At age 14 I got my first job. I worked for my father as his assistant in the woods. He owned and operated a tree falling business. My job was to carry around his chainsaw oil, gas, spare chains, ax, wedges, and drinking water. After a few years of that I was no longer his assistant, but a full-on tree faller for him. For those of you who don’t know what a timber cutter does, and for those of you who would like to know what a typical day in the life of a timber cutter is, here’s my story:

  • 1:30 AM – wake-up, eat a quick breakfast and pack a lunch.
  • 2:00 AM – meet the rest of the crew, pack into the crew-cab pick-up truck and hit the road.
  • 4:00 AM – Arrive at the job site (somewhere in the north Cascade Mountains), lace up my caulked boots (boots with spikes on the soles so one can walk on slippery logs without falling, similar to golf shoes on mega steroids), grab 40 lbs of gear and a 40 lb chainsaw and start hiking through the woods before the sun comes up.
  • 5:00 AM – Arrive at your section. You’ve just hiked for an hour, either up a very steep hill or down a very steep hill. It doesn’t matter though, because at the end of the day you’re going to have to go the opposite direction, either up or down! Nearest man- a half mile, nearest bear- sometimes 20 feet! It’s time to start cutting. The reason we start cutting at 5:00 AM is because that’s when the sun comes up. That’s how a timber cutter’s work day is scheduled; you start your chainsaw at sun-up in order to finish your day before it becomes too hot to work.
  • 9:00 AM – Your first break. You eat the sandwich, candy bar, and fruit cup you packed earlier that morning. 10 minutes later, back to work. If you take more than 10 minutes to eat your lunch you’re eating too slowly.
  • 11:30 AM – Stop sawing, grab your gear, and hike back to the truck. Because being a tree faller is so dangerous, state law prohibits anyone to work for more than 6 hours a day, we worked for 6 1/2. By this time in the day you have burned 2 gallons of gas, a gallon of oil, and have drunk a gallon of water. You have also fallen, limbed, and bucked trees that are over 200 feet tall, and as big as 6 ft in diameter. It is important to note that when you fall a tree, you don’t just cut through the trunk and hope it falls where you want it to. A chainsaw has sights, just like a gun. You aim where you want the tree to fall. If you aim wrong it could cost a lot of money in damage, or even worse, your life.
  • 12:30 PM – Arrive back at the truck with empty containers and worn body and tools, load your gear, and head home. In my case, which was typical, I would have an average of 5 new cuts or scratches on my body that were bleeding by the end of the work day. If a timber cutter had to buy a band-aide every time he bled, he would go bankrupt.
  • 2:30 PM – Arrive at home. I would already have a full day of work before many of my friends were even out of bed. Shower, relax, eat dinner.
  • 6:00 PM – I was asleep in bed.

So that was my summer job through high school.  In addition to that, my father and I would do tree jobs around our county.  They were specific tree removal or trimming projects that home owners would hire us to do.  Some of them were very difficult and tricky.  We would use cable lines, ropes, a bucket truck, and other equipment in order to safely remove dangerous trees from people’s property.

Through college I had a few jobs.  I worked at a lumber yard for a little while, and also for a land development company one year as a laborer.  Then I decided that there wasn’t very much money for a college student working manual labor.

In 2005 I became a server at the Cheesecake Factory in Bellevue, Washington.  I was able to make good money in a very fun environment.  I continued to work as a server in the restaurant until I decided to go into business with a friend of mine.  We started a small computer consulting company called 808 Systems.  Because my friend was the technical genus, I ran the front end of the company.  We wrote up our business plan and went to work!  Our company set up in-house web servers for businesses using ordinary desktop computers.  We did this with three goals in mind: to reduce computer waste, to save companies money by not having to pay a web host for services, and to allow companies to quickly and easily update their websites without having to contact a third party.  I co-ran this company for three years before I accepted a job in the aviation industry in November of 2008.

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