North Idaho Centennial Trail
Run Time: 62:07 + 2-minute kick
A rainy day in Northern Idaho. It was just a drizzle as I started. The further I got away from the hotel, the harder it rained. It peaked at the turn-around point and then stayed steady all the way back. I got soaked. It took two days for my running clothes to dry.
I found a good trail that ran along the Spokane River to Lake Couer d’Alene, past a Wastewater Treatment Facility and a college campus. There were signs with details about the Native American culture that had been destroyed so that industry could poison virgin land. Most of the trail was asphalt, but there was one gravel section. I ended up running in a bike lane for a half-mile or so — not sure where the trail went at that point.
The drive from Missoula to Couer d’Alene was beautiful, of course, although there were a lot of yellowish fir trees that didn’t look right. Probably beetle-infested. More driving and fewer sales visits on this trip. Some troubleshooting of distributors’ systems. Is it my job to troubleshoot a distributor’s system? My job is to do whatever it takes to help them help their customers. I will do whatever I am permitted to do, and usually just beyond that.
Outside Sales remains a viable practice in the business-to-business world. It works. One nice thing is there are almost as many ways to do it as there are people doing it. Anyone who promotes a sales program and says it works better than any other program is full of total bullshit. We have four outside sales reps, and I would bet that we have four very different approaches and methods. We are given a lot of freedom (well, I am, anyway — not sure what goes on with the other guys), which is wise.
Sometimes I feel isolated because I have very little contact with my coworkers, and most of that is email, but in actuality, I am the opposite of isolated. I have been set free to roam and to scout and to hunt. I love roaming and scouting and hunting. I put together my sales trips the same way I put together a hunting trip. I look at maps and I devise strategies and I buy cookies and potato chips for snacks. I suppose I’m technically not helping the deer and elk the way I do our distributors and their customers, but that’s just one exception to the similarities.
On Ancestry it says that 8% of my DNA is Indigenous Americas – North. If you go back four generations, my great-great grandmother was Native American. Also, her mother was Native American, and from that point backward, that line was all Native American. Somehow that ends up at 8% now with no more Native American blood into the mix. I cling to that 8%. It is the identity I hold onto. The 38% Germanic Europe I have no interest in. That 8% is running the show.
Don't Make It a Habit. Make It a Ritual. 