Journey of The white Bear #14: The corridor concept

Before you play the clip above, in the still image, you can see a cameraman just to the left of the rider's back wheel, wearing black shorts and a white shirt with big black circles on it.  That's me in 1989, shooting video of the 2-Hip King of Vert for sponsor Vision Street Wear.  At 1:06 in the clip, Mat Hoffman does a barspin disaster right in front of me.  The way I stumbled into video work is an example of the "corridor concept."

Life Lesson:  When you set a goal and head towards it, other opportunities spring up along the way.

I first heard of the "corridor" or "hallway" concept at a business seminar I went to in about '91.  The speaker was talking about goal setting, which is a big theme in business and success lectures.  But he threw out an idea that I'd never heard before.  He said that when you set a big goal, and start working towards that goal, you will often have great opportunities come out of nowhere.  He compared it to walking down a long hallway in an office building.  Your big goal is the door at the very end of the hallway.  But as you work towards your goal, walking down that hallway, a door will open on the side and present you with an opportunity.

When that happens, you have to decide if you should say "no" to that opportunity, and keep working towards the original goal, or take the opportunity.  The speaker said that this happens continually to people who set goals and work hard toward them.  Sometimes the door that opens, the opportunity, is just a minor distraction and you need to keep going towards your goal.  Other times the opportunity may be much greater than your original goal.  In each case, you have to decide which way to go.

My big goal when I started seriously getting into BMX freestyle in Idaho was to become a pro freestyler, get a factory sponsor, go on tour across the country, and meet lots of girls.  Instead, my family moved to San Jose, California, and I started a zine.  My goal in self-piblishing my zine was to meet and ride with the great riders in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I soon achieved that goal, and focused again on becoming a pro freestyler.  But I liked doing my zine, and kept at it.

Several months later, I got a call from Andy Jenkins, the editor or FREESTYLIN' magazine, asking me to write an article about a contest for them.  A door opened out of nowhere, and I took that opportunity.  Then they offered me a job at Wizard Publications, the publisher of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  Another door opened as I walked down the corridor.  But I kept working towards being a pro freestyler practicing two or three hours nearly every night.  Then I got laid off at the magazines.  I was still a long way from being a pro caliber rider, but I found a factory sponsorship with Raleigh.   I got free bikes for a year, but didn't get paid and we didn't tour.

 I found a job at the American Freestyle Association, editing their newsletter.  A new job, and I kept riding to improve my abilities.  One day, after working a few months, Bob Morales, my boss, walked in and asked me if I wanted to produce a TV commercial for the upcoming contest in Austin, Texas.  I had absolutely no idea how to produce a TV commercial.  Another door opened up along the corridor, and I took the opportunity.  I produced the commercial, with tons of help from the people at Unreel Productions, the video company owned by Vision Street Wear. I went on to produce six contest videos for the AFA that year, and spent a lot of time at Unreel.  In December of that year, Unreel offered me a job.  Another door opened and I took the opportunity.  a couple years later, I was the Unreel staff cameraman, and I wound up on the ramp in the video clip above.

I never became a pro freestyler.  But I did have a factory sponsor for a year, even though it wasn't a company that focused on BMX.  I also wound up going on a summer tour for three weeks with Vision skateboarders Buck Smith, Mike Crum, Chris Gentry, and Mark Oblow.  When Vision got into business trouble, another door opened, and I wound up working on TV shows.  I worked on over 300 individual episodes of a dozen different TV shows in the 90's.  I produced my own bike video, which led to the opportunity to produce and edit the first two videos for S&M Bikes.

As a kid in Idaho, I had what seemed like a ridiculous dream of becoming a pro BMX freestyler, getting a factory sponsorship, and going on tour.  I didn't achieve that goal of becoming a pro.  But  I did get sponsored, and I did go on a tour, and I met a few women along the way.  More important, because of that initial goal, I had opportunities pop up that went far beyond my initial dream.  That's the corridor concept in action.

Sometimes you set a big goal and avoid all distractions to achieve it.  But sometimes even greater opportunities come along on the way to that first goal. Either way, the initial goal and work is worth the effort.

Journey of The White Bear #13: Goal setting works... sometimes

You'd think an old school, has been, BMX guy like me would show some amazing BMX feat as an example of goal setting.  But this amazing move by Kyler Storm sums it up better.  I worked on the crew, I was one of the guys in the black shirts and shorts with the big pads, like those you see in the background.  I saw this happen live.  Kyler spent the night before visualizing this move over and over and over in his head.  I know this because he told me.

Life Lesson: Goal setting works, but not every time

In my four seasons working on the crew of the American Gladiators TV show, I met a wide variety of people with great athletic ability.  But Kyler Storm stands out among them.  He was a good athlete.  But he was also a guy who was really into using goal setting and visualization to achieve an amazing feat.  In his first season on the show, Kyler pulled off this crazy move on our Hang Tough game, where the contestant swings across rows of rings and attempts to get past the gladiator to the opposite platform.

For us working on the show, especially my crew of spotters who actually practiced the games with the contenders, we spent several days working with them.  Most of the contenders, and the Gladiators themselves, trained hard at weight lifting and other athletic pursuits, in order to win the weird games on the show.  But Kyler Storm stood out as a person who took visualization and goal setting to a much greater level.  He told us this as we practiced with him.  I remember him telling me, the year before about trying the flip over the Gladiator like in the clip above.  It wasn't a spontaneous move, he spent a long time visualizing that particular move until he felt he could pull it off.

So in the course of competing on the show, Kyler pulled a couple of the most amazing moves in the whole eight years of the show.  He set very specific goals, he visualized these particular goals over and over and over until he was able to pull them off.  It was a great example of the power of setting a goal and visualizing that goal until it was achieved.

Every human being has the power to set very specific goals, visualize those goals over a period of time, work towards achieving those goals, and ultimately succeed.  But there's another part to goal setting, and that's deciding if your goal is truly worthwhile.  Over the course of my adult life, I've seen entrepreneurs on TV infomercials, and now on the web, talking about how they can help you get rich and live your dreams.  Then these guys take you on a video tour of their huge, but empty, house and garage full of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and other expensive cars.  Those guys have achieved their financial goals.

But, are they better people because they have achieved their goals?  Is the world a better place because they have achieved their goals?  Maybe, maybe not.  It's easy to judge these guys and say they're just materialistic and shallow.  But maybe they're donating to a good cause and just not telling us.  Maybe they're teaching other people new ways to make a decent living and that leads to positive outcomes for a bunch of people. In most cases, those "get rich quick" guys come across pretty materialistic and the world's not a much better place because they have a Lambo for each day of the week.  But they do show us that goal setting can work, like Kyler did for us on the Gladiators set.

