Robert Forto

30 Days About Me

Week 1 of 130: The Start of my Doctoral Journey (BMAL 700)

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Doctorate of Strategic Leadership program Robert Forto

Hello and welcome!

If you are new here thank you for checking out my blog. A quick bio:

My name is Robert Forto and I live in the wilds of Alaska with a pack of 38 sled dogs. I own and operate a dog training company where we train dogs from all over the country for service and therapy work. I am also on adjunct faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University where I teach outdoor leadership classes.

In May of 2020, I finished my Master of Sports Management here at Liberty University and for my internship, I planned and executed a 700-mile expedition across the state of Alaska with 13 people by dog team and snow machine that re-traced the 1925 Serum Run.

Mid-life in college and doctorate program journey! Click To Tweet

Each summer, my wife, Michele, who is also a master’s degree student at Liberty,  and I travel to the Lower 48 and do what we call the Rock n Roller Tour where we go to music festivals and ride roller coasters.

I am pursuing a doctorate of strategic leadership for the challenge more than anything. Being self-employed and at (currently) 50 years old, I do not need this degree for career advancement but I am always looking for ways to continue to learn. Who knows, as I progress through the program I may find a higher calling.

My expectations are to be challenged and to learn and hopefully teach an old dog a new trick or two. Having been self-employed my entire life I have always been my own boss, manager, and decision-maker. I need to challenge myself with new ideas and processes to take my business to the next level. I look forward to connecting with each of you and wish you well in your studies.

My research interests include: Using expedition leadership as a model in the corporate environment and hope to use this for my applied research project in this program. Other project ideas are strategic management of small family-run firms, and experiential learning for team building in a small firm. Also, I just recently partnered up with a SCUBA instructor to do a study on safety protocol for recreational diving. This project suits my interests in sports management as the recreational SCUBA diving industry has little to no safety protocols after a person is certified as a diver, which you only have to do once in your life. This is much needed in the industry.

The pic above is my team of sled dogs and me on a run around the block, as I call it. We have several hundred miles right outside our back door and it is my slice of utopia.

One important fact, before we go much further together. I am far from religious and my choice to attend Liberty was for the program, not necessarily a Christian worldview. While I am faithful I am not one that you will find in a church every Sunday. I grew up in a family where we attended church for weddings and funerals and that is about it.

The truth of the matter is, I struggle to find ways to incorporate scripture and biblical research in my academic work, and do you know what? That is okay. I am perfectly fine with it.

I bet you struggle at times too.

I am far from perfect and I have had my share of bumps along the way. I have learned from my mistakes and hope that I am a better man, father, community leader, and academic because of it.

All that being said, I am glad that you are here.

 

via GIPHY

UPDATE November 2022:

This is actually an updated post that I am writing at Week 78 of my doctorate program at Liberty University.

Over the last two years, I have taken eight classes: BMAL 700, 702, 703, 704, 710, 714, 716, 727 and wanted to do an update since a lot of people have been asking for a way to search my site for particular classes and/or topics. I am in the process of updating each post and eventually, this will be a great place to find and share resources for my peers in the Doctor of Strategic Leadership (DSL) program.

I want to give a huge shoutout to all of my peers that have been reading my posts as they navigate through this DSL journey.

You are right, there are not a lot of resources out there.

While this blog is by no means a complete source, my hope is that fellow scholars can see my papers and maybe get a takeaway or two.

My goal has always been to upload my research papers and projects from the program as PDFs so that other scholars in the program can see what is expected. I don’t always get full points, but at 50 years old, I learned long ago that there is no reason to strive for perfection in everything you do. Concentrate on what matters and everything will work out in the end.

If you like what you read, please comment and share with your friends. If you have advice or resources you would like to share, please do that as well.

Oh, if you are on Twitter, I highly encourage you to follow the hashtags, #AcademicChatter and #AcademicTwitter both are great threads with advice, motivation, and a very supportive community and if you wouldn’t mind, give me a follow at @robertforto and send me a tweet letting me know you found my blog helpful!

Also, my wife Michele is getting deep into her Master’s program as well and is almost halfway done! Please do me a favor and follow her over on LinkedIn.

One last thing… If you like what you are reading and want to show your support, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon or clicking on any of the ads that you see on the page. This goodwill gesture is not to become rich, I wish, but a show of encouragement.

Hope to connect with you along the way, and please reach out if you have any questions!

Mom

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The stories of yesteryear are of a legacy of the next chapter.

My mom passed away suddenly this morning. She spent her last day in Myrtle Beach with family. It was her favorite place in the world to visit.

