Day 204

Well many of you in my circle have complained to me via email or voicemails that I have been MIA of late. My own brother, who I talked to incessantly, left me a message saying “hey, it’s your brother, MD, you remember me?” I’ve been out in Arizona all week for our senior managers meetings and it has been an adventure to say the least. There are 12 of us out here. My company as always puts us up in first class accommodations, at the Phoenician, which was absolutely beautiful. Monday night was a bad dinner and drinks. Tuesday we had meetings all morning, then a golf outing. They took us out to Troon North, which is literally a driver and a 9 iron (hahaha Max) from my in-laws house. When we received our foursomes, I was put with the V.P. of sales and our National sales manager, who is my direct boss. On one hand, I was honored to be placed in their foursome (if you know these two guys, you know they choose who they want to be with and who they don’t), on the other hand, my boss is well known for his “beer a hole” edict and the V.P. of sales is also an interesting cat to say the least. The course was amazing; in the mountains surrounded by 2 plus million dollar homes and amazing views. My golf game needs a little work, but as I told them, I can do everything; it’s just usually not on the same hole. Turns out the head-honcho and I share a similar game, while my boss and my other co-worker gambled throughout. I only had a couple of beers and wasn’t killed for it, and listening to my boss talk shit while betting on his golf game was pretty amusing. Overall, it was a solid experience, a lot of fun, and my score was somewhere North of 100 (can’t reveal). We had reservations at Drinkwater’s City Hall, which is a Mastro’s Restaurant. Steak and Seafood are their specialties. Honestly, I give the food and A+. For a teaser, they brought out two giant seafood towers which included King Crab legs, lobster, shrimp, and clams. They provided us each with our own three sauces, cocktail, the Joe’s stone crab mustard sauce, and horseradish. They told me the horseradish had some bite to it, but I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to experience. Now I am not a hot food guy, but I usually can handle a little spice. I am not joking when I tell you it was the single hottest thing I’ve ever tasted. Immediately, I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. I drank a full glass of water. It was crazy. I wasn’t alone, I saw 5 other guys at the table do the same thing. My dad was Mr. Spicy food, he would have loved this and even he would have said it was hot. We had the Seafood towers, then salad, and then for my entrée I proceeded to bury an 18 oz bone-in filet. It was one of the better pieces of meat I have ever had. We had probably 10 bottles of wine. The whole evening was great. Good people, good eats. We all planned of going out and by the time dinner ended at 11, everyone was literally too stuffed to move.

And then came yesterday. One of the crazier days I have had in a long time. It started off as I had to give my presentation on my accounts and how my role differs from the others. Things went well. After that all of the regionals took there shots at their presentations. The first guy who went, let’s refer to him as “Chatterbox Charlie,” had a classic experience that I won’t soon forget. My man was all over the place, made some silly mistakes, but nothing too serious, but he never stops talking. He ended up talking himself into a corner with the bosses who questioned him. He gave dumbass replies and then the roof caved in on all of us. It became an hour dissertation about how we all suck, have no fresh ideas, and can be easily replaced. Chatterbox Charlie actually then spoke up and said “I don’t appreciate being talked to this way, it doesn’t motivate me.” The rest of us looked at each other and were counting down the seconds until he was clipped. He got reamed badly. He was told that if he doesn’t like it he should quit, this is how things work around here, he should stop feeling sorry for himself and this job and company aren’t for everyone. All I can say is yikes. The rest of the meetings and presentations ended up becoming an exercise in futility. One region got ripped up after the next. Luckily for us, we had an activity scheduled for the afternoon and mercifully it came to an end.

And you think that was hairy? We all get picked up in vans and headed northeast into the mountains for an afternoon of 4 wheel riding. In the van, we all quickly signed these waivers without reading them and jokingly talked about signing our lives away. It was a great time. You have a leader who you follow and you can drive as fast or as slow as you want throughout the rocky terrain. We all were completely covered in dust. I don’t want you to think this was that safe, because as we were riding through the mountainous trails, one wrong turn or hot of a big rock and you could be off a cliff of into a cactus. Probably an hour in, the elder statesmen of the group hit a rock wrong and flipped his bike. I was a few behind him, so we saw came up and saw he was pinned under his bike. We helped him up and he had a huge chunk taken out of his arm. He said he was alright and we patched him up and he was more than ready to continue, but you just had the feeling that something worse was about to happen. The next minor incident we had, a guy lost control of his bike and the bike headed down a mountain, he literally chased after it and saved it from crashing. At the next little break we had to catch everyone up, the tour guide told us to go slower, this would be a very narrow area and we should be careful. I said to the guy next to me “one of our bosses is going to pop a tire and get seriously hurt you know.” Within 3 minutes of that statement, we came upon a major accident. The guy who had lost control of his bike before, hit the side of a rock, spun out of control, and flipped his bike. The guy right behind him, who happened to be the V.P., slammed on his breaks to avoid him, but there wasn’t any room, he rammed into the bike and was thrown off as well. As I drove up to the scene, the V.P. and another guy were standing over my co-worker and he was out cold. We stood there for 5 minutes trying to wake him up. He was breathing, but was unresponsive. 5 minutes later, he came too. He had no recollection of the accident what’s so ever. He was moving his arms and his legs, but was very dizzy. They paramedics were called in. We sat him up and he kept repeating himself? “What happened?” We’d tell him. “Did I wreck the bike?” We’d tell him yes. “I don’t remember a thing” he’d say. Then say again “Do you guys know what happened?” This occurred for 30 minutes before the paramedics arrive. When they arrived, no joke, one of the paramedics got out of his SUV and snapped his ankle. Finally after probably an hour and a half, the helicopter arrived and he was airlifted to the hospital. By this time, the sun was down and it dropped like 20 degrees. We had 20 minutes or so left in the dark to navigate our way back to safety. I’m happy to report that our guy after spending 4 hours in the hospital, made it to the meeting this morning with a huge black and blue make on his thigh and sporting a severe limp. Nothing was broken, just a concussion.

We ended the night in style. 8 of us, not including the two injured guys and the bosses, went to my brother in law Scott’s restaurant Olive and Ivy, at 9, had a great private room and an even better meal. Everyone was raring to go out after dinner and we ended up stumbling on a club called Myst. Now the crew consisted of 6 guys 38-42, all married, and a single guy at 33, and me. Two of the guys clearly wanted no part of it and went home right away. The line to get in was extremely long, but one of the guys with us pulled a Sturch. He duked the guy a C-Note and magically we were all in. We were clearly the oldest guys at the bar, but that didn’t stop us. We closed the club down with a lot of shots, drinks, and laughs watching a couple of guys attempting to dance with women clearly out of their league. The talent in that place was unreal. This is one good looking city that is for sure. I got to sleep around 3:30 and was up by 7 for our meetings. We had a state of the company address which was very encouraging and impressive. We are a very healthy company, up 25% in business this year and heading down the track of being a $700 million company this year. I love working here, but this meeting gave me more reassurance that I’m in the right place. I just woke up from a 3 hour nap and I should be back to normal again.

Lastly, I cannot even begin to discuss the KU loss at home to Oral Roberts this morning. On Monday I will talk about it further. Saturday’s Ohio State/Michigan game may be the biggest game in college football history. My prediction: Ohio State and the Columbus crowd will be way too much for Michigan to overcome. Troy Smith will lead the Buckeyes to a 35-21 victory and a spot in national championship.

Song of the Day: “Crash” by Dave Matthews Band