Just because some dorky guy makes a fortune in real estate or affiliate marketing, and spends the money on a big house and fast cars to attract women, doesn't mean that goal setting and visualization are bad things.  Each of us can learn these skills practice these skills, and use these skills how we want.  Or we can not use them at all.  We can use them in the ways we think can have a positive impact on those around us and the world, or we can just try to accumulate lots of stuff.

Goal setting, visualizing, and achieving goals are a set of skills.  A big part of that set of skills is stepping back and considering whether that particular goal is really worth achieving.  I've spent much of my life struggling with self esteem and self worth issues, and was afraid to set big goals.  I'm now, finally, starting to set some pretty big goals again, but I'm carefully evaluating whether the goals do some good for more than just myself.  It's hard to achieve a goal if deep down you don't think you deserve it.  Dealing with that and other issues is one part of goal setting.

Goal setting can work.  But it's a skill that you spend a lifetime working on.  Goal setting, whether they're written down, thought out goals, or more intuitive goals, is probably the main thing that sets apart people who achieve a lot from people who cruise through life but don't get or give much out of it. 

Journey of The White Bear #12: My start as a zine publisher

This is my favorite little video clip about zines, it captures the basic idea being weird, being into something outside the mainstream, and self-publishing a little booklet, which is was zines are.

Life Lesson:  There's a great power in self-publishing something

In late August of 1985, I packed up my monstrous, shit brown, 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, and drove solo from Boise, Idaho to San Jose, California.  My car broke down an hour after I started, so the trip ended up taking two days.  I pulled up to my family's new apartment in San Jose, California the second afternoon.  It was a big move, but I'd been moving my whole life, so I was used to that part. 

I soon found a job working at a local Pizza Hut, and I went to the huge San Jose swap meet and bought an ancient, manual, Royal typewriter for $15.  My plan was to publish a zine about BMX freestyle as a way to meet the riders of the San Francisco Bay Area.  In those early years of BMX freestyle, NorCal was had a great scene.  But I had no idea where the riders actually were, and it was a huge area.  I got the idea for doing a zine from Andy Jenkins, the editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine, who wrote an article about zines.  He was a fan of skateboard zines, and he tossed the idea out to us kids in the BMX world. 

I took the bait, but I was entirely selfish at first.  I just wanted a reason to meet the pro riders, and good amateurs, in the Bay Area.  I pulled out my freestyle photos from Idaho, and from a contest in Venice Beach I went to that summer.  I had absolutely no idea what a zine was supposed to look like, and no idea how to make one.  I filled up three pages, front and back, with photos and stories typed on the typewriter.  I made copies at a local copy shop, stapled each one in the upper left-hand corner, and drove around to local bikes shops that sold BMX bikes in the San Jose area, and gave them a few. 

A few days later, I got a call from a guy named John Vasquez, a San Jose freestyler who worked at one of the bikes shops I gave zines to.  He invited me over to ride the quarterpipe his friends had.  After meeting him, I started learning about the Bay Area freestyle scene.  I tracked down Skyway pro Robert Peterson, who I'd met at the Venice Beach contest.  He held a ramp jam once a month at the bike shop he worked at, and invited me to show up and session with them.  Within a couple of months, thanks initially to my zine, I met all the main riders in the Bay Area, and wound up riding with them and interviewing many of them for my zine. 

I sent copies of each zine to the individual editors and assistant editors of the BMX magazines.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  Much to my surprise, my zine was reviewed as the best BMX zine in the country in the July 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN,' and I wound up working there a while, which launched me into the BMX/freestyle industry.  The biggest, life-changing event of my life happened because I self-published a rather lame, but really enthusiastic, zine.  I've published zines ever since, more than 40 of them, over the last 32 years.

Today everyone is a self-publisher with social media, online photo sharing, and blogs.  But there's still something entirely different about handing someone a little book that you hand made yourself.  It's not online for the world, your mom, and the police to read.  It's just for the person you give it to and whomever they share it with.  Zines nearly always get read by multiple people.  Zines, by their very nature, are collector's items.  So even in this world of instant publishing to the world, zines are still being published, read, collected, and cherished.  Now you know.

Journey of The White Bear #11: Handshakes not autographs

This clip is a San Francisco Bay Area local program that aired in September, 1986.  I actually moved to Southern California after this was shot and before it aired.  You can see me chasing my bike at 5:07, that's a trick I used to do in parades in Idaho.  It's a lame trick, but it got me in the clip.  At 1:39, on the left, you can see me going into a trick called the quickspin, which was a pretty good trick at the time. 

Life Lesson: Handshakes not autographs

When I started riding with Idaho's only trick team in 1984, I was a completely shy guy who was suddenly doing shows in front of crowds, getting the occasional mention in the newspapers, and even showing up on local TV.  That was all intimidating, but it helped me to start breaking out of my shell.  It also was a time when people started giving me advice on how to succeed, which is pretty funny, because no one saw a future in BMX freestyle.  But random people at shows, adults much older than me, would walk up and say I should do this or that to promote myself and the team.  Luckily for me, my teammate Justin's mom was very extroverted, and booked all of our shows. 

One thing I decided on my own was that when I started meeting sponsored and pro riders, I would shake their hand and introduce myself, rather than asking for an autograph.  Most riders from places away from California would ask pro riders to sign their jersey or number plate or a magazine cover.  But from my first trip to a big event in Venice Beach, California in 1985, I just started introducing myself to the riders and industry people I met. 

To be clear, they were all pretty approachable, it wasn't like walking up to Lebron James at a game today.  But I never asked for an autograph.  I don't know just how much that helped me, but as luck would have it, my dad got a job in San Jose, California in 1985.  The family moved in early summer, and I worked my summer job at a little amusement park in Boise, and then drove to San Jose in late August.  I met Skyway pro freestyler Robert Peterson, who lived in the Bay Area, at a contest the year before.  It took me about a month to track him down in that huge area in those pre-internet days, but I eventually started hanging out with him, Maurice Meyer, the main guy in the clip above, and many other great riders.  I'll go more into how I met these guys in the next post.

Though I wasn't near as good of a rider as most of the Golden Gate Park locals, they welcomed me and I became part of the crew.  I learned several things from hanging out with those riders, but one was that there's a whole different mentality to asking a "famous" person for an autograph (or selfie these days) and introducing yourself.  Even if they meet lots of people and forget you, if you see them again sometime, you can say "I met you at ________ last year and introduced myself."  It's much easier to get a conversation with them than, "You signed my neck at a show last year."  It's a lot less creepy for them, too. 

In every field of endeavor, there are a relatively small number of people who really make things happen.  Taking 20 seconds to introduce yourself may lead to an opportunity down the line.  You never know.

I'm starting up an online store soon to put out my writing and art.  If you like anything you've read here and would like to contribute to my start-up, you can do it here.

