Was it Worth it?

Ive been doing some reflecting again...

As I'm sure Ive mentioned before, throughout my life, I seem to have repeatedly and reliably chosen a path of greater experience over greater wealth. Which is to say that Ive made choices that have sacrificed my financial gain in favour of my experiential gain.
And, if asked why I believe Id have always said that the intent has been "self improvement" as a higher priority than wealth.
And there are plenty of people who would have made a more or less opposite choice believing wealth to be of higher value since it can be translated at any time into "opportunities for personal growth" at will... And again there are plenty of other people who would have chosen entirely other paths like fame and power and friends and family etc etc etc... There are a large list of human motivations and every one of us makes our own "priority list" of them and applies them to our life choices in our own special ways :)

Right but to get to the point of this post... After 50 years of making my choices in more or less the same way, the question arises... Was it Worth it?

Which is essentially asking what have I achieved with my choices that I would not have achieved other-wise? But that of course is a very difficult thing to assess sine we can each only live one set of choices... We cant know with any real confidence what turns our lives would have taken if we'd made even a single significant life choice differently let alone half a century of accumulated life choices... No real surprise there though.

However, in direct comparison to the "other" contender for choices that I mentioned, the "cost" of my choices is actually easier to measure in a probably not too inaccurate a way... My choices have very likely reduced my accumulated net worth by between $500K and a million dollars (over the course of a 25 year career in engineering). And of the other choices of "priority structure" I have no idea how to measure the differences???

... But are there any real "choices" for any of us anyway???... We are who we are and it seems to me that our individual "priority structures" stem largely from our personalities and then get somewhat molded by our experiences through life... But we don't really get to choose our personalities or even as far as I can tell to make any real changes to them anyway.
Which is to say,  I cant think of anyone who Ive ever met who has "changed" in any significant way during their life... ever!

... And, I'm a perfect example to look at... because I'm a case that self declares as having generally prioritized experience and growth opportunities in my life... Sure there are plenty of people who take those sort of choices a lot further than I do but as a "moderate" example, I would hope that after 50 years of trying it, I would have achieved some measurable "growth" or change!

But, I don't think I can...
Now of course I feel that I am very much the same me as Ive always been; as Ive always felt... That's what everyone feels about themselves I expect... Its kind of the definition of "being"... a continuous stream of consciousness, yes?
But what I mean is that I don't think Ive changed my personality in any chosen direction. And nore do I feel that Ive done anything at all of any significance that affects other people or the world in any way that's any different from anyone else.
And if that's the case, then whats the point of "collecting" all the experiences?... Am I a better person for it? Do I feel that Ive "Improved"?  Am I "better" than someone else (terrible way to think) or "better" than the old me? Have I done anything useful (or dis-useful for that matter?) ... What the hell is the point of the experiences if they don't get put to use to achieve some-thing?... Perhaps I may as well have put my efforts toward collecting dollars, or collecting friends, or maybe it would have been just as useful to collect a life sized pile of stones for that matter?... maybe counting grains of sand at the beach would have been just as effective a life?... How do we tell?  ... I'm sure that kind of question lingers in the back of most of our minds in a nebulous way for much of our adult lives... or maybe its just those of us with too much time on our hands and nothing better to do :)

I think the general wisdom is that we are successful if we are happy, and the choices we make are really just about trying to balance immediate happiness against future happiness (or minimization of unhappiness... though of course those two things are not really on the same scale since its quite possible to feel both of the emotions at the same time derived from the same "source")

What then did I get out of all those choices other than simply to reinforce me being Me?

... in progress :)

Watershed

End of another year, so time for a bit of an update for anyone who still checks in on my blog...
I haven't been posting anything for quite a while because nothing of note has been happening in my world.
Last post I made covered what Id been doing with my summer off... I didn't really choose to take the summer off but there was no contract work available so it was a more or less compulsory vacation.