It comes at a shock of her passing. Just this weekend she was excited to be joining me for my grad school graduation next May.

Youth Gone Wild/Touch of Gray

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I can remember it like it was yesterday. It was July 12, 1989. I was really early for a concert and found myself playing hacky sack around the back of the Richmond Coliseum. As I was kicking around the little leather bag I soon found out that it was Rachel Bolan, Scott Hill and Dave Sabo playing with us.

They were members of a hot new metal band, Skid Row and they were opening up for Bon Jovi that night. Skid Row had a song that was an anthem for our generation, Youth Gone Wild. It was about teen angst and rebellion. Aren’t they always?

At that concert they would film a video for one of Bon Jovi’s songs, Lay Your Hand on Me and they did the song over and over. In the final cut you can get a brief glimpse of me in the front row against the barrier with a chick in a fish-net jersey–you know the ones if you grew up in the eighties. We were sweaty and gross but having the time of our lives.

That concert was just a few weeks after high school graduation and a trip that I took across country in a car that I thought was mine. That is a story for another post for sure…

In the coming months I would find myself in L.A. to see the band Living Colour call Axl Rose out on stage for being a racist and Rose later stopping the GnR show and having a meltdown mid-set before The Rolling Stones took the stage. It would be the only time I have seen the Stones unless I am able to secure tickets for them in the coming week. I paid $50 for my ticket.

I drove all the way across country three times that summer. Twice in an Oldsmobile Cutlas Supreme that my grandfather gave me after the car mentioned above was returned to the dealership.

By the end of October I was in Florida with all of my possessions in a backpack and living on a sailboat with my friend Darrin. Neither one of us knew the first thing about sailing but somehow made it to Key West to see Billy Squire along the way. At some point I had fallen off the mast of the boat and broke my arm, with no money and no insurance I somehow set it by plowing a parked car, football-style.

By Christmas we were broke and hungry. The Olds had blown up and I sold it for 500 bucks to some guy on the corner. On New Years Eve we were homeless and living under a tree near the beach. My friends father quickly threw us off the boat when we found out we took it on our little trip.

Within days Darrin called his mom and she made him join the Marines on the spot. I called mine and asked for a plane ticket back to Portland, Oregon.

I started college and formed a rock band a few months later. We played at grungy clubs and I worked my way through school working the night shift at 7-11 and drinking, mostly as payment for our gigs, pretty heavily.

Fast forward to April 8, 1994. I was sitting on the beach in Fort Meyers, Florida with my toes in the sand and talking to an old beach bum that made hats for the tourists out of palm fronds. A special report came on the radio that the singer for the band, Nirvana was found dead. Just the night before our little rock band played Lithium and Come as You Are at a scuzzy bar called The Reef further down the beach. Those two songs were in heavy rotation in our set that mostly covered other bands with an original or two.

By the mid-to-the late 1990s my life was spiraling out of control. I was heavily addicted to gambling and spending my days “playing” the stock market. In one day in the autumn of 1999, I made $170,000 and it was gone by the end of the week. That is not a brag. Just the harsh reality of how reckless I had become.

The next decade is a blur of legal troubles, losing everything, my freedom, and almost my life.

I grew up. I met Michele. We married. Raised the kids. Bought a house and started a successful business. We ran sled dogs and became respectable members of our community, or so I thought.

Youth Gone Wild had come and gone but not without a lot of scars.

If we can back up just a bit, I remember playing poker in the back of one of those seedy bars in Portland’s northeast’s side were I would spend most of my time. I heard The Grateful Dead’s Touch of Gray for the first time. The Dead weren’t my favorite but I did get a chance to see them a couple of times. The last time was on the last tour before Jerry died. That will come into play in a sec.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

I am now in my late forties and struggle to make sense of the last (almost) five decades. I have spent my life doing what I wanted and paid the price a time or two. I have done everything I have ever wanted to do. I have travelled. I have seen many concerts. Met many people. Made many friends and had a lot of awesome experiences. About five years ago I returned to school as part of a mid-life crisis, just because.

There is a quote in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile you could miss it.”

I have spent my life trying to prove to myself that life is what you make it and you can’t let anything get in your way.

I was in fact very wrong. Just this past weekend I came to the realization that time passes too fast. How do I know? It was something as stupildy simple as visiting a Walmart of all places and trying on a pair of glasses. All the sudden I could read everything again clearly. If I can digress for just a second. As we age the lenses in our eyes become less flexible. To many of us this will be the first realization that we are getting old…

To some it is inconsequential. Others will blast me and say, “what the hell are you talking about. Everyone needs glasses in their 40s.” That is exactly the point. That simple, shortsighted and trivial, little step of realizing that I need glasses was a punch in the gut to me. It was the realization that we aren’t here forever and soon things will be much different than it was before.