Journey of the White Bear #10: Passengers I gave rides to in my taxi

In my days as a taxi driver, mostly in and around Huntington Beach, California, I gave rides to thousands of people.  Here are a few of the most famous ones.  I could think of no one better to start this post off with than pro surfer Karina Petroni.  She's beautiful, she's dedicated to keeping our oceans as healthy as possible, and this woman can SURF.

As a taxi driver, I never knew who was going to climb in the back seat of my cab.  In life, we never know what life will throw at us next.  I've chased and achieved a few dreams, I've done lots of weird jobs, and I've survived a year on the streets of Southern California.  I'm 50 now and still chugging along. Failing doesn't make you a failure, not getting up and trying again after you fail makes you a failure.  

My zine of crazy taxi stories, launching my online store, is coming in a matter of days.

 Life Lesson:  NEVER QUIT

Skaters
Arto Saari
Stefan Janowski 
Dave Duncan

Surfers
 Christian Fletcher
Samba Mann
Karina Petroni 

Billionaire
 Larry Ellison -Oracle founder (It was 2003, he was only worth $9 Billion then)

Musicians
Ignite
Kerry Getz

Brawl/UFC/MMA fighters
Tank Abbot
Ken Shamrock

Tattoo Artist/BMXer 
"Big Island" Mike Castillo

BMXers
Barspinner Ryan Brennan
Keith Treanor
Chase Hawk
Ryan "Biz" Jordan
Todd Lyons
Cory Nastazio 
Adam Pope & Shaun Butler 
Chris Moeller 
"Midget" Cory Walters
Freddie Chulo 
Marvin Lotterle
Troy McMurray

There were others, but I lost the official list years ago, and these are the people I remember.   

I'm starting a new stage of my life now, focusing on writing and art.  You can help me get it going here.





 

Journey of The White Bear #9: A tiny change can change the course of your life

This clip is the first BMX track I ever saw in person and raced at, built behind Fort Boise, in a drained sewer pond, at the edge of the foothills on the north side of Boise.  I went with three guys from the trailer park to a race in October 1982, and watched as the other three raced.  The next weekend we piled all the BMX kids and bikes into my dad's van, and we all raced the last race of 1982.  We all won trophies, much to the dismay of the points chasing locals.  No one could figure out where all us kids on cheap ass bikes in T-shirts a blue jeans came from.  They really couldn't figure out why we were all so fast, considering we were all new to racing BMX.

Life Lesson: A tiny change in direction can lead to a completely different future

We just didn't have anything better to do outside of town in the trailer park, so we rode our BMX bikes every evening for six months, constantly pushing each other.  For me, what began as just another activity to do after school, turned into a vendetta against a couple of the guys in the trailer park that always made fun of me.  When I raced that first race, in the 17 novice class in 1982, my life turned slightly in different direction. That tiny change in direction, starting to actually race my BMX bike, changed the course of my life.  It happened at the sketchy little track above, a place unknown to nearly all of the 100,000 people living in Boise at the time.

In 1982, BMX bikes, because of their small wheels, were considered "little kids bikes" to most people.   Spending a couple hours a day riding one was considered a complete waste of time by my parents, my high school friends, and everybody except the other junior high and high school kids in the trailer park.  Obviously my BMX thing was just some crazy teenage phase, and I'd soon outgrow it, because there could not possibly be any future in it for me.

But it felt right to me, and I kept riding.  And then I came home with a little third place trophy from my first race.  Suddenly, BMX wasn't just something kids did to avoid homework, it was a sport.  A sport that I was kind of good at.  I started riding even harder, and started to dream about a future in the BMX world.

That's what I encouraged all of you reading this to do with the workshop in the last post.  Dream.  Dream BIG.  If you took the time to go through my workshop, then you now have a list of things you would like to do if you won the lottery or get an inheritance of your Uncle Bill's Apple stock.

Look at that list.  What really sounds interesting to you?  Let's say you listed a trip to Greece while answering the questions, and you later wrote that you'd like to see the ruins of ancient Greece and photograph them.  I'm just using this as a random example.  If that's what interests you, what can you do TODAY to start heading towards that goal?  You probably don't have money or time at the moment for a trip to Greece.  That's OK.  What can you do TODAY?  Look up Greece on Wikipedia.  read a little about the history.  Do you know what happened to Santorini Island back then?  Look it up.  Could you get a book or watch a video about Greece?  Could you make a trip to a Greek restaurant and ask the owner about the country?  You can't go wrong with a piece of baklava, trust me.

Now I know most of you probably didn't list Greece on your dream vacation list.  But look at the things you did list.  Take one small, but interesting, step towards those goals today.  Even if it's just a few minutes looking that subject up on the web, do it.  Or maybe you could print out a photo of that spot or activity to hang in your cubicle.  Take one small step today.

The reason I mentioned Greece was because when I first created my Clarity workshop, a trip to Greece was one of my dreams.  I saw the movie Summer Lovers while in high school, and wanted to go to Greece after that.  I never went.  But I did read up on Greece in the encyclopedia (Google it kids), and I rented a couple of documentaries about Greece.  I later tried some home made baklava at a convenience store near my house.  Years later I even worked for a taxi company owned by a Greek family.  For me, that was enough.  It was a subject that interested me, and I followed that thread for a while, but other interests seemed more interesting, and I followed those.

You'll find the same thing to be true.  Some of the things you wrote down in the Clarity workshop seem like things you really, really want to do right now.  When you start following those dreams in a small way, you may find that those things are just a passing interest, or something you want to experience.  That's just fine.  As you evolve and grow in life, some interests will come and go, and some will grow and become an important part of your life, like BMX did for me. So take a small step today towards one of your dreams today.  Then check back with this blog tomorrow.

I'm at a transition point in my own life right now.  For a variety of reasons, I haven't found a job in this area of North Carolina.  My eclectic work history doesn't play well in this conservative area.  That's fine.  I decided to create my own job.  I'm turning my art and writing into a small business.  I'll also be moving out of my current apartment, and will be homeless for a while as I get my business going.  If you have found this series of posts helpful, and would like to contribute to my future work, you can do it here.

Journey of The White Bear #8: Get clear about what you want in life

In this clip from the You Tube channel, Evantube Raw, we see a woman, now best known as "Mommy Tube," get tricked into going skydiving.  Guys, I wouldn't recommend trying this with your wife or girlfriend.  Mommy Tube takes it amazingly well, and seems to really enjoy it after the initial anger at being tricked wears off.

Life Lesson:  Take the time to figure out what's really important to you

So why am I showing you this video?  Because Mommy Tube wasn't always her name.  This daring woman has a real name, which she keeps private because her kids are You Tube stars.  But years ago, long before becoming Mommy Tube to Evan and Jillian, she was my sister's best friend in high school and college.

I was living in Southern California when my sister called me up one night, stressing over a big decision she had to ,concerning where to go to college the next year.  It's a long story, but I talked her through a series of questions from one of the self-help books I had read.  It helped my sister make the needed decision, but I really didn't like the tone of the questions.  They were too materialistic and focused only on making money.  So I started to work on my own series of questions to help me figure out what was really important in life on a deeper level.  I have used this group of questions as a workshop for myself ever since, for over 20 years.

