When I meet pumpers for the first time, we’re usually focused on important industry-related issues, like septage disposal costs, vacuum truck features or effective ways to market their business.
But if I am lucky enough to shoot the breeze with them for a little while, the talk invariably turns to what we do at the end of the workday or on weekends. And the fact is, most pumpers have an interesting tale to tell about what they do after they put away the vacuum hose.
While we all know that pumping liquid waste is a 24/7 job at times, it’s important to balance the critical work you perform with family time, recreation, fitness, travel and other pursuits. We all need pastimes that recharge our batteries for hard work, help us connect with our spouses and children in meaningful ways or contribute to worthy charitable causes.
Your passions outside the job and your ability to juggle work and play are the topic of After Hours, a new occasional feature that debuts in this issue of Pumper. While you’ll always find plenty of business talk here, we’re excited to start sharing these lifestyle stories with you.
For our first installment (“In the Race”), we coaxed marathon runner and portable sanitation company executive Alex Townsend to cool her heels for a while and share her training regimen for this year’s New York City Marathon. When Alex isn’t coordinating sales efforts in the Washington, D.C., office of her family’s business, A Royal Flush, she’s taking in the area scenery, one footstep at a time.
Alex has loads of good advice for those of you who’d like to give running a try, whether it’s a quick trip around the block or joining her at the starting line for the New York race this fall. We’ll be thinking about her when we see news accounts of one of the world’s major marathons.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
What trips your trigger, besides breaking through a stubborn scum layer or locating an elusive septic tank lid? Perhaps you race sailboats? Run a volunteer fire department? Compete in beauty pageants? Maybe you’re involved in charity work in your hometown?
We’d like to learn more, and explain how you balance these activities with the intense demands of running a small business.
To get the ball rolling, I’ll share a few After Hours pursuits that are important to me:
• I am fanatically studying to become the foremost expert in motor scooters and motor scooter safety. I can tell you the wheel size and engine displacement for every scooter sold in America.
• I’m an avid raised-bed vegetable gardener, and I keep the neighborhood in tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini every summer.
• I’m the president of a stock club, a group of avid hobby investors. My most dubious achievement to date was taking a pass on Apple Inc. shares at $15. They currently trade for almost $200.
• I volunteer for the local Historical Society and helped preserve a 1920s filling station that was moved to a local park as a museum to early motoring history.
TAG. YOU’RE IT
Now it’s your turn. Drop me a line at editor@pumper.com.
