Klister and Waxing Philosophical

I thought that Bertha was a fine name for the tall and curvaceous snowwoman that my lovely wife and I built in the middle of the field at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center on New Year’s Eve. It was she who suggested the name, and it just stuck. Bertha is my grandmother’s name, but only a few people know this to be true, so please keep it a secret. I’ve always called her Grandma. My mother and her siblings have always called her Mom, and everyone else has always called her Beth, which is her middle name. As far as her given name, Bertha, she hates it, and if she knew that I was sharing this sensitive information with the seven or eight people who read this column, she would be quite unhappy with me. But I personally feel that Bertha is a perfectly nice name, in that traditional, old fashioned kind of way, and it is a name that has gotten a bad rap over the years, if you ask me. Bertha the snowwoman didn’t seem to mind it, nor did Bernie or Bert, her snowman and snowchild respectively, who we built to keep her company.

Building a snow family in the middle of the field at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center on New Year’s Eve was not something we had planned on doing, but as is the case with a lot of families, it just sort of happened. We had instead planned on reliving our prior New Year’s Eve, when before the big bonfire at midnight, we went snowshoeing around the lake with shiny headlamps and a sparkling bottle of champagne. Last New Year’s Eve was a cold and snowy night, and the lake was as frozen as the look in a frozen fish’s eye, and our trek around the lake was as safe as it was wonderful. This year however, the weather was totally different. It was unseasonably warm, well above freezing anyway, and after a few slushy steps beyond the perimeter of the shoreline, we decided that trekking out on a lake that may or may not be completely frozen on a night that was as dark as a pocket wasn’t the best way to end the year.

The warm weather and the rain that fell overnight didn’t do great things for the conditions in the morning, but fortunately, thanks to enough of a base and a lot of good strong snow harvesting work performed by the Craftsbury trail crew, there was still enough snow on the trails to go for a nice ski. Thankfully, they didn’t harvest the snow from our snow family—they were still standing—although not entirely intact. Bertha had lost an eye and Bert’s mouth, made of a twig, had started to droop a bit. It only took a little bit of work to fix them up for their first full day together as a family. With our parenting work done, it was now time to head out for our second annual New Year’s Day tour.

Unlike last year, I thought I was prepared for waxing my skis, having brought all eight of the Swix kick waxes with me. I was determined to avoid last year’s frustrating situation, where I had all of the Swix kick waxes except for one, Violet Special, which of course turned out to be the wax of the day. I had no choice but to buy, at full retail, a container of Violet Special from the Craftsbury ski shop. For a retail junker who works at a ski shop, buying a container of ski wax at full price from another ski shop is a painful and shameful thing to have to do, and not something you would want to do twice. Thanks to rain and 40 degree weather, I was once again unprepared for the kind of snow that we were dealing with, which was soft and wet and evaporating in a dense low lying layer of fog. When the snow is like that, hard kick waxes are useless, even if you have all eight of them. The only stuff that works when the snow is in such a dreadful state is Klister, a nasty, messy substance that comes in a tube and needs to be spread on your skis like fine pâté on a baguette. I of course didn’t have any Klister, but because I am an expert ski tech with expert skills and a vast amount of expert knowledge, I was able to form the expert conclusion, based on my years and years of experience with waxing skis, that not having brought any Klister, all I had to do was simply purchase a tube of Klister from the Craftsbury ski shop. Despite reaching this conclusion, I refused to shamefully buy another product at full retail and decided to just head out with the kick wax that was still on my skis from last winter, whatever it was.

It was a foolish bull-headed decision and I of course had absolutely no kick at all and one thing you especially notice when your skis have absolutely no kick at all is an uphill climb. Skiing downhill feels the same, but trying to ski uphill with no kick at all is like trying to roller skate up a waterslide, only not as much fun. We did an 8K loop, and although it may be impossible according to the law of physics, I am convinced that the entire loop, from point A to point A, was uphill. This reminds me of a common metaphor for life, where at times it can seem like an uphill battle. To extend the metaphor, one easy way to gain traction in life is to not be too bull-headed. My Grandmother would agree.