A few months after I helped my sister get clear about what was important to her, I was headed to visit her for a few days.  The woman now known as Mommy Tube was a die hard actress then, and she was agonizing over two possible ways to spend her summer, both acting-related.  But she wasn't sure which was the best choice.  So I talked Mommy Tube, my sister, and another friend of theirs through my own workshop.  After about an hour, Mommy Tube was much more clear on what she wanted, what was really important to her then, and her decision was simple.  She soon headed off to an acting program across the country, and was happy she did.

To be completely clear, taking her through my little workshop had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that her kids have some of the most successful channels on You Tube now, and that she and Daddy Tube and the kids are all doing very well in life.  But on that evening, many years ago, my workshop helped her make a big decision.  I've found that if you take the time to get clear about what's really most important to you, deciding what direction to go next is pretty simple.  For lack of a better name, I've referred to my workshop as "Clarity," because it helps a person get clear about what's important. Here's a shortened version of it for you to do on your own or with friends.

The White Bear's Clarity Workshop

First , make time for yourself to do this.  Take your time answering the questions.  It should take you an hour or more.  I know that's a lot of time, but your future is worth it.  Next, get a pen and a notebook or a few sheets of paper.  Sit down, get something to drink, and follow this little story.  If you do this with friends or family, sit apart from the people you know best and DON'T share answers.  This is an individual, personal workshop. 

OK, so you get out of the car at a big store one day, and you're walking towards the doors.  A gust of wind kicks up, and a gold colored piece of paper flutters towards you.  You've watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory enough to know what a golden ticket is.  So you bend down and grab the gold piece of paper.  Much to your surprise, it says, "You have won a great prize!  Call this phone number."  There's an 800 number below that.  You figure it's some kind of prank, so you put the paper in your pocket and go shopping.

Later that evening, you pull the paper out of your pocket.  You hesitate.  And then you call the 800 number.  Much to your surprise, a polite woman answers and says, "You have won a great prize, a sort of lottery.  Someone will come to meet you tomorrow and explain the details."  She goes on to tell you that only one person every couple of years finds the golden ticket, and that your life is about to change forever.  You still wonder if it's a joke.  But the woman seems completely sincere.  You agree to meet someone the next day at a local restaurant for breakfast.

You head to the restaurant that morning, expecting no one to show up.  Much to your surprise, a couple who appear to be in their 60's walks up to you.  The woman introduces herself as Barb, and then introduces her husband Dick.  Both of them are a bit overweight, but quite healthy looking and incredibly friendly.  Barb gas a mass if very curly brown hair, and Dick's hair is salt and pepper, and his face is highlighted by a full, graying beard.  He reminds you a bit of the singer Kenny Rogers.

The hostess seats all of you, and Barb begins explaining the golden ticket after you order.  She tells you that a rich industrialist, many decades ago, decided to create a sort of private lottery to help people follow their deepest dreams and ambitions.  You will never know his name.  But he set up an organization with his fortune, and for more than 80 years, people have been putting out the golden tickets in obscure places, and giving the great prize to the people who found them.  Barb pulls out a notebook and hands you a pen.  "The prize actually consists of several things," she explains, "so I'm going to ask you some questions, and you write down your answers."  First, she explains that all your current bills, of any kind, will be paid in full.  Part of the purpose of the prize is to give people a fresh start in life.

The first part of the prize, Barb tells you, is that you get to travel for an entire year.  You can go anywhere in the world you want, any form of travel, and stay each place as long as you want.  Your current home will be taken care of while you're away, and all bills will be paid.  So... list all the places you want to visit and things you'd like to do at each place.  Do you want to take a road trip in the U.S.?  Go on a cruise?  Drive through Europe?  Visit the pyramids?  Write it all down now.

After you're done writing, Barb tells you about the next part of the prize.  You get a house of any kind, anywhere in the U.S. you want.  Describe your dream house, where it's located, and what amenities you want it to have. 

You still can't believe this is actually happening, but Barb and Dick assure you it is, as they devour their French Toast.  After you've written about your dream house, Barb tells you about the next part of the prize.  You get a vacation spot.  Nothing huge, but it can be a cabin in the mountains, a condo at the beach, or some other place to get away.  Describe your perfect vacation spot, what it's like, and where it is.

By this point, you're really getting into this idea of winning the prize, and being able to dream so blatantly about things you'd never thought you'd get to do, feels great.  Dick chimes in on the next part.  He says you get two vehicles, but make one of them practical.  "There is a limit on this part of the prize, he says, "neither vehicle can cost over $100,000.  If you want that purple Lamborghini, you'll have to buy it on your own."  Describe your two ideal vehicles. 

You can't help but smile as you imagine that SUV you've always wanted.  When you look up, Dick continues.  "The next part of the prize is home items, toys and electronics.  Do you want a sailboat, a kayak, a motorcycle, a jet ski?  What kind of TV and sound system do you want?  What kind of phone and computer do you want?  Do you want a video game system?  Do you want scuba gear or camping equipment?  Or do you want a library full of classic books?  Write down what amenities, toys, sports equipment, electronics, or special items you want in your house.

At this point, Dick orders more coffee, and Barb takes over again.  "Let's look at where we are.  All your bills will be paid. You get to travel for a year wherever you want.  You get your dream house just where you want it, and a getaway spot somewhere.  You get the home furnished, and lots of electronics, sports equipment, and toys.  For the next part of the prize, you get to meet 20 living people.  Anyone on Earth you want to meet, the organization will set up a lunch with."  Name 20 people you want to meet.  Anyone.  Anywhere.  
 
You can't believe how the prize just keeps going on and on.  Barb finally says, "OK, we're getting near the end of the prize.  You get everything you've just listed, and you can make a few changes along the way if you want.  Once you're back from your travel and in your new house, you'll get $250,000 a year to live on.  Everything you've already listed will be paid for.  You'll have full medical, dental, life, and other types of insurance for life."

"There is just one catch to winning the prize," Barb says with a smile.  Your hear drops.  "Damn, I knew there was a catch, I knew this couldn't be true," you think to yourself.  Barb smiles, "Don't get dejected, it's not a bad catch.  The responsibility of winning the prize is this.  You have to spend at least 30 hours a week doing something productive for the rest of your life.  You just can't become a lazy alcoholic playing video games  You can go back to school.  You can volunteer.  You can start a business.  You can do some form of art or craft work.  You can teach a skill you have to others."  Barb pauses.  

She continues, "You have the bills paid, the travel, the house, the vehicles, the vacation spot, and enough money to live well.  You have the physical things you want.  Now that you have all of that taken care of, what do you want to do with your time?"   It's just 30 hours a week.  We'll keep in touch, and you can change what you do when you want.  

