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Bernie Klein - armed

One cold morning, back in the early 60’s in San Luis Obispo in central California, my dad and his friend drove out to Morro Bay to dive for Abalone. They would do this with masks, snorkels, no tanks, and no wetsuits, in water that if they were lucky was in the 50’s. Those days California was still fresh, and Abalone were plentiful. One day when they were out, underwater, they saw a shark, a real big one, my dad thought it was a great white.

Berny, My dad didn’t have much money in school, but he had a friend who was a prince from Saudi Arabia, who had a Ferrari. The prince couldn’t drive as well as my dad, so my dad got to drive the car in races. Closed course, Laguna Seca type races.

When I was about 7 years old I was in my back yard in Sun Valley, in the desert hills on the outskirts of Los Angeles, up high where you could see where a million people lived, in my vegetable garden, I noticed something. Suddenly there was a good sized rattle snake about a foot and a half from where I was standing, coiled up, starring straight at me and rattling. I knew I was not supposed to move, so instead I screamed. My dad came running out, grabbed a shovel, and chopped that thing until it was in 10 little snake pieces.

My dad tells the story, of when he was a kid Bugsy Siegel came and visited their house and he got to hold his gun. I love that story.

My dad fixed stuff. Could fix anything. Engineer by training, and just a brilliant guy. I remember being about 10 years old, and him drawing complex math diagrams on how the pressure would build up in an engine, just before the spark blew the gas. He taught me how to fix cars, siphon gas out of a gas tank, mow a lawn, and paint a house.

He also left the right books for me lying around. When I was 7 years old I found a book he had on Yoga and meditation. I had just learned to read, so dove right into it. Started meditating and doing yoga then, which led to other things, and put me on a path of enlightenment. I remember around the age of 10 I found a book he had on logic. Started studying that, and doing the problems in the book, that helped a ton later on.

When I was 15 he bought a motorcycle. I think he had one in college. It was an OSSA. A Spanish trials bike, the kind that you could drive over boulders and trees with. It smoked like a  mother, and at the age of 15 he used to let me ride it on the street, and go wherever I wanted.

When I was about 5 years old he got me started driving. I would sit in his lap on the freeway, and steer. Then probably around 6 years old he taught me how to drive full on. He had a FIAT spider sports car, with a manual transmission. We would go to the big parking lots around our area at 2 in the morning and practice. First I practiced just letting the clutch in and out, and then steering, and shifting, the whole thing. Hell of a fun thing to do with your dad when you are 6.

When he was in his 30’s to get a little exercise and break free, he would take off on his bicycle in the middle of the night, and ride the streets of Burbank at 2 am. That impressed me so much. Do it myself from time to time.

Back in 1964, the year I was born, he supervised the construction of the first computer with 1 Megabyte of memory. He was into this high technology, computer thing back in the days when people were still in black and white on T.V.

When I was 15, I was playing football on the street in front of my house with a bunch of my friends. My dad had recently gotten his motorcycle. He was in his early 40’s. He decided it was time to learn how to do wheelies. He had never done this before, not when he rode bikes in the past, and not recently for sure. Over and over again he would go up the street, and we would have to step aside from our game, while he gunned it harder and harder. First the wheel only went up a little. Then a little more, but he couldn’t quite break from gravity and get it all the way up. This was by the way on a plain old asphalt paved neighborhood street, with sidewalks and curbs on both sides, and no helmet. Then he finally goes for it full on, accelerates hard! Front of the bike goes up! Way up! and he falls off the back. He is still holding the handlebars, and tries to pull it off. He ends up on the bike, on his stomach, riding up the street, rams into the curb, and crashes into the bushes. God I loved him at that moment. I had the coolest dad on the street.

He loved to sail as well. Studied it. Had boats on and off his whole life. Wasn’t afraid of putting himself into some pretty radical situations. Once in Santa Barbara we ended up being stuck in swells so big our 30 foot sailboat just couldn’t handle it, and we got pulled in by the harbor patrol. Another time he sailed into the Newport harbor when it was breaking in the channel, if you know waves you can get what that would be like.

When I was a little kid we would get up in the middle of the night, and make Dagwood Sandwiches. These were sandwiches, with as many layers, and as many sandwich ingredients as you could find.

When things would go bad, and I would be stuck somewhere I would call him, and he would come. 2 in the morning, up in the mountains, out at the beach with a broken down car, or 500 miles away.

He would come, and he would fix stuff.

Real competent guy, smart as a tack, and worked like an ox.

The world will be a much more broken place without him.

I look forward to the next time we run into each other.

Love ya dad.

You did a really good job.

