Montana Jones

Things I have learned about running a business

I have friends that want to start a small business. I want to give them advice and help them understand what they are getting into, but they are optimistic and enthusiastic and somehow think my insights don't apply to them. I sigh and roll my eyes at them just as they sigh and roll their eyes at me. We are very good friends.

Thinking about the adventure they are undertaking has given me a lot of insight into the adventure I am going through. It has helped me understand some things I have learned. So whether you take it or not, here is my advice for people starting a new business. The things I have learned by running a business.

Everything takes longer than you think it should.

Almost everything I have tried to do in my business has taken longer, and sometimes a lot longer, than I thought it should. Things like hiring employees, changing the menu, printing business cards, making repairs. Nothing terribly hard, but they just take longer than I think they should.

Sometimes it is because you end up waiting on other people. You Email out a question to someone and they take several days to respond. People have to check their schedules, finish their projects, do something in their lives before they can give your issue any attention.

Sometimes it is because you are busier than you think you are. Most jobs have a regular routine with lots of things to do and fitting that one new and extra thing into the schedule is just plain tough. It may be a simple thing, but you still can't stop everything else just to do it.

Sometimes is because of something unpredictable. Road construction delays the trip to the bank or forgetting that one important document and having to go back for it. Your delays could be from illness, or snowstorms or other more important things cropping up. The universe just messes with you sometimes.

I have seen this phenomena before when I was someone else's employee. It was a minor nuisance then, I thought it was an example of the business not being as well run as it ought to be. Now that I am the employer I see it more and more in almost every aspect of the business. It is not just a nuisance, it is a serious obstacle that needs to be planned for and dealt with.

When you are planning your business and your schedule, budget extra time for everything. I don't care what you are trying to get done, be it great or small, everything will take longer than you think it should.

Pay yourself and value your time.

The pay yourself part is hopefully common sense. It is a key point to starting a business in the first place. I have heard from some entrepreneurs the idea that they can just live from the company bank account as needed. When business is good they will draw more cash and live well, in poor times they will draw less for themselves. I'm sure there are many small business people that live this way successfully, but I think it defeats an important part in business decision making; the value of your time.

My philosophy is to put myself on the payroll as the business manager and draw regular paychecks just like any other employee. This has advantages in budgeting, both business and personal, and it makes accounting and tax preparation a little easier. If you ever want more money when the business is doing well, there are ways to get it. Bonus checks or dividends are easy enough.

The real advantage to being on the payroll is that you will know very precisely the value of your time. There are a million things to do when you run a business. Everything from balancing the checkbook to sweeping the floor. If you are paying yourself $10 per hour you can put value on each of those tasks. You can ask yourself "is it really worth it for the business to pay $10 per hour to have the floor swept?" If there is another employee that makes less that $10 per hour it usually makes more financial sense if the lower wage employee did the sweeping while the higher wage employee handles more valuable jobs.

I have seen many business owners trying to save some payroll money by doing the menial chores themselves. Perhaps it saves money, but it also costs time that could be spent on something more profitable.

Another example of the value of your time is in chasing pennies. Comparison shopping can be a fools errand. Say you need something done, like servicing all the fire extinguishers in the warehouse. Start by checking the yellow pages for someone to do this. The first price quote is usually higher than you were hoping for. It is a small business after all and money is tight and if we can just knock a little off this price, things will be better. So you call another service and another and do an internet search and really research that whole fire extinguisher thing. When you finally settle on a contractor you can pat yourself on the back because you got the best deal you could get and saved thirty bucks off the first guys rate. Except for the fact that you blew all afternoon doing it. At your $10 per hour wage it ended up costing $40 of your time to save $30 on an invoice. There comes a point where you will need to quit chasing a good deal because it ends up costing too much. The only way to know where that point is and make a good business decision is to put a dollar value on your time.

Don't take shortcuts.

I remember back in school getting writing assignments. We were supposed to turn in an outline and then do it again and turn in a rough draft and then do it again and turn in the final copy. Talk about a sucky homework assignment, you have to write the same stupid thing three times. A friend of mine had the perfect system for doing these assignments. He would just write the paper. Then he would go through it and take out every third sentence to make the rough draft, and then he would edit that down to the first sentence of each paragraph and make the outline. Submit the parts at the appropriate deadline and you spend way less time doing the homework.

