuse to leave before dessert, to catch my red eye back to JFK. SJC is the CPT of Bay Area airports: you get in and out quickly and easily, and it’s clean and modern. The flight itself was less fun for me because I was busy writing followups to the meetings earlier in the day and couldn’t get myself to sleep until it was so late that I only got about four hours of sleep before we landed.

New York was cold! I did the whole AirTrain to subway thing, and then what was supposed to be a quick errand took several hours. Story of the week, actually. Afterwards, too exhausted to be feeling much of anything other than exhausted, I realised that it was now a much warmer day so I took a walk of about twenty blocks up to the Bloomberg offices to meet a new friend, who was kind enough to let me crash on her couch for the night, and hang out on her Wi-Fi in the afternoon. The Bloomberg offices were a trip, it was kind of surreal, and a strange combination of Wall Street trading floor and TV studio.

We went for an awesome dinner and talk. I will say one thing for this lovely lady: she is driven. Confident, fearless, competent, and with a purpose. Oh, and did I mention she’s gorgeous? But so super awesome that I’m not sure you could hate her. Unless, of course, she was your boss and you were a slacker. I love people like this, the sort that just radiate enthusiasm and make you want to be better.

A five-hour nap later I was at JFK, waiting in probably the longest series of lines I’ve ever had to wait in for check in, then for security. I was so tired in fact that by the time I got to the plane, I drank my large coffee and immediately fell asleep. Yes I was that tired.

What happened next was a new one for me, in all my years of long haul travel. When we were about 45 minutes away from landing, they announced that due to electrical problems at Heathrow, we were landing at Gatwick to refuel. I am not sure what actually happened. They told us that there were electrical problems at Heathrow and no planes were taking off or landing, but my new friend’s friend was taking off from Heathrow while we were sitting on the ground at Gatwick and still being told Heathrow was down for the count. By the time we had refuelled and been given the go ahead to go to Heathrow, the plane had to be de-iced, then we had to wait for a tow out, and then we had to watch the safety video again because we’d been in the ground more than an hour. All told, we were 2.5 hours late to Heathrow and by the time we arrived many of us, I think about 40 people total, had missed our various connecting flights.

The girl sitting next to me, Natalia, was literally in tears because this delay was causing her to miss her friend’s wedding. Adding insult to injury, she had just flown from London to New York the day before. Why? Because her flight was JFK-CPT round trip with a stop in London. Since she was already in London she wanted to skip the first leg of her trip, but the airline wouldn’t let her do that and said doing so would invalidate the entire ticket, and that she must board in New York. So she spent $500 on a plane ticket to go across the Atlantic back to New York, only to have this happen to her.

Airlines and their stupid rules. I probably would have been in tears too. As it was, I just had to re-arrange two days worth of meetings. Sub-optimal, but acceptable.

The airline put us up in a hotel overnight, but since we were so late to arrive we were never fed dinner either on the plane or at the hotel. That made me a bit unhappy. Involuntary intermittent fasting.

The next morning I ate half the buffet, probably, before catching up on email. Natalia and I went into the city for lunch with her friend and a quick tour of the Natural History Museum beforehand. I was, in the meantime, enthralled with the free public Wi-Fi in the Underground. It’s so cool. Once you connect, it only works in the stations but because the transit time between is relatively quick in Central London you send your email and then it syncs when you get to the next station. Same goes for web pages you try and load from Twitter.

I was similarly enthralled with my meeting that afternoon, pretty literally right across the street from the old, and I think current, Ask Jeeves offices. My old stomping grounds! It was very exciting. So was the unexpected film crew, a bunch of cats from Ruckus Wireless. It kind of made my day when I landed in Cape Town and saw that not only had Ruckus tweeted about me, but it was a hell of a compliment. CrossFitters, this would be the like the guys from Rogue complimenting you on your technique or something. Or Carl Paoli telling you that you resemble a Games athlete he coaches.

So thank you, Virgin Atlantic. Also thanks to the airline for letting us check our bags around noon time for an evening flight. Normally you can’t check bags until check-in opens. Maybe this was because Heathrow is Virgin’s hub or maybe the U.S. rules are more restrictive. Either way, it was super convenient.

Finally landed in Cape Town, to a not-too-hot day. Normally I sleep well on long-haul flights but for some reason, this time I didn’t. They let me back in the country although I had a brief scare at immigration when the lady wanted ‘proof’ that I worked for the company my work permit said I did. I do have such proof on my laptop but  my battery was dead. She asked how she could get proof so I told her she could call the South African Consulate in New York who had granted the permit. Clearly this was too much trouble so she let me in. Gotta love it.

I didn’t start this post with that quote above for no reason. Here’s the thing: simple is good. Best of breed is good. A lot of things are good. But you know what? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Customers don’t care how the sausage gets made.

They just want good sausage.

