Living in Salem, Week 2

It is Wednesday night, and I have almost completed Week 2 of my new Normal, living in Salem Oregon during the week.  I drove down on Sunday night, stayed in Gresham for a few hours, and finished my drive here on Monday morning in terrible traffic.  I spend Monday through Wednesday nights at a Howard Johnson's not too far from the interstate.  It is what I call Spartan in terms of accommodations, but  in my new Monastic State, I suppose it would suit me fine.

Monday I explored, Tuesday I rode my bicycle around a local park on the Willamette River for an hour (very narrow bike path, lots of walkers, and lots of turns).  Tonight I golfed at Oak Knob Golf Course after work with a couple I met on the first tee.  This course is notable in that the fairways are absolutely straight, every one.  A hook or slice and you will be playing your ball in the adjacent fairway, guaranteed.  The par 5 holes were all over 500 yards (this is long, in my experience), and the par 3 holes were 180 yards+, which is also long.  The greens were soft and slow, but smooth and nicely cared for.

Work is starting to fall into a routine.  It is summer, and there are lots of people taking time off.  The manufacturing pace is brisk, and things get done.  We have a large project in house that is being manufactured and progress on that happens daily - you can see large machinery moving through the stages of manufacture.  I wander through the factory looking at parts and pieces going together.  It is fun.

My new computer is being worked on by the IT staff, so that I can work remotely, so that I have the latest versions of the software, so that I can do anything I might need to do anywhere I might be.  Today they were working on it for an hour or two in the middle of the day, which gets in my way of doing things.  I'm sure it will settle down shortly.  Perhaps tomorrow I will get a key to the front door that will allow me to stay late and work, since if I don't depart with the last person I stand a pretty good chance of being locked in.  Not good...

Tomorrow I depart for Snohomish at 4:30 or thereabouts.  Wish me luck with the Portland Traffic!

Time to Catch Up

Well, it has been a while since I've taken the time to sit down and write up something for my blog, and in that time things have changed quite a bit for me.  I am on the road more literally these days, logging 1,000 miles a week on the Prius driving to and from a new job.  I have completely changed hardware for my Road Warrior support system, including a new cell phone and phone number, new computer (I lost lost of old stuff including some contacts, so if I ask for your info, that is why), new email address for work, and a host of new co-workers.  But more on that in a moment.

In brief, I now work in Salem, Oregon.  This is a city about 250 miles south of my home in Snohomish.  Judy, Marilyn, and the cats and dog will continue to live in this wonderful house close to the kids and grandkid, and I will commute.  This means I depart on Sunday evening, stay with my dad and Rose in Gresham, OR (3.5 hours drive) and then make the final 1 hour trip on Monday morning.  I will be in residence in Salem Monday through Thursday, typically departing 4:45 or so for home.  Last Thursday it took 5 hours, door to door, to get back.  Without traffic it takes 4.5 hours, so I lost just a little time in Portland, but Seattle was clear sailing.

My new job is as the VP of Sales and Marketing for West Salem Machine (www.westsalem.com).  They make machines that grind, chip, chop, crunch, and mill all sorts of waste materials including wood and bark, plastic, yard wastes, municipal wastes, pallets, construction debris, corn stover and wheat straw, and lots more.  They have a very good reputation for making strong and durable machines, selling them at a competitive price, and standing behind them.  They have not had anyone in this particular position in the past, with the owner and General Manager sort of doing the selling and marketing in their free time while running the company.  They needed someone to help them and here I am.  I have known the company and these guys for many years, and we are all old friends.  So far it is working out very well and I am pleased.  I have a small staff in the office, and one remote guy who works for WSM and lives in Bangkok, Thailand.

I gave notice at BRUKS and spent a week in Atlanta off-loading my projects and information.  The BRUKS people think that WSM is a good company, and they often include WSM equipment in their system offers.  There was one project where both BRI and WSM were bidding, and I have stayed away from that one so there is no conflict of ethics involved.  Other than that the companies are very different - WSM is much more like Acrowood in that they make the machines, and BRI didn't make anything directly. 

