Clearing out my stuff at Mountain Hardwear

I very recently retrieved the last of my stuff from Mountain Hardwear. (Thanks to Annabel and Roberta for protecting it for me these many months.) 

Unpacking the boxes was a stroll down memory lane. I thought I'd share that with you.

First up are the Mountain Hardwear Lizard King traveling trophies.

Best Overall Forecaster got the Dragon for a year. She's still looking good though a little chipped since being painted by Cate Wallenfels at Sierra Designs in the early '90s where she (the dragon, not Cate) was used as a trophy before being liberated from Sierra Designs by Bill Sterling and then pressed back into service at Mountain Hardwear.

The Lizard Helmet was made by Tatiana with an assist from Lois Horton's grandfather.

Next out of the box were a whole pile of brass name plaques that I intended to afix to some sort of wooden trophy to track Lizard King history.

I can't actuall remember whether I intended to track Best Overall Guesser and Worst Overall Guesser or (more likely) Best Color Guesser, Best Style Guesser, and Best Overall Guesser.

Reqardless, here's one possible sort: 

Next up is the Golden Lunch Box Award, created and awarded by Jack Gilbert to the Sales Rep who appeared most out to lunch at some point during the Sales Meeting.

Last as an extra feature is the Flowbie. I don't know if folks remember but I used to cut my hair yearly at all the same length. I was describing to (I think) Tom Taylor and Richie Gardner that I had a plan to tape a chopstick to my vacuum cleaner hose as a depth gauge and use that to make it easy to trim my hair to a single length and vacuum up the cut hair all at the same time.

They told me the device already existed on late night TV! So I ordered one. Alas, it didn't work. The cutting blade (visible in the second photo) was so blunt that it didn't actually slice through your hair as much as bash at it. The net result was that it would suck your hair into the vacuum hose and then pummel it. It claimed to work if you were only trying to trim off 1/2 inch rather than 6-8 inches but I even doubt that. 

Oops, missed a box. Here's one more photo of miscellaneous items. The office sign title was created by Tom Taylor. It was my favorite off all the goofy titles I adopted though the years topping even Director of Is.