250 Years Later, Still Chasing Life, Liberty, and Lake Time

 

250 Years Later, Still Chasing Life, Liberty, and Lake Time

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for July 5, 2026

We kicked off a full week of celebrating 250 years of freedom at Midwest Ribfest at Mystic Lake Casino, headlined by the man still making us wonder why Jessie had to be so selfish with his girl. Rick Springfield shocked the crowd by announcing he was 76, then proceeded to look and perform like he had found a backstage loophole in the aging process. Classic songs, loud guitars, and smoked meat. Not a bad way to start America’s birthday week!

Even better than the concert was randomly bumping into our old friends Joe and Jill Fischer. We caught up, laughed, and rocked out while Rick Springfield ripped through classics like “I’ve Done Everything for You” and “Don’t Talk to Strangers,” which is solid advice unless the strangers turn out to be old friends.

On Friday, Tracy and Dave came to town for the holiday weekend. Dave is known for hilarious T-shirts, and this one got plenty of attention at the Prior Lake Farmers Market. A few people looked shocked, like wiener jokes don’t belong between sweet corn and cucumbers. Please. This is America.

After picking Tracy and Dave up at the airport, we headed over to Luke’s new house so they could see it for the first time. They gave it the official family approval tour, which mostly means walking around, saying “this is really nice,” and pretending we all suddenly know things about countertops.

From there we headed to Avery and Abby’s, where they were kind enough to serve us an amazing lunch. Avery grilled up some terrific burgers while Abby supplied all the great sides. I’m assuming Avery learned those grill skills in college or on YouTube, because there is no evidence that kind of knowledge came from my genetic line.

We spent the afternoon cruising Prior Lake on my boat, despite a forecast that had been threatening rain all weekend like it was trying to ruin our plans personally. Instead, the weather turned gorgeous. Sometimes luck is just the universe briefly forgetting to mess with you.

Friday night we ate at our favorite restaurant on Prior Lake, Charlie’s on Prior. To be fair, it’s also the only restaurant on Prior Lake, but that just means they’ve really nailed their market share. Good food, great view, and the kind of place that makes you feel like summer is doing its job.

Dave asked the waitress what was popular, and I immediately told him he couldn’t visit Minnesota without trying the walleye. This was bold advice from a man who may have never actually ordered it himself. Dave said he liked it, but I spent the rest of the meal wondering if I had just committed a small act of culinary fraud.

After dinner at Charlie’s, I thought it would be fun to make 9:00 reservations at the Boardwalk in Shakopee so we could sit and watch Canterbury’s fireworks. Great plan, until we got there and I immediately felt guilty for our waitress since we weren’t ordering full meals. I panic-ordered a couple desserts nobody really ate because everyone was still full. The fireworks were amazing though, so I still think we made the right call.

We celebrated the 4th the best way possible: a full day on Prior Lake swimming, boating, and watching the annual boat parade. We had planned to end the night with fireworks at Mystic Lake, but the rain we had dodged all weekend finally found us and the show was canceled. After 250 years of freedom, Mother Nature still apparently has veto power.

On Sunday, we spent time with Grandma Linda, starting with brunch at Ze’s Diner. After a weekend of boats, fireworks, and patriotic chaos, this was the part that actually mattered: three generations around a table, laughing, telling stories, and proving that freedom is pretty great when nobody has to cook. Two hundred fifty years in, freedom still tastes better with bacon.

@toddswank LeBron to the Timberwolves would be a perfect fit! #lebron #nba #minnesota #timberwolves ♬ Dramatic Tension - Litne

The One Where the Swanks Took on Olympic National Park

 

The One Where the Swanks Took on Olympic National Park

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 28, 2026

Our family vacation started at the northern edge of Washington, exploring Olympic National Park, tucked into the most northwestern corner of the contiguous United States. We kicked things off at Hurricane Ridge, where the views were incredible, the family looked great, and I immediately began calculating how many scenic overlooks a middle-aged man can survive before requesting a chairlift. It was the perfect start to six days of mountains, ocean, rain forests, waterfalls, and me pretending I was physically prepared for any of it.

I’m thankful the boys still join us for these adventures, because there’s something pretty special about standing together on Hurricane Ridge with Olympic National Park behind us and the Strait of Juan de Fuca stretching out in the distance. Normally on a Monday I’m sitting at my desk staring at an unreasonable number of computer screens, pretending that’s a healthy way to experience the world. This was better. Mountains, ocean, sunshine, and family all in one place. Not a bad upgrade from spreadsheets, status updates, and whatever fresh nonsense was waiting in my inbox.

There was a lot more hiking on this vacation than I expected. Somehow “family trip to a national park” quietly turned into “four to five miles a day, enjoy your new lifestyle.” I struggled with it more than I wanted to admit, but Luke was absolutely built for it. He and Miss Sheri even climbed all the way to the top of Sunset Point while I made a strong early campaign, assessed my aging infrastructure, and wisely withdrew before the summit. It’s tough getting old, but it’s pretty awesome watching your kids pass you like you’re standing still.

