We’ve all seen them, right? You’re driving with traffic through your city and someone is in a hurry. They rocket off the line at a green light like Jeff Gordon at Daytona. And then, there they are impatiently waiting for you at the next light where they do their jack-rabbit start all over again. Or, on the freeway you are cruising along at 75 in a 70 and someone goes blowing past you at 90. . .only to slam on their brakes because the guy in the truck next to you is also doing 75. So, Mr. Speed Demon bounces to the outside lane, where he gains a car length on the truck next door and cuts back. This erratic serpentine course keeps up for miles. Now, the Speed Demon has managed to open up a sizable lead on you. In fact, he passes a roadsign and you start counting. . .
One Mississippi. . .
Two Mississippi. . .
Three Mississippi. . .
Four Missi. . .
His erratic driving has gained him less than 5 seconds. He put everyone driving on edge so that he could gain an advantage that is less than the amount of time it took you to read this post.
We’ve all been in a hurry at times. And there are times where hurrying is really important. When my third child was born, my lovely wife indicated it was time at go to the hospital RIGHT NOW! We jumped in the car and raced the 15 miles to the hospital. My son arrived 15 minutes after we did. It helped that we were driving at 3:00am and the streets were clear. Another time, a different son developed a fever of 108.8 under his arm! We bundled him up and rushed for the car. This time the hospital was thankfully only a couple miles away. The doctors told us we got there about 10 minutes before it would have been too late.
Yes, sometimes it’s literally a matter of life or death. But, those times are rare. Most times when we are hurrying it’s to get home, or because we’re late, or to catch a plane. None of which is going to be terribly inconvenienced if we’re late.
Last week I was coming home from Shreveport, LA to Salt Lake City, UT. There are two flights out of Shreveport. You can fly through Dallas on American Airlines, or you can fly through Atlanta on Delta, (Because DELTA means Dang Everything Leaves Through Atlanta.) I was scheduled to fly through Dallas. I was leaving Shreveport at 6:00pm with a 3 hour layover in Dallas.
And then my flight out of Louisiana was delayed to 8:00pm. No worries, I could cool my heels in a waiting area in Shreveport just as easily as a waiting area in DFW. And then the flight got pushed back another half hour. All of a sudden my layover in Dallas was looking like a sprint in Dallas. I’d been gone all week and I was ready to be home. My coworkers got stuck in Dallas on the way out to Shreveport earlier in the week. They’d had to stay the night in what they described as a “nice” Motel 6. I really didn’t want to miss my flight.
It was at this point that I thought about that guy hurrying on the freeway, or worse yet the guy racing from one red light to the next. As we boarded the flight, I considered, I had a 90 minute flight to get through. I was in a hurry, but at this point there was nothing I could do to hurry things along. So, I took a nap. If there’s nothing you can do, then you might as well do nothing and attempt to enjoy it.
As we pulled up to the gate in Dallas, I collected my things and made my way off the plane. I’d done a gate check with my bag, so I was once again patiently hurrying as I waited for them to bring my bag to the jetway. At that point, I was off like a shot. We landed at gate E23 and my flight for Salt Lake was leaving in 25 minutes from gate A26. I sprinted for the train. The Sky Train makes a regular loop between the different terminals. There are actually multiple trains and the wait for the next one is typically less than 5 minutes.
As I got on the train, I realized that we were on the exact opposite side of the sparawling Dallas-Fort Worth airport from where I needed to be. There were A LOT of stops before we got to the A Terminal. So, I stretched out, relaxed and casually checked my emails. I wasn’t going to hurry this train along by pacing, or standing next to the door. I needed to patiently hurry.
I made it to the gate just as the last group was boarding.
I gate checked my bag and walked past those already seated to my window seat toward the back. I had whole minutes to spare.
At this point I had no more reason to hurry, even patiently. I’d be arriving in Salt Lake at midnight and I wouldn’t be getting home until about 2:00am. So, I took another nap.
Learn to hurry patiently. It will save a lot of stress and you’ll get there just as quickly.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Rodney, the Solutions Team is kind of upset at what you did.
What did I do?
Well, when you pushed through the network changes for the launch, it really should have come through the solutions team. They’d appreciate it if you didn’t do it that way again.
You realize that if I hadn’t pushed the changes that we wouldn’t have launched right?
That’s speculation. You don’t know that for sure.
There’s a scene in the Pixar movie “The Incredibles” where the hero, Mr Incredible, is confronted by a person in a neck brace. The person in the neck brace was earlier saved by Mr. Incredible as he attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. He’s now suing Mr. Incredible.
Hey, I saved your life!
You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death.