People that know about quality writing are probably squirming at that description. The reason the teacher was so emphatic about the long and ugly process is because those are the steps that are required to produce good writing. The point to the assignment was never the final document, but to learn the process for creating a high quality written work. My friend never understood why he got poor grades in english class and to this day his Emails are painfully difficult to read.

Business is the same way. Making the deposit to the bank is not the point. Closing the sale is not even the point. When you are in business you are going through a process. Planning, supplying, creating, fixing, polishing, selling, servicing, and finally putting the money in the bank. Each step is crucial to what you do before and after. Then you have to do it all again to keep the revenue up. How well you succeed has everything to do with the process and nothing to do with your prowess at making bank deposits.

Some might say that they are improving efficiency, but be very careful that what you are really doing is efficiency and not a shortcut. Efficiency improvements are a similar change to the process, but with a very different outcome. Some rules of thumb: Efficiency will cost you something; shortcuts won't. Shortcuts hurt the quality; efficiency won't.

You can always tell when a business takes shortcuts in their process. These are the businesses that the quality is just not there, or the service is wanting, or you walk away thinking "I can't believe I wasted time on that piece of crap."

This is your business for crying out loud. You should be proud of how well it runs. Your reputation depends on how well you do your job. There are people, customers, employees, suppliers, that are relying on you to do a good job. When you shortcut everyone can tell. Your employees don't want to work as hard, your suppliers stop caring and your customers stop buying. It hurts your business, your reputation and all the people around you when you shortcut the process.

Plan your work and work your plan.

When you first start your small business, you will need a business plan. The only ways you can get by without one is if you are filthy rich and can finance the whole enterprise out of your own pocket, or if the business is so small that you can finance the whole enterprise out of your own pocket. For everyone else you need either bankers or investors to supply the needed money. These bankers and investors won't give you a single damn dime until they see the (formal and written) plan for how you will earn the money to pay them back. In my opinion, if you can't spend four weeks making a business plan you do not have the patience or attention to detail needed to run a business for a year.

The business plan is just the start though. When you get into the nitty gritty details of running a business, having a plan is huge. Sometimes it is as simple as planning the route you will take for your daily errands. When you need to hit the bank, the hardware store, the Costco and the grocery, there is usually a route that is most efficient. It helps to have a plan for what you need at each stop too. The big picture needs a plan too. When you need to do hiring, advertising, procurement and maintenance there is usually an efficient order to do them in. Having a plan for how you will execute each of these items is also pretty key.

Working without a plan means you do things less efficiently and sometimes do things two or three times. This makes your work more expensive and that is death to a small business.

In high season for my business, I depend on a lot of people being in the right place at the right time. That calls for planning. Dinner goes into the oven at a certain time, so supplies have to get delivered at a certain time. For that to happen supplies have to be acquired at a certain time. To make that happen they have to be ordered at a certain time and knowing what to order involves an inventory at a specific time. All these little micro deadlines need to be planned in advance or everything goes to shit in a big hurry. Dinner becomes a fiasco without a detailed plan. Because I spend so much time planning I spend less time dealing with crisis. And because I follow the plan religiously everyone else's job becomes predictable, routine, and dare I say, easy.

Some of these plans get written in big formal looking documents with cover pages and appendixes. Other plans get written on posty notes. Some plans are verbal agreements between people. I have never seen time spent on planning wasted. When you try to do something without a plan, that is when time gets spent fruitlessly.

You are not really the boss around here.

A successful business is all about people. There is the business owner. Sometimes multiple owners. There is staff, could be large or small. Then there are the suppliers. The goods you sell come from someone else. Even if you sell a service you will still need supplies, so the people that supply you count. And then there are other support people around the edges; the landlord, the accountant, the lawyer, the banker. And let's not forget the government. The taxman, the police man, the city council and the governor all have an interest and a say in your business. Last, but not least, let us also count the customer. Every business involves a lot of people.

The smallest business I can imagine effects the lives of only three people (not counting the taxman). A business owner who is also the sole employee and accountant working out of his own home and keeping his money under a mattress. He will need one supplier and one customer to be in business. While I can imagine a business of this small size and structure I cannot imagine what the business does and I would be surprised if the business owner can even earn a living.

