Guest Blogging

Hi there!  I'm back.  Well, actually our first guest blogger is here.  We're going to rotate and invite people close to our organization to share their thoughts with you every other week.  Our first entry is a person deeply and dearly close to United Way of Jackson County.  He's not a guest.  He's been around longer than I have.  He's Brad Earl and here are his thoughts...

There is simply no way for me to convince my friends that it’s a good idea to bicycle for two or three hours in 100 degree heat.  (It’s as crazy as wearing all black on a 115 degree day in Phoenix, Arizona, right?)  I’ll admit it requires some forethought – such as hydrating well before the ride, figuring out where to get water during the ride and keeping my exertion at a reasonable level.  It beats the alternative. There is simply no way I’m going to go without riding.  I cannot imagine it. 

Look at the guys in the Tour de France.  Heck, they ride on hot days… NO… they RACE on hot days.  That’s even crazier because they’re not in complete control of their exertion.  Some other crazy biker is driving the pace. To the pro’s, it’s about training, acclamation and expectation.  (I expect to hurt myself AND I expect to hurt the other guy more.)  I’ll bet they find it worse to find 40 degree temperatures and rain at this time of year because their bodies are prepared for the alternative.  I understand this.  I’ve been known to complain about feeling cold when it’s in the 60s.

I was out on a group training ride with a bunch of other competitive cyclists a couple of  Saturdays ago.  Sometime between dropping my companions on a short climb and ending the ride, I had a revelation about Living United.   (By the way, “dropping” someone on a bike means you accelerate and they aren’t capable of matching your pace.  I got schooled a bunch of times during the ride too, but why would I brag about that? It’s my blog.)

Here’s the revelation.  In the same way I cannot imagine a day without cycling, I cannot imagine our community without the tireless non-profits working in the margins to keep our community whole.  In these hard times, the margins are getting wider and the resources getting narrower.  Riding on hot days requires forethought.  We need similar advance-thinking to manage through economic crisis in our community too.  I learned early in my career (not the biking one, but the real one) that nearly anyone can manage a business in a booming economy.  It’s when times get tough that we find the real leaders.

 I believe silos, territorialism, and tired old processes are still prevalent in our community.  (Note: this is a blog, so I can make wild assertions like this without backing them up by facts. That’s cool.)   This just won’t do today.  It has to be about collaboration and innovation.  We must acclimate to the times. Resources weren’t great to begin with and now they are even more scarce.  It means being humble.  The good ideas might actually come from someone else or some other organization. 

To wrap all this up, I’ve come up with a really bad example in to tie the whole story together.   After patching a bike tube a few times, it ends up in the garbage.  I was planting a whole bunch of trees in my landscape and running to the hardware store to BUY rubber tree tie thingies.  Ah ha!  Right?  I now reuse old tubes to tie young trees to tree stakes.  How many years did it take me to figure that out?  Brilliant!  (Note: one local tire dealer is now helping cyclists recycle their old tires and tubes.)

My Live United challenge to you is to take a fresh look.  Are there some bike-tube-tree-ties in your organization?  Okay, enough blogging…it’s over 100 degrees out… time to ride...

Brad Earl, secretary Board of Directors, United Way of Jackson county was born and raised in southern Oregon. Brad lives in Medford with his wife (Cher), daughter (Aubree), dog (Nala), two cats (Rogue and Mystique), and gecko (Lizzy). He is passionate about volunteering, Starbucks coffee, baseball and competitive cycling. In his spare time, he makes a living as the Chief Operating Officer at Met One Instruments, Inc. in Grants Pass.

Brad has been Living United since becoming a loaned executive for United Way of Jackson County in 1987.

If you're interested in guest blogging, call, email, FaceBook, tweet me.  Let me know and we'll get you in the line up.  Thanks and onward.