Mike Gfeller's Blog

Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 18, 2014

I have been getting up every day around 2-230 AM.  Still, I have been managing to get about 6 hours/day which keeps me running well enough.  This allows me time to write my blog post while Wolfgang is still sleeping.

I used Hotels.com to book most of my rooms here.  I tried to find the highest rated room with the best price and then took into account the location so the attractions would be relatively nearby.  In some cases I was able to add breakfast for a slight up charge.  If you are a breakfast person, I highly recommend this as we haven’t been disappointed.  In Hiroshima the hotel was nice and with breakfast included for both of us I paid $136 for the night.  Not bad.

The Peace Memorial opened at 9A, so we had breakfast around 7A.  I posted pics already of our view from breakfast.  It was on the 15th floor.  Most hotels I’ve frequented don’t use that real estate for the breakfast buffet but I am glad they did.

As far as breakfast goes, it was fairly standard fare, with some exceptions.  They had a version of bacon that was wider, almost like turkey bacon, and was good enough.  The eggs were creamy and very yellow, almost as if they were scrambled only with the yolks but they were good.  They had strange little sausages, like skinny hotdogs really, and two different types of grilled fish.  We filled up and headed down to the room to formulate our plan.

We walked over the river to the Peace Memorial.  There was a line to get into the museum so we decided to walk the grounds and wait for the line to diminish.  This is a very special place.  You can certainly feel it.  I had my Nike cap on and decided it wasn’t proper to wear a cap there so I took it off and carried it with me until we left the grounds.  We left the backpacks in the room as we had an 11A checkout.  Anyway, I took pictures of the grounds and if I haven’t shared will be doing so soon.

There are several monuments there and I think I will just rely on my pictures as I don’t really want to define it.  It’s sacred ground to the Japanese.  At every monument there were volunteers keeping the place clean, sweeping the area with brooms, picking up trash, ready to explain (in Japanese) anything a person might want to know.  These volunteers looked to be in their 70s and 80s.  I can only imagine what this area means to them and how they may have been affected.

There are trees everywhere.  This isn’t a situation where “nothing grows here”.  Quite the contrary.  Out of the ashes a beautiful park was born and probably a new country as well.  My friend John was disappointed I didn’t spend more time in the museum (will get to that shortly) because he says the key to understanding the Japanese today has a lot to do with understanding what happened at Hiroshima.  They are a peace loving people because they are the only country to have ever felt the power of such a weapon.  This definitely comes across.

After strolling around the grounds, reading, taking pictures, and reflecting we crossed the river and booked tickets on the 1110 boat charter to Miyajima, an island south of Hiroshima.  We then walked back across the river and entered the museum, which cost somewhere around .50 USD.  This is not a museum where profit is a motive.  I read a lot of the placards and learned much I didn’t know.  I saw miniature scale models of the city before and after.  I saw clothes singed by the fires, pictures of radiation burns, watches stopped at 8:15 (when the impact occurred), tin melted and twisted, and many other horrible things.  After about an hour I’d had enough.  It isn’t a place for laughter or smiling nor should it be.  It is appropriately solemn.  We left the museum and walked back to the hotel, packed up our bags and checked out.

We walked along the river about .25 miles to the boat ramp.  We waited about ten minutes and got aboard this crammed little charter that would take us to Miyajima.  The boat was enclosed so we didn’t get wet but it was very warm.  Wolf took a nap (the kid can sleep anywhere!) and I just enjoyed the journey.  We disembarked and began walking in the direction of the Itsukishima Shrine.  To set the visual, there are a lot of people that live on the island.  It has mountains on it and some topography but we were in a village and the path was paved.  We passed a large building that housed the ticketing agencies for the various charters and ferries that would take one back.  Immediately on the other side there were deer, amongst the tourists, just standing there being petted and eating whatever was thrown towards them.  Wolfgang remarked that they acted more like goats than deer and he was right.

The path to the shrine is lined with shops. There were bakeries, eateries (lots of oysters, they are known for it), and gift shops galore. The path was between the shops and to cut down on the heat a series of canvas-like fabric was draped across the path so much of it was shaded. I may go back later and edit this and add some history of the shrine, but not this day. It didn’t cost much to get in. At the entrance was a well where you would go and dip water and use it to wash your hands prior to entering the grounds. The path took us through the shrine. Some parts are not accessible. There was a ceremony going on in one area and individuals next to us were bowing and holding their hands together. Clearly they were well versed on the procedures. Wolfgang said this wasn’t for us and he felt it would be disrespectful to watch as a bystander so we moved on.