I was anticipating going back to work on a planned new contract in about mid-August but a couple of weeks before I was due to resume work, the company called and let me know that they no-longer needed my services... and I wasn't the only one... They had a big ":restructuring" (as these things are called these days) and they were letting go about 150 full-time employees as well as all the contractors.
That was a bit of a bummer for me but I'm sure it was a lot worse for the other people they fired.
And so I was at a bit of a loose end...

But then a few weeks later it turned out that I got another call from the company saying they were interested in my services again... They had come across a significant issue one of their released products and had no spare people to allocate to the investigation (they just fired a bunch of "excess people"... Anyway, it was a product I had worked on before and was well qualified to do the work, so a new contract was signed and I went back to work more or less exactly on the schedule I had initially signed up for.
And the work went along pretty well (it was quite interesting debug work) and it expanded a little into another product (that used the same design and so had the same issue) and it ended up taking a couple of more months to deal with... And then there was a new issue on a different project and since I was already there and on contract, they decided to keep using me for a bit longer and that took another month or so and all in all I ended up working through till mid December... which was great from my point of view.
But now the issues are down to where they can meet schedules with their full-time staff so Ive finished up for the year.

...And it may be that that's the end of the line so to speak for contracts there...
The industry is "consolidating" it seems and over the last three months or so the company that I was contracting to has been the subject of a bit of a bidding war. And it seems that the company will now definitely be bought (the deal is scheduled to close in about a month or so).
And the company that is doing the buying will definitely be looking to realize a great deal of "synergies"... which is the currently in vogue euphemism for making lots of cuts in projects and employees!  And while a lot of cutting will of course be directed toward administrative and logistics functions that the new parent company already had and knows what they are doing (so why duplicate those functions), there will also likely be changes in the business directions and the particular engineering projects that Ive been working on may well not have a future with the new company and so my services may no-longer be required even temporarily...

... But its been a good run while it lasted and I'm glad I got to work in this contracting role for as long as I did. I think it was about eight years all told, and I spent about three of those years riding around several continents on my motorbike which I cant imagine having been able to do with any other form of employment (for my skill set anyway).

Now I don't have any real idea of what the new parent company's policy toward scalable work-force is and it is possible that there would be future contract possibilities with them, but I should assume that the "good ol days" of reliable contract work are probably over for me and I'm now going to have to find a regular job of some sort...
And that is I admit a bit of a daunting prospect... There's lots of work for young software people these days but its not easy finding a new job for a fifty year old electrical engineer with a hardware back-ground... I may well have to change field altogether but I'm gonna take the next month off over Christmas before I start looking seriously.

But it may well be one of those watershed moments when our lives take new directions that we would otherwise never have predicted... We shall see :)

More Projects...

Summer is progressing and Im still doing lots of projecting :)
First up I built some retro-style lamps from lots of cast iron pipe fittings I got from the hardware store... The bulbs are old-fashioned "Edison" style with long thin filaments that are wound in interesting shapes.  I like the result of the lamp stand best :)

 

 

Then I set about building the rest of the night-stand that goes with that Maple-burl table-top that I built earlier. I chose to build it with contrasting woods... The frame and legs are made from Jatoba ( A fairly common South American hardwood with a rich red color) and a pale "tiger-stripe" maple veneer on plywood panels. I joined all the pieces together using pocket hole screws with turned out to be a good system... All the parts are simply cut to size and but-jointed together with screws that are driven at steep angles into the wood (uses a jig mechanism to drill the "pocket-holes" at the very steep angles... Anyway, its very effective and very quick to do with no complicated joinery cuts and no gluing time needed.

I like the result though it looks a little bland at this stage because the wood is new and has not yet developed the warmer colours from exposure to warmth and UV light ( give it a year or so :))

 

 

 

 



And I built another vegie box for potatoes... I used concrete paving slabs stood on their edges for the box walls and I held them in place with some steel straps and masonry screws... worked very well and if I were to build more then Id use the same technique again...

 



The new potato box

The original veggie box is a bit overwhelmed by the yellow zucchini plant at the moment :)

 

 

And since the night stand worked out so well, I decided to build a Hall-stand too. It will be mostly used to put motorcycle helmets in rather than having them cluttering up the kitchen counters all the time ...

