Boise isn’t called ‘The City of Trees’ for nothing.  And no time of year earns the city that title like the fall.  It’s a beautiful season with brilliant splashes of purple, red, orange and yellow decorating Boise’s already stunning backdrop against the Rocky Mountains.  When the leaves start falling and the crisp autumn breeze tosses them around in a kaleidoscope of color, I doubt there’s a person out there who can’t admit to enjoying the change of pace from the blistering summer heat.  With this scenic makeover, however, comes a looming task for anyone with a few nearby deciduous trees and a yard of any considerable size.   Raking leaves might be an enjoyable chore for some, but for others, like the elderly or the sick, the burden is just too much for them to take on alone.  Thankfully, Neighborhood Housing Services of Boise organizes a great volunteer event each fall called ‘Rake Up Boise’.

On Saturday, a team of inspired Balihooers met up in the north end of Boise to give back to their city and help their neighbors.  The timing of the event was, well, less than timely.  The day happened to fall on the same day as our biggest college football rival game:  Boise State versus the University of Idaho.  It was a home game scheduled to start at 1:00 with plenty of tailgating to be done beforehand.  Mother Nature thought she’d also spice things up with our first measurable snowfall of the year.  But we were a determined crowd and had no option but to start the day in the crisp hours of the morning, well-prepared to do equal amounts of snow shoveling as leaf raking.

From our hours spent in the snow-laden yards, we discovered a variety of ‘best practices’ when it comes to raking leaves in winter-like weather and sequentially getting the piles of leaves and snow from the ground into the large brown bags we were supplied.   I believe the pictures below do the best to describe the various techniques.

The event was a fun experience for all of us.  We couldn’t help but feel that we’d accomplished a great thing when we saw the smiling faces of the homeowners.  Our only concern, at the end of the day, was how the bags would hold up when the snow melts.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed for the pick-up crew.

I think it’s safe to assume that most tourists who visit The Leaning Tower take that same silly picture, you know the one I’m talking about and if you don’t, here’s a few examples to help you along.

A new campaign by McDonald’s UK is playing on this very idea. It’s pretty clever. When else would the Golden Arches go home with thousands of tourists in their vacation photo album to be viewed by friends and family over and over again?

As media professionals, we are constantly trying to combat the fact that consumers are taking control of their media consumption, but the fast food giant is finding ways to embrace the shift in culture and encourage interaction with their brand. As a marketer that struggles with this every day, I think the execution is brilliant.

McDonald’s Piccadilly Circus

It’s national bike to work week. Despite the frigid temps a couple of mornings this week, many brave Balihoo’ers biked to work anyway.  In fact, several of our employees voluntarily forfeit their parking passes year round for the love of reducing their carbon footprint and staying in shape.  We have bike racks in the office for security (and aesthetics- we have some pretty cool bikes!); just one of the many perks of working at Balihoo!

One of the greatest things about working at Balihoo is undoubtedly the company culture.  When I first joined the Balihoo team, I was continually awe-struck by how great all of the Balihoo’ers I met were - both at their professions and at their lives outside of the office. Balihoo employees - for lack of a better word, are livers (no, not the organ) - they are a group of people with passion, spirit and drive.

As with all jobs, there are undeniably ups and down but the one component that consistently keeps Balihoo “up” is the optimism that Balihoo employees emanate.  It was with this in mind that I decided to put together a new series for our blog.  This Work-Life Passion series will feature individual Balihoo’ers - through which I hope to give you a glimpse of what it is like to work (and play) at Balihoo.

 With that, it is with great pleasure that I introduce you to Balihoo Creative’s Creative Director Mel Mansfield.  Mel is one of those people who can manage fifty    items and make it look completely effortless. With a demanding job (contrary to popular belief - working in the creative department is HARD work), three kids at home, a passion for interior design, a charity that she is passionately involved with (Idaho Epilepsy Foundation) and a love for “all board sports” Mel is always on the go!  Whenever there is an out-of-office event, party or sports team I just assume that Mel will be taking part because, well, that is Mel. She is a do-er.

Having grown up in Burley, Mel is an Idahoan through and through. Loving all things outdoors - Mel spends as much time outside (ideally with a board strapped to her feet) as possible.  With three boys aged 8, 12 and 14 and a long-time sports-lover who professes that she “lives for football” - Mel spends a lot of time either playing in or watching games.

Creative at her desk, in her home and with her charity work, Mel is a fantastic example of the kind of person Balihoo recruits.