Get to Know an Unknown Rock Star

I once mentioned to Bart, my hands-down favorite fellow coworker, that I am a rock star. I wasn’t kidding around; I was being serious. Being rooted in logic and reason, he of course went into immediate argument mode, disputing my claim with piles of tangible evidence that proves his contradiction to be sound. He was being literal and I understand that. No, as Bart pointed out, I am not a successful performer with millions of dollars nor am I a celebrated talent with legions of adoring fans. And no, I am not a heralded axe man with racks of Gibson Les Paul guitars piled in the back of my black and gold colored tour bus and I am certainly not a bestselling artist with racks of multiple Grammy awards piled in the trophy room of my rock star mansion.

Yes, I do work at a bike shop and yes I am lousy at playing guitar and even worse at playing bass. And it is true that, not counting my lovely wife, I have zero adoring fans. My rock star mansion may currently be a humble abode and my tour bus may be a blue and rust colored Subaru, but that doesn’t matter. I am still a rock star. I’m just not a real rock star.

Maybe Bart could wrap his head around the idea if I had said that I’m a different type of rock star. I am an unknown rock star, and I am not alone. There are two other unknown rock stars—Crash Davis and Bash Baker—who also work at the shop. And the three of us are in an unknown rock band.

Any retail junkie who has ever attended a sales seminar and lived to tell about it has probably sat through the “Be a Rock Star” motivational speech. The motivational speaker is referring to another type of a rock star, the sales floor chart topper if you like, who welcomes customers within 20 seconds or 20 feet from walking in the door, who tactfully suggests and successfully sells custom insoles with every footwear purchase, and who embraces boring tasks that everyone else avoids, like making a compelling display for inner tubes or Presta valve adapters. Every shop needs these types of rock stars, and we have them in our ranks, but this is not the kind of rock star that I claim to be. (Although if the boss asks, please tell him that I am that type, too).

Most of us who work at the shop have a lot in common and we do a lot of activities together outside of work. We ride bikes together and then we drink beers together. We ski mountains together and then we drink beers together. When we’re not playing in the great outdoors, we go to the Three Penny Taproom together and then we drink beers while complaining about being broke together. We are coworkers, but we are also good friends, which is one of the things that I appreciate most about my job.

And then there are a few of us, the unknown rock stars, who do something else, something a little different together, something that doesn’t involve exercise or high speeds or anything having to do with the products that we sell or the active, outdoor lifestyle we promote. Once a week, usually on Thursday nights, Crash and Bash and I set up in the basement of the bike shop and rock out together. Crash plays the drums, Bash sings and plays the guitar, and I play the bass, and we all drink beers. For a few hours, nothing else in the world matters. No, we don’t have a record deal. No, we don’t a gig lined up. No, we don’t have a name, but when we’re playing music in the basement of the bike shop and we turn up the volume of our amplifiers enough to drown out the boiler, and I manage to play a few correct notes in a row, there is a magical feeling that only rock stars like us get to experience. The feeling is so intense, that I would break into real rock star poses and throw my arm in the air and jump up and down if I wasn’t worried about knocking over Frank’s repair stand.

This magical feeling carries over to the next day and stays with us. This is important, because even though there is no other job we’d rather be doing, work at the shop can at times be challenging, like when a customer wants to return long underwear because after a day of snowshoeing, they weren’t breathable enough. It can be stressful, like when you realize that you have more high-end racing poles in stock than you can realistically sell in a year, or three years for that matter. And it can be monotonous, like when you check the time and it’s a half hour earlier than when you checked it a half hour ago. All these things can grind you down, but when you’re an unknown rock star, you can strike a power chord in your brain and the challenges, stress, and monotony of the daily grind become a bit easier to deal with.

To all the unknown rock stars out there, keep rocking and rolling. To all the sales floor chart toppers out there, keep selling and restocking. And to all the real rock stars out there, look out. As soon as I learn how to play better and we come up with a name, we’re coming after your Grammys.