I felt that it was important for me to be working from the home office rather than remotely, both because a Sales Manager needs contact with the daily activities of the company and because my remote office environment at BRUKS kept me too distant from the flow of information that is vital to being involved with a company.  With salesmen and support people reporting to me I needed to be at hand to have the impact the company needs me to have.  I have already jumped into some manufacturing issues that I dealt with in the past, and am making contributions here and there beyond things that are strictly sales.  Wood handling machinery is what I do.  It is god to be back in close contact with the sounds and smells of making machinery.

So that is the big news on my end and how I see things going for at least the rest of the year.  I will have evenings to spend blogging, and I hope it works out that way.  I am taking my bicycle and golf clubs with me this week, and hope to do some evening riding or ball driving.  I am staying in hotels for the three nights I need them.  I book on Hotwire.com and can find decent (not great) rooms for $50/nite.  It doesn't take much to make me happy, I suppose.  Long term it might make sense to rent a room in a house or rent a studio apartment, but this is OK for now.

Houston TX

Instead of heading home on Thursday, I headed to Houston instead. Yesterday I traveled to car down to Galveston and visited a port facility that is planning on adding a ship loader. I had bid this 2 months ago, and now they area ready to go ahead with this. We talked a bit, but they are not going to actually buy until the end of July. I drive over to th beach, where the temp was 100 F or more. Really hot. People were splasihng in the waves, and sloshing on sun screen. I overnighted in downtown Houston, and visited another customer there this morning who is planning a biomass pellet plant in Alabama, among other locations. I had a good meeting, and then came here to the airport. I'm sitting in the cafeteria area writing call reports and now sending out updates on my blog. I've signed on to the internet here through Boingo. I had a mongthly subscription to this a few years ago, and it was helpful from time to time. Today I am only on for an hour, so I am typing fast. I wanted to send in my call reports while they were fresh on my mind, and so everyone could see them over the weekend, if they were so inclined. I hope you, my readers, are still with me. My intermittent posting probably you are not checking all that often. OK, you can find this later.

June 25 - On the Road

Today is Judy's birthday. I am in an airplane flying to Atlanta for my monthly office trip and not home to treat her well on her special day. Poor timing on my part, I can tell you. Sorry dear. This past weekend was spent with Mark and Anne in Olympia. Judy and I traveled down Friday afternoon, in the terrible Seattle area traffic. It was raining, and this slowed things down a lot. It took 3 hours to get there, when without traffic it takes 90 minutes. That wears a person down a bit. On Saturday Mark and I played golf with Galen Wright and Ken Thompson at Indian Summer Golf Club where Galen and Ken are members. This is a challenging course under good conditions, and we didn't have good conditions. It rained all the damn time, and very hard at some times. We all got soaked. There was a friendly sort of competition organized by Ken, which added to the enjoyment of the day. We played a sort of rolling team structure, so we all got to play with the other guys in a 2 on 2 format. It was fun despite the weather. Judy and Anne toured Olympia, including the Farmer's Market, and found some parks, although they said it was too wet to actually tour the parks. We all met back in the afternoon for a hot shower, and then dinner at Galen and Rondi's house. Very nice. We had a hearty breakfast on Sunday, then a short visit back to the Market where I bought oysters and mushrooms for dinner. Both were excellent. We traveled home in the early afternoon and were able to work in the garden a bit before the end of the day. Shannon came over and shared in the oysters and mushrooms, and did I mention steak for dinner? All her favorite things. This week I'll be in Alpharetta through Thursday, home about midnight. Guests on Friday for dinner with little kids. Should be fun.

Wenatchee Century, or a bit less...

Yesterday was the annual Wenatchee Century ride. It starts at Walla Walla Park in downtown Wenatchee, and now runs up the Wenatchee River valley to Leavenworth, then to Plain, and to Lake Wenatchee and back. It travels on the margins of Highway 2 in just a couple of places, but mostly takes place on back roads, farm roads, and other places high on the sides of the ridges. I rode with 4 others, including Kendall Kreft. My asthma was keeping me from getting full lungs of air, I think, and I was really slow. I am also in great shape for sitting all day in a car, plane, or at my computer, so that may have had something to do with my slow progress. We all met at Leavenworth at 25 miles, but they took off. I rode towards Plain for a while, but eventually turned around and headed back. I did Deadman's Road (huge hill climb) and crossed over the new bridge into Monitor (a first for me) and finished with just over 60 miles overall. KK showed up about an hour behind me, which is tremendous considering he did the full 100 miles. That shows you how different our speeds are. Anyway, it casts a doubt in my mind about the wisdom of trying to do the STP (200 miles) until i get into better shape. Less glf and more cycling? That is what it will take, but I sure do like to play golf...