Almost 20 years had passed since I actually owned a bike, but on Father’s Day this year I got a new bike from my kids. I live in Boise – officially the City of Trees, but to many the Biking City due to its many accolades for the abundance of biking trails in and around town. Despite the myriad biking opportunities, both on trail and off, in town and in the foothills, I had never biked in Boise. I do plenty of outdoors stuff, but so much that there was never room for another hobby like biking.

Well, last Wednesday morning I decided to bike into work. The ride was about 6 miles each way, and I was able to bike the entire way along the Boise Greenbelt – a paved walking and biking path that runs continuously along the Boise River. I was immediately struck by a few things:
- First, the sheer number of people along the path – proves what an outdoor-oriented place Boise is. People of all ages were walking, jogging, riding bikes, walking dogs, walking with kids, etc…
- The serenity of it all – there were no traffic lights, cars, or cacophonous noises like on a road. Moreover, you pretty much see the river the entire way and lots of wildlife.
- The weather – Boise gets hot during the day, but the mornings are amazingly calm and cool. Unfortunately, the afternoons are significantly hotter, but the greenbelt’s shade made it pretty comfortable.

These combined factors make for a great spirit and mindset coming into work each morning. Moreover, it’s really amazing to live in a capital city and have such amazing access to the outdoors right in the center of the city. Here are a few pictures of the sights you see along the greenbelt:

Certainly one of my motivations for biking is to save a little gas money. I’d imagine that the number of people on the greenbelt has increased because of gas prices, but Boise has always been a biking town. Proof positive of this is the number of bikes parked outside our office entrance every day! I don’t see biking replacing my other outdoor passions, like fly fishing (see previous blog post), but it’s definitely a great way to start the day.

Last weekend a couple things happened that got me thinking. First, as I was driving away for my long Memorial Day weekend, I heard a couple songs on the radio performed by icons from my home state, New Jersey. Stop — can you name a few famous singers from New Jersey? Not too hard, huh? (answers to follow)

That got me thinking; Idaho, the state where I currently live, lacks icons. Most people can rattle off at least a few famous people from New Jersey, and most Jerseyans can rattle off A TON of famous people from their home state. Frank Sinatra, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Willis, Whitney Houston, John Travolta, Paul Simon, Kirsten Dunst, Jason Alexander (aka George Costanza) - and Jersey doesn’t just have singers and movie stars - to add some repute to the list, Jersey claims two sitting Supreme Court justices (Alito and Scalia). Of course, New Jersey is about five times larger in population than Idaho - but still, that’s a lot of icons. So, I got thinking, maybe the state has a bit of an inferiority complex because of its diminutive size and bad rap for toxic waste and pollution, which makes everyone more aware of the famous people from there. So, maybe Idaho has some famous icons that I don’t know about?

Well, I started to think of some Idaho icons and my brain quickly jumped to JR Simplot. He’s the guy who put Idaho on the map as the potato capital of the world, but you probably never heard of him. I was thinking this on Saturday night. Then, to my surprise, I woke up Sunday to hear that JR passed away. He was 99-years old and left behind quite a legacy. I’m certainly not trying to make light of this - on the contrary - he probably did more for Idaho than any other person and was an incredibly impressive businessman and philanthropist, to say the least.

In case you don’t know much about Mr. Simplot or his namesake company, he made a fortune by pioneering the freeze-dried French fry in the 1950’s and began to supply a fledgling company called McDonalds with these fries. He quickly amassed a French fry fortune and an agriculture empire, which turned Idaho into the potato producing behemoth that it is today. Interestingly, very few (if any?) potatoes are grown anywhere near Boise, but eastern Idaho is veritably the potato growing capital in the world - each year Idaho produces 120 Million sacks of potatoes! You can learn all you want to know about Potatoes here: http://www.ag.uidaho.edu/potato/

So, back to my original train of thought. I figured there were some pretty well-known Idaho icons beyond JR Simplot and the other few that I do know: Picabo Street (Olympic skier), Jake Plummer (former NFL quarterback), and Harmon Killebrew (hall of fame baseball player). I realized these are all athletes and it’s a very short list, so I scoured the web and found several other important people, but none of greater notoriety than the aforementioned threesome.