After going through the shrine and taking pictures of the gateway to the shrine (located in the water) we headed back through the village and bought a few gifts for the family. We decided to take a ferry back to the mainland south of Hiroshima and then take a train back to the JR station in Hiroshima. This would be much faster and cheaper. In fact, it was free! We went to purchase ferry tickets and found out it was a JR ferry. With our JR passes there was no charge. We boarded the ferry and in about 15 minutes were back on the mainland. At this point my feet were hurting badly and I needed to sit. That wasn’t going to happen because nobody in this country sits.

We walked about .25 miles to the JR station (think subway, not bullet train) and asked about getting to Hiroshima. The train was leaving in 15 minutes so we headed up to the platform and waited while standing as again, no seating was available. We boarded the train and again, standing room only. Ugh. It was about 30-40 minutes to the Hiroshima JR station. We asked about reserving seats to Osaka and they were all sold out. It was about 1:30 and I was starting to get worried we wouldn’t get there. I Skyped John and he gave me some suggestions but mostly reassured me it would work out. I thought there might be a language issue so I went back to JR ticketing and asked a different guy. He said there was a fast train (less stops) to Osaka at 1517 but non-reserved seating only so we would have to get in line early to get a spot. JR was starting to frustrate us.

We shopped (no place to sit) and headed up to the platform around 1450. We got in line behind a red-dreaded Aussie and her mother who were on holiday and trying like hell to get to Osaka. The redhead was pregnant and clearly not comfortable but very friendly, which probably explained her current condition. We boarded the bullet train but had standing room only. I could barely stand at this point and was biting my teeth in pain. Keep in mind we had these heavy backpacks on our back since we got to the island. My phone’s battery died. About halfway to Osaka (45 minutes into a 1.5 hour trip), we made a stop and several people exited, which gave us seats. We rested for the next 45 minutes. Wolfgang slept.

Upon arriving at Osaka, which we were altogether familiar with at this point from the previous day’s adventures, we hailed a taxi to our hotel, the Hotel Monterey La Soeur Osaka. We got there to check in and they told us we were at the wrong Hotel Monterey! Are you kidding me? We had just paid $25 for nothing and that wasn’t all. We had to get another cab from Hotel Monterey 1 and pay another $25 to get to Hotel Monterey #2. We got there around 5:30, drenched with sweat, me hobbling, and literally dropped ourselves into our room. After checking in with John and connecting to wifi I crashed. I woke around 8:30 and realized the hotel restaurants stop serving at, you guessed it, 8:30. Osaka was pissing me off at this point. Now this is the third largest city in Japan and has a great nightlife but we weren’t in that part of Osaka. Wolf and I were both hungry and we had resigned ourselves to protein bars when John Skyped me and asked how we were doing. I think I was pretty frustrated at that point. I didn’t want to spend more money on cabs, I couldn’t walk, and I just needed a pick me up. John is one of my oldest friends. Though we haven’t spent much time together over the past 25 years, we will always be like brothers. He told me to hang on more than once (I wasn’t amused) and then asked me what type of pizza I liked. I gave him Wolfgang’s favorite, pepperoni and black olive, and he in turn was skyping his wife to make it all happen. Needless to say I reported to the hotel lobby 15 minutes later per his instructions and was the proud recipient of one large pepperoni and black olive pizza, delivered by Dominos and paid for by John and his wife from Tokyo. It was the best pizza I’ve ever had and it wasn’t any different than the standard Domino’s pizza and yet it was.

I don’t want my readers to think I am not enjoying my trip or am not grateful, because both would not be correct. I love this trip and am extremely grateful, but transportation here can be frustrating and my plantar issues are not fun or expected. In the days ahead you will see I will deliberately chart a course of action to reduce standing wherever possible. Walking isn’t bad, but standing with the pack is challenging at best.

The good news is that tomorrow we head to Kyoto and will stay in that hotel 3 days, which means the backpack can come off and remain in the room while we are out seeing the sights. We’ll also see how good the baggage service works, because the two bags we had shipped from Tokyo should be there waiting for us.

With a belly full of pizza chased with a couple Ki-rins from the hotel vending machine, I find myself at the end of day 3.

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 17, 2014

Woke up at 3A and started getting organized for the day while Wolf was sleeping.  Besides, I was wide awake.  It gets light very early here which also throws one off.  We packed 3 days worth of clothes and our necessary items into our backpacks and headed down to check out.  We had our bags shipped (common in Japan) for about 3200 yen.  They shipped them to the Kyoto hotel where we would be Monday night.  That way we don’t have to lug our baggage around the country.  We checked out of the hotel and now it was off to meet John.