It’s said that “No good deed goes unpunished.” I’m not sure I’m that cynical yet, but it is frustrating when you do something that helps a situation and rather than get praised, or even ignored, you instead get criticized.
One of my greatest strengths in business, is the ability to get stuff done. I think it’s the hyper-focus tendency that ADHD suffers have. If you give me an objective and a deadline, I will move heaven and earth to meet the objective. I call it tank driving. If you think about it, the guy in the tank doesn’t much care what is happening around him. Your tank can make a bee-line for your objective and roll over just about anything that gets in your way; obstacles, houses, horses, flower beds. And that’s the downside of being a tank driver. You tend to roll right over those obstacles, but leave a trail of destruction in your wake.
I did a little tank driving last week. We were supposed to launch on Thursday. Wednesday morning, many of our agents had the wrong network permissions. In this case it typically takes about 2 weeks to get the permissions changed. We had turned in the request to change permissions about a week earlier. Without those permissions, we couldn’t launch. What would you do? Delay the launch, but follow process? Or ignore process, climb in your tank and roll over the neighbor’s flowers?
I drove the tank. The Solutions Team is the group that normally grants network permissions. They had our request and I’m sure they were planning to get it done within the two week Service Level Agreement. However, I’d flown in for the launch and we had 50 agents ready to take calls. Waiting a week would have cost us tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I forced the issue and got them to grant the permissions right away.
My role is normally not to grant or even facilitate network permissions. There are whole teams that do that. But, my role is to look for anything that might prevent us from launching on time and deal with it. I was appropriately contrite and agreed that it would be much better if the Solutions Team were allowed to process these requests without IT getting involved.
I apologized for the tank treads through the flower garden. I promised not to do it again. . .until next time.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Don’t wear white after Labor Day, or to a wedding.
Don’t wear socks and sandles.
Don’t wear a belt and suspenders at the same time.
Don’t wear plaid if you’re a dead man.
Don’t wear red or blue if you live in LA (or Chicago, or parts of New York.)
Don’t wear red to a funeral.
The clothing we wear says a lot about us before we ever get a chance to open our mouths. I once wore jeans and a t-shirt on my first business trip for Microsoft. I was young and it was what we wore to work every day in Redmond.
Last week I was in Shreveport, Louisiana for the launch of a new line of business. The launch was scheduled for Thursday. In order to launch a new line of business, many different departments have to come together. We need the networking team to connect up circuits. We need the telecom team to configure phone lines. We need the recording team to be ready to record every call. We need the desktop team to configure the computers. There are countless others. The process takes several weeks, even for a launch at an existing call center like this was.
We didn’t launch on Thursday. We discovered on Wednesday that one piece of the user configuration wasn’t complete. We scrambled, but ultimately had to postpone the launch by one day. I hate missing deadlines. It wasn’t an IT issue that tripped us up, but that’s small consolation. However, it is what it is. We juggled schedules and prepared for a Friday launch.
Our client has a tradition for Friday’s. They dress in red to honor American troops serving around the world. I had planned to be at the center on Friday, so I brought my red shirt. (Star Trek fans relax. We haven’t lost anyone yet.) It’s a fun tradition and something that we can good naturely tease coworkers about if they forget to wear red.
It actually affected me more than I expected it would when I walked in Friday morning and noticed one of my coworkers who had also made the trip from Salt Lake to Shreveport. She had not only chosen to not wear red, she’d opted for black.
Black! On the day of a launch.
Johnny Cash made a career out of wearing black. So did Steve jobs. His black turtleneck sweaters were a stable at every Apple product launch. But, we aren’t Apple. We don’t sing Folsom Prison Blues at the start of our day. And we already had a “wear red” tradition.
Are you not superstitious at all?
Nope, not a bit.
The launch on Friday was successful and actually pretty uneventful. But, I will leave the beautiful northern Louisana countryside thinking more about my coworkers fashion choice than the new business we are generating.
There’s no rule against wearing black to a new business launch, of course. But, like white after Labor Day, it’s probably something you want to avoid. Oh, and wear red on Fridays, if your company has that tradition.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Let’s make this a third beer conversation.
I don’t drink. I haven’t had a drink of alcohol in four decades; not since I was eleven. (It was a different kind of childhood.) Yesterday I had a third beer conversation. I didn’t start with one beer. I went straight from “no beers” to “three beers.”
I’m in Shreveport, Louisiana. Members of our team have come from all over the country for the launch of a new line of business here in Shreveport. These are men and women that I’ve worked with for years. We speak often on the phone and communicate often through email. But, being in the same location is rare.