Forgiveness??

My dear readers, if three are any of you left, my sincere apologies for not writing sooner. I have been everywhere and I've not written a thing to you. Hopefully you are on FB and my occasional anemic postings have given you a clue. Tonight I am in Roseburg, OR. I've traveled here today from home, with stops in Salem and Eugene (2). Tomorrow I travel to Klamath Falls, another 170 miles down the road, and then turn around and head for home. I departed at 5:00 am and arrived at 6:00 pm, so another 13 hours on the road and in offices visiting. Tomorrow should be about the same. On the Good News side the weather here is fabulous - sunny and low 80's. But, I have no bicycle and no golf clubs in the trusty Prius, so it is all work, work, work for me. Last week I was in Atlanta, the the BRUKS offices. Week before that it was Houston at a conference, plus a bonus day visiting 2 plants that have BRUKS equipment. I really liked that part. Next week I will be in Spokane for a day, and then down to Oregon for a day, then home. Busy schedule. Two of the folks I visited with today turned out to be golfers, and one was a U of O scholarship athlete in the sport. I have no allusions of being competitive but they both offered to play with me next time if I can bring my clubs. Score! I considered going back home and retrieving them!

April has zipped by...

To my many readers (or are there any left?), I apologize.  I have truly been on the road, and I have failed to blog about it for a month.  I should be flogged.

Let me give you a brief run down of where I have been recently.

This week:
Monday    I visited the TransAlta Power Plant in Centralia, WA.  They have equipment from BRUKS Rockwood and I was there to see about a disquieting noise it was making.  The plant was completely down, and has been since January due to the abundance of water in the Columbia River (see the Big Questions Cafe blog about this from a month ago), and the low price of natural gas.  Coal power is not currently cost effective in this climate, it seems. Anyway, I was able to offer some good service during their visit and all now seems to be OK.

Wednesday    I flew to Houston, TX, to the IAH airport (George Bush), which is on the north side of town.  I then rented a car and drove to Galveston.  I stayed in the Holiday Inn on the Seawall, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.  Ordinarily this is no big shakes, but a steady wind was blowing at 20-30 MPH, and there were dozens of ships lying off the harbor, waiting their turn to get into port.  Very pretty sight.  The temp was 86 when I landed, and didn't get below 72 the whole time I visited.  BTW, Hobby Airport is way closer to Galveston that IAH, but I couldn't get good tickets to HOU without going through Atlanta, or some other inconvenient place.  The irony is that I had to drive right by HOU on my way to Galveston.  IAH is about 30 miles north of HOU, and about 70 miles from Galveston.

Thursday     I visited one of these ports, who want to buy a ship loader to export fertilizer and soda ash.  My meeting time was 1:00, so I worked in my room until about 11:00, then checked out and drove around old downtown Galveston, and presented myself at the port at 12:45.  Then I sat and waited in the small room by the door until the company president and the GM were done with their other meeting and were ready to let me in, which happened at about 2:25.  When I did get in we had a good meeting, and I think they are interested in an offer from us for their project.  I had to depart by 4:00 to catch my plane, and I made it fine because there were no traffic problems at that time of day.  So, I spend 48 hours of travel time for a 1:30 meeting.  I hate to put the costs into an equation in this case, the cost per hour would be too terrible to think about.  I got in to SEA at about 11:30 pm PDT, and was in my bed at 12:40 am.  Long day.

OK, so today I'm home.  Sunday Judy and Marilyn depart for a conference in California.  Monday I head to Portland area for a conference.  We all get back on Wednesday, and Thursday Judy and I head to Washington DC for a wedding next weekend.  Wow, what a lot of air time.

I'll try and be a bit better at keeping you all up to date with where I am and where I am going.  I've been a bit lax.  - Des