the day we left

When the decision to sell our beloved house and leave St. Croix came to us, sometime in the summer of 2009, we had no idea everything would move so quickly. It was with mixed emotions we left the balmy island in the northern Caribbean after five years of unbelievable experiences and new loving friends. With our two daughters Frida and PJ, we embarked on a long and ambitious journey which would eventually lead us to Sweden.

The author with coconut

Our house keys were handed over to the new owners on January 4, 2010 and we headed to St. Croix’ West-end eco-resort Mount Victory Camp where we relaxed and tied up loose ends, sold our cars and cancelled WAPA. Frida, our four-year-old, would sometimes be away from our cabin for three hours at a stretch, playing on the grassy slopes of the jungle camp. Horses would graze outside our dwelling and the anole lizards protected us from mosquitoes. It was peaceful and it gave us good closure with St. Croix.

frida and zavi wilson at mt victory

Later in January we left the Caribbean for the climate shock of Montana, where we were greeted with open arms by Shawn, Brian and their daughter Ruby at their place in Bozeman. Brian works for Murdoch’s, an outdoor outfitter and we slowly got used to the cold thanks to some good new gear bought there. Frida and Ruby got along great from day one, and they learned new ways of wearing princess outfits from each other.

Brian and Amy in winter

One of the many reasons it's called 'land of big sky'

amy & shawn in the family ambulance prior to the perceived emergency

During our stay in Montana, we took the two families to stay overnight at the Chico Hot Springs in Pray. Around noon on our last day there, Brian and I took the kids back to Bozeman and Amy and Shawn got some well-deserved girl-time at the spa. At some point during our evening, Brian and I started looking at our watches and wondering where our wives were. No cell phones were answered, and the people at the spa had not seen them for hours. We decided to take action: Brian started the hour-long drive to Pray and I started calling sheriff’s offices, the highway patrol, and hospitals. We both came up empty for some time, but acted calmly although we felt a grinding worry deep in our bellies. He and I kept each other informed of what the other discovered, and I finally got the call from Brian that he had spotted the round headlights of the old Chevy ambulance happily heading home towards Bozeman at 10.30 pm. Relief, elation, happiness. And what did the girls have to say in their defense? ‘We forgot the time’, or something to that effect. 

NEXT: the Lanners head to Chicago

Rock-stars in Chitown

Physicist Teppei Katori

Muons, gluons, protons and neutrinos.  Um, yeah. The laws of nature and the cosmos; how did the universe come to be and is there still evidence of the beginning, like a fossil, until this day?  Maybe? 

The folks on this day trip are attempting to answer the big questions  which I’m not sure I even know how to formulate.  But for a morning at Department of Energy-funded Fermilab, it was impressive to be in the presence of those excitable physicists who know about Muons and much, much more.  

At SciBooNE bunker

Physicists are people who have the confidence to say “I don’t know” and the youthful energy to keep up the search.   And for that integrity and enthusiasm, we like them and we like them wearing Nüggis.   We created a little video of our time there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVPuaOkws48

Amy continues the journey of exploration in the value and importance of her Nüggi product.  Over a period of 4 months, she and her family will distribute the remaining stock of their product to those they meet along the way.  For the next few weeks, they are in the Humbolt Park district of Chicago.

 Nothing says the foundation of our little start-up like the idea of mulitpurpose products.  With all these Nüggis in store, slowly being doled out by the handful to new friends and strangers, we came upon new uses.  This week Nüggi was reinvented into an Üggi for Mark and a Nügglette for baby PJ.  And together only two Nüggis were harmed, so I guess there were casualties.

 In our quest for personal and professional clarity, we see other new ways of using our surroundings. Limited space allows for creative invention and practicality.  We are all allotted a certain amount of space as a voyaging family and when one thing enters, another must leave. One sleeper outgrown, a new fleece pullover introduced.   We are settled into Chicago daily life which involves Ukraniane delis, Mariachi serenades, chiropractors, wet, diagonal snow storms and, the vrai culinary symbol of repurposing: soup.

Nüggi and Üggi at Work

Chicago soups are frequent and the stuff of warm tables and comfort.  Brothy, whole-potatoed soups from the Mexican neighborhood and medleys of homestyle favorites, pepper and smoked meat Goulash, split pea, and golden chicken noodle each for $1.29 a serving at local Polish-Ukraine grocers.  Or the historic Drake‘s Cape Cod Clam Chowder and more signature Bookbinder soup, formerly with Snapper Turtle, now just the fish of the same name and a drizzle of sherry served in small flasks on the side.  Even the Chicago sandwiches are dipped au jus for your pleasure.

