My Favorite Kind of Hero

Even as a kid I was never really interested in mainstream stars and never gave a crap about Hollywood. I always seemed to be intrigued by people who do amazing things, yet don’t find themselves on Entertainment Tonight. After spending 3 days, so far, at the AWSF Fair in Las Vegas I have realized how fortunate I am that I idolize accessible people. And as a person who aspires to make a name for himself in the area of woodworking education, I get awfully excited when I meet some of the big players in the industry. Everywhere I look I see someone that has influenced me as a woodworker. David Marks and Scott Phillips are giving demos at the Delta booth.
I see the Popular Woodworking crew meandering around the Festool booth. Norm is signing autographs. And one of the MANY highlights of my week was finally meeting and chatting with Chris Schwarz and Glen Huey. I follow Chris’s Blog and his articles in Popular Woodworking and Ive seen almost all of Glen’s videos. So I was really excited when I ran into them at the Steel City booth on Thursday. As I quietly inspected Steel City’s new granite-topped offerings (secretly waiting for a chance to introduce myself), Chris actually introduced himself first! We had exchanged a few emails here and there but I never expected him to actually recognize me. After few minutes of conversation, it was clear that these guys were quite humble and perhaps even a bit unaware of their influence on the woodworking masses. And as a person who is just starting to cope with the concept of people recognizing him in public, their humble nature was inspirational to me.
And yes, we did stand in line to shake hands with Norm. Nicole and I told him we were from The Wood Whisperer and Norm actually knew who we were. Ummm, someone pinch me please! We gave him a Wood Whisperer t-shirt and he then began talking about online woodworking videos being the way of the future and how the guys at The New Yankee Workshop are discussing the possibility of putting old episodes on their website. How cool would that be??

And the real high point of the week occurred last night. We had an incredible evening with David Marks and his lovely wife Victoria. Stay tuned for the exclusive interview!

To sum it all up, I really feel bad for people who idolize celebrities who they will probably never meet. Fortunately for me, I have the opportunity to meet my heroes on a regular basis. I guess for me they are like Paris Hiltons with handplanes. Ok maybe there are other differences but you get the idea.