OK blog readers.  That's the first part of the workshop.  Take a break, get a snack or drink, and share what's on your list with any friends or family members that may be doing this workshop with you.  One important rule, no one can put down another person's items on their lists.  Come back to this after you've taken a break and thought about actually doing and having all the things you just listed.  









The White Bear's Clarity Workshop: part 2

Go back over each of your lists, and look for themes.  What did you want to do at your vacation spots?  Lie on the beach?  Scuba dive?  Explore ancient ruins?  Meet interesting people?  Shoot photos?  Do some sort of athletic or adventurous activity?  What themes come up more than once?

Now look at your dream house and vacation spot.  What type of lifestyle do these suggest. Would you be someone writing mystery novels?  Or someone going rafting and camping?  Or someone entertaining friends and family?  

What does your choice of vehicles suggest?  What are those vehicles used for?  

Look at the toys, sports equipment, and amenities you listed.  What kind of lifestyle do they suggest?  Are you planning to spend your time building things from wood in a workshop?  Or are you going to travel the world and blog about it?  Are you going to study a foreign language?  Or will you be teaching a needed skill to some group?    

Now look at the people you want to meet.  Next to each person's name, write what their job is or what you find interesting about them.  You will probably see two or three themes emerge.  Are they mostly writers or musicians or actors?  Are they NASCAR racers?  Are they politicians or scholars of some kind?  Business people?  Whatever themes emerge from this list, it's something you want to put more interest and effort into in your real life. 

Last, but definitely not least, how would you spend your time after winning The Prize described?  

As I mentioned at the start of this post, the point of this workshop is to become clear about what's really important in your life.  In the next post we'll look at how to implement these ideas into your real, everyday life.  

As for me, Steve Emig (aka The White Bear), I'm moving out of where I'm living at the end of May.  At this point, it looks like I will be homeless, likely living in a shelter, for a while, as I build my business around my writing and artwork (and maybe doing these .  If you found this workshop helpful and would like to contribute to my future doing similar things, you can do so here.  

It's a big world out there.  Live well while you can. 



 

Journey of The White Bear #7: A new hobby learned in an old trailer park

Old School BMX freestylers know the name "2-Hip" well, but many forget it started with a two man trick team in San Francisco.  Ron Wilkerson and Rich Avella, in a TV clip from 1984, the year BMX freestyle became its own sport.

 Life Lesson: Everybody needs an outlet

As my family moved from town to town as I grew up, when things got tough at home, I headed to the woods to get away.  In New Mexico, I headed to the edge of the desert.  Then in Boise, Idaho, in high school, we moved to a trailer park outside of town.  Technically, the area around Boise isn't true desert, it's steppe, but we called it desert.  Waste high sagebrush stretched for miles.  I started wandering and exploring on foot, and then on my BMX bike.  It was a Sentinal Exploder GX, basically a "Kmart special" bike I bought from a friend in New Mexico for $5 right before we moved.

All the young guys in Blue Valley Mobile Home Park had crappy BMX bikes.  Every summer evening, as it cooled down outside, we gathered to play whiffle ball, basketball, football, or to ride our BMX bikes on the little jumps some motorcycle rider had built.  As the summer passed, we got more and more into BMX.  It was simple, we all tried to out ride and out jump each other.  We began to push each other day after day.  As our cheap bike parts broke, we mowed lawns or babysat to earn money to buy better bike parts.  Or we stole them.  It was the summer of 1982, and BMX became our thing. 

In addition to hitting our little 18" high jumps to flat and carving through berms in the evenings, I rode for miles on the Jeep trails, exploring the desert.  In the beginning it wasn't about being a great rider, it was just about getting away from drama and frustration at home, and burning off the energy of a teenager. 

But it quickly became something else.  We started buying BMX magazines and reading about the pro riders, far off in California.  We found the Boise BMX track and started racing.  BMX became our thing.  We practiced racing each other and we built our jumps bigger.  We also started to learn simple tricks from the magazines.  BMX trick riding and skatepark riding was in the magazines.  Then, the next summer, my parents bought a house in town.  By that time, BMX had become my thing.

In the spring of 1984, I heard about a show of an actual freestyle team in Boise.  I went to the show, met local freestylers Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore, and soon forgot all about racing.  I was graduating from high school, getting a summer job, and planning to go to college to become a wildlife biologist.  But I spent most of my free time practicing tricks on my BMX bike.  At that time, EVERYONE thought that was stupid.  That little bike wasn't going to take me anywhere.  But it felt right to me, so I kept riding and improving.  By the summer of 1984, I took Wayne's place on Idaho's first BMX trick team.  That changed the course of my entire life, and set the stage for all kinds of adventures to come. 

What started as an outlet for frustration turned into the thing that set the course for many years of my adult life.  I followed my dreams... and that has made all the difference.

Journey of The White Bear #6: Collecting WWII practice bombs in New Mexico in 1980

Gotta love You Tube, I wasn't sure if anyone else went looking for these things.  Here's a guy named Chase in Arizona scouring the desert for World War II practice bombs, and talking to an old timer who watched the bombers doing their practice runs there.

Life Lesson: You can find all kinds of crazy things out in the desert.

As I  mentioned in the last post, being an Ohio kid who moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico, was an incredible culture shock.  I took two years of Spanish classes in Ohio, but when I moved to New Mexico, I had no idea of what the local kids were calling me.  Our family spent a couple of weeks in a hotel while my parents looked for a house to rent.  It was insanely hot in New Mexico, which sucks when you're not used to the heat, and even more so for a chubby kid like I was.

Instead of a lake to swim in, we lived a block from the Pecos River, which I'd heard of in western movies and novels.  The water was even dirtier than Holiday Lakes in Ohio.  The local joke about the Pecos was it was "too thick to drink and too thin to plow," which was close to the truth.  Somehow, both rainbow trout and gar lived in that river, which is a really weird combo.

I soon met some desert rats, most of which my dad worked with.  Nearly everyone went out in the desert to do something on the weekends.  Many went out to go 4-wheeling in Jeeps and trucks, or to ride motorcycles.  In addition, southeastern New Mexico is riddled with caves, the most famous being Carlsbad Caverns.  It's a huge cave where average people can hike over 750 feet underground through cathedral-like rooms with huge and amazing rock formations.  Spelunking, or caving, was another popular activity there.  Another friend of my dad's used to find old Indian ruins and paint pictures of the walls and remains.

My dad an I loved hiking around outdoors, and we were soon riding with various people out into the desert on the weekends.  A trick of the locals then, in 1980, was to go to an obscure government office and buy a thick book called the county Soil Conservation Survey for $4.  Why?  Because that book had aerial photos of the whole county, which was amazing back in those days long before the internet and Google Earth.  People at my dad's work would scan the photos at lunch, looking for all kinds of things.  It wasn't long before they found something they couldn't explain.

