I've been toying with the idea of going to grad school for the better part of two decades, but always had something else to do first. I was even accepted and ready to go, back in the day -- I remember telling Kim when I started racing: "School will always be there; my physical ability to race a bike will not. I can always go back later."
Well ... it's later.
As of today, I am officially part of the Wake Forest Schools of Business MBA class of 2014. I've been in prep mode since Christmas, got the decision at the end of March, and now it's game on! Needless to say, I was stoked to get in, even moreso when U.S. News released its 2014 rankings the other day ... the WFU part-time program -- MY program -- came in at No. 28 in the nation! Holy moly, am I ready for this?!
I was never the best student. I like learning, but I just don't have any patience -- I lose focus and my ability to process information -- especially numbers -- goes out the window. But I've been doing a lot of thinking in the past couple of years, watching some very interesting trends in the bicycle industry, and I know that I don't have the tools I need -- we need -- to make the most of the challenges and opportunities ahead. I need to backfill nearly 20 years in business with the knowledge and skills afforded by one of the top business programs in the country. And so, starting next in January, I will.
Gulp.
I'm really lucky they looked past a fairly dismal undergrad transcript to see the value of what I'm trying to do. Wish us luck as we get ready to start yet another couple of chapters in this roller coaster ... bring it on ... and go Deacs!
I always figured it would be my head that got me. I've had more concussions than I can remember (ha, ha), and the only thing I fear in life is developing CTE -- I'm moody enough as it is, so to have a medical condition contribute to that would likely be more than I can bear. That was a main factor of stepping out of road racing -- every season ended with a hospital visit due to landing on my head. At least with mountain biking I was going slower and didn't hit my head quite as often.
But as scary as that might be, it's never been something to stop me. So I kept at it, kept pushing, spent the last decade of my life pursuing my dreams. Exceeding them. Living the life I'd always wanted.
And now it's time to shift gears.
First, as many of you know, I've taken on increased responsibilities at work. This is a good thing, and is affording me an incredible seat for the next great ride -- the future of the bicycle industry is being written now, and I'm helping to shape it. For a kid who opened his first "bike shop" in his Dad's garage some 33 years ago, this is a pretty incredible opportunity that I can't pass up.
Along with that, I'm studying hard for a graduate school admissions test. I've always said we need to drink less of our own Kool Aid, and to look outside ourselves to figure out how to navigate the coming tide, and so I'm hoping to put my money where my mouth is, starting next year. I take the test in a month, and we'll see how it goes from there.
Then there's the family. When it was just Kim and I, it was hard enough to spend all my time riding, even if it was in pursuit of some sort of personal fulfillment. Once Kate came along, my efforts became more focused, though through Kim's generosity the race preparation was still very much a part of our lives. Now that there's two of them, though, it's that much harder to get out -- all last year, I found myself thinking only of them as I drove to Brevard, or Mills River, or DuPont -- wanting instead to be at home, longing for a tackling hug from Daniel or to be working on a craft project with Kate. At the end of this season, I began to spend more time at home, and now I know more acutely than ever what I've been missing.
Still, I kind of figured I'd have a bit of a go this year, and planned to pick it up once the travel ended this first quarter. "Don't call it a retirement," I said, "just an extended break."
Well, now I'm calling it a retirement.
I've been having trouble with my right wrist and thumb off and on for the last few years, without really taking the time to figure it out. Finally, as the season ended last year, it go so bad that I couldn't even pull up my socks -- the pain was that intense. And it was sudden -- there was no telling when it would start, but once engaged it wouldn't subside. It just friggin' hurt.
Which, sadly, seems to indicate that I've developed arthritis in my wrist and thumb. Which wouldn't be a big deal, except I'm a mountain biker -- I execute rear shifts with that part of my body, and it's sort of important to be able to hold onto the handlebars too. All of which is compromised by pain.
(Yes, I "could" become a single speeder. But I won't. Or at least, not to race. I just have no desire to go down that path, and besides, it doesn't solve the whole hold-onto-the-handlebar thing.)
So I think that's it. I'll try to manage through it, I'll do what I can to ride (and I think I'm OK on the road bike), and I'll get back into running to stay in shape. But I'm calling time on my racing career -- it's been an awesome ride, more fun than I could ever imagine, but I know when to say when. And it's time.
There's this awesome scene in Running Scared, after Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines come back from Key West to bitter, cold, hard Chicago. They go into their Captain's office (brilliantly played by Dan Hedaya, Carla's ex-husband on Cheers), light up cigars, lean back and tell him "We're retired." That's kind of how I'm feeling right now, with a big, sh*t-eating grin on my face, knowing the future is wide open.