Your son,

David

Was just doing taxes. (This is our San Diego earthquake story)

My wife walked down to the lower level, and I felt the house give a little roll.

I yelled to her, “hey, we are having an earthquake”.

I immediately thought of one of my silly things, which is to watch water slosh during earthquakes.

So before it even stopped shaking, I grabbed the pool key and yelled, let’s go see the pool!

As I got out the door, I noticed a little wind, and as we were running said,

“oops, the wind will cover up any ripple waves.”

When we got to the pool it was a different story, the whole pool, about half an olympic size one, was sloshing back and forth,

like a drunk, stumbling, carrying an overfilled beer across the bar, that sloshes out the side.

We stood and watched for about 3 minutes, and it slowly subsided, but never stopped.

Our neighbors just moved to California, and I met them for the first time.

She asked “Does this happen all the time?”

We said, nope, you were just lucky.

Wild week with New York Times Facebook Advertising interview, Hanging out and giving chiropractic adjustments to Dashboard Confessional Group, presenting with Rand Fishkin and Lee Odden at OMS, phone call from one of the highest earners in the world (name withheld), letter from IRS saying they have a long lost $1,200 for me, huge facebook advertising home run, and it ended with surfing the san diego tsunami in La Jolla, and then being interviewed by Elliot Spagat of the Associated Press, and having it picked up and run by papers all over the world. I have to get the camcorder battery charger tomorrow, then I can post the video. What a week.

Here is the quote that was repeated hundreds of times around the world in papers:

“David Klein, a San Diego chiropractor, set up a tripod on a bench and recorded himself riding the paltry waves amid intermittent rain. When five or six small waves rolled in, he was convinced he had ridden a tsunami.”

“They actually got big enough to surf on,” he said, laughing. “If you blinked, you missed it.”

So I was over at Neil Patels house today visiting him and his parents.

I knew Neil was going to meet someone and had to leave at 2:30, so before I left he said CK Chung, and a friend of theirs who is a well known writer from L.A.

After giving Neil a little hint he invited me along.

It was great to see CK and I met their friend Francisco Dao. Fransico is from San Jose, of Vietnamese decent, but was named Francisco after his parents new home, San Francsico!

Francisco claimed to be the only Francisco Dao in Google, and sure enough he is.

We talked a lot about conferences, attracting people, social media, and how to really apply it for a result and not just gum flapping.

So after we all met, I hooked up with my wife again and went to dinner at our sushi place at Irvine Spectrum.

When I got home, I went to check my database to see if my staff had been doing their job updating things.

I kid you not, I went to the most recent entry and there he was, the one and truly only Francisco Dao.

My staff at met him at Pubcon, gotten his info, and shot a photo, just as they were supposed to do.

Not only are they doing a great job networking, the original social media, but they are out there on the front lines meeting important guys like this before I even get the chance.

Good job guys! And great to meet you Francisco!

Francisco Dao lives in L.A., is a social leader in the tech scene, is a past writer for Inc and Fast Company magazines and currently does life coaching for L.A.’s best and brightest!

Fascinating day. My staff, Cobra and Whiteshortz kicked butt today. I got to meet some amazing new people and was fully indoctrinated into the affiliate world.

Jeremy, being the amazing friend that he is basically took me around and made sure I was well connected with the top people in the affilate space.

Out of the blue I was offered a potential big SEO gig to do, that sparked a little interest.

Deena invited me to the Market Leverage dinner at Switch at the Encore (new Wynn hotel), and I managed to squeeze in Chris Hedgecock too.

I finally got to meet Michael Jenkins, CEO of Market Leverage. Chris and I sat next to him during dinner, and had I kid you not, a 5 hour dinner with non stop amazing conversation. I was shocked when I looked at my watch and realized that what had felt like an hour or two had been a five hour dinner. We had everything from oysters, to foi gras, and I even went wild and ordered rabbit. I had never had that before.

Chris, Michael and myself covered everything from Michaels new video training on their blog for begginner bloggers, to his climbing a 23 thousand foot mountain in Argentina and the trouble it takes to breathe there, to Chris’s sites, the ThinkTank, and our shared love of the U.S. constitution and early American history and what we can apply from it today.

It was a memorable dinner, and will not be forgotten.

It was a very long table, and at the other end, about 40 feet away, Mr. Shoe held court and entertained, with people like Zac Johnson, Andrew Wee, the UBD crew and internet marketing blogger Daniele Nagami in between.

Sorry everyone, I am too tired to link or post photos for now, but I thoroughly enjoyed the dinner at every level. Deena, thank you again so much for inviting us and thanks to our host for one of the great dinners of my life!

Of course thanks again to Shoe for continually getting me in the door and getting me a seat at the big table.