A coworker of my dad's found a huge set of concentric circles out in the middle of nowhere.  The outside circle was about a quarter mile in diameter, the next one about 200 yards, and the smallest one about 100 yards diameter.  There appeared to be a small building right in the middle of the circles.  There were no mines or oil wells nearby.  There were no farms with circular irrigation pipes there.  There was nothing, except huge circles.

Like most every 70's kid, I was a huge fan of Scooby-Doo, and I love a weird mystery.  So did my dad and his friends.  So we headed out early Saturday morning in his friend's Chevy Blazer to see what the circles were.  Now, in 1980, we didn't have smart phones, we didn't have GPS, and we used maps and compasses to find things.  We wandered the Jeep trails and got within a couple miles of the circles, and then found a gate.  Cattle wander all over the desert, and there are barbed wire fences all over to keep them in or out of certain areas.  The desert rule is, if you cross through a gate, you leave it the way you found it.  It it's open, leave it open, if it's closed, close it behind you.  Most gates were just three strands of barbed wire with a post tied on one end.  To close those gates, you just hook the post into loops on the opposite side.  Now and then, there were wooden gates.

On our first expedition to find the circles, we ran into a very narrow wooden gate with tall side posts and a top beam, which was unusual.  The big, wide, Chevy Blazer was too wide to squeeze through.  We walked through a ways, but saw no sign of the circles.  So we headed back to town.

The next weekend, another friend of my dad's headed out there alone in his smaller Chevy Luv pick-up.  He came to work Monday morning with a photo of him standing next to the shack in the center of the circles.  The circles turned out to be man made piles of rocks, each about a foot tall.  What he found around the circles blew everyone's minds.  He found old, rusty, broken bombs.  Most were broken into pieces, and he wasn't sure if they had exploded, or just broken on impact.  Some were metal shells (like in the video above) and some were made out of concrete with metal tail fins.  The huge group of circles was a bomb target used many years before.

Again, this was more than a decade before the beginning of the internet as we know it.  No old timers knew about the bombs.  The local historians didn't know anything about the bombs.  No one knew anything about them.  Like an episode of Scooby-Doo, we had a mystery on our hands.  All the guys in my dad's office, even his boss, started searching through the soil survey books and looking for other circles.  And we all started finding them, all over Eddy county.  All in all, we found over 40 bomb targets.  Suddenly, we were sort of amateur archeologists, and nearly every weekend we went out to one or more of the targets to wander around.

Before long, we started finding bigger chunks of the concrete bombs, half buried in the ground.  When we pulled them loose, we found the buried sides were painted light blue, and there was stenciled writing on them.  From the writing, we learned they were practice bombs and that they were from the World War II era, in the early 1940's.  The more we searched the targets, the more we realized that none of the bombs had explosives, they were for practice.  My dad started bringing home pieces of the bombs, and his analytical, engineer mind used them as puzzle pieces.  He identified 12 or 15 distinct styles of bombs.

A month or so into this search, we had an idea of why the targets were out there, but still didn't know the history.  So we turned our search towards the local library.  I happened to find the first magazine article about the bomb targets.  We kept digging, and got a basic history of it all.  In World War II, the Air Force, as its own force, didn't exist yet.  It was part of the Army, called the Army Air Force.  The bombardier and navigator training school was located in Carlsbad, where we lived.  The Army spent thousands of man-hours building the targets in the desert.  We also learned the the bombs were light blue, which designated that they were practice bombs.  They were all 100 pound bombs, the same size as the bomb Chase digs up in the video above.  The fuses on the back of the bombs were orange, and some bombs had smoke canisters built in, so the airplanes could see where the bombs landed from the air.  My dad actually put together a complete tail section, and painted it the correct colors, and it sat on a shelf for years.

But here's the craziest part.  There was one bomb target, a few miles west of the city of Artesia, as I recall, that was different from all the rest.  The Army engineers had actually built a huge swastika in the dirt as a bullseye, to remind the aviators who they would be fighting.  How big?  It was made of mounds about eight feet high, and was about 100 yards square.  Out in the middle of the freakin' desert.

As it turned out, the company my dad worked for had financial issues, and we moved to Boise, Idaho a year after moving to New Mexico.  It was a tough year for me in many ways.  I was scared of getting beat up every day at school.  But I loved wandering the desert on the weekends, especially in the winter when it was cool.  I've loved to wander the desert ever since.

Learn more about the 38th flyer training wing here.

Here are three of the main planes the Carlsbad trainees learned to fly, the B-25 Mitchell, the B-24 Liberator, and the B-17 Flying Fortress.  In addition, here's a look at the often forgotten gliders used in WWII.

Here you can see the arm patch for the Carlsbad base, Bugs Bunny dropping a bomb

Here's a WWII Army Air Corp recruiting film, narrated by Spencer Tracy, no less.  

What are those old, abandoned airplanes good for now?  Here's one thing.

Journey of The White Bear #5: A Kid from Ohio

This isn't me, but spillway sliding with my friend Robert was probably the most exciting thing I did as a kid in Ohio.  I was always a weird kid, really shy, pretty smart, horrible at sports, and I liked to draw.  My family moved nearly every year.  I was born in Barberton, Ohio, right outside Akron.  By the time I finished 8th grade, I'd lived in 12 houses and apartments, and gone to nine different schools.  My family was more dysfunctional than most and less dysfunctional than some.  Thick, oozing psychological tension was the overwhelming force at play in our home sprinkled with continuous drama.  I spent my life crying, saying "I'm sorry," and walking on eggshells trying to stay out of trouble.  It never worked.  So I ran off to the woods and wandered around whenever possible to escape.

My dad was a draftsman, a guy who drew pictures of machine parts on huge sheets of paper.  Although he didn't have a college degree, he worked his way up to being an engineer.  The last place he worked in Ohio, Plymouth Locomotive Works, made custom locomotives, lift trucks, and ceramic extruding machines.  By 1979, the company was in trouble, and my dad found another job.  Even 35 years after the company went out of business, Plymouth locomotives are going strong all over the world.

My childhood was a series of small towns and rural areas in Ohio when there were still lots of fmaily farms and most other people worked in factories, or the office next to the factory, like my dad.  My mom was active in my school, Cub Scouts, and church.  Like most other kids in the 70's, I was expected to do a job much like my dad did for my whole life.

My last 2 1/2 years in Ohio were spent living here, in Holiday Lakes, outside Willard in northwest Ohio.  We lived in a small cottage on the very end of the main lake, and there was a dock that no one else ever used where I would hang out for hours, if I wasn't hiking around the nearby woods and creek.  My friends an I went fishing on a pretty regular basis, hoping to catch huge bass, but catching bluegill, crappie, and the occasional pumpkinseed sunfish instead.  My freind Robert found this hidden little pool below the Holiday Lakes spillway, with three big bass in it.  We tried for months, but could never get those bass, the biggest about 18" long, to bite.  But I did hook a huge bluegill that broke my  little kid's rod and got away.