An on-site visit is typically long days. At dinner yesterday, I sat down with Daryl. We work on a lot of common projects. We work with a lot of the same people. We are actually in vastly different organizations within our company. Dinner was at a local restaurant that features some of the South’s unique food.
Daryl’s been with the company a lot longer than I have. I’ve worked on a single account my entire two and a half years here. Daryl has had success with multiple accounts, although we currently work on the same one. I asked Daryl about people and politics. We discussed successes and failures. And then the discussion turned to challenges that we’ve both had with personalities and certain management practices.
And that’s when we got to the third beer territory.
My friends who drink tell me that one beer doesn’t affect your judgement much. The second beer might start to loosen your tongue. By the time you drink that third beer, you’re willing to say things that might get you in trouble otherwise. You share things that could get you in trouble with coworkers or managers.
Third beer territory is both evidence of content and trust. You can’t have a third beer conversation without trusting the person you’re talking to. And you gain trust by trusting others. Third beer conversations are an opportunity to let down the walls that we all create to protect ourselves in the workplace.
Sorry, I’m not going to talk about the actual content of our third beer conversation, because that’s the one rule of a third beer conversation. It’s like Fight Club in that sense. You typically don’t even mention that you had third beer conversations, let alone share the contents.
I don’t drink, but it’s great to work with people that I feel comfortable holding third beer conversations with.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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No, Rodney, we’ve got it covered we really don’t need you to help. You’ll just confuse things.
I was on site at our facility in Kansas City. We were getting ready to launch a new line of business. It meant that we would start taking calls on a new call type. Our agents had been training for six weeks. And for six weeks, they had not been able to log into their computers. They could log into the local computer, but when they tried to log into the network session for the new line-of-business, they instead, were logged into the old line-of-business. We were using a network program called Citrix. Each line-of-business had it’s own Citrix “pool.”
It’s not a tough thing to fix. You move the agents from one pool to the other. Well, I couldn’t, of course, but if you put the request in, the proper team will make all the necessary security and network changes. It takes about five days. Unfortunately, I didn’t find out that we had a problem until the day before the launch. And I was having a though time convincing my team that I could help.
I’m pretty sure if I escalate to Debra’s team they can help move this along.
Well, we’ve already involved Debra’s team.
They hadn’t involved Debra’s team. For two weeks they had been trying to get the client to move the agents to the correct pool. It was Wednesday morning and the launch was 24 hours away. I finally decided I’d just call my contact’s team at the client anyway.
They quickly went to work trying to get our agents moved. The client team I escalate to is like me. They don’t actually do anything. They talk to the team’s and people who can do things. They pushed hard all day. Finally, at 4:00 they made the call. Or rather Debra called me,
Rodney, the business has decided to postpone the launch. We’ll go on Friday instead of tomorrow. We just didn’t have enough time to move the agents.
Twenty-four hours more and we would have been in the clear. Instead, we had only our fifth missed launch date out of a couple dozen. I hate to miss launch dates. In fact, if we are more than an hour late on our launches, I consider it a serious problem.
It’s not unusual for IT to be asked to solve problems. It’s what we do. It’s the reason the company paid to send me to places like Kansas City. We actually LIKE solving problems. It’s why many of us got into IT in the first place. And like Mr Scott on Star Trek, we often have a reputation for being miracle workers. Or, sometimes we are like the cavalry, coming over the hill to save the day.
But, occasionally, the cavalry needs a little advanced notice. I was surprised that they teams didn’t ask me sooner. But, we can’t fix what we don’t know about. I arrived in Kansas City on Tuesday night. I found out about our issue Wednesday morning. I had planned to come in on Sunday. Had I been on site on Monday, we’d have had the time we needed. As it was, 24 hours was just not enough time to work our miracle.
Sometimes the Calvary needs just a little more warning.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.
– Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com
Tony Hsieh is worth $840,000,000. If you follow his advice, you can end up just like him, right?
Let’s look at this a second. The tech world is full of visionaries, people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marc Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. Men (why is it mostly men?) anyway, men who chased the vision and the money followed. Obviously, it’s a proven model that following your dreams leads to fame and fortune.
I love basketball. I have a group of guys I play ball with on Tuesday and Friday mornings. We enjoy the chance to run up and down the court for an hour and a half. We generally play three games to 21 each morning. Between games we talk about family, vacations, kids getting married, kids going on Missions (it’s mostly an LDS group.) We also groan and complain about getting old. We have a fair number of guys who bring their sons to play. At 51, I’m not even the oldest. There’s a guy who is 62. Clearly in the next 11 years I’m going to get a lot better if he’s an example of how the over-60 crowd plays.
Also, players come and go as people’s scheduled permit. We had a guy a few months ago how was slightly better than the rest of us.