I may have mentioned it here before: I spent the better part of my childhood "Not Living Up to Potential." When Mom passed away a few years ago, we found evidence of this, in the form of a box of report cards that she had kept. As I worked my way through this anthropological nightmare, the pattern became clear -- I did just enough to get by, just enough to avoid completely crashing out, nothing more, and sometimes less.
There were flashes of success, sure. Mrs. Wright in fourth and fifth grade was pretty awesome. Mr. Hollister in middle school, along wtih Mr. Higgins and even Mr. Biagioni. Mr. Sharp. In high school, which otherwise was four years of purgatory, there was Mrs. Stubinger above all, and Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Stark. Mr. Paldauf, who wasn't at my school but was my debate team coach. I still remember what she said to me, the day Mrs. Stubinger put me on my life's path, and I am forever grateful.
Despite those bright lights, the few inspirations who got through to me, my academic career was a study in stunning mediocrity. And you know what's funny? You know all those threats about how not doing well in school would affect you for the rest of your life? I didn't believe them. I thought they were bogus. I managed to muddle through just fine, thankyouverymuch.
And now I'm screwed.
It all started a year ago. At Christmastime after Daniel was born, Kim took the last of her maternity leave in Chicago, leaving me for 2 weeks in a big house, all by myself. I'm not really sure how it happened, but all of a sudden I found myself in the midst of a crazy project, blowing through my spending money in two days as I planned and began to build -- what else? -- a bike rack.
And somewhere, deep in the recesses of my mind, I recalled something long forgotten: A-squared-plus-B-squared-equals-C-squared. I wasn't quite sure what it meant, but I somehow remembered that I needed to know it to realize my vision.
And I'll be damned, it worked.
One thing led to another, and although I jacked up the angle cuts on the stringers, my right-triangle of a bike rack came together. And it looked decent. By somehow solving this paltry geometric dilemma, I had managed to build something real, something tangible -- without using a computer. And that was pretty neat.
Something -- I'm still not quite sure what -- was reawakened that day. Fast-forward a year now, and a2+b2=c2 has become part of my everyday waking life. I'm not harboring any illusions of becoming a master carpenter, not by any stretch of the imagination; I have instead decided to put my money where my mouth is, and to return to school.
For years I've been lamenting the state of affairs in the bike industry: That many talented, smart people don't stick around. That our ideas are stagnant. That there is a coming tidal wave of customer-oriented, technology-enabled change headed our way, and we're ill-equipped to capitalize on it. That we need more information, more innovation, more differentiation, and that we need to look outside ourselves to learn and adapt. The "bike industry" as we know it may not survive the decade, and without some serious effort on my part, my role in it won't either.
So I am looking to look outside. There are a number of really fantastic graduate school programs here in North Carolina, and I'm going to find my place in one of them -- or I'm going to blow up trying. See, getting into these programs requires a certain amount of knowledge, which is gauged according to well-known standardized tests. And as you may have guessed, those tests always include a "quantitative" portion, which in non-academic circles means "math." While I may do fairly well on the "verbal" and "written" portions, math isn't exactly my strong suit -- I only just learned (or rather re-learned) that my right-triangle equation came from Pythagoras rather than being labeled a "quadratic" equation. Which it is also, apparently.
Damn.
My lifelong middle-of-the-road approach is making things tough. I need to score very highly -- like, "Top-Tier" program highly -- in order to even be considered -- that's how narrowly I escaped my time in college. Sure it's been 10+ years, but really, it wasn't pretty. Especially with a C-minus in statistics (which factor heavily in business school, don'tyouknow) and two glaring Fs in logic (which I finally passed with an A-minus, but that's another story) on my undergrad transcripts. And I know full well that a piece of paper conferred upon me in 2 years does not a "Master" make, but I'm hoping that the exposure I gain while working on a degree will directly translate toward building a new future for my industry.
So despite a few hurdles, I think I can do it. No -- I know can do it. I may have sat in the back of Mrs. Tegtmeier's class making race car noises all through sophomore year of high school, but deep down I actually learned something too, while completing all those proofs she made us do. Because, as it turns out, Mom and Dad were right, and whether it's building a bike rack or studying for grad school admissions, all that stuff does matter.
And so maybe now I'll finally live up to my potential.
Those of you who follow along on my adventures via social media may have noticed a strange -- and possibly disturbing -- trend lately. To wit: Many of my posts have nothing to do with bicycles. In fact, I would say "most" of my posts are not of the two-wheeled variety.