One day, the spillway was pumping hard.  There was a big square hole in the spillway, and usually a small stream of water flowing out of it.  But on that day, it was blasting water.  We forgot about fishing and took turns running across the spillway ramp and jumping into the water and sliding down the algae slicked ramp.  We both wore holes through our jeans, but it was a blast.

I was a Midwest kid who had John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" as my anthem.  Fate stepped in, and right after finishing 8th grade, my family moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico.  Culture shock doesn't even begin to describe it.  

Journey of The White Bear #4: The night I got hit by a Tank

This is why you don't pick a fight in Huntington Beach.  O.G. HB bad boy and early UFC powerhouse, Tank Abbot, flat out levels Wesley "Cabbage" Correira in this match.

Life Lessons: You are not your childhood and humor is a great martial art

I grew up as a smart, pudgy, dorky kid who was always small for my age.  I got picked on at home, I got picked on and bullied at school, after school, and I was always a wimp.  I sucked at sports all through my childhood, and was one of the last kids picked for most every game.  Except dodge ball.  I kicked ass at dodge ball.  The reason I was so good at dodge ball was because I was so freakin' scared of getting hit by one of those red balls thrown by a kid who was six inches taller and 20 pounds heavier than me, that I became really good at dodging.

But in all other cases, I ran from any kind of fight.  I lived my childhood in fear.  I was deathly afraid of pain, and did everything I could to avoid it.  Then, in high school, I got into BMX riding.  I started falling on a regular basis, and getting my hit in my shins by the pedals.  I slowly got better at dealing with small amounts of pain.  Later, in Southern California, my friend Mike started taking me to punk rock shows, where I soon got into bouncing around slam pits and bashing into other people for fun.  Over the years, my tolerance of pain grew, and so did my personal confidence.  In my mid-20's, I was practicing games with the American Gladiators.  I worked as a furniture mover for years, which made me stronger and more able to deal with scary situations, like helping to push a 500 pound piano up a flight of 26 stairs.

Years of different adventures led to me working as a taxi driver in downtown Huntington Beach, California in the 2000's.  One night, I got a call to the back door of Perq's, a bar on the first block of Main street in HB.  After waiting a few minutes, three really big, burly guys walked out and got into my cab.  One guy had a thick mustache and big goatee.  He sat behind me.  I asked the guys where they wanted to go, and they said they weren't sure.  They had just got into a scuffle in the bar with some guy, and had to leave.  I headed out of the parking lot, turned right on Walnut, and then took another right on Main, which put me in a line of traffic as we crawled past the front door of Perq's.

"That's him!" one of the guys in the taxi screamed.  The guy they'd just scrapped with in the bar ran in front of my cab.  "Run him over!" yelled the big guy with the goatee behind me.  I turned to look at him, thinking he was joking.  "Run him over or I'll throw you out of the cab and run him over myself!"  Now, I knew the guys had a few beers in them, but he seemed pretty serious about me running the guy over.

As a taxi driver, I'd learned to deal with all different kinds of drunk people, and aggressive people, and drunk, aggressive people.  Another thing about taxi driving is that I usually had two to four people in the cab, so I was always outnumbered.  If a physical fight broke out, I would be toast.  I learned to deal with crazy situations using a combination of intelligence and humor, mostly humor.  It kicked in automatically that night in front of Perq's.

"Man..." I began, "if I run that guy over, then I'll get blood all over the front of my cab.  It's Saturday night!  This is when I make my money!  I'd have stop for half an hour, wash off all the blood and body parts, and then go dump his body somewhere..."  For a couple seconds it was REAL tense.  Then they three burly guys started laughing.  The big guy behind me with the goatee slapped me on the back, so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of me.  "I like you taxi driver," he said, "you're alright."  With a little humor, the tension was broken and the anger fizzled away.  The guy they fought disappeared into the crowd on the sidewalk.  I drove them to another bar, and went on with my night.

The next day I was telling one of my friends about the incident, and he said, "That big guy with the goatee sounds like Tank Abbot.  Was it him?"  At that time, everybody in Huntington Beach knew who Tank was, the UFC was still pretty knew, and Tank was a standout fighter.  But I didn't know exactly what he looked like.  The next weekend I was telling some other guys in my cab about the incident, and I happened to see the guy with the goatee on Main street, walking down the sidewalk with some friends.  I pointed him out.  "Dude... That IS Tank.  You had Tank Abbot try to throw you out of your own cab last weekend... that's AWESOME!"  Sure, it seemed awesome to them as a story, but it scared the crap out when it happened.

In his day, even though he was ten or fifteen years older than many he fought, Tank Abbot was one of the kings of the Octagon.  I would not want to be on his bad side.  But my taxi was my domain, and by joking, I managed to make Tank and his friends laugh.  In everyday life, there are very few situations where you really have to physically fight.  A crazy sense of humor can de-escalate many situations.  I learned the martial art of humor from my dad, a high degree black belt in joke telling.  I've been into a few scuffles, but the martial art of humor has served me well over the years, and kept away from the hospital on more than one occasion.

 I'm at a transition point in my life.  I plan to focus on writing what needs to be written and drawing cool pictures to earn a living from now on.  I could use a little help to get started.  If you like this tale and want to hear more in the future, you can help me out here.

Journey of The White Bear #3: The Gold Watch Plan

To a Generation X kid from the 70's, nothing sums up a boring factory job like the intro to Laverne & Shirley.

Life Lesson:  The people around you have a life all planned out for you, and that life probably sucks.

I was a nine-year-old in the small Ohio town of Willard when I first heard of the Gold Watch Plan.  My best friend and I had been outside playing all morning, and we wandered into his kitchen for some Kool-Aid.  His mom, aunt, and grandma happened to be having tea at the kitchen table when we went in.  As we were drinking our Kool-Aid, his aunt told the other women that her husband just got his gold watch.  She pulled the watch out of her purse and showed them.

"What did he get the watch for?" my friend asked.  His aunt explained, "Your uncle worked at the factory for 40 years, and he just retired.  When you retire, the company gives you a big party, a gold watch, and a pension." 

"Wait," my friend asked, "he worked for the factory for 40 years... and all they gave him was a watch?"  The concept seemed ludicrous to our young ears.

"It's a gold watch," his aunt replied sternly.

"If you work for a company for 40 years, they should give you a... a... a Cadillac!" my friend exclaimed.
"And I bass boat!" I added.
"And a really great 12 gauge." He added.
"And..." I never got the sentence out.
His aunt was getting upset, and my friend's mom shooed us out of the kitchen.