I have lived fast. I have lived loose. I have slowed down and tried to re-connect with those I have let stray away. Just this past weekend I heard that my high school class is planning our 30-year reunion. 30 f-ing years. I will go.

Time will pass and there is still a lot to do. I am sure, all of you–my rabid readers–have had that realization a time or two that we aren’t young anymore. When was it for you?

In the words of Jerry, (and Robert Hunter)…but I also know that that we must whistle through your teeth and spit ’cause it’s alight.

Our time, oh, well, a touch of gray kinda suits you anyway.

I will get by.

ACE Preservation Conference: Michigan’s Adventure

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The second and third days of the American Coaster Enthusiasts preservation conference was to be held at Michigan’s Adventure. After a quick photo of the group on the bridge at Indiana Beach, most of must jumped into our cars and headed some 200 miles north to the shores of Lake Michigan.

As I was driving I had thoughts of the old 1980s movie, The Cannonball Run staring Burt Reynolds, Farrah Fawcett, and Dom DeLuise. Here was 80 or so of us trying to get to the next park before the night time ERT. We coaster geeks are a rambunctious bunch!

I arrived at the motel in time to drop my bags and headed to the park. When I first arrived I was awe-struck. Here was this massive coaster with what looked like ten dips! I have never seen anything like it. That was going to be my first coaster in the park. My first ride was the ferris wheel to get a lay of the land. It took forever to get on but the view was worth it.

I headed over to the massive woodie that I saw coming in. It was Shivering Timbers. I waited for about a half hour before it was my turn in line as I waited for the front car. I have been on about 350 coasters in the last three years and my goodness this was one that I will never forget! It literally took my breath away. It was a constant up and down, up and down and it felt like we were flying. I know now what people are talking about when they say this is one of the best woodies in the world.

I still had a couple hours to kill before the ERT so I jumped on another woodie, The Wolverine Wildcat. I would later find out this coaster has an interesting story. It opened in 1988 and really put this park on the map. It was such an important opening that one of the daughters of the family that owned the park back then, was forced to skip her own college graduation because of the coaster’s reveal.

I also rode Zach’s Zoomer which happens to be named after that same daughter’s eldest son. It was a fun little woodie and hardly no wait to get on. I jumped on corkscrew and the big dipper in the kiddie section of the park. Since I had ridden four coasters in less than two hours I decided to skip the ERT and just grab my free ice cream cone on the way out just as it was getting dark.

Sunday morning I arrived early and in time for ERT. I jumped on the Mad Mouse after the requisite group photo in front of Shivering Timbers. It looked like most of the group had made it north in time for the day’s activities. We were alone in the park so I headed over to Thunder Hawk and waited in the shade for it to open at 11. I was the first, and only one on when it opened. It was fun to have a front row seat on a train all of your own.

Our picnic lunch was fun. We had pulled pork, hot dogs and cookies while the daughter that missed her own graduation back in the day–remember her, who is now the vice president, talked about how the park came to be and a few questions from the group.

This was only my second ACE event with my first being last year’s preservation conference in Alabama and Georgia. The only reason why I was able to make this one was because it was held right after our trip in the Northeast. I like the ACE events and it is fun to talk to members who you chat with on social media. I look forward to the next one and hope my wife, Michele can come too.

Lastly, I want to thank ACE for all that they do and of course the host parks. It is awesome that they are keeping these older coasters alive for all of us to enjoy. I can’t wait to see what 2019 brings!

 

Recess

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Today’s topic is: Write a strong memory about recess.

It was kindergarten at Highlawn Elementary School in Huntington, West Virginia and a beautiful spring day. School was nearing the end of the year and I have been flirting this little girl friend that sat across the room from me during playtime. Her name was Kelly and she was soooo pretty. She had curly blonde hair and liked to play in the mud!

I knew time was running out and I WANTED Kelly to be my girlfriend.

It was recess, my favorite period besides nap time and snacks in our half-day schedule. I saw Kelly standing by the swing set and walked up to her and mentioned something like, “there’s something you gotta see!”

We walked across the meadow down a little hill to a smalll smattering of trees. Once we where there I leaned in and kissed her. Right on the cheek. At that very moment I saw fireworks in my head just like Bobby Brady did when he kissed Millicent for the first time on that old 70s TV show.

I don’t remember what ever came of Kelly after the kiss, as it came to be known. But I do know that I have shared that story a thousand times with my kids and my son Tyler grew up to be just the kindergartener that his old man did….