Tough Decisions

February 23, 2016 ~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ 2 Comments

Al Allen, from what I recall, is not a tall man. By my junior year in high school his thinning black widow’s peak stopped just above my shoulder. He had the paunch of a man in his 50s that crept past his belt and had a way of picking up ink from the white board on the wall as he moved back and forth across the room.

He addressed us by barking last names, or nicknames, or grossly phonetic caricatures of Christian names, but almost never what our parents had in mind. In my class was Peanut, Giraffe, Steed, and Pa-owl-la, among others. I remember him being a kind of excitable little man who routinely yelled at us to “shut up.”

He also had the uncanny ability to appeal to a roomful of comatose, bleary eyed sixteen year-olds and make trigonometry absolutely fascinating.

Here’s Matt working out one of life’s tough decisions: one more lap or the hot tub?

Al’s (we called him Al) uncouth approach to instruction was disarming. After a lifetime of tutelage-through-obedience, this class offered an early glimpse of how fun and important learning through collaboration and mutual respect can be. In less than a semester I went from never actually quite learning my multiplication tables to deciding to study math in college.

I can think of two other teachers who’ve shaped me this much, but I can only remember a single lesson from his class. Of course what I remember has nothing to do with math.

A² (sometimes we called him A² ) also coached the basketball team. If he was a good math teacher, then he was a great basketball coach, apparently, and saw numerous players progress to the NBA over 21 years at the helm of the team. That role blurred with teaching. He brought energy from the court to the classroom, and acted as a mentor for players who might not have guidance elsewhere. His office was usually occupied by a student athlete working on homework or studying between classes.

I overhead a conversation once between Coach Al and a girl who was unsure of whether or not to try out for the varsity team. She’d played as a freshman and a sophomore, but didn’t know whether she wanted the additional commitment of a varsity sport.

“What do you mean you’re not sure?” he asked her. “It’s not up to you right now. You haven’t made the team yet, so don’t worry about it. Try out, and if you make it, then you can worry about all that.”

I understood, at the time, that she was a shoe in for the team, but he was right. She didn’t really have an option yet.

I’m not planning on trying out for a basketball team any time soon, but the advice holds up. It’s easy to stop short of applying for a job because you’re not sure if you’ll like it, or not looking at grad school because you don’t really want to move, or to not strike up a conversation with that girl at the coffee shop on the off chance that she’s boring.

But by walking away from something before you apply yourself, you’re making a decision that isn’t yours to make. No matter how good you are, how smart, or how attractive, if you assume that you’re a good fit, then you’re probably not.

Most of us have something on the horizon that we think we’d like to do, but aren’t really sure. It’s easy to talk ourselves out of taking a crack at it just for that reason: we’re not totally sure. Maybe the timing is wrong, or we don’t have all the information, or we’re still figuring out what it is that we really want.

The fact of the matter is that until you’ve got an offer, it’s really not up to you. All you can do is put your head down and try, an worry about some of the logistics later.

You might just find that having hard decisions to make is a good thing.

Balancing Reward

February 9, 2016 ~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

“It’s really not as hard as people think,” he said. Two ice cubes floated in amber liquid and clinked against the rim of the glass. He held it between his thumb and middle finger, and punctuated every point with an index finger that he brandished like a foil.

“The secret to happiness,” he said for the third or fourth time since I’d wandered to this archipelago of half a dozen people at the fringe of a crowded party, “is simply to lower your expectations.”

The party was several years ago, I think in Chicago, or California or somewhere, but I found myself thinking about it again as I hiked through boottop powder the other day for another short lap of skiing through excellent snow.

The day before skiing I’d hoped to make it a big day. My usual morning routine involves hitting snooze until the last possible moment, groping in the dark for clean socks, nearly forgetting boots/skins/poles/skis, and leaving the house with neither food nor water (requiring a gas station or grocery stop on the way to the trailhead).

But this time I laid out my gear after dinner and got to bed early. I had snacks and water already packed, and even found my repair/first aid kit. When the alarm went off at 0530 I think I only hit snooze two or three times.

Eight hours later my skis whispered across the snow on a climb back to the top of our short run. It was already after lunch and we’d skied multiple hundreds of vertical feet. It was clear that we would not be hiking anywhere near the 10,000 vert that I’d prepared for the night before.

