Thirty one

As I turn thirty one, I’m in Montreal, a place I’ve been several times over the past decade for both work and play, but all amazing times. It’s not just a cool destination where the people speak a language I barely know, but more of a reflection back on the experiences with friends that have continued to strengthen or the career moments that grew into something greater. Reflecting on this shows myself my progress and proof of caring about the things that matter most to me.

Travel

This has turned into a great travel year. Hawaii in October, Dominican Repubilc in February, Prince Edward County, London, and Amsterdam in June, and Montreal now in October. A handful of weddings to attend too. Of all the travel, Hawaii had to be my favourite as my partner and I spent a couple weeks island hopping and driving their beautiful coasts. Some of the best moments were snorkelling for hours with plentiful reefs of fish and turtles, driving the narrow north coast of Maui, and waking up hours before dawn to see the incredible sunrise on mount Haleakala - truly beautiful. The food was top-notch, whether it was a lovely beach resort’s dinner on halloween night vibes, or tasting the best cooked octopus that has ruined every other octopus dish for me, we ate well. Renting a car while staying on each island was a necessity with being back there again.

We went to London for a close friend’s wedding (congrats guys), and this was my first time there. We had a few days leading up to wander around, check out the sights, and grab some great food and beers. One day we hit up Bermondsey for their beer mile - a stretch of breweries in the east end where you can easily hop from one brewery to the next. A great time. I also went to Fabric, a night club that hosted several DJs one night before the wedding, all spinning dubplate: Miley Serious, Dr Dubplate, and Megra. It was so gratifying hearing proper UK club music as I started my Electronic music fascination with the likes of The Prodigy, Chase and Status, and Sub Focus. No crappy 90’s or ought’s music with a baseline, this was real club music where the beat kept going all night.

Life / Dog

My partner and I picked up a puppy just a month ago! Poppy, a Portugese Waterdog, is already a central part of our lives making each day and night entertaining and fulfilling. The beginning was hard but it got much easier as time went on with her adjusting, getting house trained, and used to us not being near her every moment of the day. We’re now enjoying walks around the neighbourhood with her, introducing her to our friends and their dogs, and going to puppy training classes. She’s got an Instagram account too where she posts cute photos of herself accompanied with wild captions with her favourite EDM bangers. We’re looking forward to having her up to the cottage and out camping next summer to really enjoy the outdoors with her.

Work

Since this time last year, Mantle has continued to prosper and grow - all because of the powerhouse team of founders and first hires. We’ve hired several people since then, all bringing great strengths in support, marketing, sales, and engineering. That makes 16 of us now. These investments are paying off in terms of allowing most of us bogged down with support and bugfixing to get back to what we’re truly great at, and work on some of the more impactful stuff.

One of the best times of year, and likely becoming an important company tradition now, is our yearly conference we throw: Techtonic. Happening the same week of Shopify’s main partner conference in Toronto, this year we hosted Techtonic as a multi-day event in Toronto’s Distillery District with many amazing talks to benefit the Shopify Partner community. I could talk all about how cool the conference was, but the best parts were getting the entire team together, some whom many of us haven’t met in person yet, and chatting with new and old faces who are customers or just in the ecosystem. Great people all around.

This year has increasingly shown my own abilities to get shit done by shipping even faster than I have ever before. I give most of this to my growth in knowledge and confidence of making changes to our million line codebase. It’s now common to dream up and design features or entire products with my CEO, Jordan, and go and build it all pretty quickly. My current project is leading the build of an entire contact centre product for both email and live chat support. This is my strong suit as I have several years immersed in this world from my Shopify days. We’re beta testing it now with ourselves and a few customers, but it’s been the most fun I’ve had at building in a while.

Lastly, my abilities at offsetting our CTO’s bus factor has been helping a lot when it comes to all of our infrastructure we use. Namely Kubernetes, Kafka, and our Postgres DB has been problematic from time to time, therefore we’re able to tag team these issues quite well. All that time being fascinated at production infra at my previous jobs is continuing to pay off.

