Steve Tilford

I read an article yesterday about Steve Jobs, mastermind behind Apple, whose ex-girlfriend is writing a memoir about her relationship with Mr. Jobs. I guess she doesn’t have a bunch of nice things to say about her ex.

I never had the pleasure to meet Steve Jobs. I don’t think we would have hung in the same circles. But, I do have one Steve Jobs story. Actually, I’m repeating a Steve Jobs story that Eric Heiden told. This isn’t verbatim, so I hope I don’t muck it up too much.

Anyway, Eric Heiden lived up above Palo Alto on Skyline Drive. He went to Stanford Medical School. One day, Eric was home and a woman came walking down his driveway pushing a bicycle. There was a guy with her. It seems like the woman had mis-shifted or something and had screwed up her rear derailluer. For some reason, I think she must have been riding a nice bike because I envisioned it with a screwed up Campy derailluer. Anyway, Eric said something like you just happened upon the perfect place to rip off your rear derailluer because I have a box full of them in my garage. He then introduced himself to the couple. When the guy introduced himself to Eric he said, Steve Jobs.

I don’t exactly remember Eric saying his thoughts were when meeting Steve Jobs. Back then he (Steve Jobs) wasn’t the crazy famous Steve Jobs of today, but he was Steve Jobs of Apple still. Anyway, Eric puts a new Campagnolo rear derailluer and sent them off. Then I thought that Eric was going to say that a couple days later, a new Macitosh showed up at his house or something. But, no, he said he never heard a peep from either of them again.

I thought, wow, a free Campy rear derailluer, installed by a five time Olympic gold medalist and no nothing? What nerve. But, from all I hear, Steve Jobs wasn’t the nicest guy in the world. He did help make some world changing electronics though.

I spent most of the day yesterday on my knees. I woke up feeling a kind of under the weather, didn’t feel like just laying around all day, so I decided to go over to the Walberg’s to help Keith and Catherine get their house ready to show to sell. Next thing I know, I’m tearing the layers of flooring out of the two bathrooms upstairs.

The realtor suggested they put tile in the bathrooms. That made sense, but when you think about it, why wouldn’t all realtors want you to fix up all the houses that they are planning on listing. They make more commission, or at the least, they sell the home, making their commissions, quicker. They aren’t the ones spending the money to upgrade the home. I have a friend, Joe Irwin, who says any house he sells is as is, where it is. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, there were a couple layers of vinyl down which was nearly impossible to tear up. Upon closer inspection, they put a 1/4″ layer of plywood down, so prying that off the floor exposed pretty pristine wood. I think construction is nearly the best cross training a cyclist can do. You do so many different motions that you would never do normally. I’ve been trying to get my shoulder working better, pretty much the whole year. I did do 30 push ups yesterday morning, which was mildly motivating, but working for 10 hours on this bathroom after was 1000X better/harder. I am so sore today I can hardly move.

I probably walked up and down their two flights of stairs 100 times yesterday. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but I live in a ranch house, so I’m not doing stairs much. Carrying cement board, mixing and moving thinset, etc. just adds to the workout. My hamstrings are usually worse than they seem to be today. Maybe that will be a slow process and they will get more sore as the day goes on. It is always humbling when I consider how well I can tune my body to do one specific thing athletically and then when I attempt to do other things that fall out of that range, I am so horrible at them.

I’m doing a cyclocross clinic down in Dallas this weekend. I’m not sure that sitting a car for 10 hours is the best way to loosen up, but that is what I’m doing. I needed to start doing some different motions, so it’s all good.