While waiting for John I looked around for coffee.  It was 630A on a Saturday morning and nothing was open.  Starbucks opened at 8A…what?  John arrived a little after 7 and we headed to the train station.  I was glad he was with us because I would have not been able to navigate this maze without him.  We made it about 7 stops from Ikebukuro station to Tokyo station (I think one of the main ones, though the one we’d just left was crazy).  We found a JR office, exchanged our documents for two official JR passes, and then John had to leave, leaving us to navigate the madness to find our gate.

I’ll explain more about Japanese trains in another post, but there are many flavors and sizes.  We wanted the bullet trains, or Shinkansen.  Our final destination for the day was Hiroshima, but we were stopping at the station known as Shinfuji to exit the train, take pictures of the mountain from a distance, and then hop back on another train.  This is a logistical challenge because the fastest trains have less stops, so if you want to stop at Shinfuji, you take a bullet train that has a lot of stops.  Hiroshima is far south, so you take a bullet train with a lot of stops to get to Fuji and then try to find a faster train from there to Hiroshima.  Add to that reserved/non-reserved seating and you can see the learning curve imposed on us.  We got to Shinfuji around 9:30A but there were clouds covering the mountains.  In the meantime, my camera strap (from my Panasonic from which I posted the first round of pics yesterday) broke.  Since we had an hour to kill before the next train (where we had reserved seating), we decided to venture out and find a camera shop.

Here we are, two  Americans with backpacks and such walking through the backstreets and alleys of Fuji looking for a camera shop.  We passed by one small shop with some cameras in it and walked in.  The young kid went and grabbed his mother, who also couldn’t speak English.  I showed them the broken camera strap and she went on in Japanese and I got nothing out of it other than they didn’t have what I needed.  But then she drew a map and I am good with directions!  We bowed and took our leave and ambled further away from the JR station.  We got to the camera store, bought a new strap, and headed back to the JR station without incident, though I quickly found out about the usefulness of those towels John gave us.

So now we jump back on the bullet train headed for Shizuoka.  That is only one stop away.  We get to Shizuoka and switch trains to head to Osaka.  This is where it all fell apart.  Turns out there were heavy rains and while these trains are punctual, they don’t drive them in heavy rains.  Something about 182mph and a rain soaked track…will have to investigate that one further.  So we literally stop for minutes at a time…start…stop…start…stop…until we get to Osaka.  We get to the platform 2 minutes late but the train is gone.  Now what?

We go down to get new JR passes.  It is hot, humid, we are literally drenched in sweat, and have just missed our train and have a language barrier.  Just a little stressful.  The time is now 1:00 or so.  We get our new tickets and the earliest we can get is for around 1520.  We have time to kill.  It’s time to people watch!

A few observations and I am not judging:  the men here carry man purses, not sure why exactly.  Maybe to haul around the towels they need to wipe their brows or to hold all the train passes they need.  By the way, they have iPhone apps in Japanese to let you know how to find the right train and everyone has them (I saw it on many phones).  Lots of what I would call hooker heels but I don’t think these young ladies were of ill repute.  Establishments that have doors (in the train stations most do not, it would be an inefficient choke point) often have doors that open by touching them.  Pretty cool, as I hate the energy required to open a door…I also have seen very few tats here.   I am sure they must exist but not where we’ve been.  There isn’t much cleavage displayed by the ladies compared to Texas.  Very conservative in that respect.  The beds in the hotels are hard and the pillows even harder.  Makes you wonder what the hell the point in having one must be?  They love sweets and bakeries.  Wolfgang noted a 2:1 ratio of sweet shops to any other type of shop/store in the train stations.  Also, I think the drinking age is 20 or 21 but there are drink machines everywhere that sell water, coke, various Japanese drinks and BEER!  It is ubiquitous in the vending machines!

There are very few places to sit unless you want to go to a restaurant to eat, which we didn’t because we didn’t want to wait an hour to be seated.  I’ve battled plantar fasciitis for years and this was going to be a problem.  Walking I knew would be excessive and anticipated, but standing around with no place to sit was not.  We finally got on the train to Hiroshima.  Wolfgang slept much of it.  I didn’t.  We got to Hiroshima and hailed a taxi.  For $10 he got us to our hotel, the Hiroshima Sunroute.  The staff were courteous but this was no Hotel Metropolitan.  Still, it was nice enough and we had breakfast included for half of what we paid at the Tokyo Met.  It was about 5:30P by the time we got to our room.  We just sat and decompressed for awhile.  They had free wifi so we both charged our devices and caught up on posts.

Note:  keeping devices charged is a challenge.  If you have a window seat on the Shinkansen there is an outlet at your feet but if you don’t you will lose battery strength quick.  This IT Director was quickly schooled by his eighteen year old on all the tricks to conserve battery life.

