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Purple Ride 2013!

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network raised over $400,000 on Sunday, their largest year. I was very proud of our team’s contribution of over $2000. Your donations in the past week were critical for us to reach that milestone. This is our team’s sixth year riding and we’re getting stronger each time. We’ll see if we can grow our team to 10+ members next year and raise over $5000!

This was my first year riding and I was confident that everything would go smoothly, but it was more than double the distance I’ve ever done in one ride. I had hoped to document the entire route for everyone to share in the experience, but in the hustle and bustle of the start I forgot to start my tracker. Fortunately I’ve got great hand-eye-cycling coordination and I was able to start the app while I was biking.

purple-ride-2013

The course felt like it had more hills than my tracker recorded, but I guess the data doesn’t lie. I think was aggressive with my gear changes and that gave me some weird speed transitions. I should have a much smoother time next year. We’ll see if we can get some on bike footage to take you along for the ride next time.

I didn’t get in mid-ride photos but we do have a few pre- and post-race.

Our full team in pre-race condition.

Our full team in pre-race condition.

Us at the starting line with dozens of riders waiting behind us:

Start of the ride!

Start of the ride!

And a fun post-race picture:

post-race

I’m not sure the feather boa was a good addition, but Bethany insisted that I wear it. As many of you know, don’t argue with 4 year-old.

Thank you so much for your support. It means a lot to our team and me personally that we can support pancreatic cancer research. The survival numbers are still very depressing, but it takes events like this and support from friends like you to raise the profile and provide resources for families and researchers.

Week 38 2013

https://twitter.com/IamStephly/status/377962846665322496

Words of Bunny Wisdom:

Required Instagram Food Pic:

Week 37 2013

Crockford Series

recommended by @hardy101 and @therperterson

June 2011

Wes is in town. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the reunion. As you may have expected knowing Hardy, Haugen, & Wes, hilarity started almost instantly. Unfortunately, it was brought down by the the death of Matt’s cat, Crosby. I’ll provide a fitting tribute to Crosby in a later post, with some of the photos we were able to capture during his short time at the house.

May/June 2011

Monaco GP Course

Monaco GP Course

Planning and rethinking the summer and the product needs.

 

May 2011

small problem

A slight change in direction

It has been an up and down week, we’re not going to ImagineK12. Its a bummer, but everything should work out for the best (not really, but you have to say it).

I’m still at Lawson, it good and bad. Now I can waste money on a trip to Florida for the last space shuttle launch, STS 135.

STS 135 Patch

STS-135

I’m planning on driving down and trying to use my work hours flexibility to maximize the vacation time I’ll have for future trips. Now if I can only get my cousin to let me borrow his “car”. This is what he brought to the family Memorial Day event.

The curiser

Jesse & Shannon's cruiser

Otherwise, I’ll just have to put some more miles on the ol’ xB. Keeping the job and going on vacation are good fringe benefits of staying at Lawson. There are some jobs I would never take not matter how many vacation days I received, this is one of them:

Lawson's window washer

I should have taken more pictures at the Memorial day event with the extended family. It was a beautiful day on Lake Pepin. Dad’s chicken was a hit, I think I brought back 3+ chickens home to eat (and share).

May 21 2011

This is a bit of an ominous vibe, what is the count down to? Well that’s an interesting story.

At first it was a count down to my estimated time when I was going to be working full time on Kidblog. Day job done, helped out as long as I could, but I’m going to do my own thing.  That was Wednesday.

On Wednesday we got the final “no” from ImagineK12. They put the hammer down saying our product wasn’t defensible and we didn’t have enough time this summer to make it defensible, show that value to investors and have them give us money. I didn’t agree, but I understood (hence my previous post).

Now its Friday and it appears that were are now accepted in to the accelerator and are now going to California in a week or so. Really? Yes, really. I guess our “re-pitch” over email on Monday didn’t go to waste. I’m glad, this blog is really public on danflies.com yet. I limited send the bad news  to the handful of people we told about the project, but that was still disappointing.

We’re talking the weekend to be prudent and review what we’re going to do and if this is really our best option. I suspect that we’ll take the offer, but stranger things have happened.

Waiting for a bus.

Still wating

I have failed. Long live failure!

I hear it from the startup bloggers, I hear it from the titans of industry and from my teachers, coaches and managers over the past 30 years. You will fail. You learn more from failure than from success. It is not a comfort when you get that first big rejection of your new idea, an idea you’ve cultivated for weeks, months, sometimes years.

The only solace I can see at this point is spite. Spite, the special kind of bitterness from rejection that pushes you turn your rejected idea into the next big thing. I hope that the guys that passed on our idea have the same kind of regret A VC had with AirBnB.

Only time will tell, but we’re moving on to the next steps with more information and more determination.

Another blog change

For the 3rd time in the past 6 or 7 years, I’ve switched blogging platorms. This time form tumbr to WordPress and I’ve managed to bring the old Blogger posts with me to the new format. I don’t know how long I’ll be here on WordPress.com, I’ll eventually move to my own host at danflies.com, but we’ll see when that happens.

The best part is that my signature header is still here. Long live the LTD!