I just returned from the annual Summer Motorcycle Trip. There were too many schedule conflicts to undertake the customary two or three week cross-country extravaganza.

We have been to rallies at Sturgis, Daytona and Laconia NH, Four Corners and more. We have ridden the Oregon Coast, the Canadian Rockies, and the Gaspé and Nova Scotia in Canada.

If you ask me what I like best, it is always the people. When we roll in to town on bikes, you don’t know who is under the biker get-up. Guys. No offense ladies, but we usually just make it a guy trip. When our ladies have joined us, they have flown into a midpoint (like the Montreal Jazz Festival & Adirondacks) and then flown home.

Motorcycling is a sort of social “equalizer”. When we are on the road we are pretty much the same, regardless of our status elsewhere. Our motorcycles may look the same to the uninitiated, but they are all personalized in our own identifiable ways.

Yes, we have seen and met some of the real bad guys, and we give them their space.

After all the big road trips, one thing seems to happen in the home stretch. When the Rocky Mountains come into view, I always say to myself: “This is as beautiful and breathtaking as it gets!”

So this year it was back to Colorado. A long weekend trip to Crested Butte, which is one of the lesser know ski towns in Colorado, built around the vestiges and ruins of an old mining town.

You just can’t beat a trip through the Rockies in the summertime. We crossed the Continental Divide a couple of time during the trip.

Since there were late Spring snows this year, there were a lot of snowfields still in late July, and the creeks and rivers are running full. The whitewater rafters were loving it. I like to call it a “three color day”. That is: 1) Intense blue sky with no clouds; 2) evergreens and aspen trees up to the snow line, and 3) bright white snow on the sides of granite peaks, all lit by an bright summer sun. Wow!

Colorado is full “Ghost Towns”. These are old abandoned gold and silver mining towns with names like: Leadville, Cripple Creek, St. Elmo, Silverton, and even South Park City (yes, the inspiration for the cartoonists).

When Ron heard that the “ghost town” of Tincup had a little store that sold blueberry pie, we were off to see it. Unfortunately the pavement ran out, and our Harleys aren’t really the best for the dirt roads (or maybe I just don’t want to clean it after a dusty ride).

So we had to settle for a little Mexican food on the banks of the Taylor River. When you think about it, rivers aren’t really RIVERS, when they start out in Colorado. If you go up high enough you can step across the headwaters of the Colorado River, or the Arkansas, or the Platte, which run into the Mississippi, or the Rio Grande that separates Texas from Mexico.

And the hills were covered with wildflowers like you see in the ads for Switzerland. I wish I could send you the smell of the morning air 10,000 ft. above sea level with 15% humidity. The only “thunder” is the roar of the big twin echoing in the canyons.

Mom used to say the mountains of Colorado had 9 months of winter, and three months of late fall. She exaggerated just a bit. Those few weeks of Summer…… They are the best!

Keep riding.

Brad

As I write this, it is the week of Thanksgiving.
As a nation we have just come through the worst financial crisis most difficult business climate of my working life.

At this time, I cannot be more thankful.

For my family. Georgi has been my companion for 44 years this year, and has taken the wild ride with me. She did most of the raising of Joel and Sarah while I was out being the road warrior. That explains how they turned out so well. Now there are five grandkids, and it all seems to have happened in the blink of an eye.

This year we have learned not to take our health and resources for granted. We are truly thankful for our many friends.

For our Business Family. It is more than a family business, it is a business family. I don’t have any idea what it must be like to work for me, but here’s to you Mark, Chris, Ed, Christian, Ken, Mike and your teams. You always “Get ‘er done” and it is right.

For our Customers. Thank you for your confidence in our Pelsue team to provide the quality, value and service you deserve and expect.

For our Suppliers. We depend on so many to make our business a success. Thousands of parts and SKUs go through this place in a month, and without dependable suppliers we could not do our job.

For AMERICA! With all of the flaws so annoyingly repeated through the election season, we have the best in the world. I really believe it!

The more I travel, the more I see the POWER OF FREEDOM and the uniqueness of the American Spirit. America is the only country in the history of the world to have begun with an IDEA. We are so blessed to be here.

And for YOU, my reader. Thanks for taking the time to stop by my infrequent blog.

Soon it will be Christmas and Hanukkah and New Year’s Day. I wish you the best of health and prosperity, and a friend and companion to share it with. Take some time to share with those less fortunate.

All The Best!

Brad

(for what it’s worth, “Small” means less than 500 employees, & that is most companies)

A TRIBUTE TO DAD

Dad (T. A. Pelsue) was Exhibit A.

It was 1949. Dad hung up his wings from WWII, finished Business School at Golden Gate College, and was now travelling around the western part of the United States selling truck bodies to municipalities utilities and telephone companies. Mom told me that at age 4 we were riding on a bus in San Francisco, and I blurted out “there goes one of daddy’s bodies”.

In post WWII America there was a new move to put the unsightly telephone lines underground. At the time most of the telephone lines were open wire (single strands of copper wire strung over mountains and valleys suspended by the dozens on crossarms above the countryside. These bright strands lined every highway, criss-crossing America.

In the cities large cables consisting of bundles of copper wires wrapped in paper insulation were being installed into manholes in all the major cities, and small towns alike.

BEFORE THE PELSUE COMPANY 1950-1962

The Problem: It gets cold in manholes in the wintertime. These wires required lots dexterity to splice cables together, and hands were freezing…. not to mention other things.

The Idea: Create a small heater/ ventilator that could be driven by a small engine that would run on propane, which would also heat the manhole. Of course safety was of the utmost importance. A small heat exchanger assure that no exhaust fumes were blown into the manhole.