Harvey, did you play college?
Yeah, and then I went and played in Europe for a couple of years.
Now in his later 30’s he still showed flashes of a player good enough to get paid. However, he wasn’t THAT much better than the rest of us. It wasn’t like we were completely outclassed. And that’s my point. We all had passion for the game. He was a better athlete. He was able to get paid for a couple of years to play a game. And good for him. But, had you taken one of the rest of us at 18, when young men are going to college, and told us to follow our basketball passion, what would the results have been?
There are a limited number of professional positions. If the rest of us had decided to “follow our passion” and expect the money to follow, we would have wasted a good portion of our youth and been that much further behind when it came time to “get a real job.”
Sorry, none of us are good enough to play professionally. None of you are good enough to play professional basketball, no matter what your passion says. And that’s not a reason to be depressed. It should be a reason to be happy. You can spend a lot of years chasing what you think should be your passion.
I love watching minor league baseball. But, as I go to a Single A game, (that’s three steps below the Major Leagues), I can’t help wondering about those men playing a kid’s game. My town has a team called the Orem Owls. They are even a step below Single A, they are Pioneer League. They are affiliated with the Angels organization. In the history of the Owls, there has been exactly one player who went on to play at the major league level. These men are not going to play in Yankee stadium, or Camden Yards, or Safeco Field. These men define the idea of “playing for the love of the game.” And, if that’s their passion, then, that’s great. But, if their passion is to play at the highest level, they should stop following their passion. They are going to be disappointed.
For every Bill Gates, there are a hundred guys, a thousand, who were equally passionate, but not as lucky. Marc Zuckerberg got the idea for Facebook from a couple of guys who had a very similar idea. They were passionate. They are probably investment bankers or something at this point.
No, Mr Hsieh, we should not ignore the money to follow the vision. Because, the fact is that we are not going to make 3/4 of a billion dollars, just by keeping our eye on the vision. We are going to be Program Managers, and kindergarten teachers, and police officers, and any number of “normal ” jobs. And some of us will have jobs we love and some of us will have bosses that make us crazy, and if we do it right, we’ll end up with families and kids that love us, and the chance to go to Yellowstone National Park every few years, and we will live and die without having to worry about unfulfilled dreams.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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My journey to green energy continues. This is my house.
That is 39 solar panels. They will provide about 85% of my energy needs. We spent quite a bit of time research different options and different companies. I’m finding that my view of energy in general has been changed by having these panels on my roof.
I wrote about the Irony Of Clean Energy a few weeks ago. And while the panels are here, they are not connected yet. But, I find myself questioning everything I’ve learned about home energy use. Is it free when it’s from the sun? Is it now okay to run a dryer load because I want to dry a single towel? Can I run my dishwasher multiple times per day guilt free?
Lights? So long as I don’t mind them burning out sooner, are fair game. Maybe, I’ll adjust to this “new normal,” but in the mean time it’s confusing me.
We opted to get enough panels to supply 85% of our usage because we have a house full of teenagers. I’m buying these panels over the next twenty years. My youngest kid at home is 13. In a few years, I’m going to use a lot less energy than I do now. I didn’t want to supply 100% of my current energy needs and then end up with double or triple what my lovely wife and I will need in the future.
The biggest surprise of having solar installed was the wall graffiti. This is the side of my garage.
I have no idea that I was going to be sacrificing that much wall space to my new energy plant. The panels no longer look ugly, like earlier ones did. They need to do some work on the rest of the installation.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Hi, this is Rodney.
Yeah, this is Peter Galt. I wanted to ask you about a project that the client has requested we complete.
Give me a minute, Peter. I just need to get my kids back in the van. We’re driving home from Yellowstone National Park.
Oh. . .sounds like this isn’t a good time.
No, it’s fine. They’re watching a DVD. I saw your earlier email. What’s up?
I spent 10 days on vacation. I had a wonderful time. My family went to Southern Idaho for a reunion and then on to Yellowstone for a multi-family vacation. The campgrounds we stayed at all had cell phone coverage. That coverage not only allowed me to update this blog daily via my phone, it also gave me access to my corporate email.
Do you check email on vacation? Many people view a vacation as an opportunity to completely disconnect and there is certainly value in that. A chance to reconnect with family and kids who may not see much of dad or mom during busy work weeks. Leave the phone at home and just enjoy the geysers, hotsprings and buffalo. I’m not one of those people. I have been in the past, but my current job is somewhat like a garbage man.