But, in thinking about this, I realized that’s why I love living in Idaho so much. It’s such a great place to live that we don’t need to brag about the people who come from here. Nothing against New Jersey, but who needs all those movie stars and icons to represent their state? They didn’t choose where they were born, but I realized that many of them choose to come here to vacation, or own a second home, in places like Sun Valley and Coeur D’Alene. So, Idaho is not so well-known for its people, but it is better known for interesting facts about the state: it has the most federal land in the lower 48, the largest sand dunes, the most beautiful mountains (the Sawtooths, in my humble opinion - see picture above), the television was invented here, etc. I’d rather live in a place with such incredibly high quality of life, low-hassle, low social pressure, and incredible access to recreation.

Sorry for the rambling thought, but hey, isn’t that what blogs are for?

BTW - the two songs I heard were Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory.

I’m sitting here at my desk, fairly fatigued from a long, but rewarding week of work. Admittedly, I am thinking about fishing and suddenly had an urge to write about my favorite hobby - fly fishing. It’s actually more than a hobby, it’s a passion. At Balihoo, passion is one of our core values. So what better thing to blog about at work than my passion? Especially on a dreary fall day like today where fishing wouldn’t be as fun as it would in better weather (important note: there is no bad day to fish - I’ve fly fished in 9 degree weather where the line froze to my rod, but still had a good time).

About five years ago, I moved to Idaho from New Jersey (*of all places*). When people ask why I moved here, I half-jokingly say I followed my fly rod. On many levels, this is true, but I did find a good job with a good company, and more importantly, it’s a great place to raise a family. The access to fly fishing, however, was certainly no small factor in my decision to move here.

Boise is one of the only, if not THE only, metro areas with a quality, native-producing trout stream running through it. The Boise River, which originates in the mountains to the northeast of town and ultimately runs to the Snake River near the Oregon border, holds native brown trout and rainbow trout right here in the city. I work a few hundred yards from the river and often observe the mayflies (a staple of the trout) sitting on our office windows.

Beyond the river in town are several “blue ribbon” trout streams in which you can catch trophy brown and rainbow trout, as well as native cutthroats. I call this trio of fish the “Idaho trifecta”. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any single river in this area that holds all three species. Several hold two species, but no rivers hold all three. So, I try to cover many rivers and catch the trifecta as often as possible.

A Big Brown

I love to catch all three species, but the cutthroat, Idaho’s state fish, is actually the lone native trout to Idaho and my personal favorite. They were the fish Lewis and Clark identified during their expedition, thus the scientific name of the cutthroat species is Oncorhynchus clarki - the Westslope sub species in Idaho is known as Oncorhynchus clarki Lewisi (Lewis and Clark were chartered with the task of identifying new flora and fauna and sending them back to Washington DC). Knowing these fish have been in the rivers so long makes it very cool to catch them. Unfortunately, they have struggled to adapt to declining stream conditions throughout the west, which has mostly come from human encroachment and especially in recent years, from drought. But, good populations of cutthroat can still be found in the more remote, back-country rivers and streams. Further, the browns and rainbows, both non-native species that were introduced by humans over the years, compete for food with the cutthroats and the rainbows interbreed with them, thereby putting further pressure on the cutthroats’ survivability.

A Westslope Cutthroat

While the survival and improvement of this species is important to me, many rivers here now hold strictly rainbows and browns, and I really enjoy fishing for them. At the same time, I hope to see the native cutthroat waters stay that way! I have several out-of-the-way fishing spots, deep in some of Idaho’s pristine wilderness, where I love to escape and catch trout. But I’ll keep those places to myself

There. Just writing this energizes me. Back to work.

A little break today from the standard business post….I’m on vacation up in the wilderness of Idaho and thought I would drop a note out to everyone to wish you a happy 4th of July.  We’re in a spot called Anderson Ranch Reservoir, it’s about halfway between Boise and Sun Valley.  Earlier today we went up to an area called Trinity Lakes…it’s a collection of spring-fed alpine lakes with some beautiful trails linking them all togetether.  Here’s a picture of part of the hike in:

In the foreground you’ll see our (almost) 12 year old lab named Mokie.  He’s getting up there in age, and certainly takes his time on the hikes, but he loves being out in the wildnerness. 

This next picture is myself, Mokie, and our other lab Azzie (she’s 10).  In the background is Green Lake, one of the first lakes you come to in the trail.  Everybody is tired but happy!

We ended the day with a nice long swim in the Big Trinity Lake.  Here’s Azzie pondering her next jump into the water:

I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday and I look forward to getting back to business as soon as we return! 

Shane