A more typical small business will touch the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people. My own small business has multiple owners, multiple managers, dozens of employees, dozens of suppliers, a reasonable cadre of support from accountants, lawyers, bankers and so forth, and a good deal of oversight from regulatory agencies. When I make a business decision it can touch the lives of easily a hundred people. This does not even take into account the thousands of customers I serve. There are lots of small businesses that touch more people than mine.

There is a romantic notion that the boss is lord of his business realm. That his needs and decisions are the only ones that matter and he can use his capital and decision making power to lord over employees and all that interact with him. Rubbish. Anyone that runs a business this way, especially a small business, is in for troubled times.

The people of a business bring with them a complicated web of cause and effect. For example, if the boss decides to change the budget by cutting wages, then the help becomes disillusioned. Since the boss is not looking out for them they either quit or productivity goes down or quality goes down. This ripples through the company and everyone from the secretary to the customer has to deal with a change in how things are done. So in making decisions, the boss needs to watch out for the interests of the workers if things are to run smoothly. And also watch out for the suppliers interests and the accountants and the city council and so on. Every one of those hundreds of people has the power to make the business owners life more difficult and the power to hurt the company.

When running my business I very rarely feel like the lord of my domain. Sometimes I don't feel like the boss of anything. It is more like everyone else is the boss of me. When I make a decision it is rarely about what I want; it is usually about what is best for the people around me. Strangely enough, that is as it should be for the business to succeed. Business is about people after all. My life does not get easier until I put effort into making life easier for the people around me. I don't succeed until the people I rely on succeed.

Labels: advice, boss, business, employees, Employment, entrepreneur, how to, job, plan, shortcut, small business, time

Posted by: Montana Jones / 9:39 AM 3 comments

How to make mustard

This season I made little pots of homemade mustard as Christmas gifts for all my friends and family. It went over really well like homemade gifts usually do. I was surprised to learn how easy mustard is to make.

The recipe is super simple.

1. Grind mustard seed into a powder.
2. Mix with a liquid.

Okay, I admit, any ol' craptacular mustard follows that recipe. The good mustards will involve a little more nuance than that.

Start with the mustard seeds. I found mine at the local health food store. They come in two basic varieties, yellow seeds and brown seeds. The yellow ones have a milder flavor and the brown ones have some spicy kick to them. I found blending the two types of seeds creates some interesting flavors depending on what sort of mustard you are trying to make.

Next there is the grinding part. I tried using a mortar and pestle and found it to be a pain in the butt. An electric spice grinder is much more efficient. The mortar and pestle does have the advantage of making a better coarse grind, that can add some interesting texture into your mustard. You can also buy the stuff pre-ground as mustard flour or mustard powder. It is usually the yellow seed sold this way and the grind is much finer than anything I achieved with my little spice grinder. Helpful hint: Clean your spice grinder by blowing it out with a can of compressed air. The kind of stuff geeks use to clean dust off electronics. This is a bazillioin times easier than soap and water.

Now comes the liquid part, there is a lot of room for creativity here. The most common liquids used in mustard are water and vinegar. If you need a quick sauce for cooking up mustard glazed pork chops, just mix mustard powder with white vinegar in about a 1:1 ratio and you are all set. But if you are looking for a nicer sandwich garnish you should take a little more care. I spent a lot of time experimenting with the different types of vinegar available. White vinegar, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar. Lot's of choices and each one gives a different flavor.

There are more liquids to choose from too. Use wine to make Dijon mustard, beer makes a hearty sauce, honey makes a popular sweet mustard. I even experimented with fruit juices and came up with a great apple mustard using concentrated apple juice. The possibilities are endless.

There is also some nuance to the application of your liquid. The flavor of the mustard is brought out when the liquid activates the enzymes in the mustard seed. Those enzymes are going to react in some unpredictable ways if your liquid is too acidic. Vinegar is usually about 5% acidic. What this means is that you could mix the same amount of mustard with the same amount of vinegar two different times and get two different flavors depending on how those enzymes and that acid react to each other. To get consistent flavor you should activate your mustard with a PH neutral liquid like water. I mix my mustard powder with water at about two parts powder to one part water and make a thick paste. Let this stand for about 10 minutes. After this add whatever vinegar or liquid you want for flavor until it is the desired consistency. This way your recipe will taste the same each time you make it.

