August 2005

Way back when, back in the service and as a kid I traveled around a lot. Sometimes I would fly but one time I rode the bus from Lancaster, California all the way up to Portland, Oregon to see and stay with a friend over the summer. Frank and I grew up together and it was this chance to go voyage, see sites through a slow pass, and also think. I was probably 16 then so I was gently growing up and seeing things out the rear view window of my own conscioiusness. It was the wild years, the 60’s. People were struck with war and wanted peace. Often, peace was much harder to assume than war to consume. Anyways, that trip was no seminal occurence in my life; but it marked a passage for me. I knew then that I would not be at home much longer. I was stretching boundaries there and I knew something else had to come.

In a few years it would be the service. The Army offered me the escape I wanted and needed. I needed to get away and wanted to taste life in some other lane. I went in the service and traveled by bus again up to Fort Ord, California and I remember that trip along the ocean and first along US Highway 101. Ford Ord is closed now but I remember the bus taking me through the front gate. Then I knew that things were simply different. The bus ride had taken me to another place; but it had also taken me through a vortex. My space and time continuum had floated.

After years in the service abroad in Japan and Asia, I returned and decided to ride the lonely road out to Texas. In my case a long and slow passage through the deserts to El Paso and Fort Bliss. I remember seeing the spread out deserts and plains and thinking I would come back to that place some other time. In 30-some hours I arrived in downtown El Paso and proceeded to drink some beer, celebrate my arrival and walk the city. Next day I reported as required to the arrival station and got assigned.

As I left the service, I flew back to California but my relationship with buses would not end there. Soon I was going to school up in Baksersfield and met my love. We relocated out to New Mexico and as it happened she rode the slow ride out to California for a so-called family emergency. It turned out not to be such an emergency so she rode back and I met her in Gallup, NM.

What prompted all this introspection and reflection was the story here. The bus carries memories for me and I remember other days on that “slow parade”. I remember desert rises and sets, the sun parading itself to my weary eyes, and I remember the arrivals and departures. The silver hound took me to many one-horse stops in Texas and everything must change. Often a completely unrelated event ties together in my mind with so many other things and a cascade of memory follows…

This is the overall map courtesy of RandMcNally we are looking at for next year. Part of the nice thing about Rand McNally is you can setup the entire trip, save it, print the maps, etc. I also am beginning to setup the stops we want to make. The interesting areas for us is that first leg out to Carson City and then down into Arizona. There are so many interesting things to see on that leg. I also am computing the driving distances using Rand McNally for the trip since we have kids and its nice to know the “diffs”.

A few of the challenges confronting us are distances and places to stay. Since we want this to be memorable and perhaps its the start of yet more adventures of this kind, we want to have activities and stops which make a difference. We all like to stay in campgrounds like KOA and we have a Thousand Trails membership but there is also need for the kids to have the so-called creature comforts.

The second leg of the trip going out is through Arizona and New Mexico and the places we remember as being so beautiful and unique. The entire drive actually is and there is so much that we are hoping that some days on that part of things will allow us to see many of the places we remember from distant days.

The third part of the journey is the Texas part. We both lived up in the Panhandle and Val went to school in Canyon, Texas at the school that was called WTSU. She got her BSN there. At the same time, I was going out to grad school in Portales, NM. So we know the areas out there pretty well. I also did a bunch of work down in southern New Mexico around Las Cruces in the Guadalupe Forest. So we do the drive down from Amarillo to El Paso and then west along the southern desert route.

As we go east to west its along US Highway 10 and we end up in San Diego for some days of relaxation and fun at the zoos and sea world, etc.

Finally, its back to SF and the bay area. Suffice to say, I am going to provide lots of links and photos and other stuff.

We have spent a few vacations last few years traveling in either a rented 25-foot RV or driving down the coast to places like Santa Barbara, the coastline around Hearst Castle, San Diego, DisneyLand, etc. All of these have been wonderful and we’ve enjoyed most of every trip. But the kids are getting older now and there is this vacation we have wanted to do for a long time. If you read my personal pages, you can see that Val and I traveled across the south central plains and out to New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas a lot for school. Those states have wonderful things to do in them and we captured groups of places we wanted desperately to return to in the following years.