We took our Kool-Aid to the picnic table on the patio, and he a serious discussion (for 9-year-olds) about the fact that we just realized our lives were all planned out for us.  We talked about all the things we pretended to be when we would play, like soldiers, spies, pirates, or mountain men.  But we never pretended to be factory workers.  It just seemed awful.  We discussed the fact that none of the adults we knew seemed to like their jobs.  My dad, a draftsman, liked his work, he liked figuring out mechanical problems and then drawing the parts he designed.  But he usually had a boss or coworker who made his job annoying.  So even he didn't really like his job much of the time.

So my friend and I, as 9-year-olds in a small town in Ohio, made a pact with each other that we would live lives of adventure.  We wouldn't work lame, boring jobs for our whole lives.

I soon moved a block away, and didn't see my friend quite as much.  Then we moved outside of town, and eventually to another state.  I don't know if he went on to live a life of adventure, or if our childhood pact was just something that faded away.  But I did take "the road less traveled" in life, and I've had a bunch of crazy adventures along the way.  I didn't end up flying a bush plane in Alaska or trekking through the Canadian wilderness hunting grizzly bears, but I didn't stare at beer bottles like Laverne and Shirley either.

We all get to decide whether to live the life those around us expect, or to live life as an adventure.  It's not a one-time decision.  It's a moment to moment decision.  To be clear, I'm not saying everyone should blow off their responsibilities and go backpack through Europe for a year.  But we can look for, and find, little adventures on a daily basis.  We can push our limits in our free time and our work, rather than letting the monotony beat us into submission.

As fate would have it, by the time my friend and I were in high school, those high paying, but mostly boring factory jobs were disappearing.  The peoplewho planned to work 40 years for the gold watch and the pension mostly got laid off and had to find new careers.

Here's a little secret, kids...  Life throws adventures at you no matter what.  The people who avoid adventures on a day to day basis are the people who struggle the most with the big adventures life throws at them.  It's your choice.  How are you going to live today?

Journey of The White Bear #2: The day I had lunch with Superman

Here's actor and former college football star Dean Cain, who played Superman on the TV show Lois and Clark at the time.  This was about 1994, I believe.

Life Lesson:  You never know who life will bring into your path... even Superman

It's a long story, but my obsession with BMX freestyle riding in the early 1980's led me from Idaho to Southern California, and later into the TV business.  One weird job or project led to another, and I wound up as a spotter on the crew of the hit TV show American Gladiators.  For you younger people today, Gladiators was something like American Ninja Warrior with a touch of wrestling thrown in.  The costumes were red, white, blue, and small, the Gladiators were big, and the contests were all real.  There was no show like it at the time, and it lasted eight seasons, which is a long run for a TV show.  I worked on the crew for the last four seasons, starting as a spotter, and moving up to head spotter and leading the crew the last two years.

 In the clip above, you can see three of the spotters in black shorts and shirts with big AG logos, holding the white, shield-like karate pads as Dean crosses the finish line.  We also hooked the Gladiators and contenders into the bungee cords and belay ropes on other games, we coached them, we helped the grips change sets, and we did one other important job on the show.  We were the guinea pigs and practice dummies.  Every time there was a new game, us spotters played it first, and we played against both the Gladiators and contenders in the couple of weeks of practice before we taped the shows.  I happened to be the very first person to run through the gauntlet the first time we set it up.  Fun stuff.  So... literally... I used to get beat up by the American Gladiators for a living.  At least for six or seven weeks each summer.  The show was kind of corny, but it was a blast to work on. 

Most of the show's season was a elimination contest of people who made it into the show through a series of tryouts.  We had all kinds of athletes, martial artists, gymnasts, cheerleaders, cops firefighters, and even a few soldiers make it on the show.  On any given day, there were some serious battles on the show.  A few of the male American Gladiators, including Hawk, played college football.  Any time a football player was a contender on the show, the testosterone levels were through the roof.  So when actor Dean Cain came on, former college football rival Hawk was gunning for him.

The funny thing was, Dean was one of our celebrity contestants.  Every year, they would shoot two or three shows with celebrities going against the Gladiators.  We had actors, Olympic athletes, Playboy Playmates, and others during those shows.  Most were no match for the huge and very athletic Gladiators.  Dean Cain was one of the few exceptions.  He literally would have done well against the regular show contestants, and he did not hold back.  He gave it his all, which earned him a lot of props from both the Gladiators and the crew.

The day before each celebrity show taping, we'd have all the celebrities come in for a practice day and learn the games.  As a spotter, me and my crew did triple duty, although those days were still much easier than normal days.  We would change the big sets and set up the games, we would help coach the celebs on how to compete in each game, and we would practice the games against them, playing the role of Gladiators.  Like I said, it was a fun job.

Halfway through the practice day, we'd all break for lunch, and walk to another stage where the catered lunch was set up.  I happened to sit down by myself that day, most of my crew were at another table.  Then Dean Cain walked up and said, "Mind if I sit here?"  "Sure," I replied.

Now here's the thing about celebrities on athletic shows.  They get a pretty big check just for showing up and going through the motions.  Most of them don't want to risk a serious injury.  Most definitely don't want to get their expensive face messed up, even if there's extra money for the winner.

 But Dean Cain wasn't most celebrities.  Even at lunch he was asking me about the games, and I gave him my knowledge on how to best compete in each one, since I not only watched all the practice and actual events, but I played most of the games myself to help train the on air contestants.  It turned out to be a really cool conversation, and I walked back to the stage with an even bigger respect for Dean Cain.  He did so well on the show, that he came back the next year and competed again.  Even more, he was just a down-to-earth, hard working guy.  He's definitely one of the coolest celebrities I met in my years working on TV crews.  Here's a few more clips of him BITD.

Here's Dean's on air moments from American Gladiators
(If you pause it at 9:51, there's a guy in black, under the silver tower, left of Dean's head.  That's me.)

Highlights of Dean as Superman on Lois and Clark

Bloopers from Lois and Clark

Dean at Comic Con NE in 2017 (see how long a Superman gig-or 4- will get you event appearances)

I'm at a big transition in my life right now.  You can help me move on to the next stage here.

The Journey of the White Bear #1

Even as a cub myself, I wasn't near as cute at this little guy.  This is a great video to start my tale.

My name is Steve Emig.  My best known nickname is The White Bear, given to me by roommate, BMXer Chris Moeller in 1992, after reading my semi-autobiographical poem, "Journey of The White Bear." The poem, like most of my poems, has been lost.  For the next month, I'm going to tell my story in this blog.  Then I will move out of the apartment I'm currently living in.  I don't know where I will move to.  What I do know is that I will keep writing and doing artwork for the rest of my life, however long that may be.

Here's a haiku I wrote as age nine that I remember:

In the grass I lie

Gazing at the blue heavens

I lie wondering

I've been wondering ever since...

This month long story is dedicated to my niece Katherine and my nephew Ethan, who are both teenagers, and heading into their own lives in this crazy world of ours.  Maybe something from my journey will help them on theirs, and you on yours.