Now for some more fun and creativity. Mustard powder does not have to be the only dry ingredient. Add some spices to that bad daddy. A dash of salt helps the flavor. Some garlic powder can zest it up a little. Pepper, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, basil, rosemary, cinnamon. Woo hoo, your spice rack is the gateway to some interesting and unique mustards.

The king of all mustard spices has got to be turmeric. This is the ingredient that gives the store bought hot dog mustard its bright yellow color and unique flavor. I have shared my mustards with some people that don't like mustard and I have discovered that what they usually don't like is the flavor of the turmeric. Without it the mustard is a brown color instead of yellow and the flavor is remarkably different. The mustard haters I know consistently turned up their noses at the bright yellow mustards with turmeric and raved about the brown mustards without. If there is a mustard hater in your family try turning them on to a brown mustard and see if they like it.

So if you have been playing along at home and have mixed some mustard powder with some liquid and created a sauce, the next step is to taste it. If you have done that already, please don't hate me. Pretty nasty stuff huh? Your fresh made batch of mustard is going to taste very strong and a little nasty. Don't panic. Remember those enzymes you activated? Well now they have to age. Leave your mustard sitting on the counter at room temperature for at least a week to ten days. The strong flavor will mellow and it will mature into a nice and yummy sauce. Have some faith. The longer you let it age the more the flavor will mellow. Taste it every few days to follow its progress. If you are after a mild mustard you may want to let it age for a month or more; for a hot and spicy mustard, not so much. As soon as it mellows to a flavor and spiciness you like, move it to the fridge.

Refrigeration is not necessary for most mustard. Mustard seed is naturally resistant to molds and the acidity in the vinegar helps too. But if it continues to sit at room temperature it will continue to age and mellow. To keep a mustard spicy, put it in the fridge. Many commercial mustards and some more interesting mustard recipes have ingredients like egg whites. You will want to put these in the fridge. My apple mustard kept better under refrigeration. Pay attention to the ingredients you are using, if you added fresh garlic or jalapenos or fresh spices you will probably want to move the mustard to refrigeration sooner rather than later.

One last word about utensils and containers. Avoid metal. Mustard is pretty corrosive and if you put it in a jar with a metal lid or use metal spoons or utensils when you make it, the metal can corrode and harm the flavor of the sauce. Glass, plastic and porcelain are safe bets.

And that's it. That is everything I know about mustard. I had the most fun experimenting with different ingredients. I found that it is easy to experiment with small batches, about two tablespoons of mustard powder and the same for your liquid to see if you like the recipe. If it's good, multiply the portions for your next batch, if it sucks you can flush it down the drain for no big loss.

Enjoy your mustard. I like mine with pretzels. I know that I will never blow $3.95 for a small pot of deli mustard ever again.

Montana Jones' yumtastic hot dog mustard
2 Tbsp Ground yellow mustard seed
1 tsp Ground brown mustard seed
Add 1 1/2 Tbsp water, blend to a thick paste and let sit for 10 minutes.
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 Tbsp white wine vinegar

For thinner mustard add a couple drops more vinegar, let age for a week or so.

Kokanee™ Beer Mustard
1 Tbsp yellow mustard seed
1 Tbsp brown mustard seed
Briefly grind to a very coarse grind.
Drown the coarse ground mustard seed with an excess of apple cider vinegar. Let sit overnight until the seed has absorbed all the liquid it possibly can then drain any extra liquid. You will be left with a thick goop.

In a new container:
1 1/2 Tbsp fine ground yellow mustard seed
add 1 Tbsp water, blend to a thick paste and let sit for 10 minutes.
Add 1 Tbsp of the apple cider mustard goop.
Dash of salt.
1 Tbsp Kokanee™ beer.

Age for at least a week.

Sweet and Spicy Apple Mustard
2 Tbsp ground brown mustard seed
2 Tbsp ground yellow mustard seed
Dash of cinnamon
1/2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 Tbsp concentrated apple juice

Thin to the desired consistency with more concentrated apple juice. Age for two or three weeks and then refrigerate.

Labels: Beer, cooking, gift, how to, mustard, spice, vinegar

Posted by: Montana Jones / 3:55 PM 17 comments

How to replace the wax ring on a toilet

Problem: Your toilet is leaking down at the base on the floor.

Solution: Replace the wax ring gasket.