The Money: No bank would lend money on an idea, and savings were inadequate to fund prototypes, patent filings and the myriad of start up expenses. Thank God for my mother’s Auntie Gladys. She had helped Mom through school, and was willing to make a 5-year loan. Somebody always has to believe in the wide-eyed entrepreneur who’s pursuit of happiness exceeds his resources.

Operating capital then came from L.R. Morrison. and the Morrison-Pelsue Company MoPeCo was created.

Early Success: The Bell System

195 Broadway, New York, New York

The original AT&T was America’s telephone system. And they talked to each other. Initial presentations in Denver were quickly followed by requests to see the PEG (portable engine generator) heater.

It is a long way from Denver to New York City. With introductions and acceptance all along the way Dad took the new PEG heater to Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, etc., and finally arrived at the AT&T headquarters at 195 Broadway, New York, New York.

Acceptance was pretty fast. There was a need for heat and ventilation in manholes across the country, and the PEG unit was just what the industry needed.

Back at our house.

There was a black dial phone in the corner of our 3 bedroom, 1 bath, post war starter house with its single garage. To my sister Gail and I this was the mysterious contact to the world.

It was daddy’s phone, and we weren’t allowed to answer it. Mom applied her Denver University acquired secretarial skills to be the garage based company’s World Class Administrative Assistant.

I only met Mr. Morrison on a few occasions. He was considerably older than Dad. When he reached retirement age he wanted his money, and he did not want to reinvest profits in any of dad’s ideas. So they split up. MoPeCo would eventually be sold, and pass through many corporations including General Cable Corp, Penn Central Railroad, Mobile Tool, and Altec.

As for Dad & Mom, they started all over again at the T. A. Pelsue Company.

I was hoping for an Italian Restaurant.

What a country!

The year was 1964. The Pelsue Company was 1 year old. I was graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver, and was headed to the University of Colorado in Boulder in the fall.

Dad & Mom decided that we were taking that “last family trip”. With my sister Gail and I we loaded up the Pontiac station wagon with Pelsue blowers, and our allocated luggage, hooked the GPC Mobile Power Trailer to the bumper and headed out.

It was great! We had never been to the East Coast.

Boston: the Old North Church, Concord Green, Lobster at Anthony’s Pier 4.

New York City; Empire State Building, climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty, Broadway to see the Music Man, and to sneak around the block to Birdland, one of the all-time great Jazz Clubs.

Washington DC: The Washington Monument, Capitol Building, Dinner at Blackie’s with Uncle John and Mary Ann Thurman.

New Jersey…….. Aaaah, what to see here? The Jersey Shore? No time for that.

It was the Bell Telephone Laboratories. BELL LABS!

I could not appreciate how many innovations I saw that day, which are now a part of everyday American Life.

While Dad met with engineers, we were treated to a tour. The transistor was invented here. Solid-state electronics began here, transatlantic cables were designed here. The list was endless.

At the conclusion of the tour we entered a museum room. Music was playing in the background. There was Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone. Another display showed the early switchboards, and step switches, transistors, and a plethora of other “futuristic” devices.

FIBER OPTICS
At the conclusion of our tour, we came to a display with a beam of light. Our host put his hand up to stop the light, and the background music in the room went silent. A dial would allow us to change the color of the light, and that changed the music station.

The engineer explained that Alexander Graham Bell had designed and patented a method of transmitting sound over light waves. But it was the invention of the LASER that allowed commercialization.

Then there was the problem of “conducting light”. He explained that Bell Labs was working with a small glass company in upstate New York (Corning) who had devised a method of extruding glass fiber, which could be bundled into cables.

The remaining challenge was in keeping the light signal inside the fiber strand, particularly as it turned a corner. Corning Glass Works had developed a method of extruding and “cladding” the fiber, which almost completely eliminated signal losses over distance.

The following year I started working part time in the Pelsue Company. I learned that the largest “twisted pair” cables were about 3 1/2″ in diameter, and had 3600 pair of wires. That provides a maximum of 3600 voice conversations.

By the mid 1970s we pulled one of the first FIBER OPTIC cables into Princeton, NJ. It was the diameter of my thumb, contained 144 glass fibers, and could be multiplexed to carry about 500,000 voice conversations.

That is ancient history in technology terms.

I miss Bell Labs. That Bell Labs; supported by the All-American Bell System, where smart people worked, just because they were smart. Their job was to think… and come up with one or two break-through ideas during their career.

New Jersey. Who knew?

Daytona Beach Florida was the location for BellSouth training symposium. We interrupted the sessions to watch the lauch. I took this picture from the roof of the Daytona Beach convention center.

Explanation: On Thursday October 29, Discovery blasts through a bright afternoon sky returning Senator John Glenn to space over 36 years after he became the first American in orbit. Paving the way in 1962 Glenn flew solo, but today he is part of a crew of seven astronauts shepherding scientific payloads on shuttle mission STS-95.

On tape, fellow Mercury Program astronaut Scott Carpenter again wished, “… Godspeed John Glenn.” while Kennedy Space Center launch control offered, “Let the wings of Discovery lift us into the future.” At age 77, John Glenn, a legend and hero of NASA’s first human spaceflight program, has become the oldest space traveler. From orbit, Glenn commented, “… zero-g and I feel fine!”

I have been reluctant to do this blogging thing, but the fine folks at freshbait have convinced me otherwise. Don’t expect daily, weekly, or evenly monthly updates, but once I get started, I expect you’ll hear more from me.