I can’t remember when I booked the hotel what criteria I chose to determine the hotel but I made a good call on this one!  We were as close as you could get to the Peace Memorial, which was good, because we were supposed to hit that on day two and because of our rain delay in Osaka, that meant we would now be behind on day 3, which was meant to be spent in Osaka.

I started searching for a good restaurant.  John told me one of the foods Hiroshima is known for is oysters.  It turns out one of the highest rated restaurants I could find was located about 100 yards from the entrance to our hotel.  Mind you, we were in shorts and t-shirts and I had a fluorescent yellow Nike ball cap on (so I would be readily visible if Wolfgang and I became separated), so I was unsure if they would even let us in the place.  We walked across a gangplank to get to it as the restaurant was on a boat on the river next to the hotel.  They did let us in, and it was one of THE best dining experiences of my life.  It was very traditional.  The dining areas were hidden from view by screens.  We had to take our shoes off.  They showed us a menu with prices.  We ordered two oyster/fish dinners at about 6000 yen each.  There were something like 5 courses, each one as good or better than the last.  There was soup, salad, ramen, oysters fried and steamed, sashimi, and Asahi!  Wolfgang had coke.  It was about $150 total USD but worth every penny for the experience.  Wolfgang loved it too.  It was a bargain for the memory.  The three servers (female) walked us up the gangplank turning every 10 feet or so and bowing.  We walked across the small street next to the river to our hotel and they were still standing there waving saying things we didn’t understand but I’m sure were kind based on the tone.  They were still there as we turned the corner…

And just like that, what was a challenging day ended on a high note as the frustrations of the day were washed away by the incredible experience we had with the people and the food.  This trend would continue, except from an unlikely source.

I stopped by the vending machine, picked up a couple of beers, went back to the room, drank the beers and went to sleep with Wolfgang laughing while watching YouTube videos.  With all devices charging, day two had come to an end.

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 17, 2014

I have seen some of the craziest heels here…Natalie and Wendy Miller would love it!  But I digress.  After arriving at the Hotel Metropolitan we had some time to kill before meeting My friend John and his wife for dinner.  We walked around the block.  There were loud buzzing sounds coming from the trees.  Wolfgang thought they sounded like mechanized birds and I told him I thought they were locusts, which they indeed were.  We went back into the hotel and perused the various stores in the hotel.  The front desk people in the hotels seem to speak the best English, the others are hit and miss.  We went to a 2nd floor bar area where I had two beers (Asahi, not my favorite but it is growing on me) and Wolfgang had a hot cocoa.  $20 for that.  The Yen is roughly 100 to 1 conversion, so $2000 Yen = roughly $20.

we went upstairs and got a little bit of rest.  John writes for an English newspaper in Japan and so he works crazy hours.  He met his wife at the Ikebukuro train station and met us at the hotel lobby.  He presented us each with a gift.  Upon opening it, we each had received 3 patterned washcloths.  They are for wiping the sweat from one’s face/forehead.  I thought at the time such a gift wasn’t needed.  I would be wrong.

I had brought John and Swee-Chi (his wife’s nickname), per his request, 2 boxes of Triscuits, 2 boxes of wheat thins, and two large bags of Cheetos.  Wanting to avoid lugging them around, I left Wolf with John to review dinner options while I went to get the treasured snacks.  There were no bags in the room so I confiscated a pillowcase, put it all in there and brought it back down to John.

Meanwhile Wolf and John had been deciding between ramen and okonomi-yaki, which is called Japanese pizza.  Wolf decided on the pizza.  We headed to the train station.  I was blown away.  You take escalators down and you are in the middle of an ant farm.  I had mentioned in a Facebook post that there was lots of scurrying.  It looked like controlled madness.  There were different colored subway stations leading this way and that way, Japanese Rail (JR) a different direction, and shops everywhere, from restaurants to electronics to sweets.  We walked into an elevator, John pushed a button, and we got out of the elevator smack dab into this huge department store.  It went left and right and was apparently multiple floors.  Turns out it had the same name as the subway line because it was the same developer.  Ah, now this is closer to American thinking!

There were restaurants of all types.  The smells were amazing and falling on a relatively virgin palate so this was really something for me to behold. We sat down to wait for a table.  There were chairs outside the restaurant and you sit in order (the equivalent of taking your name).  When someone gets seated, everyone shifts chairs.  It’s really culinary musical chairs, but it is efficient and in typical Lean style, there was a picture of how the seating worked and when people walked up to it they looked at the picture and sat down accordingly.

They took our order before we were seated so they could begin preparation.  Just like an American pizza, you started out with this base (a little batter, noodles and cabbage) and added to it what you want, such as pork, shrimp, egg, etc.  I ordered pork and shrimp.  When we were seated, the opposite side of the table was against the wall and it was bench seating.  You lift up the bench and store your packages there and then sit down.  Clever and efficient.  I am noticing some recurring themes.  The middle of the table had a grill (think Japanese steakhouse).

They brought the pizzas and set them on the grill.  They then pour a sauce (kinda like teriyaki) all over them.  Then you put mayo on them, then flakes of dried fish and seaweed and finally you get to eat the damn thing.  It’s a lot of work for some noodles, but it was delicious and like nothing I’ve ever had.  Very filling.  Wolf can be a picky eater but he ate every bite.  John and his wife picked up the tab and we walked back to the hotel.  All the stores close at 9P, which I found surprising.  John and his wife came up to the room and Wolfgang was instantly asleep.  Since we were headed to Hiroshima the next day, John made plans to meet us at 7A at the station to escort us to Tokyo station to exchange our JR passes for the trip and then they departed.  Day one over and a success.

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 16, 2014

Even the plane ride was different.  First, it was real hard on my backside.  I managed to watch 3 movies en route, including The Monuments Men, Chef (huge Favreau fan ever since Swingers) and probably my 5th watching of 50 First Dates just because I like Drew Barrymore.  I flew United and they fed us 3 meals on the plane and served numerous rounds of drinks.  I opted for club soda.  I was determined to stay awake as long as possible so that I could adjust to sleeping at night in Japan.

For dinner I had a choice between pasta with spinach and fried chicken with noodles.  The “fried chicken” was actually chicken nuggets, which is a dubious use of the term “fried chicken” but it wasn’t half bad.  The lights were shut off on the plane for much of the flight and I realized that was because it was nighttime in Japan and they were making it easier to adjust.  I wonder if they will do the same thing on the way back to the states?

We flew much further north than I expected.  We were over the southern part of Alaska at one point, flew over the Aleutians and then clipped a portion of Russian airspace from the looks of it.  Luckily they decided to not launch any missiles at us.

Kris had packed us some serious food for the trip.  She went to Costco and went nuts on, well, nuts.  We had cashews, almonds, peanuts, and also 3 large bags of beef jerky.  I also had a box of 12 protein bars in my backpack so that we could have a quick breakfast each morning before heading out.  The airline handed us the customs form and it appeared as if the nuts and jerky might qualify as restricted items.  We asked the stewardess about this and she said she’d seen nuts confiscated before.  In retrospect I may have needed to clarify the nuts to which I was referring.  In any case, after we landed and walked through an almost deserted wing of Narita International Airport, we went through immigration where they stamped our passport.  So friendly!  Wolfgang remarked about the politeness of our first encounter.

After speeding through immigration, we went to get our bags. They changed the carousel on us so after waiting 30 minutes with our bags nowhere to be found, Wolfgang correctly suggested we were in the wrong place.  We went two carousels over and there were our bags sitting there with everyone else having gathered their bags and left.  We grabbed the bags and went through customs.  At the suggestion of the stewardess, we listed all of the items previously mentioned.  We ate two of the three bags of jerky on the plane thinking it would be confiscated.  The customs official looked over my declaration form, asked me a couple clarifying questions and let us go through.  No searches, no nothing.  I liked this place already.

My friend John told us after we went through customs to look for the orange sign for Limousine Bus service.  His wife had made reservations for us at The Hotel Metropolitan and the bus left at 1:45.  It was 1PM and so far everything was perfect.  Jinx.  I went to buy the tickets and they asked for which Hotel Metropolitan.  This was an unexpected development.  I wasn’t aware there was more than one.  I tried to Skype John but he wasn’t online.  I got the tickets to the hotel in Tokyo, in Ikebukuro.  Turns out I made a good guess.  John finally Skyped me and spoke with the clerk in Japanese and told me we were good.  We waited until 1:45 and the bus arrived promptly.  Apparently trains and buses run on time in Japan.  Not surprising considering this is the home of Lean Six Sigma.  I was already impressed.  The porters bow to you on the bus and then they bow to the bus driver.  The cars are smaller too, likely because of necessity.  Less people have them and the people themselves are not as large as us bulky Americans.  I didn’t see one SUV from the airport to the hotel.

The bus ride to the hotel was awesome.  It takes about an hour and while everyone has heard that Tokyo is one of the largest cities in the world, that doesn’t begin to describe it.  Wow is all I can say.  It is huge.  There are waterways everywhere, skyscrapers for miles and miles, and very few houses.  They dry their laundry on the balconies of their apartments, and they don’t discriminate on the types of garments either.

We got to the hotel and the service was nothing short of amazing.  The female bellhop took us to our room and unloaded the bags.  You don’t tip in Japan.  Wolfgang wanted to tip anyway but I talked him out of it.  More to come in Day One – Part 2.