Cycling

Prince Edward County (PEC) is becoming a staple to visit every year. Besides the beer, wine, and food, the county roads are very scenic, attracting cyclists to the area. On one beautiful and windy morning, I left Picton to roll along the far eastern part of PEC. Leaving around 6 am allowed me to snap some beautiful shots of Lake Ontario, and the tailwind kept me cruising fast. The further east I went the more desolate it got with less and less houses and more farm fields. At least at this part of the morning there weren’t many cars, and there certainly weren’t many cars out that way. After making it eastward, turning to go back west on some different roads showed that I underestimated the amount of headwind I was going to face the entire way back. No sweat, just take it low and slow. All in all, it was a very beautiful and satisfying 60km. Can’t wait to explore more of the roads elsewhere in the county.

We had the opportunity to join some friends out at Ste Anne’s Spa in August. It was a very relaxing and fun time. After seeing signs for Ste Anne’s Spa over the years, it’s proximity to Lake Ontario, rolling hills, and country roads, I knew I needed to bring my bike and enjoy the new scenery. The front desk staff at the spa were all too helpful in pointing out some popular roads for cycling. After a late night of several drinks, I was still able to head out at 6 am to avoid the traffic and enjoy the beautiful sunrise. From up on the hills I headed down towards the lake, giving me a decent descent to rip down and wake me up real quick. Midway through I noticed my energy reserves weren’t doing too well, likely from the beers, but I pushed on at an easy pace. After going along forested residential roads down near the lake, pushing back up into the hills proved to be more scenic with lots of farmland and pastures. I think that’s why I enjoy cycling in Collingwood so much - all of its fruitful farmland. My legs were feeling it at this point, and I tried to take the most direct route back to our place. Even with being out of gas, the beautiful scenery kept me going. In the last km, in the opposite direction I took off, I encountered my last challenge: a 37m climb that started out easy but then turned steep. Overall I arrived just in time for breakfast with the gang and 50 km to feel satisfied about. It’s pretty novel for me to have gone out and done an epic adventure before anyone has started their day yet. I remember that day being a tiring drive back to Ottawa too.

Oh Collingwood. It’s now been three years of cycling its beautiful hills and paths. I only had a few days up there this year, so I decided to make the most of it by heading down to Creemore again. A great 78 km in the bag, with a stop in Creemore to have breakfast with my partner at Creemore Bakery, which makes an effort to support cycling in the area with their bike stands out front. It was nice going in the opposite direction I went last year to see things from a different angle, and to enjoy some of the roads that were just gravel last year.

A buddy and I had some gift cards for some local patio bars. Each patio was part of the “Tavern” umbrella. When we received these gift cards we were talking about the idea of making a day trip of cycling and having a beer at each one. Later on in the summer the idea was resurrected and a third friend joined us on the trip. Having already been to some of these Tavern locations in the past, we saved those best ones for last. The order we decided on was Tavern on the Island, Tavern at the Lake, Tavern on the Falls, Tavern at the Gallery, and lastly Tavern on the Hill. We picked the furthest out ones first then had the closest and best ones for last. We lucked out with it being a beautiful day, and beyond some gift card issues, each spot was busy and bumping. At Tavern on the Hill, our last stop, we celebrated with beers and dressed up hot dogs as we talked about how we would rank our least favourite to most favourite. The sun set and the live DJ set made this last stop a worthy finish to the tour. After almost 8 hours from start to finish, we only rode 31 km, but most of the time was enjoyed on those patios.

The next year

It’s exciting to be looking forward to this next year, epsecially in several different areas: having fun with Poppy as she grows up, the start of another winter season of skiing (hopefully I’ll get out west again), Mantle reaching another inflection point of growth, and some travel plans for Australia and even out to the east coast. It’s going to be a wonderful year.