Masters of Technology Happy Hour
Conversations with masters of technology, those who produce it or those who use it.
Masters of Technology Happy Hour
Grant Rochelle, from Bike Crashes to Hiking Around Everest, with a Whole Lot of CAD In-between
We swap crash tales, altitude math, and plans for a 21,000‑foot trek while sharing how injury, MS, and early retirement reshaped our choices. Between Garmin alerts and book drafts, we weigh risk, recovery, and why some goals still feel worth the climb.
• Cycling crashes, concussions and a hip fracture
• Blackouts and memory gaps around impacts
• Trekking to Everest Base Camp and high passes
• Altitude, acclimatization and Diamox trade-offs
• Planning a 21,000‑foot trekking peak without oxygen
•MS diagnosis (wife) and early retirement
• Risk tolerance as we age and safer sport options
• Turning travel journals into a self-published book
• Testing Amazon’s publishing tools
Hello everyone and welcome to the Masters of Technology Happy Hour, where once a week I have a drink with someone I meet in the course of business, but someone I'd like to get to know better as okay. Yeah, so we were talking about the last time I was in Lake Oswego. Oh my god, that was so long ago. Must have been like 15 years ago. You had your daughter. How old is she now?
Grant:She's a senior in college. Oh, that was a long time ago.
Roopinder:I remember she came and greeted you and your wife had came to see you at the end of our ride.
Grant:That's right. Yes. I was thinking about that the other day. I get out to Hag Lake, which is the big lake that we rode around, I think on the second day. And that's actually also the place where I crashed on my road bike a couple of years ago and broke my collarbone.
Roopinder:I remember hearing about that. Did you go through the back carnival?
Grant:Well, that was a different incident a few years before. I have a reputation for being accident prone.
Roopinder:Don't take it too hard. People that ride a lot have accidents. It just comes to the territory. It's basically an unstable vehicle. And you're not protected at all. So you're gonna get hurt.
Grant:The one where I hit the car, that was my first sabbatical at Autodesk. So that was probably like 2009, where they made us take sabbatical because we were in some financial constraints. And that was, yeah, I put myself through the back window of some old lady's Subaru at a traffic light. She stopped suddenly and the light was green. I figured this traffic's moving, so I sped up to make sure I could make it through the light, and she decided it wasn't safe. So she was right, it went yellow, and she thought she had time to stop. I did not. Oh, it's funny now.
Roopinder:It wasn't funny.
Grant:No, but yeah, I I was yeah, I think I pretty much put my head through her back window in the tailbate.
Roopinder:Did you break birds then?
Grant:No, I didn't. Actually, I had a pretty good concussion and cut myself up on the glass. But yeah, that's a lot. That was the first one. I broke my collarbone doing the triathlon two years ago up at Hag Lake after a terrible swim. I just wasn't in a good I don't know what was going on. I got out of the water, got on, I'd bought a time trial bike and rid it a few times, but not extensively. Half a mile from the start, I think I blacked out. I don't know what happened. The next thing is I was on the deck and I'd taken out another cyclist.
Roopinder:I haven't had this issue, and I I should talk to a medical professional about this, but I've had a number of faults as well. There's been a few, or I just don't remember what caused it. It's almost like you hit your head and the tape erases backward off the event. I don't know what the physical reason for that could possibly be, but a couple of people I've talked to since then, cyclists, had the same experience. Somehow it does a number on your memory.
Grant:Yeah, it really depends on the circumstances and other things because I was wearing a time trial helmet which doesn't have anywhere near the padding inside. That was one of the loudest things I've ever heard that close to my ear. But that was just a collarbone and I didn't need surgery. And then of course, last year completely self-inflicted another cycle crash, which is when I broke my hip. So I broke my hip and what was that? August.
Roopinder:Your hip? Oh my God, now you're now you're seriously not ambulatory, right?
Grant:They fixed it, they didn't replace it. So I got a lot of metal work in there. The worst thing was I was really committed to trekking in Nepal in March this year. Was committed to go back to Europe to do a five-day bike ride with a bunch of former servicemen. I couldn't do that. I was in a pretty bad place for a while. But I I worked really hard and had a lot of setbacks. I went to Nepal in March and trekked for three weeks. So I got it done. I've been doing everything now. I'm not a hundred percent it's not the same. I don't think it ever is when you get to outrage and you start having nasty accidents like that.
Roopinder:So I'm amazed you went around Everest Base camp, correct?
Grant:Yeah, yeah, it was a big circular loop. Two of the three high passes. We had to scrub the third one because of the weather. But yeah, the base camp was part of that. That was one of the places we saw on the way. And I'm hoping to go back next year in the fall and do something different.