Wait, what?!
I still remember my last mountain bike ride, a quick jaunt around Bent Creek on Thanksgiving Saturday, after wrecking my rack, my cx/road bike and the back of my car in a fit of stupidity that I wish I could say I've only experienced once in my life. It was fantastic, and I made an extra effort to catch air wherever I could, before rolling back to Kim's car, shivvering and satisfied, just before darkness overtook me.
The road is a bit more forgiving, and I think I've ridden twice since then. Mostly, though I've been running -- truth be told, really, even that isn't as consistent as I'd like.
What I've been doing is working. And studying.
Wait, what?!
Sure, I work in the bike industry. And yes, I can sneak out for a lunch ride now and then. Only, for years I've been saying that what our industry needs is more folks who aren't "bike people" -- if companies are going to survive, we need smart, educated folks with experience outside the Sands Convention Center. The funny thing is, though, I am finally coming to grips that I've been ignoring my own Kool-Aid.
Not anymore.
I started to get really inspired when I tore through the biography of Steve Jobs. Isaacson's portrayal reminded me of a few folks I used to know; more importantly, it dawned on me that we have a similar opportunity within the walls of Cane Creek. We're reinventing ourselves and the world around us, and holy crap, WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY!
After that came Moneyball. And The Search. The Long Tail. Why We Buy. "Fast Company." I reactivated a neural network I put to rest nearly a decade ago, one that I let get beat out of me by the perceptions of a toxic, misogynistic, egomaniacal environment followed by the self-determination that I would live an idealized lifestyle, not be a -gasp- "middle manager."
The crazy thing is, this time around, I'm having fun.
When I joined Cane Creek, I naturally started to focus more of my attention on the industry. My reading habits became less cyclingnews.com, more "Bicycle Retailer." All the same, on some level I've been holding back for one reason or another, and it wasn't until a few months ago (oddly, about the same time I might have been in Vegas for the annual trade show) that something finally clicked: I actually don't have much bike industry experience. Most of my professional life has been in insurance. Or cars. Or agency work. Consulting.
And I finally realized: That matters. I can use that. It's not a liability. I can help shape the future of this industry by tapping into this knowledge and experience that I never really thought was all that relevant.
Do or do not. There is no try.
Now, for some of you, this may seem pretty elementary. But for me, in this environment, this industry, it was pretty revolutionary, at least to myself. It's the culmination of a lot of angst, feeling the heat and getting burned a few times, and finally realizing that to be an agent of change, you must embrace and become the change yourself fully -- the middle ground is, in retrospect, the too-easy path. And while I like to think I've not been a slouch, neither have I taken on completely my responsibility to myself.
Until now.
On some level, yeah, I'm a bike guy. I always will be. But while my coworkers have been geeking out on the latest products on Bikerumor, I've been watching the developments at Google with a lot of interest -- Once upon a time I built an open-source inference engine to aid in field diagnosis for paramedics, and as we lurch ever-closer to a successful Turing Test, I am fascinated by the possibilities. I say this not to brag, but as an example of a new way of thinking: Computer science, retail theory, statistical baseball -- these are the fields from which we can draw to ensure a future for the bicycle industry. We must escape the gravitational pull that has thus far destroyed the ski and golf industries, and I believe it's only by the grace of our own backwardness that we have survived as long as we have. Thinking outside the bike will be the only way to leapfrog the fate that now faces us. And I want to be right there, taking hold of that future.
I have this really weird ability: It seems that no matter what happens, no matter how hard I apply myself -- or don't -- I just can't make it past 3 years in a job. A couple of stints have been noticeably shorter, and one lasted 6 months longer (though it was over before it was over), but by and large, the mantra of my professional career has been three-and-out, thankyouverymuch and don't let the door hit you as it closes. It's not personal, I'm not bitter -- it's just the way it has worked out.
I thought Cane Creek would be different. I was looking forward to some longevity. But here I am, at 2 years and 51 weeks -- just one week short of my 3 years -- and everything's changing. I really thought I had a chance to make this my longest job ever, provided I make it to May 13, 2013, one day after my 40th birthday -- that would make my stint exactly 3 years, 6 months, and 1 day.
It's not gonna' happen.
Instead, starting more or less immediately, I'm taking on a whole new set of challenges. Well, not "whole new," not exactly. But different. Strange. More broad. Bigger.
How big?
Big.
Like, Leonardo DiCaprio big.
"Whole world" big.
