Forty feet down, at night, off Hawaii
He and Robin went into the water after dark and settled about forty feet down to watch manta rays feed. The rays circle in the lights, close enough that people who have done it talk about it for years afterward.
The part worth noticing is everything that came before the water. Certification for both of them. A boat, a season, a plan, a set of conditions that had to hold. Then getting in anyway, at night, having decided in advance what would happen if it went wrong.
Photograph needed hereJesse and Robin in dive gear on the boat off the Kona coast, taken the evening of the manta dive.
Certification, planning, and then follow through is a fairly good description of how a trial gets prepared, too.
Eleven days and about a hundred and ten miles on foot
In 2018 he walked Philmont with his oldest son: eleven days, roughly a hundred and ten miles, carrying what they needed. Nothing about that is fast, and there is no version of it that can be finished early by being clever.
His three sons each earned Eagle Scout. That is their achievement and it belongs to them. His part was being the parent on the other end of a great many long, uncomfortable, unglamorous stretches of it.
Long matters are like long trails. The people who do well on them are the ones who are still walking at the same pace on day nine.
Two basements and two decks
He finished two basements and built two decks himself. Framing, footings, the parts that are hidden once the surface goes on and that determine whether the surface holds.
It also explains something about who he can talk to. A conversation with a framing carpenter and a conversation with a chief financial officer are the same conversation held at different altitudes, and someone who has done the physical version does not need an interpreter for either.
Photograph needed hereThe deck he built, photographed from the yard in daylight, with no people in the frame.
A second degree earned in the evenings
The Master of Divinity in Christian Education finished in 2015, earned while practicing law full time. Alongside it: leading a middle school ministry, teaching a small group at church, substitute teaching at his children's school, and five years on the board of Northland Christian School.
Every one of those involves standing in front of people who did not have to be there and holding their attention on something difficult.
What a colleague noticed about all of it
He gives his full attention to what he is engaged with, whether it be a case he is working on or his role as substitute teacher at his children's school.
She put a patent case and a substitute teaching shift in the same sentence, and she meant the comparison.