Its been like 15 years since we were out on the plains and the southern deserts. Its time we go back. So, we started looking at a road trip that would include several places that we want to get back to. Places like Walnut Canyon, Bandalier, Arches National Monument, Santa Fe, the Guadalupe Mountains, many spots of interest across a wide swatch of the southwest and plains. We’ll end up in Amarillo, Texas and then drive south to El Pase and then on to Las Cruces, NM. All beautiful and holding memories galore.

I’m going to post our route next so people can see what we will be doing. I am really excited since we are going to take on a trip like one we used to do when no kids graced our lives. This trip will take roughly 3 times as long and we will see many states that we have or had love affairs with. New Mexico is truly wonderful and its places, geologies, ecologies, and prehistories are priceless. I’d also like to show Val and the kids the lonelist highway in the US since its a place I drove many times.

Look for followup posts here and some maps from www.randmcnally.com on our route. We are planning this early because we feel its a significant vacation and its one we have wanted to do for awhile. We still have months to get there and lots of planning around stops, places to visit, and equipment we will need.

We all know the mantra. Project Management is like the evil side of doing projects. At one level, the technology consultant can excel at delivery and consulting expertise. The integration guy can bring a focus point to how all the pieces fit together and how a delivery and integration team will fit. But the third axis is always how well the team is managed and what the goals are. At my current job, project management is the goal and the exercise I engage in every day; but its quite wonderful because I feel like I am cutting new terrain in how we utilize existing tools to do the work. I’ve always felt that good and effective management needs attention process and the people. Leave one and the other suffers. The good PM cannot just schedule and do GANTT charts. Its like you cut the life out of the person and replace it with a scheduling application. Even if PM is the evil side, its a side that needs exercising (not exorcising). It needs to be brought up much like an IBM executive told me to a level where the PM is a member of the team and not an afterthought. How does one do this though? Development teams run rampant on tasks, integration consultants may be in different geo’s. I deal with different countries now and I’ve found a few rules work for this:

• be available. You got to be available and understand the basics around timezones and locations
• be patient as new team members crystallize. nothing happens the next day and good management takes awhile to get working.
• dwell on the projects and the implementations thereof. remember the goals and the projects all intersect at some known point in space and time. try to visualize the end goal
• be patient. Patience is indeed a virtue and sometimes its hard to combine that with the goals. I had to integrate teams of people stretched into other geo’s and nothing happens even in this geo overnight.

All of this points at goals at a high level which forms the way we do things and lower level goals that allow the PM to escape from the evil side and become truly desired. As a Chinese counterpart told me, “Michael we want you on board throughout it all. We need you”. Well… It makes one realize that building effective bridges for management is truly a building exercise. If you blow the bridges apart by asserting something that is unworkable, nothing gets done and if you have responsibility in different geo’s, it all suffers.

If you are looking for a PM to be a panacea, think again. In my current set of tasks and milestones, goals and scheduling, integration with a technical team; I’ve seen a point come up where the PM “could be” a panacea. But it just will not work. It works much better and is more sustainable to allow the PM to become a member of the team and not just the guy that does PERT and GANTT. Think about this when want a project manager on board and ask the magic questions like:

1) what is it that I want this person to do?
2) do I have a set of predispositions or prejudices that may color the work I want done?
3) will this person only manage timelines?

Consider carefully and I’ve been asked for both. Being a scheduling manager is evil and you will not succeed. You have to bridge the schedule, the teams. The process and the people. It ties all of it together. Make your project manager a “gopher” and you will not get a quality approach. There are new requirements that come up with new geo’s. I’ve been involved lately at a management level with teams in China and India. Look at what the requirement is there and what you are asking the manager to manage. Finally, give that person the right tools to succeed. Thanks to my current work environment, I’m given those tools. Project Management is not evil there. Its highly regarded. So instead of being a evil entity, it becomes a sought after need.