Creatives In Nature: Jake Szymanski
Our series Creatives In Nature continues with Portland-based strategy director, Jake Szymanski. A cycling enthusiast, Rapha ambassador, photographer and collaborator with non-profit Leave it On the Road. Jake shares his insight into cycling of all types, some of his favorite gear and his favorite projects.
What do you do for work and where are you living?
I work as a Strategy Director at an agency called Instrument. I also spent a couple years in marketing at Google. My favorite projects include leading one of the very first influencer campaigns for Levi's Commuter back in 2013, producing a commercial with Bill Nye for Google, and more recently consulting with REI on digital transformation of their business.
What are your favorite ways to get into nature regularly?
I love early morning bike rides, catching the sunrise. My favorite weekend jam is long backcountry XC mountain bike missions, like point-to-point with no cel reception. Enter the void, scare yourself a bit, and come out the other end! This winter, I've been getting into backcountry splitboarding and just completed my AIARE L1 training, which was pretty wild. Especially with this season's unprecedented avalanche conditions.
Do you have any mindfulness practices that you regularly use?
Candidly, I'm a pretty sporadic user of Headspace for meditation. Reading The Power of Now taught me that I really am an adrenaline junky and rely on my thirst for extreme speed, remote rides, and physical exertion to escape mental static. For anyone looking to better understand mindfulness, I can't recommend that book enough.
What is Leave It On The Road and how did you get involved/start this initiative?
Leave It On The Road is a non-profit dedicated to fighting cancer with epic bike rides and storytelling. To date, we've raised over $250,000 for cancer charities and research organizations. It was started by my friend Michael Tabtabai, who in 2013 rode across the U.S. in 21 days in memory of his father who he lost to cancer. Shortly after, myself and a few other close friends joined in doing more big rides and fundraiser events. We've done tons of big rides 800-1,400 miles all down the west coast, from Boulder to Boise, ID and even 1,000 miles around Ireland. I originally met Michael (better known as Tabby), through a friend at work. We started riding together while he was training for the cross-country effort and just kept it up. I could talk for hours about all our crazy trips. This year we're starting to lay the foundation for expanding our support to more riders who want to plan their own epic charity endeavors. Look for more on that soon! You can learn more about it all at leaveitonetheroad.com.
What are a couple of your favorite pieces of gear or tools and why? (Bike, shoes, watch, pack, jacket, etc anything)
Heck yeah. Here's my latest rotation:
Bike: Rapha Cargo Bibs and Flyweight Jersey, S-Works Recon MTB shoes, Specialized Epic Expert, Sram AXS Eagle drivetrain
Casual: Arc'teryx Atom hoodie, Actual Source socks, Whoop
Gear: Ricoh GR II, lifted high mileage 957 Porsche Cayenne, Front Runner RTT
How is your experience in nature reflected in your creative work?
Commitment — cycling teaches you that you can always go a bit harder, last a bit longer, do more than you think you can. I bring this to work every day. Sometimes it can be unhealthy, but when it really counts, that drive pushes me to break through obvious ideas and find the more compelling ones. Obvious ideas are easy. It's the good ones that take time, willingness to make "creative waste", dropping ego or preciousness to get to the real gems. It's kinda like food always tastes better after a long workout, but the creative version where commitment and perseverance leads to the best ideas.
Optimization — Endurance sports quickly teach you about marginal gains and how every little aspect of optimizing your performance from aerodynamics to food, sleep, form, and mechanical preparedness add up to a sum greater than the parts. You can only get so fast on strength alone. In creativity, or design, this teaches you to look at every aspect of your work and team. I very much believe that great creative work comes from creating the right conditions of trust and team, almost more than it comes from raw talent. In my work, I focus a lot on building that trust, and an environment where creativity can come to life. That might be how your team works together, the tools they're using, or how your client's are onboarded to the process. It can all be optimized as a factor of getting to better outcomes.
Have you always been into photography and documenting?
No! It wasn't until I moved to Portland in 2012 and was so struck by the beauty of living out west that I started taking pictures of everything to share with my family back home in Wisconsin. When you grow up in the midwest and finally visit the west coast, everything is eyeball drugs. Slowly, photography turned into a way to make friends in my new city. Looking back, that time was actually kind of an era in cycling. We were riding gravel on 28c tires and traditional road bikes before gravel became a thing. Combine that new style of riding with doing it in the middle of foggy Oregon winter, and you get some killer photos. It wasn't until Bicycling Magazine reached out to me asking to use a photo of mine for an issue that I thought about getting a real camera! Up until that point I'd just been shooting with my iPhone, but Bicycling needed something higher res. They were going to give me a full-page photographer feature, but my photo was too small resolution from my iPhone 6 or whatever. That was when I decided to buy my first Ricoh GR. Since then I've gotten more and more into it, done lots of little shoots for Rapha, Chris King, and others. It's still just a hobby, but I love it.
How would you describe the difference between riding road, mountain and gravel?
The purity and physical aggression of riding road bikes is a unique thing. The experience of traveling long distances by road bike like we do with LIOTR is pretty unmatched. Translating that skill to gravel, you have fitness, but it takes a whole other prowess for cornering and getting brave over rugged terrain. While I was living in San Francisco, we really pushed the limits on gravel bikes — going big in Marin down Coastal Trail, bottoming out the head shack on my Diverge, or that time I broke a set of carbon bars jumping the steep section of the Miwok descent that's not open to bikes... oops. I'm generally a big fan of underbiking things. There's a weird satisfaction to flying past people in full-face helmets and pads, while you're lightly clad in lycra XC kit down some gnarly descent that they're all walking. That could be a gravel bike, but short travel XC mountain bikes are just so versatile and much faster than people think. We're all just warming up to the fact that smooth is fast, jaw breaking 110 psi isn't the way to go, and wider tires don't completely turn you into molasses. I'll throw it out there and predict that we're gonna see a soon resurgence of popularity for lightweight hardtails. Flat bars are just more fun.
Do you like riding solo or with a group?
Fast groups. Friends are half the reason I ride. Being forced to ride more solo due with COVID going on has really unearthed for me how much I value the peer pressure, competition, and camaraderie of riding with a group.
After a run/ride or trip where you’re away from devices – how do you find your perspective has shifted when you sit back at your computer?
I'm always happier when I've had a chance to work out in the morning, I feel more positive and creative at work. The jokes and ideas just roll easier out of my brain.
What trips or places are on your list to explore in the next year?
B.C., Baja, Oregon Timber Trail... I've got a whole list of Oregon bucket list backcountry rides I'm cooking up. Think <100 mile epic 1-day rides way away from things on seldom ridden singletrack. I'd also really like to do the Breck Epic stage race some day.
What tool or piece of gear is on your wishlist right now?
I'm really looking forward to the new Rapha mountain bike line that's due out this summer.
Is there any way that you’d like to combine your creative process with nature in the future?
The idea that in a couple years we could have 5G reception everywhere with the ability to tether and work from wherever is really exciting. My job is going to stay remote, so I'm really stoked about getting set up with way to work from the road, get out to new mountain bike spots while doing work from camp. At very least, the idea of being about to work from anywhere and house swap with friends to live in different places every once in a while sounds like a great way to shake up the routine and get fresh thinking.
Jake is strategy director at Instrument, working across influencer campaigns, content strategy and production in the Oregon. These photographs are from his adventures cycling around American, as part of our ongoing series of interviews with Creatives In Nature.
Tags: Creatives In Nature, Movement