Big enough that I have to start using abbreviations in polite company ... and in my email signature.
It's been brewing for a while: I am taking on responsibility for every Cane Creek product we sell that doesn't already come on your bike. From my beloved Pony Shop in Evanston to the guy in his pajamas calling for headset help to the massive warehouses in Germany to the street-corner shop in Surrey or Melbourne or Tokyo or Moscow, it's now my job to watch over the worldwide wheels of commerce and keep them moving smoothly.
I guess it's more or less official: I am in the process of becoming the Director of Global Aftermarket Sales and Customer Service for Cane Creek Cycling Components.
That's a bit of a mouthful. And one hell of a legacy.
For those of you not familiar, Cane Creek is an icon in the bicycle world. Rock Shox got its commercial start on a fixture we still use to this day, one that sits not 50 feet from my office. The threadless headsets we championed and marketed revolutionized modern bicycle design and paved the way for suspension forks as we know them. More recently, our adaptation of rear suspension design from motorsports is rewriting what's possible -- and along with that, necessitating a whole new approach to customer service and education.
But for those of you who are familiar, you know the bicycle industry tends to chew up and spit out its icons. For whatever reason -- passion, enthusiasm, luck -- bikes have thus far bucked many of the trends of the rest of the global economy, and the very public failures have tended to be pretty obvious internal combustion vs. outside market forces. However, that is changing rapidly, inexorably -- on a worldwide scale, selling bicycles and bicycle parts will be radically different in the next decade. None of us are quite sure what's coming, but we're seeing the trends begin to solidify -- calling them "good" and "bad" would be disingenuous: Our industry is pivoting on the buying habits of the modern consumer, and only those who can adapt will survive.
And now, that's my responsibility.
All of it.
Gulp.
The great news is, we have a fantastic team that's come together here, and we're unecumbered by the past. We're doing it right, we're doing it quick, we're doing it smart -- I haven't been this excited to come to work every day in a long, long time; really, since the best days of Legacy over a decade ago. We don't have bread days here, but maybe we can make that happen soon.
I've come to a pretty important realization over the past couple of weeks: There isn't much racing in my future.
I'm not ready to "retire" -- that's what my Dad is planning at the end of the year, after which, he's done working and will spend his days driving around in his '42 Chevy. I'm not quite that finished ... but neither do I have a plan to ramp up for 2013. In the consulting world, we had an expression: Someone was "on the beach" when they finished an engagement, before they got picked up for another one.
Right now, I'm on the beach, but my ship is coming in quickly.
In many ways, things are coming together that were set in motion more than 30 years ago. Back then, when my brother Tim and I opened our first "bike shop" in my Dad's garage, I never could have imagined that I'd get the chance to first devote my life to racing, and then use that as a stepping stone into the industry. It worked out well that I didn't come up through retail -- now, as I find myself planning for next year and beyond, I'm bringing to bear all those experiences that have shaped my adult professional life. I turn 40 next year, and I'm finally taking myself seriously.
I've got a lot to offer, and I'm more excited about what's next than I've been in a long time. What's more, this time it's different: In the past, I have capitalized on opportunities; this time around, I'm creating them. There's a satisfaction there that I didn't realize I was missing -- a lot.
My gut tells me this space will be fairly quiet for a while, though I may still break in from time to time. And like I said, I'm not done -- I'm all but signed up for BURN, and have already committed in spirit to another assault on Wausau. I'm just not sure what form my run-ups to those events will take, and what other adventures I'll be on in between.
This was the weekend that wasn't. Dealing with mechanicals, a route that was more fun this year despite taking us to the same places (and getting us there more slowly), and much better weather made Double Dare 2012 a sort-of event for Greg and I. We decided to bail halfway up Pilot Mountain Road on Sunday morning, when, as Greg put it, we realized that we "stopped having fun yesterday sometime." And that was that.
I made up for it, though, sending my friends from Minnesota on a true Pisgah experience on Monday: Laurel > Pilot > SMR > abandoned logging road > Squirrel > Bradley Creek > 1206. Yes, you read that correctly. They missed a couple of turns in there. Let's just say that if DD was forgettable for us, Joshua and Scott's first-ever Pisgah ride will be one for the ages.
DuPont yesterday with them, Bearwallow today and probably a night ride tomorrow. Despite all the black clouds swirling around, this week may not be so bad after all ...
I'm a writer and rider, racing on the road, mountain bike and cyclo-cross. Believing in yourself and the difference you can make is the most important thing you can do. Feel free to contact me: scstrout [at] yahoo.com.