And then I built a couple of gifts for a friend... A Jewellery box and a jewellery tree (to hang necklaces on).

 

 And now Im all out of time for domestic projects because another work contract has started.  I think its been quite a creative and productive summer at home this year... But this will only be a short one and I don't know if there will be more to come, so Im thinking I will engage in a bit of a job search... That should be interesting :)

 

Summer Projects

 

... And a couple more months pass...
And Ive finished my work contract so it seems that Im free now for a couple of months over the summer... I know that sounds great to everyone but it also means that ill have no income and lots of spare time... And that spells financial trouble for me since it seems that the only way I know how to fill spare time is with projects!, and all my projects always cost lots of money :)
Oh well, as I said, I dont expect to get any sympathy at all from anyone, and its only a couple of months.
Besides, there are plenty of projects to do at home since the house has been rather neglected for a couple of years while I was traveling in the summer and well, its pretty hard to do anything outside in the winter here with all the rain.

So, the first and largest project was to rebuild the stairs along one side of the house... They were just a jumbled pile of bricks and concrete paving slabs when I originally bought the house, so about a year after that I rebuilt them in the form of a more organised and neatly stacked pile of bricks and slabs... But they moved around and settled and needed constant nudging back into line. So after a decade or so I'd had enough and now Ive done a more solid job of rebuilding... They are still made of bricks and slabs but they are now 90cm wide instead of 60cm and they are now built on a concrete substrate... I hand mixed about 30 bags of concrete mix and rebuilt them one step at a time over about two weeks... Its not perfect but the stairs are now wide and solid and should last for at least a couple of decades :)

 

 

Next project was to build a trellis for a grape-vine that I planted in the front yard a couple of years ago. Its kind of a dividing fence between mine and the neighbours property (should let the low angle sunlight through to the front yard in the winter though when the vine has no leaves).... More hand concrete mixing for the post footings and then just some 6mm galvanized cable for the vine to hang its-self over.

 

 

And now Im working away on another wood work project. This time its a night-stand for the bedroom. I saw a slab of maple burl at a wood shop a few months ago and decided to use it as a small table top. But the burl had several big voids in it that I wasn't sure how Id fill. So I bought the lump of wood and have been thinking about how to work with it over the last few months... And Ive decided what Im doing and have got to work on it... I decided to fill the voids with clear epoxy and an aggregate of yellow/brown chunks of crushed glass.  Its taken a couple of weeks of steady little epoxy sessions to get it done but the table-top is now basically complete and looks like this...

 

 

Now I just need to build the rest of the night-stand to go with it :)

 

And I also finally got around to replacing the ugly old metal floor vents in the house with some flush fitting ones that I made myself from spare sections of floor boards that were left over from when I installed the hardwood floors a few years ago... It was lots of effort to drill all the holes but I quite like the end result :)

The new flush wooden vent and the old metal vent.

 

 

And another "finally" project is that I got a decent vice for my garage projects, but there isn't really space for a suitable work-bench, so I built a concrete pedestal for it that should work pretty well.



 

And that about wraps up my projects so far... On with the summer break :)

What have I been up to lately?

Its been several months since I last posted on my blog… That’s how it is when Im living a mundane life while not off on some international moto-adventure J

Anyway, at last report I had got back into skeletoning and had just “made it” to the top of the Whistler sliding track. So, to report on the rest of the sliding season, Id have to say things went pretty well, and at the very least, the regular sliding each week kept me pretty busy…

Ive now put in probably about 70 runs from the top or so, Ive gone out to the Calgary track and spent a week training and sliding there (a very different track to Whistler) and there have been two or three competitions to slide in as well. Along the way Ive managed to crack my ribs, split the skin on my jaw and bruise the hell out of my elbows (bad form!) and shoulders/arms a few time… all part of the learning process in this sport.

Its a bit hard to see whats going on, but the whole lower half of my upper arm is bruised a very dark purple!

 

The sliding season has now finished and Im certainly still enjoying it enough to really want to do it again next year but I was a bit disappointed over-all with my own progress… I seem to perform particularly badly on race days too! Anyway, My best stats for this season are probably something like this: Top speed about 131Kmh, best down time about 58.75seconds, and best start time about 5.5 seconds. And to compare that to other athletes in the “local” North America Cup circuit, they would have speeds of about 135Kmh, down times of about 56seconds and start times of about 4.9 seconds.   It might seem like Im not that far off the pace there but believe me there is a very large difference between them and me… Oh well, plenty of room for improvement next season J

But its now getting into the summer season here and the track at Whistler is shut down and so if I want to practice at all then it needs to be on dry land rather than ice…

To that end Ive built a practice sled so I can work on my push start which is an area I can definitely improve at… every 1/10^th of a second faster in the start time translates to 2/10 or 3/10 at the finish time, and Im very slow at the start.  So I need to practice running in that awkward bent over push position. And so I bought a pair of old roller blades, a 2’x4’x3/4” sheet of ply wood and a couple of pieces of aluminium channel…and given a couple of evenings of tinkering etc I now have a push sled that I can practice with on any flat bit of pavement… though not a downhill section cos the sled has no steering mechanism and it builds up speed pretty quickly J

The practice sled. 

And on other fronts, Ive been working on my motorbikes of course… Ive decided to ride the little yellow one this summer so it and the dirt bike are currently registered.

But since I accumulated so much debt last summer with my not working, traveling, paying the mortgage, and giving away the motorbike, I simply cant afford to get the 20’ container I was planning to set up as a workshop this year. So instead I spent a few days over Easter extending the roof on the car-port I built a couple of years ago… and so now I have a sheltered place that I can both park and work on motorbikes in.

Work wise, Ive been doing a six month contract with my usual employer and its been going fine... Its easy to fit back into the systems and tasks that Im used to. But Im getting to the end of that contract now and Im not sure if there will be another contract immediately or not... Personally Im hoping there will be because I need to do some more debt paying for a while yet, but if not then I guess Ill try to think of something cheap to do for a month or three in the summer here - at least the weather here will be nice :)

The extended, postless, self-supporting car-port extension... The car is not mine, it belongs to the guy down-stairs.

 



From the Top

I have finally made it to the top of the Whistler sliding track!
Its taken about a full year of regular practice to get good enough to move up to the top and before Christmas I moved the last step up from corner 3 to the top. Ive since done about 10 runs from the top (before the track shut down for the Christmas break) and have even competed in the local BC Cup race and came in third... Well that's 3rd out of three contestants :)) so maybe not that impressive...

 

And in fact there were two separate races and in the other race I came in fifth out of six contestants ... but the sixth guy crashed badly, separated his collar bone and did not complete the race!
And on that note, it was in fact a pretty rough week at the track with another guy crashing hard at the same spot on the track (exiting corner 6 is where many of the crashes happen) and he broke his collar bone... Its a mean track when you slide from the top... You have to drive every corner, and if you get it wrong, you can get thrown about 3m in the air and come down onto rock hard ice at a speed of 80-100Kmh... Itll mess you up!
I don't think you could get thrown out of the track and you cant hit any obstacles head on, but dropping 3m onto ice from the prone position can and does do serious damage to the human body.

For myself though, Ive learned to respect the track and Ive been progressing slowly and carefully... But that style does not seem to be very prevalent in other sliders (like those to injuries I mentioned). It seems pretty obvious to me but when you have a rough run and your not sure exactly why then its probably best to take the next run a bit slower. Now its not like you have any brakes on the sled and in fact trying to slow down by dragging feet actually makes your sled very unbalanced and more dangerous (so mostly you should just let the sled run and keep driving it) but its the easiest thing in the world to not run as hard at the start and so have a slower run over-all... But no one seems to do that but me... Those two guys that got hurt... They had both had a series of five or six or more quite rough runs immediately before their crashes... all the warnings were there! But at the start of each run they were still sprinting flat out and trying to launch as fast as possible.... It makes no sense?
There seems to be a huge amount of testosterone in the sport... They seem to think that the most important thing is speed regardless of being out of control?... I think its because you can get away with it on most other sliding tracks where the speeds are lower by 15-25Kmh and your body can survive the hard bumps... but not at Whistler!... But still, if that's their attitude then I guess they got their just deserts!... one is now out for the season and the other for several weeks.

