Au revoir DreamWorks

It seems like it was only yesterday that I began working with the folks at DreamWorks Animation in Glendale, Ca. I remember how proud I was to be working as a full time employee at a position I had sought after throughout college and alway imagined so difficult to attain, what with the awesome nature of the work, and every fan boy computer scientist and art student I assumed would be competing with me for the job. It was with much apprehension that I approached the job hunt after graduating college with nothing yet lined up. I had a degree, a temporary gig coding open source RenderMan for Google/Aqsis, a resume that listed work experience from student computer support technician at UCSB to editorial intern at Pixar, and a heart full of desire to work on awesome animated films, with the people I had come to revere through reading Siggraph papers and watching DVD special features. To me the environments at places like Pixar and DreamWorks looked like utopias where creative, friendly, and brilliant people collaborated, using art, science, mathematics and engineering to create movies.

It was at Siggraph 2007, two months after I graduated college, that I got my big break after hunting down DreamWorks' human resources desk and handing them my resume. I really did not expect a call from them. Pixar was my big hope, but I was happy to aim my sights at lesser known and therefore (I assumed, it seems, incorrectly) easier to get into shops like Laika. But in fact it was DreamWorks that called me up the next day and wanted an interview right there at Siggraph. That interview was surprisingly pleasant.

The train ride back to Ventura after that trip was something I will never forget. There I was on the train in a seat with an empty one next to me, feeling very content after my awesome week at Siggraph, where I had made new friends, partied on the aircraft carrier courtesy of Autodesk, attended lots of interesting talks, and interviewed with DreamWorks. I thought the week was over but a man who worked at DreamWorks asked if he could take the seat next to me. He told me his name and I recognized it, because I owned a copy of his book, Image Synthesis using RenderMan, by Satty Raghavachary. He told me about working at Dreamworks and at this point I felt it was destined that I would work there too. I was so excited!

I look back on over five years and am really happy to see that I worked on such a wide variety of things, and with such an incredible group of people. I worked with people who made the movies that I grew up on, like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and even The Jungle Book. I worked on state of the art camera capture tools, learned the tools they made Shrek with (and even Kung Fu Panda on mostly the same tools, incredibly antiquaited though they were for the time), I wrote probably hundreds of python scripts, became an industry expert in Maya, designed APIs, learned stereo movie making from the best people in the business, and saw how these films get made from almost beginning to end and worked in almost every department in the pipeline along the way. I really feel like I've seen a lot, and I haven't seen everything but for now I have seen enough and I know that the world out there is so big and I have a yearning to see that too.

I am forever grateful to those who demanded the most of me and never doubted that I could deliver even though sometimes I doubted myself. I may or may not return, but I feel content that I have inspired some of you to run, others to do triathlon, and I was in turn inspired in watching you rise to your endeavors. I will remember most the hallway conversations and lunch table discussions where we shared our weekend stories, complained about the process, and dreamed of bigger and better things.


IronMan New Zealand

Me at Craters of the Moon, a thermal area near lake Taupo, a few days before the race

I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand with my dad and we visitied my friend Tim Mitchell, an Auckland resident who I met in 2011 on my tour of the Alps in the Tour de France. Tim is a Kona IronMan athlete and completed IMNZ multiple times. On race morning Tim sent me a text which I read just before entering the water.

"Ironman is all about how you deal with the bad-patches - cause know there will be bad-patches mate ...
And whether that's a technical problem on the bike, accidentally dropping your specially prepared peanut-butter dates, or just your body saying "I've had enough", be prepared for them (ideally just the latter) ...
Also know everyone out there is dealing with them too. Cause Ironman is a race that you race against yourself (just like your 100-miler which blows me away) ... so again, your biggest challenge will be how you deal with the bad."

I don't know if Tim jinxed me with this little warning, but it stayed in my mind while dealing with the physical pains and discomforts of the race, and especially so when I suffered mechanical problems on the bike. It kept me calm and determined to fix the problems and keep on going.

So the race began before sunrise with a deep water start, all of is bobbing in the water waiting for the gun. I positioned myself middle-to-back. I had been in this water many times in the days before the race and found it to be the most pleasant swimming environment ever, with comfortable temperature, 25-foot visibility and water so clean you could drink it. The surface was smooth and we were off.

