The New Job

Week #1 of the new job is in the books. It's quite a change going from the huge engine, 12 product marketers, 5 designers and 7 developers that make up adidas running on footwear at least, to one product marketer (me), one developer and an outside designer. Although the goal is not people oriented it just prooves that there is work to be done.

The week was rather non-descript. General get to know everyone, sit in a few meetings, watch how things happen. Got the big company orientation and that's when I knew there was a really big engine there. Let me see if I can explain this. Zoot, is part of the global company that is K2 sports. K2 operates a large portfolio of brands including, Ride, Marmont, K2 and in our building Adio. K2 is owned by Jardin. Jardin operates a huge potfolio of brands many of which you have in your kitchen (Mr. Coffee, Crock Pot and many more). So we have the small company/brand that has this absolutely huge engine behind it. You can tell how big a company is by the HR packet you receive on day #1. It's big.

The end of the week, Friday had a bit more juice in it. We started the day with a 6:00am meet up at a San Marcos Starbucks.

As you can see by the pictures this was going to be a rolling meeting. Really it was simply team building, very little work talk was being done. That guy in Blue is Brian the big boss at Zoot. I'm pretty sure that he'll compete at anything if you let him. It makes for a fun atmosphere.

The Ride for the day was to take us to the top of Palomar Mtn. It's not a walk in the park kind of climb. The climb itself is 11 miles long starting at 2.000 feet and finishing at 5,200 feet. The hard part is not the climb, it's the getting there and then getting home that's hard. Here we are after the first big climb of the day, together again and cruising into the morning sun.

Palomar is a well known mountain in the world of Cycling. Clyclists for years have been doing their training in San Diego and all use Palomar in their preperation. There are unoffical records kept (50 minutes to the top I believe) and lots of stories of pure collapse revolve around this mountain. Here the group gathers at the store which marks the start of the climb. All smiles here. Let the suffering begin.

Like I said it's not always the mountain itself that kills you. Everyone rode the mountain at their pace. We gathered at the top and then rode back down the way we came. It took me 80 minutes to climb and 25 minutes to get back to the start store. We gathered at the store once again and then made a route home decision. Fortunately or unfortunately the choice was to follow the tour of California final day route and go up Cole Grade. I believe in general, Cole Grade is the hardest climb in San Diego. You usually hit it after riding Palomar which means it's mid-day. It's steep but not super long. What makes it hard is the absolute lack of wind and the exposure to the sun. On this day it was 96 degrees in the area but on Cole Grade it was well over 100. It's a tempo climb for sure. Go too much out of your comfort tempo range and you could blow up easy. Evidence of blowing up is in the picture below.
I'm not sure how long the ride took but I know we were out in that sun for 7 hours. Lots of gathering at the stores. It was a hot hard day but a fun one. There will be lots of fun stories to tell around the office for a few weeks anyway.

Week two of the job will be totally different. Off to China to fix shoes with AA. It's a good thing I've got Cardiff to come home to.

It's a good life.....

Dave