SOAR Blog

Garbage day is Monday at the Politis household, which means that every Sunday night before retiring for the evening, Poppa P gets to take the trash cans out to the curb.

And for 10 years, that has also meant taking the green recycling can out to the curb as well, filled (as often as not) with newspapers, cardboard and other paper products, as well as with empty soda bottles and aluminum cans too.

In spite of the fact that I assiduously collected newspapers, aluminum cans and glass of all types and colors as a 13-year-old to help pay for a month-long summer trip to visit cousins in Ogden, Utah, the truth is that for most of my life I’ve been a reluctant recycler. But not anymore.

Intellectually, I realize that throughout modern history unscrupulous profiteers have illegally dumped toxic liquids, chemicals and materials into our water, air and land, and wantonly harvested plants, animals and compounds from the earth with little thought about long-term consequences and/or sustainability. In this regard, I am glad that there are now tougher laws in place to halt, minimize and prevent such actions in the future and to seriously penalize those who thwart such regulations.

That said, I have often felt overwhelmed at the enormity of the task, particularly as one individual out of a worldwide population of more than 6 billion.

“What can I do?” I have wondered when contemplating the environment. “And will my solitary actions make any difference?”

Today being Earth Day 2008, I realize that I do not have such questions any more.

Continue Reading »

Recently my buddy (wilsontribe) and I headed out geocaching once again — the eternal quest to not get lost looking for hidden objects.

Although we did only hit two caches, I did snag my first geocoin (see picture). Geocoins are cool and come in all different designs. This particular one, the redhanded geocoin, has a couple goals: travel to all 50 states, all countries and continents and then return to the US.

After looking at the travel log of this coin I see that it has traveled a total of 77 miles between Utah County and Salt Lake County. So, for my part, I will be taking this coin back east with me in a few weeks to plant it in a cache beyond the Utah state line.

Our second cache was a virtual cache. This is usually a non-traditional cache that has some sort of historical significance or is designed to educate. This one was a memorial to a fallen Utah Highway Patrol Agent. Interesting, but I have to admit, not as fun as finding a little box hidden with trinkets or goodies in it.

Although my second geocaching trip didn’t prove quite as fruitful on the cache side I did learn some valuable lessons about going geocaching and how to make the most of the outing.

So, as a beginner, here’re my 6 tips to get ready for a simple geocaching trip:

• Decide ahead of time the area you want to geocache in.
• Download the cache waypoints and then upload them into your GPS.
• Review the map and choose a couple waypoints as starting points.
• Review or print off the hints for starting waypoints.
• Charge your GPS receiver.
• Be sure to take water and snacks, if needed.

Doing these beforehand could save you an hour or two before you get going, or, in other words, you could find a handful of caches or just two!

If you ever need a boost of inspiration about the potential of diet and exercise (specifically cycling) to overcome one’s weight challenges, you’ve got to read yesterday’s story on The Gear Junkie: “Large Fella on a Bike” (4-18-08).

In summary, Scott Cutshall went from 501 pounds to 232 pounds by strictly following a self-imposed regimen of cycling and a 1,200-calorie per day diet, and he did so in a little more than two years.

I won’t go into more details here, but major, major props to Cutshall for his shining example to all of us, weight-challenged or not.

In addition, thank you “Gear Junkie” Stephen Regenold for bringing Scott’s story to light. I loved it!!!

So my neighbor introduced me to, and subsequently got me hooked on geocaching; the ultimate game of hide and seek. Being the gadget guy that I am, I just love these little GPS units. My neighbor has a Magellan eXplorist 210 and that thing will tell you how fast you’re moving, sunrise & sunset, moonrise & moonset, phase of the moon, in short, it tells you everything! For $10 more it will tell you your fortune — kidding!

So as a new geocacher I set out on an adventure (well, we were close to home and went in the car so maybe not much of an adventure, more of an outing) with my buddy, wilsontribe, and my son, little beldog. The great thing, for us men, is that with a GPS unit I don’t need to ask directions, just give me the coordinates and I can call in an airstrike anywhere in the world. Now, given we were staying local in Midvale, getting lost wasn’t a real concern. So after downloading some cache locations (hidden stashes are recorded on geocaching.com where one can download them and then sync the coordinates into the GPS unit to go out and find them), we set out to find our first cache.

Continue Reading »

The University of Utah’s football team today announced that it has entered a five-year “performance apparel and footweat outfitter” agreement with Under Armour (NYSE: UA). (Here’s a link to the official news release.)

Under Armour, of course, pioneered the field of performance apparel. And they make really good stuff.

Good for the Utes.

