Back to the having work interfere with my surfing, I was in Vacaville today. Yes high school Spanish buffs it means 'Cow Town' and there really is a place that proudly bares the name. It is about 20 miles west of Sacramento.
I was in a new facility. They are are huge company that 'develops gene therapy medicine for serious illness' (read 'octomom').
During my tour of the facility with the operations manager, he said Dr. Important Guy might be available for a few minutes. I was OK with meeting Dr. Important Guy. I being a sales guy like to meet the important guys. This is one of those facilities where they take away your cell phone and do a check on your drivers license to make sure you are not some spy (corporate or biological.)
Anyway the operations manager who was a nice older man with real pride was showing me the new facility brought me to Dr. Important Guy. It was surreal.
Me....."Sidewinder!!!!!"
Sidewinder......"Fosters Freeze"
Me......What are you doing here
Sidewinder......."Research and development...."
Me.....(I am now in the weird moment where the guy who surfed with you 27 years ago is now some important research guru at a huge company and I am baffled) "That's cool"
'That's cool ' is all I could come up with. The poor operations manager was about as nervous as you can get around your bosses bosses boss. I am in shock that 'Sidewinder' is not in jail or some psych facility. He was out there back when I knew him several decades ago. He would always have some trippy government conspiracy story to scare us with. We thought he was a bum and was crazy (in a good way).
When we used to surf at Davenport we met this guy who was doing a sideways bellyboarding thing. We of course named him 'Sidewinder'. We went into his palatial office and I learned the whole story. When we met him he just had suffered a back injury falling down some stairs. He was working on his PHD at UC Santa Cruz and loved the ocean and became another surf junky. His 'sidewinding' was good therapy and now he can stand up and surf. He quickly emailed me this picture of him longboarding.
This picture says it all about our sport, the true democracy of it and how powerful it stays with you. After all in most meetings you meet someone that you haven't seen in 30 years and they are gracious and all. But in surfing first things first LOOK AT THE PICTURES OF ME SURFING I CAN SURF!!!!!!!
5 comments:
Cool story. Careful of what you post though as the walls have ears and some employers are un-cool.
Wow. Good story. 30 years. Wow.
Great story indeed. Did you bust out the Big Sunday video of you at GV getting those rights to Bobby's house? I can see you guys taking over the conference room and plugging into the projector to have a day of show and tell "the places we surfed". Those rooms are perfect for surf videos and slide shows. They make them so that they can get extra dark. Maybe that will come with the follow up sales call. Be prepared though. Get David to shot you before you go. Get some A shots lined up just in case he takes boat trips every year.
Yes! You know I broke out my laptop and had way too many pictures. He was stoked on my kids surfing and told me he has a daughter that he has been trying to get in the water for years to no avail.
It's is funny he couldn't believe that I seemed normal or some facsimile of normal.
He's probably a SUP! Don't root to much for the guy. I think there is a paddle.
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