Roopinder:So this was all while your hip is pinned together. Trying very hard to bend it, make sure that it doesn't matter.
Grant:Yeah, I would say I was very careful and quite slow. Working at those altitudes, you're moving quite slowly. I was moving quite slowly. It was an interesting, it's the hardest thing I've ever done.
Roopinder:Yeah, I can imagine. How did you it's fascinating? It's way more interesting than history of cats. I'm dwelling on it. I've always admired how well you perform physically. So well, how about the altitude? Did that battery? You're up at around 15 feet, right?
Grant:Yeah, so you know we lived in Goto for seven years, so you're living at 5,000 feet. But you lose the benefits of that very quickly, like within a couple of weeks, I think. So flying into Kathmandu, you're at about 4,000 feet, and then a day later we flew up to Locla, which is 10,000 feet. Give or take. So you're immediately at Mexico City altitude, you feel it immediately. It was like bending down and picking up my backpack, and you're like, whoa, everything feels a bit spinny. The best I could describe, I think I wrote this into one of my entries was when we were walking the first couple of days, remember we were just walking, my heart rate was 130 something, and that's 10,000 feet.
Roopinder:That's close to my maximum heart rate.
Grant:Yeah, and normally walkie to me is like an 85 year at sea level, and I never actually bothered looking when the highest we went was 18,200 feet. We were going up the summit of Calipata, which is opposite. I recorded a video of myself and it was like you were almost fighting per breath. I was just researching it a couple of days ago. There's 40% of the available oxygen per breath of what you get at sea level. So yeah, you really are working very hard most of the time. And the longer you spend, the more acclimated you get, your body compensates, your oxygen production goes up, and you do much better. Once we started descending, I was fine. I was like a dog with two tails. It was excellent. But yeah, it was definitely challenging. But the thing I'm considering right now is there is I don't know if it's the world's ice track, but it's classed as a track or the mirror peak. It's either mirror peak or turn peak in the ball, which you summit at 21,000 feet in the middle. Yeah, you have to treat it a mountaineering trip because you get up to about 18 or 19,000 feet and then you camp, and then at whatever it is midnight, you get up and do the last 3,000 feet in one push. You don't need ropes because it's not mountaineering, but there it's a snow capped peak and so the cramp-ons and the guides and all the rest of it. But that sounds pretty intriguing.
Roopinder:Yes. You're gonna push your limits once again. No oxygen. 21,000 feet. No oxygen. No, not unless you get sick.
Grant:I think on a trip like that they carry it in case you need immediate relief. I was taking Diamox the whole time I was there, which I heard about, talked to my doctor about. It's a drug normally used as a diuretic, but it's really helpful in dealing with the symptoms. I was with my cousin's husband, who's done loads of mountaineering, and he's I don't use anything like that. I just put up with a few headaches. So that I was like, okay, I'll just wait. Because you're supposed to start taking it just before you go. And then that first day we got to Lotler, we got to the guest station. I've got a thumping headache. I'm like, no way. I started taking it and never stopped. So I never really got headaches the whole time.
Roopinder:Oh, that's good to know. That friend of yours was trying to kill you.
Grant:That's Martin. He'll be fine.
Roopinder:Give us last words.
Grant:He was probably looking to handicap me because he's a bit older than me.
Roopinder:Okay. Yeah, I didn't want you to show me. I'll hobble the youngster. All right, let's get back on track here. So it's all very good. We're gonna have a new show just about your exploits physically. How on earth does your wife indulge you with all this time and death-defying adventures?
Grant:Yeah, I know you all he met briefly, but Nancy's lovely. She's a very graceful person. Actually, if you don't, yeah, when I retired early, there was a few factors involved. One of them was that Nancy had just got diagnosed with MS, ironically enough.
Roopinder:Oh, yeah, really?
Grant:All those years we were doing the fundraising and all the things. Actually, she was going through a lot of things over at least a decade-long period, which they were constantly misdiagnosing and saying, Oh, you must have this, or you must have that, and we must have the other. So that was 2021, sometime around, and she got that diagnosis. My plan was always that I would try and retire early. This kind of stuff I'm doing now, and just being able to enjoy the groups of your labour and stuff like that. But yeah, once that came in and we were coming out of COVID, there was like the prospect of re of the return to all that air travel, and I just had it was so nice to be at home. And yeah, so that was in the end, that's why I pulled the pen and kind of checked out early through Siemens. But yeah, so yeah, no, Nancy's yes, she I think she enjoys like my adventures by proxy, and she knows it's what keeps me ticking over. Yeah, I don't work anymore, but I do a lot of these other things, and I've developed some new interests as well. I've started with the writing that I was doing when I was traveling, I've actually now developed that I've took that content and writing a book about the whole journey, the whole adventure, which my plan is to solve publishing. What a journey. What chapter are you in now, dear book? I've actually just uh completed first draft, just done a just done a first round of revisions, but now I'm gonna let it sit because I've started this writing course and I want to see what I'm learning through the course and then go back with a pair of fresh eyes and see if there's something that I would change about how I've written it. That's okay.