Tools you will definitely need:

• Adjustable crescent wrench
• Replacement wax ring (get it for about three bucks at the hardware store)

Optional tools that might help you out:

• Flathead screwdriver
• Vice grip pliers
• Rags
• Bucket
• Mop
• Flashlight
• Rubber gloves
• Bathroom cleaning agents
• Bleach
• Trash bags
• More rags and sponges
• More rubber gloves
• Google
• Credit Card
• Beer

The first thing you may want to do is gather some information on the internet. A web search for 'fix a leaky toilet' will turn up over 40,000 results. From here you can read many fine websites describing all the different ways a toilet can leak. With diligence you can work out that the specific leak you are looking for is the wax ring. A Google search for "fix a leaky toilet wax ring" narrows your search to 3,660 results. Start reading.

Most of these how to fix stuff websites are absolute crap. Your best instructions will come from websites catering to women. The masculine fixit websites will just say "replace the wax ring" and expect your experience with testosterone and tools to intuitively guide you through the process. The women's web sites will give you the step by step instructions. If it offends your masculinity to use a women's guide to learn how to fix things then you have several options.

• Send the lady of the house out with the credit card and instructions not to return for several hours. Use the privacy to read whatever website you need to.
• Ask the women to help out by Googling the problem for you. Pretend to tolerate the results she finds.
• Suck it up like a man, admit that you don't know shit about repairing a toilet and get your instructions from the pink website.

Your next step is to go out to the hardware store and buy the wax ring and any other tools you need. I really recommend a ten pack or so of latex disposable gloves. Some websites will tell you to disassemble the toilet first and take the old wax ring with you to make sure you get the right size. Don't bother doing this. The wax ring pretty much only comes in one size and the old one is nasty gross right now. Just don't.

Back at home, have your tools and some towels and rags at the ready.

Turn off the water flow to the toilet. It's a valve down in the back on the wall.

Flush the toilet to get rid of most of the water.

When you discover that holding the flush handle down only empties the tank in the back but not the bowl, turn the water back on to refill the tank and then turn it off again before giving it a proper flush.

You are right to worry about the little bit of water left in both the tank and bowl. If, like me, you cant figure out what to do about it, remind yourself that it is just tap water in a porcelain container and it is pretty clean. Besides, you have rubber gloves and rags here. Fetch the mop just in case.

Disconnect the water supply to the tank. This will take that crescent wrench. This is also a good time to come to terms with the fact that you will be crawling around on the floor in front of the toilet in the pukers position. Flashbacks to your youthful drinking days could be expected. If you haven't already this would be a good time to back up a few steps and clean your toilet. Especially those hard to reach places you are about to get intimate with.

When you get the water supply disconnected the tank will leak a bunch of water onto the floor. You could go get a bucket to catch it, but you will be too late.

Take the fancy, decorative caps off the bolts holding the toilet to the floor. These ought to pop right off, or sometimes you can wiggle a flathead screwdriver under an edge to pry them off. After five minutes of jacking around with these things just get some lock jaw pliers, clamp them on the sides and rip the thingys off. This will leave scratches and deformations in the plastic, but screw it, they are just stupid plastic things to hide some bolts and no one looks at them anyway.

Unscrew and remove the nuts and washers on both sides. Crescent wrench again. This is a good time to realize that no matter how well you clean there will still be places on your toilet that are nasty and gross. Like underneath the decorative bolt covers. Go get those latex gloves. Finish removing the nuts and washers and put them aside, you will need them later.

Now for the heavy lifting. Grasp the toilet by the lip of the bowl or any other convenient hand hold near the bowl or base. Do not lift by the tank and be careful about grips that may stress and crack the porcelain. Lift the whole toilet off the bolts. Careful, that fucker is heavy. Move it away from where it was sitting. You are going to want to lean it on its side. Don't bash it into the bathroom drywall, shower door glass, the tub or anything else, that will give you more repair work later. Just tip it over in the middle of the bathroom floor. Remember that water that was still inside? Yeah, me too. Run and get another towel that you can put in front of the bathroom door so the puddle of water now on the floor does not run out into the carpet.

Take a rag and stuff it into the hole in the floor so that sewer gases do not enter your home while you are working.