No one seemed to mind. The unspoken routine in this group of ski partners is for everyone to meet around 7am with an idea of where we’d each like to go. Over coffee and bacon burritos we’ll discuss the weather of the last few days, the avalanche report if it’s recent, any time constraints, and the disparity of our relative gumption. We’ll hem and haw for a while, and by 8 usually have a pretty good idea of where we’re headed and what kind of day it will be.

By the time we consolidate vehicles we’re all on the same page and have a good feel for the social dynamic before we even slip into boots. The morning after I’d laid out my gear and prepared like you’re supposed to, we decided the conditions ruled out steep terrain and settled on a day of conservative tree skiing.

A morning tradition like this sets the tone for good communication and safety. It does not, however, set the tone for doing anything ambitious. The tree skiing the other day was really quite good. We found soft snow blowing in to lee aspects and that wind slabs were easy to avoid. We had a good time and told a lot of jokes.

What we didn’t do was stand on top of anything noteworthy. We didn’t descend anything exciting. Really, nothing we did was worth writing about at all.

When we decided on a plan over coffee and sausage gravy, we categorically rejected expectations for the day. There was no angst about whether or not we’d succeed, because there was no stated goal. There was no risk, because there was no bet. There were simply a few friends wandering around in the woods cracking jokes and skiing powder.

Balancing reward and risk below the East Couloir on Grey Wolf Peak.

There’s nothing wrong with cracking jokes and skiing soft snow in the same way that there’s nothing inherently wrong in whiling away your working years without risk or creative endeavor. But the unstated foundation of the idea that happiness is got with lowered expectations is that happiness itself is mutually exclusive with ambition.

I don’t know if I agree. I do think that it’s worth thinking about. Recall Annie Dillard’s warning that “how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.”

A day of low stress fun with friends is a beautiful thing, but a life without creative expression is heartbreaking. The daily balance of reward and risk extends beyond our morning routine. It’s the foundation for how we will have lived our lives.

Nutrition Tips for the Dirtbag Athlete

February 2, 2016February 2, 2016 ~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

Many of you have made your way to this site out of a shared passion for being outside. We share a zeal for crisp October mornings, in light snow and in coffee before dawn. In starry desert nights, in finally sending your project, and in cold beers with good friends after a long day on the trail.

But getting to the end of a long day in the mountains means, well, that you need to make it to the end of the day. You can have all the right gear and great fitness, but to survive a 10,000 foot day of ski touring, you need to eat right.

And in the spirit of the other week’s primer on setting skintracks, I’d like to offer a few nutrition tips on how best to keep your energy up for the long day ahead:

Finish your buddy’s breakfast – Nothing says “I’m really looking forward to having my life entirely in your hands this afternoon” like asking, “are you going to finish that?” while you’re topping off the tank before the trailhead. This is most effective after not ordering breakfast yourself, and mentioning that you ate at home. In the awkward time between the last refill of coffee and paying the check, start picking at stray hashbrowns on your partner’s plate and go from there.
Bacon by the pound – There’s a strong correlation between towns with good skiing and towns with hipster grocery stores. There’s also a strong correlation between hipster grocery stores and food buffets that charge by the pound. When confronted with a by-weight eatery, the intrepid dirtbag knows better than to waste precious grams on things like potatoes, condiments, and vegetables.
Pepperjack cheese is often overlooked as a staple.