Roopinder:I really appreciate you giving us a preview of that book. It's very good.
Grant:And it started with that idea. A lot of people I did a photo book of my trip, but I decided to reproduce all of the journal writing that I posted on Instagram. So it really is a mini book, but it's a physical representation of what I posted over a three-week period and an album. So the lot all the writings in there and a subset of the photograph. So I had to give up on some of the photos to fit the writing in. But once I've done that, I'm like, maybe I could turn this into another photo book.
Roopinder:Yes. At least you're not making a graphic novel. That's a bit beyond my ability. Now, when you do the book, we'll have to have you back when you do your book touring.
Grant:Oh my god. Yeah, that's gonna be a whole other learning thing, yeah. Because I'm planning to self-publish on the Amazon platform. Okay, because I I I love learning about technology since early this year. I've become a big experimenter with Chat GPT, figuring out where its failure points are, what it's useful for, and what it's absolutely rubbish for, which is definitely a lot of that. But yeah, learning how to use the Amazon platform. You can publish to Kindle, you can publish to paper. That's gonna be a whole new journey. You never know, and maybe there'll be a movie deal for Binder. We'll see.
Roopinder:I'll look forward to anything like that. Keep me posted. It was wonderful catching up to you. My god, you've done so much. And now that you're free to move about the world and do whatever you want, there'll be more interesting things. Still safe on the bike, please. Are you still out and about yourself? Not so much. Nowadays, it's mostly in here. I replay all my memories, including the MS bike tourists.
Grant:There's a guy that I talk to when I go up to the gym. He also used to ride a lot, and then he got he just got concerned about his own safety. He's a he's actually 173. Jeff, he took up paddleboarding. Paddleboarding. It's something for you to consider. So he does Tai Chi, he swams. When I see him working out at the gym, he only does body weight and kettlebells and he paddleboards.
Roopinder:So I've I stopped mostly I stopped riding because I was having an undiagnosed health issue and I couldn't ride. But then as you know what it's like when you're not on the bike, you think, whoa, that's really unsafe. I don't know how I ever rode on those roads. As I go by in my car and I think, oh my god, that's a really narrow path I was on. And I thought nothing of it at the time. But now and I'm not on it. It's like almost every other sport when you're like skiing or whatever, diving, and you're doing it, it doesn't feel dangerous. When you're observing it, it seems like it's fraught danger. And I'm at that position now. Do I really want to subject my wife to any more of those horrible crashes I had, or she was the fucking oh honey, I'm all right. Or please come and get me. Miles and miles away from where she is.
Grant:I gotta tell you the last one I made was when I crushed and broke my hip. Uh I've got the Garmin alert on. So when I went down and eventually came to a stop on the ground, I could hear this shrill thing going. And so that reminded me, I'm like, oh crap, that means Nancy's getting a text message right about now. And I tried to move and realized I wasn't in a lot of pain initially, but I literally couldn't move my leg. It was weird. It was like it was paralyzed. You didn't know what it was. You thought maybe it's I knew something was wrong. I thought this is not, I'm not gonna get up from this. So I got my phone out. I'm literally lying on the floor in the fetal position. People have started coming out where I was. It's a largely pedestrian area, it's very quiet up in northeast Portland, popular with walkers and cyclists. People are beginning to come around me. I'm on the phone, I'm like, It's me. Did you have an accident? Joking, I'm like, yeah, a little bit. I'm not really sure how bad it is right now.
Roopinder:Can I call you back in a oh my god? So it's our wives. We really have to. I'm sure you have a loving preface to your book because they put up with all that we do, all that we're allowed to do, they put up with quite a bit, don't they?
Grant:That was that it was better for her to get the call from me the year before when I crashed at Hag Lake and broke my collarbone. Yeah, got back on the bike, tried to ride it, realized something wasn't right and couldn't. I rode one-handed back to the start finish. Which can't. I broke my left collarbone. So I got my right hand on the bars, and then I rode back and they got me in the medical tent, and Amelia was with her. And so for that one, it was over the tunnel. And Nancy Rochelle, please report to the medical tent.
Roopinder:Oh, that's a bad call because no subtlety there. No, no. I gotta stop doing this. For everyone's sake, right? Yeah. All right, be safe. I know you'll do fine things. Great talking to you. All right. Bye. Talk to you later. Bye bye.