Greg Turbo Linder: A brief bit about me
I am Greg: This is me, standing in front of switchgear after finishing up a long day of testing at a solar site outside Phoenix.
I have a great range of interests, and am a bit of a renaissance man. I love music, dance, and engineering. Over the past few years, I have really dug into a bunch of cool random physical things, having finally accepted some of this CO outdoorsy/fitness attitude. In no particular order, and as a shout-out for the great people who run these gyms and businesses, I present a couple of great gyms and activites that I really enjoy:
- Apex Movement: Where adults (or kids) get trained to jump, fall, roll, vault, and generally enjoy movement for the pure fun of it. They have a bunch of great instructors, a bunch of stuff to jump/fall/swing off/over/through/around, a foam pit, and a trampoline. Classes there teach kids to play safer, and teach adults to play more like kids, in a safe and comfortable environment. They also partner with local aerial dance, pole, and combat arts studios, full of their own inspring people and teachers. Many of these things I did not know even existed a few years ago. One of my personal goals is to get fit enough to train aerial dance: Why not extend my love of dance to a third dimension?
- QiFlow: A Yoga studio that is so much more, offering a great mix of mixed-up fitness classes, where you can cycle until your heart rate is up, and then go do barre, or flow yoga, or kettlebell, all in the same hour workout. I dabbled a bit in Yoga before, but one of my friends suggested this gym, and their style has made me love yoga. Their style of classes fits my style of dance: fluid, strong, and musical, with a wide assortment of movement.
- Farrell's Extreme Bodyshaping: This is another one that a friend of mine got me into. Farrell's shapes your body by getting you into a supportive community within a rigorous, structured, kick-boxing based program. The Boulder Farrell's is operated by an inspired owner, and the 10-week series really does show results. I dropped several percentage points of body fat after one 10-week course, and generally saw my capabilities at the other stuff I do increase accordingly.
- The Mercury Cafe: A wonderfully healthy, organic, and entirely local restaurant and community gathering spot that plays regular host to multiple dance, social, and artistic events. Also my regular sunday brunch spot.
Some other things about me, in no particular order:
- I am terrible at taking pictures, and therefore lack photos of much of the Awesome that I have been lucky enough to be part of.
- I am a solid but free-form partner dancer, but also truly love music and movement as separate arts.
- Improving personal fitness is wonderful, making it easier to learn new skills and generally bringing a lot to life.
- A healthy imagination is a wonderful thing to have.
- The world continues to be full of Awesome, if you keep yourself open to it.
- Friendly, amazing people are everywhere.
- Being an intuitive engineer is both wonderful and difficult, and I love hearing people explain things to me, and sharing in the passion of learning.
- Colorado is a great state, and it is nice to be here.
- My calves are great.
- There is not a lot that I am not interested in, if given a chance to be exposed to others' love of that topic.
This is me on my first large-scale PV plant several years back, with most of the crew who really got me up to steam on large-scale
solar projects. One of the best things about the engineering discipline I have found myself in is being able to work
with large numbers of motivated, friendly, and smart people. I have always felt great joy at teams of people doing awesome things together.
My love of putting great things together with teams of people really came about in high school. This is a photo, taken in 2014,
of my thespian friends who worked together to put on years of professional-quality high school shows over a decade ago,
a tradition which continues to this day at the theater we all enjoyed.
My friends in that photo are now actors, project managers, comedians, government employees, costume designers, engineers, architects, and lawyers, among others. We all share a passion for working hard together to successfully do things larger than ourselves. There is something special about doing live theater with serious people, as it teaches a type of real time trust, enabling you to trust people to do what they know they are good at in a flowing, collaborative fashion.
Today, although I no longer work in the theater, I feel the same type of enjoyment when working with great crews on an engineering project. When that switchgear is energized, or that circuit board is powered on, everything needs to be right enough to work, and you have to trust people to deal with whatever happens in real time in a safe and competant manner.
I love weddings. In between the (beautiful) ceremony and the other events for the afternoon, my friend and I, who were
guests at our mutual friend's wedding, had some downtime. Turns out that the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago is a fifteen
minute drive away from the famous (to some) Site A/Plot M disposal site.
Great to have friends that are willing to troupe through a rainstorm to pose by a marker of the world's first reactor. There were only the two
of us, she we took turns taking pictures, then I (poorly) added the other in, so we could have a group shot.
I love to dance, and Denver has a large and vibrant dance community. This is me with a dance partner at a blues event
in early 2014. I do not dance nearly as much as I used to, as early mornings are now very valuable to me for other reasons. However, in total, I have been dancing in some form for over half of my life. It has been, and continues to be, a wonderful pasttime and hobby.
This was a great moment. This is the cast of the 2002 Illini Union Board Musical, Crazy for You, and one of the few shows
in which I was able to perform.
This was one of the actors' last shows, and everyone (including the orchestra) got together
to sing him his favorite song. I would have loved to have done more shows in college, but
an engineering degree is really hard, especially if your are balancing love of theater
with a love of building things outside of engineering coursework.