• “$3 an hour! That’s crazy!” “No, that’s San Francisco!” – Michael & Ellie
• “It’s sort of a non-architecture architecture strategy.” – Steven
• “Now I see why you said he was so interesting!” – Michael
• “192.168.1.1 is way over most people’s heads.” – Zach
• “As much as they’re watching me, I’m watching them!” – Vinny
• “You're the second person to actually read that – you are meant to just sign and not read it. Really, you have too much time on your hands. I suggest you take a sport like Cross Fit.” – Mike
• “You understood it!” – Marjorie
• “I’m on about day 10 right now so I should be feeling pretty good right about now.” – Ellie

Seattle

Why was I in Seattle? I was in Seattle because my parents were there for a convention and I kinda followed them, by which I mean I totally followed them.

While there, I got a chance to see my friend Katie, who I met in Boston, and who is now a rowing coach at the University of Washington (pronounced ‘You-Dub’). I was just incredibly exhausted and unmotivated the entire time I was there. I wasn’t sure why, maybe rapid onset Seasonal Affective Disorder, but when I woke up on Sunday with a bite of a sore throat it was clear that I was coming down with something.

Still, it was nice to see some of my parents’ friends and people who hadn’t seen me since I was a toddler! Wow a lot has changed since then.

Heck, a lot has changed in a year. Katie and I went out Friday night to see the new movie Les Miserables. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t seen the musical since high school so I am not sure how the movie compared. It was good theatre, certainly, but there was this one scene that really struck me: when the rich were being very nearly assaulted, while in their carriages, by the beggars. It reminded me for all the world of South Africa. The difference, of course, being the skin colour of the people banging on the windows, and the fact that we now have windows. Barriers.

It’s easy to be an ostrich. But then again, life is hard enough without making other people’s problems yours. I’m glad I’m not Minister of Education, for one thing.

So the next morning I took Katie to CrossFit Seattle, which happened to have ‘bring a friend day’ on that day. We were given a 15 minute AMRAP that was kind of ridiculous because it was a zoo, and I also wouldn’t have put the exercises together the way they did but whatever. To make it more challenging I decided to use a men’s weight mall for the wall balls and an 11 foot target. That was a bit more challenging than when I was using the women’s ball and a 9 foot target at Ballistix and threw the ball through the ceiling. Well, a Ballistix gym isn’t christened until I’ve knocked out a ceiling tile.

Haha. Later on I had the very strange experience of stroking a tortie cat through a window, followed by seeing a giant troll, then on to a sports bar to not drink beer but rather watch football. The game, Texans vs Bengals, was kind of a blow out, and the second game which I hoped would be better was not. But my then I was saved from the misery of watching yet another Vikings loss (but yay for Aaron Rodgers!) by a lovely dinner with my parents and some friends of theirs, followed by the convention parties. Classicists, apparently, like to drink. They also like to talk loudly. I think my general sense of humour failure was caused by my strange exhaustion, so my mother and I went back to the room pretty early in the evening.

The next morning: breakfast, shopping, the end of wild card game number 3, this one a win by the Ravens over the Colts, and Katie then picked me up so we could watch the final playoff game of the weekend: the Washington Redskins vs the Seattle Seahawks (hence the “12^th man” flag on the Space Needle). The Redskins have a hot young quarterback who goes by the awesome moniker of RG3 and works his tail off, reminding me of Tom Brady, but he was also injured. This game looked like another blowout in the making with the Seahawks down 14-0, but they fought back to win decisively. Very exciting!

The mile walk back to the car made us a bit late to pick up my parents but we were on time to the airport where we had a great experience with Southwest. Southwest also made my “non-shit list” by allowing two free checked bags on a domestic flight.

We arrived late into Oakland and I picked up my rental car, a Ford something or other. Actually quite a nice car. Like I might buy that car nice. Can hardly believe I’m writing this about an American car, but I’m a big fan.

Seattle also drove home to me some of the challenges of the industry of which I am now a part, when I actually turned off Wi-Fi on my phone because it was causing me so many problems. That was an eye-opener, but hey, a problem is an opportunity in disguise.

For some reason though I was just in a gray mood. The weather didn’t help, nor did the cold.

What was pretty awesome? Seeing an old friend again, getting some rowing coaching & cues, and I’m looking forward to watching her succeed in her new role.

There’s nothing quite like success at something you love. That’s one of the fun things for me about business, and one of the things that keeps me coming back to CrossFit. OK yeah I hate the times when it humbles me (just makes me want to be better), but what I really love is learning new things and actually applying them, and those rare moments when you can do something you couldn’t do before.

The other thing this made me think of is how you establish credibility in a new role. I guess the generic answer is that you can only really ever do your best. Call me crazy but if you try too hard you usually fail because you’re tense, or you create some sort of unrealistic expectation. I suppose at the end of the day people either like you or they don’t, and they trust you or they don’t, and they respect you or they don’t.

Still, who doesn’t set out to impress?

So, on to Silicon Valley, for the first time in 2013.

• “I’d pay not to have to eat gummy bears.” – Mom
• “I went to the philosophy one last week and this one is an orgy by comparison.” – Erik
• “I’m not even going to call it a bromance because he makes Wang gay.” – Katie
• “My first crossgym workout!” – Katie
• “I get two gigs on my phone!” – Katie
• “Only beaten dogs lie on the floor.” – Jim
• “I love the part of your personality that makes you brag about being strong.” – Katie
• “I trusted them enough to get on the RV.” – Ellie
• “You favour your mother.” – guy at the bar