I’m in vegas for actually the third time in three weeks. Are you kidding me?

I also spent the day at Word Camp and got to hang out with Matt Mullenweg, the powerhouse behind wordpress and a fine photographer

To feel a little clean and refreshed after so much cigarette smoke, I am throwing off my poker theme and putting on a clean set of word press classic.

There is a big dinner tonight organized by Brian La France

Now in the spirit of vegas for some spammy giveaway promotion thingy.

Shoemoney is shooting for a big target of twitter followers.

Here is how you can help, and win a video camera or a mac computer.

Just follow these simple steps.

So here is the deal. We are going to giveaway ShoeMoney Flip Mino’s on February 27th. And these are the High Def ones not the cheapass ones!

So what do you have to do to win?

1) Follow @shoemoney on twitter.
2) simply tweet “Just entered to win a flip minoHD. Just follow @shoemoney and retweet. http://xr.com/fliphd”

I will be at affiliate summit the next three days, mostly hanging out with Shoe and meeting with big shots and little shots. If you see me come give me a hug and say hello!

I get complaints sometimes that the theme of my blog rambles. Well, get ready for more!

Hold Still. Talk Softly. Smile and don't move

I am prepping for Yellowstone, and recently found out they have grizzlies. It appears that they are all hibernating right now, but ya know what? I think it would be worth knowing what to do if a bear attacks.

If you were at thinktank and heard Orie’s story, you would know why you don’t want to get caught by a bear in the woods! I’ll just say it was the most graphic animal story you ever heard. If you search twitter well enough, you might find it! I am afraid that somehow that inspired our upcoming trip.

So, first off I found someone who knows the scoop, the Bearman! It appears that he sells Bear Spray on his site, so if you are looking for Bear Spray, check him out! (I also have gotten sick of looking at commercial sites with no real content on them, so want to direct some traffic over to some good data!

So here is the scoop according to the Bear Man! (My interpretation of his suggestions)

If you get attacked by a bear and the below doesn’t work, send me an e-mail and I will send you a free t-shirt! (Only half kidding, but really I have no idea, so don’t follow my advice and listen to someone who knows like the bearman!)

This replaces my previous advice which was, if attacked by a bear, lie down and be eaten.

If attacked by a bear!

1. Find out if it is a Black Bear or a Grizzly! (If you don’t imediately know then read the label by the tail.)

2. If it is a Black Bear go ape S#&t and try to scare or fight it off, as it might want to eat you!

3. If it is a Grizzly stand still and face it, don’t scream and run off into the woods. They run something like 14 feet per second and will chase you!

4. Don’t try to climb a tree or the Grizzly will follow you and they climb up to 30 feet up!

5. If the Grizzly comes at you he is probably feeling threatened by you. He just wants to knock you down and maybe scrape your back, or bite your skull for a second, but not eat you. Here is the fun part, hold still! Some people claim talking softly to the Grizzly also may help your chances. Try saying things like “I used to watch Gentle Ben growing up” or “Yogi the bear is my favorite cartoon”.

So in summary it’s easy, if a black bear attacks you fight him, yell etc.

If a Grizzly attacks, stand your ground, but be calm and don’t move or yell. If he attacks and chews on your skull, hold still as he will probably leave you alone. If he doesn’t stop with the chewing, he probably thinks he is a black bear, so go back to number 2 above and scream or yell, then recomend that he subscribes to my RSS feed, so he gets better educated before his next encounter.

For a change, I am going to take some time off. My wife and I are heading north. It is pretty funny because she is from Norway, and totally used to the cold. I have no idea what to do. Once when she asked me to climb on top of a big snow drift, I asked her if it was possible to fall in the center or if it would hold me up?

The plan, still subject to change, is to drive to Vegas, stay at the Wynn a few nights, then head north. Off to Aspen, to ski/snowboard for half a week, then drive further north to Yellowstone. You can’t drive a car into yellowstone during the winter, so we have arranged for these cool snow cats that carry you in on. Their bottoms have skis and tractor belts.

Once we are in yellowstone, we have reservations for a few nights in these little cabins in the middle of nowhere. It turns out there are still grizzly bears in Yellowstone. I thought they were extinct. I am just imaging wandering outside the cabin at night with grizzly bears.

Then we have a private guide to take us on snowmobiles around yellowstone.

It will be pretty adventurous. The funny part is that you realize that hundreds of years ago, native Americans lived there, grizzlies, snow and all. The only way you could survive was with what you could find in the woods. They did have thermal ponds which they could use as jacuzzis which I am sure made it much easier to get through the winter.

We’ll see how the city/surfer kid does in the snow.

Stay tuned!