In Missoula, at the Good Food Store, the hot bar price is $7.50 per pound, regardless of what’s on your plate. Well, my friends, that hot bar has bacon on it, and bacon is hard to come by raw for much less than $7.50/lb. Load up on cooked bacon at a discount, and if you can’t finish it with breakfast, be sure to lay in stores of pocket-bacon for a pre-lunch snack.
Hostess – The great staple of poor athletes: Hostess. The first time I rode my bike more than 100 miles, it was actually 135 miles. I was about 19, inexperienced, and riding with much stronger companions. The only way I survived to collapse into my tent was with the gratuitous ingestion of Hostess Fruit Pies and gas station burritos. In 2012 Hostess Brands faced bankruptcy and liquidated warehouses of product. Those savvy consumers in the audience stocked up when the market was hot.
Gels – Gels go by many names: gel, gu, etc. They are generally vile, but do offer a couple of real benefits. They’re an excellent proxy for how tired you are; if the gel tasted good, and maybe you’d like another, then you are very, very tired. The marketing departments will tell you that their proprietary blend of simple carbohydrates and electrolytes is easy your stomach and will keep you energized to perform your best; the scientists will tell you that that’s what PopTarts are for. Never pay for gels. They can be found slowly coagulating in the bottom of of every 10k race packet on earth, next to the car wash coupons and safety pins.
PB&J – Gels can snatch you from the depths of hypoglycemic despair, but there’s a limit to what the soul can endure. Better men that me have been fundamentally broken by diets too rich in “sports product.” The bread and butter of the dedicated dirtbag athlete is, literally, bread and butter. Peanut butter, that is, with a little jelly and, (if you’re feeling fancy) some banana. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich is as simple and reliable as it is time tested. More first ascents have been powered by PB&Js than by any other food source^{[citation needed]}, so throw a couple in your pocket and hit the trail.
Michelada – The dreamers among us know that no today can beat the promise of tomorrow, and it’s important to be well rested and ready for the next big thing. For proper recovery, I recommend a specifically tuned blend of electrolytes, carbohydrates, and the anti inflammatory properties of alcohol: The Bud Light Michelada. It’s spicy, it’s refreshing, it’s technically got vegetables. You earned it, so crack one on the drive home.

I Love Craigslist

January 26, 2016 ~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

Several months ago I was indulging in one of my favorite morning rituals. I had a piping hot cup of coffee, and before the rigors of the work day took hold I spent a few minutes nipping at the crema on top of my americano while I scrolled through Craigslist.

I love Craigslist.

I wasn’t looking for anything in particular; I almost never am. It’s very rare that I buy something on there. But there’s something exciting about wading through tomes of other peoples’ refuse on the off chance that a gem pops up. It’s the same impulse that drove thousands of young men to California and Alaska in search of gold. It’s the same impulse that drove many of you to buy a Powerball ticket in the face of impossible odds. It was the impulse that brought me to The Patriot.

There’s a lot of crap on Craigslist. A quick search turns up old stereo systems and gaming consoles, parts of aluminum ladders, and a finger skateboard (remember Tech Decks?). There’s certainly no shortage of old, rusted, unreliable vehicles that eager sellers are waiting to pawn off onto the next unsuspecting sap. By all rights, a rust bucket of a ’97 F-250 and a much older camper fit that description.

Fist sized holes have rusted through the wheel wells and there are cigarette burns on the upholstery. The stereo doesn’t work and the brakes rub. The camper used to leak, and I suspect that it still kind of does. It smells like a $40 motel room. The headlights allow for a safe nighttime velocity of about 45 mph. But the tires are still good and the engine purrs, and for $1,500 it was too good a deal to say no. I scrambled out the door like the prospectors of ’49 and by lunchtime held the keys to my brand new home away from home.

This is not a blog post about the untold possibilities of life on the road or a buyer beware horror story of inherited automotive woes. There’s time for all that. This is the story of the more than 100 MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) that were stuffed into every cabinet of the camper.

The MREs were mentioned briefly in the ad, but the extent of their volume didn’t sink in until after I got home. Almost every cubic inch of storage space in the camper was filled with plastic packets of beef stroganoff and vegetarian omelettes, and in order to store anything at all I would have to get rid of the meals. After brief consideration it was clear that I had no choice but to list them to the Craigslist barter section.

I could have listed them for cash, or laid them in with the barrels of water and cases of ammunition that I keep in the basement for when Ben Carson is elected President and the Canadians take the opportunity invade. But that didn’t seem in the spirit of what I thought was a bonus to the camper purchase. And really, Craigslist is like a throwback to the markets of Constantinople with the database indexing capabilities of today. It’s the greatest social experiment of our time, if we only choose to make it so.

So here’s how the ad read:

100+ MREs for trade – all offers welcome (missoula)

I recently acquired more than 100 government issue MREs (by honest means, I swear!). At first I was just going to sell them, but then thought the barter section is a better bet.

Here’s your chance to stock the bug out bag, sponsor a boy scout camp out, or host the gnarliest eating contest the 3am paid programming slots has ever seen. you can even mail them to those knuckleheads in Oregon if you want.

Assorted entrees, all offers considered.

I think the typos really sold it.