The bike was my least favorite part of the race. The chip-seal road surface is bumpy and uncomfortable. I was suffering my usual stomach issues and trying to get all my food down. That was my big goal for this race: to eat enough. Shortly after the half way point, I dismounted to take on new water at an aid station, and began eating from my special needs bag. I kept the bag out and continued riding, and emptied the bag. I remember thinking I was past the drop zone for trash, so I should stuff the empty bag in my shirt, and boy do I wish I had. I decided to discard it anyway, and the darn thing landed in my rear cogset. Its then plastic membrane formed a web over all of the cogs and got underneath the chain. I first tried picking it off but knew it would be easier to remove the wheel from the bike to be free of the chain. I did that and removed the bag, replaced the wheel. Riding again, up hill, I could heard bad sounds. I stopped again and looked. My rear break was stuck fully open, brushing against the crank. I had pulled the break cable free of its anchor point in the break, and the steel threading had unwound at the end, making it impossible to reset. It was not an option to ride on; the grinding would slow me way down and tear up my bike. I rode to an intersection manned by a volunteer and asked if she could get me a mechanic but she didn't have a comm unit. I knew I would have to work this out on my own, so with my bike upside down and my drink leaking from my aero bottle, I went to work taking the rear brake off. I managed to get it all off and stuffed it into my spare tube bag and mounted the bike again. Now I realized I couldn't shift. My thoughts turned to true dispair. I must have broken the electronics somehow. I could ride without a rear brake but no shifting? I'm done. Luckily this was an easy one. I had merely engaged the shift adjustment mode on my computer, I saw that the LED was lighted up so I pressed the button and had shifting again. Ok. 55 miles to go and then a marathon.

I think I spent about 30 minutes all told stopped, fixing these various problems. This break kind of changed the way I was approaching the race. I was now riding with the back of the pack. Before, I had been riding with some grinders, and having them pass me was affecting my pysche and making me ride harder than I wanted. Now I could ride at an easier clip and pass others, and that's what I did. I stopped two more times to use the restroom, eat and take on liquids. I finished the ride after 7 hours, right behind a 70 year old man.

The marathon was the highlight of my day. Well fed, and not too drained from the bike, I hit good form immediately, running out of the starting chute, a woman asked me, how come your legs are working? "I don't know, I said." I could see I was well behind. After each 8.3 mile loop of the marathon, you get a new colored scrunchie on your wrist. Lots of people already had two. It wasn't going to be the kind of day I wanted for the overall ironman time, but maybe I could have a better marathon than I had hoped. Going in, I estimated I could do the marathon in 4:20-4:30. Spectators brightened my day with their cheering and comments about my great looking form. I love them. I walked every aid station and ate and drank, alternating water and electrolyte drink. I would stuff ice into my hat, shirt, and mouth. This really helped a lot. I wish I had done it at my first IM. I started passing people. I passed hundreds of people. Most of the athletes at this stage were walk/running. Lots of walkers. The runners were finishing their IM when I started the marathon, or just shortly after. I remember hearing "So and So, you are an IronMan!" as I left transition to start the run. Those would have been the pros I guess, at around 9 hours into the day (15 minutes longer for them since they start early). I had the time of my life on that run. I walked the hills, mostly as a strategy to conserve energy, not because I felt I had to. I probably didn't run as hard as I could have, since I am still new to this and wanted to conserve and make sure I had enough in me to run at the end. And I did. I ran the whole least 1.5 miles and came in about 10 minutes faster than my first IM, and with a marathon time of 4:11, which was 9 minutes faster than my best hope, and 49 minutes faster than my first IM. I had so much fun, I immediately wanted to do another IM. There were no IronMan blues for me this time, not at the finish, and not in any of the subsequent days. Just pure addiction.

This was the first time I returned late at night to watch the end of the race. It was a very lively and inspiring place to be near midnight as hundreds of people cheered the last hundred or so athletes to finish the race. The most memorable was the last, a woman who must have given up 300 meters from the finish, I heard someone say she was getting on the foot bridge as if to go home, perhaps assuming she was not going to make the cutoff which was only about 90 seconds away. I could imagine her wanting to avoid the dismay of the clock stricking midnight right before she crossed the finish line. Mike Reilly took off to usher her in anyway. Somehow we learned her name, so the whole crowd began to chant it and we grew louder and more excited as she come through and finished with about 11 seconds to spare.

My dad and I before the swim start