But like I said, I try to take a different approach... slow and careful. When I started from the top I chose a time when the weather was warm which made the ice soft and slow. And for my first few runs I started with zero speed and dragged my feet as much as I dared to keep the speed as low as possible (which as I mentioned can actually make things significantly more difficult it turns out). And Ive only just started to do a few jogging steps now before I lay down onto the sled, and it will still be another 10 runs or so before Im confident enough to realy start to go for faster starts.
My "zero speed and dragging feet" starts gave me a disadvantage of about 10-11 seconds from my friend Matt who has been sliding from the top for a few weeks longer than I have (and hes doing full sprint starts now). And then once I stopped dragging feet but still had a walking speed start it was down to about 5-6 seconds disadvantage. And now with a few jogging steps, my times are only about 1 second slower than his.

Matt loading onto his sled after a sprint start at the top of the track (picture credit Dave Eastwood)

But now we have had a couple of weeks off... It will be very interesting to see how I feel from the top when we get some really cold weather and the track gets fast... scary fast!... Im sure it will scare me then, and Im sure sooner or later Im gonna have a really rough run and probably come off the sled at some point. But when I do, Im not too proud to slow things down again and go back to a walking start. :)

A Cautionary Tale

It seems that my motorbike importation odyssey is finally over... and its a complete failure!

At the conclusion of my ride through Africa I had to export the motorbike from Israel... I could not sell it there and I could also not just leave it or "lose" it there (Israel often detains people with customs/immigration irregularities in their paperwork on exit as well as entry to the country)... So I had to export it and so I shipped it to Canada.
On arriving back home in Canada I set about figuring out what I needed to do to import it here... And that turned out to be an extremely difficult task... Its easy enough if the vehicle was originally made in North America or for the North American market (but the XRV750 was never sold here) and its easy enough if the vehicle is 15 years old or more (but the bike is only 14 years old), and its easy enough if you are a foreigner and only want to import your vehicle temporarily (on a tourist or working visa etc)... But my situation did not qualify under any of these options and so the "door" was firmly "closed" to me bringing the bike in.  And so I tried to find ways around the problems and time and again I thought I had it worked out but every time there would be a catch... I must have had at least a half dozen highs and following lows as I attempted to make things work, and frankly I had become quite tired of the struggle by the time the bike finally arrived here in Vancouver on about Dec21st (Nice Christmas timing to try to get anything through customs and government too!)
And so when I finally went down to the customs office to try one last time, I was not overly surprised nor actually overly disappointed when they said "NO"... You now must either export the bike immediately to somewhere out of Canada or have it destroyed here at your expense...And Id already looked into trying to send it back to South Africa or to find someone in Britain who wanted it... Id have given the bike away for free if they would pay for shipping... But alas, No takers were found.

And so just to rub salt into the wound I was left trying to find a local wrecking place that was licensed to destroy the bike at my expense (to try to minimize the cost of the procedure!), but it was looking like it was going to cost me another $1000 to destroy a perfectly good motorbike!

But during my phoning around I found a place that exports bikes from Canada to Europe for sale there cheaply... And the guy was willing to take the bike off my hands for free... So he will get to sell the bike for whatever he can get (probably at least a couple of thousand dollars I expect) and he will only have to pay shipping costs (he ships used bikes in bulk in containers so the shipping cost is likely only about $300-$500) and import costs at the other end (which I think are of the same order).
... So I think hes getting a pretty damn good deal there. But Im not going to feel bad about it at my end cos it saved me another $1000, and the bike does not get destroyed... It goes on to be enjoyed by someone else.
And so its done... The bike is gone and all up including shipping and Carne (all lost money), the whole Africa motorbike thing cost me about $10,000.

Story closed.... but let it be a warning to anyone else.... Look very carefully into import details BEFORE you ship something back to your home country... or be prepared to lose it outright :)