Think about your garbage collector. He (or she) comes around on a particular day of the week and picks up the trash. But, if there’s a holiday, they don’t pick up trash. So, you put your can out a day later. But, just because there is a holiday doesn’t mean that you generate any less garbage. So, the garbage guy has to do in 4 days the work he normally does in five. He might get the day off, but there’s even more work waiting when he gets back. My job is like that.
While I do have a designated backup for times I’m unavailable, my backup doesn’t really know my account. He’s someone to pick up the phone, and he can certainly push things through, he doesn’t have the background to manage my processes and projects.
And, occasionally, because my account is unique, he will attempt to solve a problem and actually cause greater confusion because he’s using the standard process and my account has a unique process. So, coming back from time off is often a little like the garbage truck after the Fourth of July holiday. . .work piled up and less time to get it done.
My solution is that I keep up on my email and projects. I read my email. I send status updates. I take phone calls. I know, sounds like my jobs sucks, right? But, there’s a certain empowerment in my approach. I get to own the interaction with my client. I get a reputation as a bit of a workaholic, but also as someone who is committed to meeting goals. And it’s actually not that much time.
The best benefit of my approach? I don’t come back to 500 messages in my inbox. That alone is worth taking business calls while dodging bison.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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The sign made me pause,
Danger – Do Not Approach Wildlife
I knew I was misinterpreting it, but I couldn’t help but think of it as too strong a caution beyond the current setting.
How many of us lead lives of quiet desperation? Thoreau said,
“The mass of men lead lives of quite desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console youself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” (Thoreau’s Walden)
I guess it’s not surprising to think of Thoreau when visiting Yellowstone National Park. He said,
“The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world.” (Thoreau’s essay Walking)
Thoreau would possibly take exception to a caution to avoid a “wild” life. To not only not embrace it, but to not approach it.
We are made to attempt wild and desperate things. President John F. Kennedy said,
“But why, some say, why the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” (Address at Rice University September 12, 1962)
I’ve tried hard things. I’ve moved across the country on a handshake, it nearly bankrupted me. I’ve flown to China to adopt a son. It has been a joy. I’ve loved and lost. I’ve loved and found I was loved back more than I can ever imagine.
The point is that we are made to try, and in trying we will sometimes fail. For without a fear and a chance of failure, we aren’t really trying. Yoda had it wrong,
Do, or don’t do. There is no try.
Trying is what sets us apart. It gives us the chance to grow. We should not recklessly approach a wild life, but should certainly not avoid one. And of course, it is going to be hard. Everything worth achieving is. One of my favorite fictional baseball players was Jimmy Dugan, the manager in “A League Of Their Own.”
It’s supposed to be hard. The hard is what makes it great. If it wasn’t hard then everyone would do it.
My week in Yellowstone is drawing to a close. It’s been a truly magical time with my kids, my lovely wife, some relatives who happen to be good friends. It’s a time none of us will forget. And while the advice to not approach the “wildlife” was valuable and we paid attention to it, I hope none of us are ever so timid as to avoid approaching a wild life.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Should they or shouldn’t they? Should our national parks be more or less accessible?
The question sounds stupid and since I’m IN a national park currently it sounds a lot like I need to check my privilege. After all, who would even suggest we limit access? What a crazy idea. Those parks belong to EVERYONE and if we could get every American out to see them, we might have fewer issues with people taking this country for granted.
Yellowstone is not only the oldest national park in the United States, it is the oldest national park in the world, established by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1872. It’s 2.2 million acres in northwestern Wyoming, with just a slice out of Montana and Eastern Idaho.
The park is amazing. In three days we saw geysers and hot springs, mountains and valleys, river and lakes, and elk, buffalo, fox, bear, ravens, crows, cranes and pelicans (Yeah, I don’t know about the pelicans either.)
But we’ve also seen a lot of this.
At Old Faithful there was a lot of this.
Even the restrooms constantly had lines.
Last year 4.1 million American and international tourists visited Yellowstone. That was a record year, up 14% from the previous year which had also been a record year. This year, the centennial year for the foundation of the National Parks Service, there will be even more.
And therein lies the paradox. As we advertise the parks and provide greater access, we end up with worse experiences for people in the park. This year, all fourth graders get into the national parks for free. They can even bring their families!
I went to Disneyland once when I was a kid. The first day I stood in line after line for all the cool rides. The second day I road the streetcar and talked to the driver the entire day. The lines weren’t worth the experience for me.
The lines at Yellowstone are not Disneyland long. Most of the time slowdowns on the road are to look at wild animals along the side. Being delayed by a buffalo, or a bison is a unique experience. But, it’s still a delay. At times we pulled off to less popular sites simply so we could use a restroom without a line or eat our picnic lunch without the crush of humanity intruding.
The national parks are a treasure. But, that treasure has a price.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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