This week we visit Fermilab, whose mission is “High-Energy Physics, the science of matter, space and time.”  We’ll be given a tour  by VIP Nüggi fan and physicist Teppei Katori whose knowledge of neutrinos and his innovation with our little Nüggi  product continues to make my head spin and heart blush.  Thanks for joining us on the journey. 

The girls at local Feed got their Nüggis too!

www.mynuggi.com; info@mynuggi.com

On our first leg of  our North by Northeast Nüggi Tour, we investigate, as a family, if the business we started is worth continuing.  In 4 months, we intend to give away Nuggis, the product, to people who cross our paths. 

one of the world's many Nuggi models

The Best Laid Plans: another possible tour name, or B.L.P, which means that ideally I would have had video of the inception process, but I don’t. That I would have made better choices, put in more effort, given it some time. Giving away a business is a similar process to how I’ve run things in the past: Loosely. We sent 10 boxes of Nüggis into the world to what we call Key Distribution points, points along our journey, measured in fistfuls of colors but favoring Camel and Light Blue. The goal: ‘get them out there.’ I believe when you hang on to stock in anything, be it beef, money, Nüggis, or love, you devalue it. And nothing devalues a business like fleece in the Caribbean. But we saw modest sales and great enthusiasm.

“Your Nüggi saved me.”  I believe in Nüggi and have a hard time not giving my sales pitch to people receiving free ones; I will remain Nüggi’s greatest fan. Not because I made it, but because I made it for me. But there is the moral obligation to the larger questions in life that makes the retention of 2000+ fleece hats unnecessary. And we were moving. And traveling for many months in the cold North. Come along with me as I go out of business! People ask me where they can buy another one and it pains me to tell them that there are simply no more, that they shouldn’t order them online as the Paypal function is still up but really no one is home. For a length of time the site only said “Hosting Has Expired,” which wouldn’t generate confidence in anyone looking online for it, but it wasn’t actually a lie either. [It is back online now at www.mynuggi.com.]

author & nuggi designer amy with daughter pj in montana

It’s not that I intended to go into or out of business so Laissez-faire, well, maybe I did. I wanted it to be ‘my ideal job’ in an extremely vague way that I once funneled into a Business Plan which remains on both a computer file and a back-up CD somewhere. It has a graph with an exponential sales curve. Peripherally, I learned a lot about business. That you need to dedicate time to it was the main thing I learned. That was what got me. I liked not dedicating time to it. I can list the other things I spent my time doing and having a great time of it except for a short pile of working-for-the-man-hours where the Dream of Nüggi really took off, but overall it was a really blessed time to be me.

 Having to deal with convincing others that my product was very cool was not very fun. It was like starting at a new school every day and trying to be cool when you feel lame. And the other tough part was dealing with the people who help get your product to market. The people who sew it, but inside out. The lost boxes, receipts, filing, unpaid invoices. There were a lot of headaches, a lot of dread over tasks. Now, giving them away I’ve put more smiles on people’s faces directly than I ever did via mail or through a store. Triplets of Montana hunters, families, coffee house workers, Swedish consulate interns, two men getting their car jump started, radio hosts, college students and food bank staff. The Nüggi is out there right now on these cold nights and getting used. I’m happy to see them go, until the end, until the end…

So maybe he (or she) had lugged what he thought were truly enlightened works of art to gallery after gallery. Maybe he was rejected from a few establishments, a few maybes here and there but no firm commitments? He was feeling low, like he wants to give up (and what the bejeezus is he to do with all this art?)- then he sees the sun, and nature, and the sea, and he gets a revelation: ‘I’ll take my art to nature! And I’ll give it to her!’ 

Columbus Landing, St. Croix

At least that is what I speculate happened at the Western end of Columbus Landing beach on St. Croix, where someone has created a small and temporary (but certainly noticeable) outside art gallery. It consists of between five and seven mixed media creations in different states of natural disrepair. The art is compelling somehow- since it’s human and bold and it’s suddenly there, intentionally, as you’re getting out of your car, in a natural setting no less, slightly underground- since the art is installed in a national park, certainly environmentally unfriendly- since a lot of the work is on foam and plastic, and is being torn by winds and spread into the bush. All in all, I have to say that I was impressed by the ‘graffitti-style’ effort but unimpressed by the juvenile content and the artist’s choice of location. Seems to me if you’re going to try to beautify something, you might try finding a spot that needs it, which Columbus Landing does not. Enjoy the photos and send me your comments.