Whatever It Takes

This picture was on a birthday card I received last week.

It is a real photo of Rolland “Rollie” Free setting the motorcycle land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats September 13, 1948 eleven months after I was born. Rollie Free raced Indian motorcycles before World War II. He set a record at 111 miles per hour. He served in the Air Force and was stationed in Utah near Bonneville during the war.

Rollie had a bone to pick with Harley-Davidson, which had apparently reneged on an offer to support his racing career. He “acquired” and retuned the Vincent Black Shadow from its owner John Edgar for the specific purpose of breaking the Harley record.

During the first runs in Rollie’s signature prone style, the wind ripped his leathers and he was still below his goal of over 150 mph. He stripped down to a borrowed bathing suit, cap, and swim shoes and set the record, (150.313 miles per hour) apparently mindless of the equivalent of coarse sand paper under his bike wheels.

The record stood till 1950 when he broke it again (152mph) and again in 1960 (160.78 mph), but he fell off the bike and quit racing motorcycles. He still raced cars. He died in 1984 and was inducted into the American Motorcyclist hall of fame posthumously in 1998.

There is something admirable in the passion, single-mindedness and zeal to “do whatever it takes.” If I’m honest, possessing that attitude has been quite beneficial in my life. However, there is a line between passion and prudence, between purposeful and perilous, between enthusiastic and foolhardy. That’s a line you often don’t see until you’ve crossed it.

People called Rollie “borderline insane,” “hyper-competitive to a fault, and a “regular nut job.”

I have never done anything like Rollie Free, but in my life, I have been called “gung ho ,”all-in,” and a “work-machine.” I have sometimes taken extraordinary risks to make something work.

 In 1967 I was in a summer stock production of Peter Pan. At nineteen, I was assigned to head the flying crew. We were on a budget so the director ordered flying harnesses without pullies or hydraulic assists. He wanted Rena, playing Peter, to fly in from offstage and up to the top of a scenery cave that stood about twelve feet above the stage. I determined the only way to make that happen was for the flying tech (me) to jump off the catwalk by the third pin rail offstage in the fly gallery to the one by the second pin rail a distance of fifteen feet. If I missed I would fall about twenty feet to the hardwood stage floor.

This maneuver worked in rehearsal. In performance one of the two flying harness guy wires broke and I sent Rena up and into the back of the proscenium. Fortunately, Rena wasn’t physically injured, and finished the performance, but may suffer from PTSD to this day. (Rena, I am deeply sorry.)

Still it took me a while to realize that “whatever it takes,” isn’t always the safe strategy. I worked full-time for a consulting firm in my second year of business school, which meant that I often worked into the night. I came home once at 1:00 am, and had just fallen asleep, when my pregnant wife, nudged me and said “it’s time.”

I said, “Try to go back to sleep.” That did not go over well.

I was slow to learn.

I worked hundred-hour weeks, which the people I worked for loved, but which ultimately made me sick. I was the only independent consultant I ever met who went to work for himself and worked less than I did as an employee.

I trained for a marathon and learned first-hand about the dehydration headaches and nausea of over-training. Several pricey speeding tickets and one thirty-day license suspension taught me “don’t drive faster; leave earlier.” I learned to manage my workload through the not-so-simple task of saying, ”No” to more work.

Years of working for chemical and oil and gas clients increased by awareness of personal and process safety. I still have the urge to stand on the top step of a ladder, but I have learned to get a bigger ladder, or to hire someone else to do work at heights.

I still describe myself, by saying “whatever I do I really do.” Now, however, that describes my ability to intensely focus. I’m still learning that I must intersperse, my “whatever it takes” with some mindless distraction and family and friends time.

So I’m rarely found doing Rollie Free stuff anymore, not even scaled down to my level. Everybody grows up sometime.

But, I guess, my reputation lingers: