Great Good Friday, Climbing Up & Snowboarding Down Tuckerman's Ravine

Last Friday, with my awesome 13-year-old son, I was fortunate to share the intense and immense pleasure of hiking up snow-covered Mount Washington, NH, climbing up Tuckerman’s Ravine and snowboarding down.

Ably leading us 1st-timers on this bold mission, were two other Soccer Dads, a totally-cool Ski-Racing Mom and Dad, four Ski-Racing Kids aged 9-15, and two of my son's Soccer Teammates.

What a glorious, Spring day!  One Run down Tuckerman’s Ravine, plus the ride all the way down the Mountain after the hike up was a solid day's workout for this “Grey on a Tray”!  3 hours climbing up and 30 seconds snowboarding down Tuckerman's Ravine was totally worth the effort!

It was my first Tuckerman’s experience and I look forward to many more.  It was 65 F degrees, dazzling sunshine, deep blue sky and the snow was wet and heavy.  Every carving turn triggered noisy, slowly-slipping snow-slides; like benign, mellowed-out. mini-avalanches.

I over-packed my backpack with winter clothes, food, water and PBR, which turned my legs to rubber by the time I'd finished climbing up the Right Chute.  My son and I talked about hiking further up the ravine to the left, but decided, “naaaah, next time”.  My snowboard run down the ravine was somewhat geriatric; but to be charitable if not fair to myself, I really wanted to make it last ;-).

I can only imagine how scary skiing down Hillman’s Highway must be!  The totally cool ski racing parents, with their 3 kids and one ski-racing-soccer-teammate, climbed up the Ravine a 2nd time and took the Left Chute down, which looked absolutely terrifying to us from below.

Most amazing of all, was that after we drove back 2.5 hours (fast!) to Burlington, just-in-time for the Kids' 7:00 PM Indoor Soccer Game, the kids all played their game with Full, 13-Year Old Energy and Won!  It was as if they'd spent their day sitting in school and needed to let-off steam!  I was toast!  Ahhhh, to be 13 again. (Not! I'd settle for 25!)

I hope everyone's having a good time on this glorious day of April Fools!

My best (and worst) ever April 1^st was the one when about 10 of my 22 country managers in our B&J’s Int’l network got completely freaked-out, by our Int’l Marketing colleague’s brilliant prank:

Without anyone's knowledge, "M" sent our entire international network an extremely somber and urgently-toned email, informing us that B&J’s USA had:

“...unfortunately failed, following prolonged efforts to renegotiate the International License with Vermont Artist Woody Jackson, resulting in our having lost all rights to use Woody’s (B&J’s-Iconic) 'Woody Cow' imagery outside of the USA and Canada."

M’s message, (dummy) cc’d to Unilever Legal colleagues in NJ & Rotterdam, stated that B&J’s Int’l operations had to immediately cease and desist from using Woody Cow images anywhere in our trade dress, including packaging, trade collateral and scoop shops that we’d licensed and built around Europe, Asia and Latin America.  M’s coup-de-grace was the beautiful artwork image attached to his email, painted by a co-conspirator in B&J’s Design Group, showing "newly authorized” imagery:  Black & White Skunks.

There are many national cultures around the world that know nothing about our April Fools-Day Tradition; so I spent the better part of that day and some of the following night (for Asia) talking Country Managers and their local Unilever Ice Cream Chairman, respectively, down off of their upper-floor window ledges and out of their proverbial trees.

Speaking of Creativity…readers might also enjoy the material below about Tina Seelig of Stanford, whose concept of “The Failure Resume”, I find really great.  The blog-post below featuring Tina is from from “The Frank Peters Show: Angel Investing and Venture Capital” http://bit.ly/cDqNZ7 I always find Frank Peters' blog & podcasts fascinating and very useful, especially when I'm getting pumped-up for raising growth capital.