-Mike

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on December 13, 2012

Good afternoon folks,

I’m a bit embarrassed to discuss the topic I am about to cover just because I think it is the most obvious thing to do and yet I don’t believe most of us that either manage or have managed people have performed this at all.  It’s about discovering what you are best at in the eyes of others.  We spend an incredible amount of time and energy critiquing our children, our staff, and even our friends on what they need to improve.  We spend almost no time letting them know what they do best.  Many of us know our strengths and weaknesses, but this is a little different than that.

My wife told me about an exercise they went through in her work environment and it went something like this:  each person had to get 360 degree feedback from a number of people they selected.  I don’t recall precisely the number, but let’s say it was between 5 and 10.  You can pick any 10 you want, doesn’t matter where they are on the friendship spectrum.  They only have one question to answer:  in the time that you’ve known me and have observed me, what was I doing at the time that you thought I was performing at my very best.  When did you go “Wow, clearly Mike is best at THAT.”  What were the circumstances and what did you observe, and why do you feel that way?  And you ask that same question from those 5-10 people you selected.

What you get back many times is eye opening.  What we personally feel we are best at (i.e. our strengths as I mentioned earlier) is not necessarily what others would perceive as our strengths.  It is so important to align those two.  If you are in a job where others perceive you as being great, but you don’t like the job, then success is going to be difficult.  On the other hand, if you believe you are really good at something and others just don’t see it, you’ve got a different sort of issue.  But it’s not just that, it is not about knowing where you are good.  Most people know this to some extent.  This is about knowing what you are BEST at doing.

The great thing about this exercise is you can do it as a teambuilder on a smaller scale and share the results.  Nobody minds if you openly talk about how great they are at something.  Well, there are a few people who are a bit more shy by nature, but assuming you get their buy-in upfront, it is a pretty fun and enlightening exercise.  This exercise serves to boost self-esteem and also if people know what others perceive them as doing best, they will do it more often, and possibly can do it even better since they know that behavior is receiving some attention.

Let me see if I can provide an example.  Let’s say I have an employee that is task-oriented.  That employee has probably received feedback from me saying that I appreciate that they are always well-organized and keep everything on track.  The employee knows that organization is a strength of theirs.  So that employee does this 360 feedback exercise.  The response is always going to vary based on differing perceptions, but let’s say one of the answers is something like this:  “I thought you were at your best when XXX happened.  Your organizational skills were helpful, but combined with your calm demeanor you were able to tackle the issue with rational deliberation while others around you were flustered.  Anytime all hell is breaking loose, this company would be well-served to have you in the middle of it.  (Disclaimer:  lest someone think I am writing this as a backhanded way to give credit to myself, think again.  I am not sure people would describe me as generally being calm.)  What that person has just learned about others perception of them is a whole lot more than “they have a strength with organization”.  Knowing that, they may want to consider learning more about crisis management and honing those skills others see in them.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback, especially if you think this is not a valid exercise.  I’ve been thinking about this for some time and haven’t found a down side, other than there are some who believe this might be too touchy-feely for their environment.  This isn’t rainbows and unicorns though.  This is concrete, and it isn’t about warm and fuzzy but about behaviors that a person exhibits.  Thanks for reading.

-Mike

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on September 9, 2012

I don’t know what it is about a tractor that is comforting.  Maybe a person has to grow up around tractors.  You know, have an uncle or a grandfather that drove one when they were a kid.  Maybe they even went so far as to attend a tractor pull.  I’ve been to a few.

My grandfather grew up in a farming community.  While he broke horses to ride (and yes, zebras – see my photo albums for more detail on that) and didn’t really do much traditional farming, he lived on a farm and had chickens and horses and maybe a few cows here and there.  He also had tractors and as he got older decided to get into the hobby his oldest son had already started:  collecting old John Deere tractors.  At least, initially just John Deere’s.  Later he purchased an Allis-Chalmers and maybe even an International Harvester or two.  I think at their high point, between my uncle and my grandfather they had over 30 big tractors and a few small garden tractors as well.  Probably 25 of those being John Deere.

My grandfather passed away almost 4 years ago, and in May 2010 we had a sale about sixty miles southeast of Kansas City in the little town of Garden City, Missouri.  On the sale bill were a few garden tractors, though none of them running.  My uncle had all the larger tractors, and used a couple of the smaller ones to mow.  One of the John Deere tractors had a mower belly on it, and was probably about 30 years old.  It wasn’t especially collectible or worth much, but I wanted one of my grandfather’s tractors.  This particular tractor he used for pulling my oldest son, his first grandson, around his yard in a wagon that he hitched to the back.  My uncle agreed to give it to me and so I rented a Uhaul trailer and hauled it back to Frisco, Texas.  I initially had high hopes for it.  I have a rather large yard for this area and fancied mowing the yard myself with the tractor rather than pay someone to mow it.  My wife reminded me that the edging of such a large yard was included in the price of mowing.  I immediately noticed her good sense on the matter, and so the tractor went into the garage, but not before I drove it around the yard for about 30 minutes.