This weekend was the 2008 Sprint U.S. Freestyle Championships at Deer Valley and Shelly was back in town. David and I were lucky to have met Shelly several months ago on a flight back from a client meeting. A couple months later, Shelly came to Utah for the Visa Freestyle International and I had chance to go to breakfast with her the Friday before competition.

The next day my wife, Debbie and I went to Deer Valley to watch Shelly compete, but an ill-timed exit from the chairlift made it so we missed watching Shelly win! (Deb and I were riding the chair down from the race course to get warm, didn’t have skis on and had to sprint out of the way of the chair and Deb didn’t quite make it. The chair hit her, knocking her to the ground. She felt a little loopy, so we went home.) David was there for Shelly’s win and has been meaning to blog about it for awhile.

This time Shelly was in Utah to compete for the national title in individual and dual moguls. She’s been the Duals National Champion for the last three years straight. Deer Valley’s Champion run, where the course was set, is one of Shelly’s favorites. It’s one of the steepest on the circuit, which makes it a very technical course with lots of speed.

Continue Reading »

David, Maura and I visited Delta 7 Sports in Payson, Utah last Friday. Things are going pretty good for the start-up. They are putting the finishing touches on the first few Arantix IsoTruss mountain bike framesets going out to distributors in the UK and Australia, a dealer here in the U.S. and the first frame to a consumer (a doctor in Texas). The photo to the left is of Tyler Evans, Delta 7’s bicycle program manager, tapeing off one of the frames for its final clear coat.

We met with Delta 7’s executive team to check in on them. They are pretty happy about getting some bikes out the door!

Hopefully, the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games will be thwarted in their attempts to hide the fact that the air quality in Beijing is NOT conducive to world-class, aerobic sporting events that require high-oxygen intake.

If you’re not up to date on this topic, please check out my post from earlier today on TheBettyFactor.com entitled, “China & the IOC Utilize Spin in an Attempt to Minimize Athletes’ Concerns for the 2008 Games.”

So it’s that fantastically fun time for college basketball fans everywhere: March Madness.

That time of year when the top 64 65 Division I teams in the United States get tapped for a weeks-long, single-elimination tournament to determine the top D-I, B-Ball team in all of collegedom.

And in case you were not sure, understand that March Madness is BIG BUSINESS spelled with two capital Bs!

How big you ask? Rumors and reports on the ‘Net state that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has pegged annual March Madness betting at $2.5 billion. Nevertheless, a recent story from KHOU-TV in Houston, Texas says the FBI has never made such a claim.

Maybe not; but I’m sure there’s a TON of money sitting in office pools all around the country right now.

As for us within the POLITIS universe of agencies, we take a non-gambling (yet still serious) approach to March Madness.

Specifically, the top two March Madness prognosticators in our firms will each win a $25 gift card to a local eatery (provided by the company):

• One for the top “point getter” (we assign escalating points for each win within each round of the tourney; ergo, the most points wins); and
• One for the top predictor of wins (pretty simple: the person who predicts more wins within the entire tournament than everyone else comes out on top).

This year we’ve also instituted what is affectionately known as the Bacon Equation, which means that if one person comes out on top in both categories, the second place finishers in both categories will pick-up $25 gift cards/certificates. [Yes, the Bacon Equation is named after Jonathan "Canadian" Bacon who nailed both categories in 2007.]

So . . . although we’re having fun while not gambling on March Madness, don’t think we’re not into this annual B-Ball lovefest in a big way.

In fact, everyone at SOAR Communications, Politis Communicationsand the other Politis entities takes the competition pretty seriously.

How seriously? Enough so, that although I’m banking on the No. 8-seeded BYU Cougars winning their first round match-up with the No. 9-seeded Texas A&M Aggies (which is nowhere close to being a sure thing), I had no compunction notching a loss for BYU in the second round to the No. 1-seeded UCLA Bruins. Sorry, Cougs!

= = = = = = = = = =

For the record, I have all four No. 1 seeds making the Final Four (North Carolina, Memphis, Kansas and the aforementioned UCLA), with Memphis winning it all.

Go Tigers!

Tuesday on BicycleRetailer.com I read that Dick Burke, founder of Trek Bicycles, died Monday night, March 10, due to complications from heart surgery. It was sad to hear the news. It made me think about what Dick and Trek have accomplished and about what bicycles have done for me.

When I was in high school, my brother Steve was an Italian fanatic who had an Alfa Romeo Spider and a Pogliaghi road bike. I wanted to ride road bikes like him, so I bought a Japanese made Centurion (I couldn’t afford a nice Italian bike). I didn’t ride the Centurion too much. Riding bikes wasn’t the cool thing to do in high school. Continue Reading »