I had a weird year. There’s no getting around that. But I also didn’t do as much as I probably should have in the way of creating and developing my product design skills. This one probably won’t have many (if any) pictures or product insights, but I’m hoping to write my way to a conclusion on how to balance life and work with my hobbies that would benefit from increased attention and time dedication.
Excuses Up Front
I spent the spring training for my annual shot at the Open and got a bit hurt. Then I went to the Open and my adventure buddy Korbi sprained his ankle at the end of day 1, so he popped Vicodin (which a man he met on the PCT years ago called “hike-again”) for 2 days until we made it the 35 miles back to the car. A week later, with my friends safely back in their California homes, my car developed a misfire in the Pioneer Mountains about 20 miles from cell service. I nursed it 45 minutes down to the state highway junction where there was 1 bar of service and I could call AAA for a tow back to town. The shop in town couldn’t help me, but a man in Helena (2 hours away) said that he could take a look at it for me 5 days from then. I got a tow up to Helena and spent the day waiting for his conclusion that the engine would need to be torn apart to diagnose the cylinder 4 misfire. He referred me to the engine shop next door, who said they couldn’t look at it for another 2 months.
I had a job to get back to and the car wasn’t worth as much as a new engine, so I started looking at plane tickets. I gave most of my stuff to a friend I don’t deserve, who shipped it all back to Minnesota for me. I rode my bike to the shop in Helena, who at the time were busy fixing the rigs of folks riding the TDR as they rolled through town, and they said they’d ship it home for me when they got the chance. I walked to a diner that was closed and then to a nearby McDonald’s where I checked flight prices. $800 to fly from Helena that evening or $500 any time in the next week. Or if I could get myself to Bozeman, there was a $120 flight the next morning. I told myself that if the uber was less than $250, I’d buy it. It was $200, and I hit the “call” button, assuming it’d take a bit for somebody to be interested in hauling me the 100 miles to Bozeman. 15 seconds later, my phone was telling me to be ready, as my ride would pull up outside the arches any second now.
Jack chain smoked the whole way and regaled me with tales of his many girlfriends over the years and why things hadn’t worked out between them. He also told me about the time he drove a number of blue collar workers 2 hours further than I was asking him to go, so the drive wasn’t all that bad. Throw in the fact that the rest stop by the Super 8 motel by the airport had a diner that he considered of high quality and he said he was actually happy to be talking my ear off and giving my asthmatic ass lung cancer for a couple hours.
Once I got up in the morning and walked the mile and a half to the airport, it was all fairly straightforward. I was back to my life. I went back to work a day or so early. I mailed the title for my car to the garage owner, who presumably scrapped it for the $300. I had told him he could keep the money. I ordered an e-bike conversion kit for my Schwinn to replace my recently deceased Volvo. And I was back in the groove, having expended quite a bit of emotional and physical energy over the 2-ish weeks I was stranded in Montana. What I really needed was some time to decompress. But I had to shop for apartments with my new roommate and move in the next month. I bought a new-to-me Subaru Forester which still hasn’t broken down (always a bonus), and as fall turns to winter, I finally feel like I’m settled back into a bit of a groove. It’s been 5 months.
CHWOT
When I joined Cal’s club triathlon team at the beginning of my sophomore year of college, one of the first things I heard (and one of the only things I would hear over the next few years) was the importance of Consistent Hard Work Over Time. It’s acronymized form is hard to pronounce and harder to look at, but the concept is rock solid. I went from a former high-school athlete who hadn’t really ever done endurance sports to a top-10 contender at our conference races, regularly losing by less than expected to men and women who had earned their pro/elite cards through tenacity and genetic gifts. I never stood out. I still don’t. But they were really the only friends I had on campus, so I showed up to most of the practices and went through the motions 7 times per week and got a hell of a lot better. Bike rides and our team’s Tuesday Tempo runs taught me how much I liked exploring the hills and seeing new places by leg-power, and a few years later, it’s one of the primary focuses of my free time. Train hard to be able to have a good time throwing down 30+ mile hike days or 120+ mile bike days in heinous, beautiful terrain.
Revision
I wanted to title this “revisionism” or “revisionists” or something slightly more melodic, but those apparently have political and historical connotations that don’t fit the meaning I’m going for. Plus, “revisers” sucks. But the 2 people whose art and craft I admire most and whose work I have connected with most deeply over the past half decade are consummate revisers. I admire it. George Saunders worked on “The Semplica Girl Diaries” for a decade before it made me cry with laughter and then again with sadness. And Jason Isbell labors over his songs before running them by his wife and his band who give them the final OK en route to occupying my thoughts for days on end. They both excel at letting their works simmer, and at remaining dedicated to them long after the first or second or fifth draft is “finished.” I’ve heard the 400 unit play songs live that sound nothing like the studio versions, after their years of breathing and evolving on tour have led them to a new word in the pre-chorus or sometimes an entirely new musical genre.
When I had to write papers in college, and usually when I write things for this site, I start by putting as much down as possible, throwing every single idea I have at the page, and then going back through once and cutting whatever seems superfluous or detrimental to the overall message. I justified it in college by arguing to myself that I was an engineering major and the fact that I was writing things which made any sense at all was a real win. I justify it now by arguing to that same, slightly older self that this is a site to showcase my design and construction work, not my literary skills. But those are both sorry excuses for the fact that I hate revising. When I’m done with something, I like being done with it. Maybe it requires a shift in my frame of mind. Almost certainly being done with the first draft doesn’t mean being done.
In a broader sense, I’m writing this because I think revision is as important in design as it is in writing. With a lot of projects, I’m so glad to be finished with them and have something to use/test that I don’t revise them. I have never torn apart a project to add or change a feature. The times that changes are made in designs are in subsequent iterations. My cross-body bag has seen a few changes over the past few years as I’ve made some for friends, and a more drastic change is in the works for this winter. My framies have seen changes as I’ve made them for my multiple bikes. It’s possible that I’m not giving myself enough credit, or as my mother said last week in a different context, “selling myself short.” In reading Dave Chenault’s blog last year, the main thing that stuck out to me was how much making he did. A few years in a row, he built and subsequently dismantled 10+ packs per year. I’ve been fortunate to glean his learnings from the best of them and so maybe I don’t need to do quite as much building, but I should try to close the gap a little bit, I think.
I’m not trying to make excuses or complain that design is hard. I need to revise more. To do that, I need to make more. I struggle to make more than one of something for myself, because if it’s good enough, I’m not going to make another. That feels wasteful. But I can always make for friends or family. Nobody hates getting free stuff that works pretty well and looks half-decent. I’m trying to put this in writing so that when next winter rolls around, I’ll be able to say that this was the turning point. So that when next winter rolls around, I won’t be able to say that there weren’t enough design problems for me to solve or that there wasn’t anything wrong with the things I’d made.
Coming Up
Below is a non-exhaustive list of projects I’d like to get to work on in the next few months. Winter in Minnesota is famously slow and cold and a perfect time to sit in front of your sewing machine and figure shit out.
- Suspension addition/modification for the Open pack
- Framies for Emma’s and Doug’s bikes
- New iteration of the cross-body bag with a stabilizer strap, internal mesh pockets, and hidden body-side pocket (read: not UL)
- Seek Outside Silex Clone with built-in nest (UL 1P silpoly shelter for backpacking in MN with its hellacious bugs)
- Framed pack to be built on frame I stole from an old Jansport external frame pack. Light-ish load hauler
- Fly fishing chest rig for my friend Matt (not that Matt) (not that Matt either) (yeah, the other Matt)
Elliot DH 