Untitled from chad totaro on Vimeo. As I walk through your doors of your office park building, it is not that intimidating. I have been doing this for a long time and I have sat on both sides of the table. There is a certain mindset that I get into, only one shot at the interview. As a designer, most everything should be considered. The interview suit, the portfolio, the ability to talk and discuss ones work. I have worked long and hard on my portfolio, it is great and I really like it and I am very proud of it. I have gotten a lot of great feedback on my presentation – I made, 100% of me went into it and it is all me. So, I respect the interviewie and I hope that I get the same respect back. Over the course of the last few weeks I have been on 7 interviews and 6 of them I was respected. I don’t mind being grilled about design, but don’t judge me on my ability to recite how to insert a hyper-link , although I will tell you the right answer. Design is about execution, but it far more important to get the concept right, the idea and the vision – the execution is just that – execution. The last few weeks I have been going around and around, new shirt, tie, no tie, black shoes, sunglasses, printed resumes, thank you letters and with that I am here, I [...]

Another decent weekend in Boulder and with that another good day of riding. This weekend a bunch of us choose to ride from my house in Boulder with an attempt to log as close to five hours on the bike and near 100 miles. A few plans and routes were hashed out – to Horsetooth, to Mead, to Carter Lake. In the end because of strong winds we decided to just do the normal Carter Lake loop and possibly throw in an extra loop at the end. Bad mojo was in the air when I woke on Saturday, usually I have coffee made, my cycling gear all ready to go and bottles made and food rationed. The group started to show and we were behind, some were lost, some late and me, well, I was sort of both – lost brain, late body. After a few coffees and some chatter we rolled out into the wind, it was strong and gusting and the ride was fast tempo to start. The wind never makes it easy, riders go to hard to compensate for the slower speed and it causes the group to break. A few new riders with massive strength but a bit of lacking knowledge on when to use it or not pushed the tempo and in with 4 miles it was splintered. I was to blame for the fast start, but sometimes rolling out of town it is good to step it up just a hair to tighten up [...]

I have 3 sessions on the track now, 1 with my friend Nick and the other 2 as part of the 8 week intermediate class that I am taking. I am sort of stoked on the velodrome but I must admit the stoke is not coming without some risk and for sure a few scary moments already. It is a daunting experience riding on this track with its 45 degree banks and 130 meter track; now mix this with varying levels of cycling experience and knowledge from complete newbies, kamakazies, excel catalog riders and me ( a fredly wanna-be racer) throw 10 them on a velodrome doing drills and it is bound to bring some close calls. I have found that the track is great for riding at the blue line and riding tempo, one of the guys in the class whom knows I race and such asked why I wasn’t lighting it up during our open 10 lap ride, I felt as though hammering below the pole line was not necessary. 10 people of varying abilities do not need me hammering all out. Anyhow, safety is my biggest concern and coming out of this experience in one piece is my number one goal. Session one last week had a group of us riding 1/2 the class above the blue line as we were the ones that went through the beginner 101 and the others had never been on the track and the instructor was just getting them up to [...]