Old timers have a deliberate way of doing things, and my grandfather and uncle were no exception.  I may even relay part of this wrong, but when you put the key in the ignition and started the engine, sometimes nothing would happen.  That’s because the gear had a few missing teeth and so it didn’t always catch.  To remedy this, all you had to do was to take a wrench that fit the nut on the bottom of the engine compartment, turn this gear slightly with the wrench, and turn the key again.  Worked every time, but that necessitated a place to store the wrench that wouldn’t get in the way.  So my grandfather had hung a wire from the steering column fashioned in such a way to hold the wrench so it was there when you needed it.  The wrench hangs there today.  Same wrench.

Another problem in using the tractor was that the gate wasn’t large enough to allow the tractor through.  I was already into this tractor the cost of renting the Uhaul, and my wife didn’t see the necessity of spending a lot of money on a wider gate if I wasn’t going to be doing the mowing anyway.  She was right.  The tractor went into the garage for the next two years.

You can’t change where you come from, and my uncle had blackberries growing in his yard.  Now, thornless blackberries are new to this world, like LED TV’s.  Anyone who has lived out in the country know two things about blackberries.  They will get you and you will get chiggers trying to get to the berries.  You put a little sulfur in your socks, wear flannel shirts, sweat, and maybe you’ll have enough blackberries in your bucket to make a cobbler.  I told my wife I wanted blackberries.  She said what she always says when I say something like that, which is “Whatever.  It’s your deal.”  Translation:  I’m not touching them or going near them.  So about 5 years ago I plant blackberries.  And for the next 5 years, every time I walked near the fence those blackberries got me.  Snagged shirts, drew blood, and whatever other mischief they could cause they did.  The rabbits that ate my flowers used them as shelter.  The birds that ate the blackberries nested in them, and the birds ate the blackberries so fast that I was never able to get more than one or two of them at a time.  Not enough to make a cobbler.  So this year I decided they needed to go.

In the meantime, heavy winds during the spring had taken down much of my fence.  On a lark, I asked the fence guy how much it would cost me to put in a larger gate while he was performing the rest of the work.  About $100 he said.  I could live with that, so I had a new gate put in that I could drive my tractor through.  I hadn’t determined a used for it yet, but at least it was now possible to get it back there.

Cutting down a blackberry bush is no easy task.  First, there were young birds nesting that I had to deal with.  Essentially I let them get old enough to leave the nest, then I resumed my efforts.  I got my share of scratches, but I managed to cut it down pretty well.  The problem was what came next?  I now had a huge pile of fresh blackberry branches on the ground in my backyard, but if you’ve ever tried putting blackberries in a trashbag, you will know it is pretty much impossible.  The branches snag and prevent you from advancing them into the bag.  Rosebushes are bad.  Blackberries are worse.  I decided perhaps I would call the company that does the mowing to see if they could take care of it.  Well, I did what everyone who knows me expects that I would do.  I promptly forgot.  So a month later I go out into my backyard and see dried up blackberries, which are arguably worse than fresh blackberry branches because they are less flexible.  I had no idea what I was going to do.  Then I thought of the tractor.  The tractor tires were too thick for the thorns to penetrate.  Check.  Riding on the tractor over the top of the blackberries would keep my legs from getting torn up.  Check.  I didn’t have to touch the blackberries.  Check.  I thought of all the things that could go wrong and could come up with nothing.  I would use my grandfather’s tractor and I would mow over these blackberries and mulch the yard with them.

I put the key into the tractor and clicked.  But no whirring sound, nothing.  The battery was dead.  $50 later I am heading back from Lowe’s with a new battery and replacing my old one.  It cranks right up.  I open my gate and drive my tractor through, like Caesar entering Rome with his armies for the first time.  I turn on the hydraulic system, set the mower height, and spend the next 20 minutes driving over and over the blackberries until there is literally nothing left.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it was 100 degrees outside.  And I thought about my grandfather the whole time.  I thought probably that the last time the tractor had been driven twenty minutes it was likely him driving it.  His sweat would have still been on the steering wheel mingling with mine.  But I wasn’t sad about it.  It was a part of the thing that holds families together and keeps traditions intact from generation to generation.  I was driving his tractor, utilizing it in a way that would have made him proud.  He would always tell me to “Use my head for something other than a hatrack, boy.”  And so I did.

Life is a lot simpler when viewed from atop a tractor.

-Mike

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on July 16, 2011

It might be the chair, the music, the people, or the atmosphere.  It might be the smell or the location.  It might be the food, and quite possibly the drink.  People have the need for familiarity.  There is nothing comforting about trying someplace new.  Comfort comes with familiarity, just the way it did when you were a kid and went to grandma’s house.  Bet you remember the smell of the soap that she used in her bathroom.  For me it smelled like roses.  If I try, I can smell it like it wasn’t 40 years ago.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and we got around to this subject at the same point in the conversation.  I was talking about restaurants, and specifically that while I like to try new places, when I find something I like at a restaurant, I tend to stick with it.  I can try my adventurous side at another restaurant.  If I like a dish, it becomes a regular part of my routine.  It becomes comforting.  It becomes familiar.  You probably have a shirt like this, or a pair of jeans, or maybe some comfortable shoes.

My friend was discussing how he gets his haircut precisely at the same time and same place every two weeks, and gets it cut by the same person.  That is the time that he has allocated for it, and if something comes up where his barber cannot make it, it puts him in a quandary.  It is very difficult with his schedule to change the day, and he likes his barber.  She cuts his hair just how he wants it to be cut.  Some might find this a bit too precise, but he needs this in his life as much as he has a need for sleep.  He’s been doing this for well over the past year in the exact same way.

Over drinks he was telling me that there are executives he knows that eat at certain restaurants certain days of the week every week, and they order the exact same thing each time.  While I don’t exactly do that, I certainly can understand it.  I bet one need only look at what gets thrown at them each day to understand why they carve out some semblance of routine.  I remember watching the video about the “Fish!” philosophy, born in Seattle at Pike’s Place fish market, and the employee of the fish market saying, and I am paraphrasing, “You can’t always control what happens to you during the day, but you can control how you react to it.”  The way you control how you react is to go someplace familiar, even if it is buried deep within your head.  That’s where that happy place lives.

I would not presume to make a value judgment on what stressors a person can or cannot handle in their life.  Let’s just say that each person has a range.  Some can handle more, and some less.  When stress is low, that is the time for adventure and for trying new things.  Familiarity rightfully gets tossed to the curb.  But when stress is elevated, familiarity grows in importance and everyone needs something in life that is stable where they don’t have to worry and they can just be.  Luckily, there are a few places like that for me.  Where is yours?

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on June 27, 2011

I took a BBQ 101 course at Premier Grilling on Main Street in Frisco, Texas.  Bryan Brickman, a friend of mine I met through Rotary, told me about it and so I signed up for $75.  It was worth every penny.  We made our own ribs, but learned a lot in general about smoking meats and cooking on the grill.  One of the more important lessons was to use good charcoal, not the briquets like you buy at the store, but good lump charcoal.  I’m not here to sell you anything, so I won’t mention a particular brand, but the difference in taste is incredible.  I’ve always made fun of my friends who use gas grills, and rightly so, but when you use charcoal briquets filled with lighter fluid, there honestly isn’t that much difference.  From now on, I use lump charcoal, with maybe a little bit of flavored wood thrown in sparingly.  Bryan gave me a great tip for how to get your charcoal lit quickly.  Get a MAP gas torch, lay your charcoal in your grill/smoker, and torch those babies for about a minute until they catch on fire.  I went to Lowe’s and bought a torch kit today, with the torch and the fluid for $49.99 + tax.  I’ll let everyone know tomorrow night how it works out after I’ve had a chance to use it.  Until then, cheers.

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on June 18, 2011

The next time you BBQ with either real charcoal (not lighter-fluid infused) or with wood, get a cookie sheet or something smaller and throw a bunch of rock salt on top of it.  Throw it in the smoker/grill and make sure the grill is covered.  Give it about 30 minutes.  Take it out and put it into a separate salt-shaker/grinder and you’ll have smoked salt.  It is excellent for adding a smoky taste to whatever you might be cooking that needs it.  This takes almost no effort but the payout is pure goodness.

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Posted By Mike Gfeller on June 17, 2011

This is a lesson I learned a little later in life.  When you are old enough to get your own apartment or buy your own house, it is essential that you befriend a good realtor.  A good realtor is good at selling houses, and that means they are good at ensuring houses are in good shape and sellable.  A good realtor will know a good tile guy, a good painter, a good roofer, a good fence person, a good handyman, a good plumber, a good landscaper, and the list goes on and on.  You will need all of those things at one point or another, whether you rent or buy.  Be proactive in befriending a realtor and you won’t regret it.

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