Fall Foliage Ride

Last weekend, Ben and I did an impromptu ride on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, ~40 miles round trip.

It was the first substantial ride I had done in over a month, and even the previous couple rides I did were only 15-20 miles and on the road. It became evident fairly early on that the fit on my Seigla isn't as good as my Úthald... but that stands to reason. Seigla had a body geometry fit, Úthald got the full bells and whistles "retül" treatment. Saddle angle, reach... everything just feels a hair off on the Seigla, but hard to say if that's just because it is off or because I haven't been riding as much lately. Probably a bit of both.

While it was exhausting and cold, the ride was exactly what I needed for a mental reset. After walking all over Paris with my shoulder bag, I decided to try it out as a means of carrying my camera with me on a bike ride. It was great, definitely doing that again. I've almost certainly missed a lot of wallhangers like this one:

The strap to keep the bag tight and in position while riding was :chefs-kiss:.

Work-wise, things are chaotic as ever. My primary frustrations continue to be a lack of planning on other people's part being something me/my team have to routinely absorb. Those aren't going to go away in this job or any other – not completely anyway.

So I'm putting my energy behind thinking of ways to architect systems that enable people to compensate for a lack of planning. Making Campaign Operations for email (etc) fully self-serve. Creating an ITG loop for getting a broad sales play in market with Human-in-the-Loop feedback as a final gate. Building tools anyone can use and intuit for booking meetings.

The problem is decidedly not building cool and useful things. IMO, it all accrues to a focus problem. A previous CMO's mantra was "fortune favors the focused," and unlike most things I hear from the C-Suite this one actually resonated with me. Probably because it has roots in common sense. No one seems to want to admit that human capacity is a finite resource and has to be spent wisely.

... Unless you have product-market fit, because in that case it almost doesn't matter what you do, good or bad.

Otherwise, Haleigh's been doing better lately with managing her diabetes. Not perfect, but better. We have a doctor appointment coming up and she's starting to meet with her counselor again more regularly.

Even Tango's meds seem to be helping. He's probably a little loopy 24/7 between the stuff we give him at night for arthritis pain management, and then again with a lighter does in the morning... But he and Moby (knock on wood) haven't had a serious altercation in a couple weeks now.

We're heading into Q4 over the next week and Ocarina of Crime™ is sure to be a fun distraction to ease into winter. I'm looking forward to seeing my family for Christmas, it's been too long.