It may be my prejudices showing through, but I thought that the kind of people who make a habit of perusing the Craigslist barter section and are piqued by more than 100 MREs would have something interesting to say. It turns out that prejudices are hard won. Here is an incomplete list of things that I have been offered in the last few days:

An antique Sears Roebuck chainsaw
Aluminum ramps for loading an ATV into a truck
A 50cc Suzuki motorcycle (ran when it was parked!)
Other antique chainsaws
Granite counter tops for my kitchen and/or bathroom
A large variety of firearms
A larger quantity of ammunition
Advice that my perceived value of the MREs is greatly inflated (with citations)
A 1991 Pontiac Firebird (engine and transmission are included, but not installed)
A mounted ram’s head

I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the rest of this plays out. And if you know anyone looking to trade in preparation for the apocalypse, be sure to send ’em my way, I’m still taking offers!

At the Heart of Angst

January 12, 2016January 26, 2016 ~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

“I think I’m ready to get a dog,” I told my mother. “And plant a garden. I think I’m ready for tomatoes.”

The time I spent in Latin America was formative in the way that only travelling alone can be. It was an opportunity to party with Belgians, sip mezcal with smugglers in a candlelit bar, and smoke Cuban cigars on the roof while volcanoes spewed lava under a full moon. I read Hemingway and Dosdoyevsky and watched pirated DVDs of shit TV when I was too sick to hold a book. It was a chance to be in a kind of social vacuum, away from friends and family, to look at what I like and who I want to be. After six months I found that I wanted to be at home.

When I got off a plane in Seattle, my hair was greasy and long. I had dirt underneath my fingernails, and what clothes I still had with me were stained or torn. I smelled very bad and had dozens of dollars to my name. Half a year as a trekking guide in Guatemala left me weary from the road and ready to put down roots.

For a while I was happy to build a life in a little mountain oasis with a dog and a row of tomatoes, but a few years later I quit a good job to drive to Mexico for a while. The garden had mostly failed, and the dog seemed happy to come along.

In the car I had good company and a folding chair and a long book, but the expectations of the trip were different from my time in Guatemala. I wasn’t so much looking for anything in particular so much as the experience of being on the road. Of moving every day and not thinking beyond what kind of ceviche we might have after a nap.

A nomadic inclination is natural, I think, for humans. Ten thousand years ago we wandered across the Bering Straight after game. Pre-Christian civilizations spanned Eurasia, Colonial Europeans mapped the globe, and two centuries ago new settlers trickled westward across a continent already claimed by a different sect of wanderers. Restlessness is as fundamental a part of the human experience as oral history and sharing fire.

But it’s not quite as simple as that, because we’re also driven to stay put and build. We discovered the wheel, and the written word flourished in the relative calm of agrarian society. Whether we’re piling sticks for a shelter or cultivating a field for grain or engineering a high rise apartment, what sets humankind apart is our industry and our drive to improve our place.

That disparity is at the heart of angst.

Not that long ago I drove through Idaho with the dog. The radio didn’t work and cell coverage was a distant memory. I was simply alone with a panting companion. At a gas station in Ketchum a man well into his 40s came to the passenger window, and the dog woke from a nap to greet him.

“Just you and your buddy, huh?” he asked. A Volkswagon van has a way of inviting conversation. The man drove a fifty thousand dollar Chevrolet, and in the back seat his young son was spreading chocolate ice cream across the upholstery. He looked through the van and saw the bits of camping gear spread out. He saw ski boots and a propane stove and a broken paperback, and his eyes glazed over with a kind of longing or instantaneous regret for every decision he’d made in his life. He wanted to talk about the van.

What he didn’t see was that I was sick. My eyes watered and my throat bled, and the van didn’t start when I turned the key. There was no bed in the back. I’d been sleeping alone in the desert, but never more than a few hours a night. There was sand in my toothbrush. I didn’t know if the engine was blown, or if the problem was electrical. If I needed a jump or a new battery or if the starter had finally gone. I did know that I didn’t have the money to fix it and that even under the best conditions the only place I wanted to be was still a day’s drive away. That I longed for a comfortable pickup truck with air conditioning and a good radio and that cruised at 80 miles an hour on the highway.

A man’s eyes turn desperate when he’s been on the road for too long, but if he sits still they soften and let the spark die out. I’m not exactly sure how we’re supposed to spend our time, but maybe that’s the point.

The Gentleman at Large

Keeping an eye on the forest.

essay

Tough Decisions

Balancing Reward

Nutrition Tips for the Dirtbag Athlete

At the Heart of Angst