Now you are going to want to clean up the old wax ring. They call it a wax ring because it is just that, a ring of wax. When installed the wax smushes to form a seal between the toilet and the sewer pipe. Right now you have mighty blobs of smushed wax piled on the floor where the toilet was. There is also wax on the base of the toilet. There is also wax smeared all over the bathroom floor where you dragged that toilet. This aint no fancy perfumed candle wax either, this is nasty toilet wax that has been blocking your shit for who knows how many years.

When your gloves and rags get too sticky with wax, just throw them in the trash bag and get more gloves. (You did get the ten pack of gloves right?)

The floor where the toilet was sitting is probably pretty nasty right now too. Especially since that is right where the leak was. Just clean up that filth. Oh god, that is nasty. Do Not Puke! The toilet is currently out of commission. If you have to make a sudden dash out for fresh air, be mindful that there is now a toilet blocking the door and puddles of water on the floor. Sudden movement may result is slipping and injury, move carefully and deliberately when evacuating the bathroom.

After getting some fresh air and fresh gloves this is a good time to recognize that you will never again have such a fine opportunity to clean the floor and wall behind the toilet. This is also pretty nasty, just think about football and get it done. Nasty rags and sponges should go straight to the trash bag.

After cleaning nasty sticky wax until you are immune to the gag reflex (don't forget to clean the base of the toilet too) pull the new wax ring out of the box.

Press the wax gasket evenly over the horn of the toilet outlet with the plastic flange pointing away.

Make sure the bolts are lined up and ready.

Now lift the toilet back into place, you will need to carry the heavy motherfucker without smushing the new wax ring against the floor, line it up with the bolts and set it into place.

When you slip in a puddle of water and drop the toilet too soon, inspect the wax ring for damage. It is probably fine. Replace it on the horn of the toilet outlet because it is sticking to the floor more than it is sticking to the toilet.

When you can't get the bolts to line up on the first try and need to set the toilet down, inspect the wax ring for damage. It is probably fine. Replace it on the horn of the toilet outlet because it is sticking to the floor more than it is sticking to the toilet.

On the next attempt, just put the ring in place on the floor over the drain pipe and hope for the best. Besides, it is sticking to the floor more than it is to the toilet. This is also a good time to remember that you have a rag stuffed down the drainpipe. That should be removed before you install the toilet.

When you finally get that heavy bastard toilet in place over the bolts, resist the urge to lift it again to see what damage was done to the wax ring. It's probably fine. Besides, if it is damaged you are just back to where you started with a leaky toilet. Just put everything back together and see if it leaks or not.

Sit on the toilet. Use your body weight to squish the wax ring into a tight seal. Wiggle back and forth and rock the toilet around a little so that it seats itself and spreads the wax.

Put the washers and nuts back on the bolts. Get another rag too because the bolts will probably have some wax squished all over them. Tighten the bolts carefully and evenly to avoid cracking the porcelain.

Re-connect the water supply to the tank with the crescent wrench.

Have more towels at the ready before you turn the water back on.

If all has gone well, turning the water on will refill the tank and bowl. Inspect for leaks. Check the water line connection, it might have been fastened incorrectly. Check where the tank connects to the bowl, it might have been stressed or damaged as you were moving stuff around. Check the base at the floor, this is the seal we were trying to fix in the first place.

If you have leaks, you are just fucked. I can't help you. Turn off the water, flush the toilet and call the plumber.

If there are no leaks congratulate yourself. Clean the wax off your tools, Clean the rest of the wax off the floor. Mop the floor. Throw all those towels and rags into the laundry with extra bleach. Splash some bleach onto your tools to sanitize them. Rubber gloves into the trash. Wash your hands. Take out the trash. Wash your hands again. Dry your tools. Wash your hands again. Go fetch a beer. Think better of it because you feel really gross after crawling around on the bathroom floor in toilet water and nasty wax. Shower. Twice. Now drink beer.

Out of paranoia inspect the toilet for leaks every hour for the next two days.

Labels: household maintanance, how to, leak, repair, toilet, tools, water, wax, wax ring

Posted by: Montana Jones / 9:14 AM 9 comments

How to have a good hike

Drink before you get thirsty.

Eat before you get hungry.

Tape it before it bleeds.

Happy Hiking.

Labels: bleed, hike, hiking, how to, hungry, tape, thirsty

Posted by: Montana Jones / 9:14 PM 0 comments