While trying to catch up with Luke and Sheri, I stopped on the trail to rest when three deer suddenly walked right up near me. They didn’t seem scared at all, probably because in a national park humans are less “predator” and more “slow-moving camera holders.” I stood there snapping pictures while they calmly passed by, pretending it was a spiritual moment and not just proof I had finally moved slow enough for wildlife to trust me.

We also spotted this large marmot not far off the path, basically looking like a fat beaver who had retired from dam work and moved into mountain real estate. He seemed just as curious about us as we were about him, although he never stopped eating grass long enough to make it feel personal. He’d look up, chew, judge us briefly, then go right back to lunch. Honestly, I respect that kind of focus.

We had another great deer encounter on the drive up the mountain when this mama and her baby were hanging out on the side of the road. You’d think with an entire national park available, they could find a safer place than “next to moving vehicles,” but apparently they also understand tourism. We were just glad they made themselves available for our viewing pleasure before returning to their busy schedule of being adorable and wildly unconcerned.

Mountains in the morning, ocean in the afternoon. That’s a pretty solid day. We went whale watching on the Strait of Juan de Fuca expecting orcas, but the humpbacks apparently didn’t get that memo. For four hours they were popping up in every direction like the world’s largest game of Whack-a-Mole. Our naturalist said she counted at least 35 different whales, although a few of them were clearly attention whales who just kept coming back for more stage time. It was an absolutely whale of a day.

Day two brought us to Lake Crescent, a glacier-carved lake with water so blue and clear it almost looks fake. The blue is ridiculous because the lake has very few nutrients, which means not much algae grows in it, so the water stays crazy clear. It’s more than 600 feet deep, which is comforting if you enjoy standing near beautiful things that could easily hide a submarine. Lake Crescent is also home to its own unique trout, because apparently even the fish here needed to be more interesting than the rest of us. The whole place feels calm, clean, and slightly unfair to every other lake trying to compete.

Olympic National Park is pretty isolated, which is beautiful right up until you realize nature has not installed enough businesses to service our every whim. Thankfully, we found a nice resort on Lake Crescent that was happy to let us wander around and enjoy the amenities like civilized people pretending we belonged there. We were tempted to rent kayaks, but ultimately decided against it, which I fully supported. My legs had already filed a formal complaint for the week, and I didn’t need to start lying to myself that my arms were ready to become above-average employees.

After enjoying Lake Crescent, we had seen enough water just sitting there, so we went looking for some water with ambition. That led us to the hike toward Marymere Falls, because nothing says vacation like leaving a perfectly beautiful lake to go watch part of it throw itself down a mountain. The trail was gorgeous, winding through giant trees, mossy rocks, little bridges, and the kind of forest that makes you understand why people suddenly start using words like “peaceful” without irony.

Marymere Falls is one of the most popular hikes near Lake Crescent, mostly because it’s less than a mile each way and leads through old-growth forest to a 90-foot waterfall. The trail crosses Barnes Creek and Falls Creek before the final climb, which is where the brochure’s definition of “easy” and my definition of “why are we still going up?” had a brief disagreement. I’ll admit, I was a little underwhelmed at first and mildly annoyed that the waterfall made me climb a steep incline to earn the view. But I do like falling water, and once we got there, it was hard to stay mad at a mountain for doing something pretty.

After lunch we decided the only logical next step was to go find another waterfall, because that’s what brothers do. Some families throw a football around. Ours apparently hikes into the forest to admire water with commitment.

Sol Duc Falls was one of the cooler stops in Olympic National Park. The trail winds through old-growth forest before the water drops about 50 feet into a narrow canyon, which is beautiful in the way nature gets when it wants to impress you and remind you it can still win. I watched several people climb way too close to the edge, which made me nervous and sent my brain into the healthy vacation question of, “How often do people actually go over?” Then I remembered I was on a family vacation and probably shouldn’t spend too much time mentally producing a National Park disaster documentary. Great waterfall, though.

On day three, we got up early and made the drive to the Hoh Rain Forest, which is basically what happens when trees stop trimming their moss and fully commit to the lifestyle. The whole place feels prehistoric, magical, and just damp enough that you understand why the Twilight vampires were always brooding nearby. We had been tipped off to arrive early, so for once we listened to vacation advice instead of assuming we knew better. Smart move. When we left, there was a huge line of cars waiting to get in, which gave us that rare and beautiful feeling of being the people who planned correctly.

I did the Hall of Mosses Trail, but skipped the Spruce Trail because apparently my body has very strong opinions about how many enchanted forest walks should happen in one day. I do regret missing this giant tree stump, because it looks incredible and exactly like the kind of thing I would have pretended to fully understand while taking 47 pictures of it. But while they were out discovering ancient forest magic, I was back at the visitor center enjoying a bench, which honestly had a lot going for it. It was sturdy, quiet, and most importantly, not another trail.

The boys are lucky they have at least one parent who can keep up with them. Miss Sheri has always been pretty rugged, the kind of person you’d want nearby if you got lost in a rain forest. She’d stay calm, find the trail, ration the snacks, and somehow make it feel like a team-building exercise. I, on the other hand, would be waving down the first bear I saw like, “Good news, I’m slow and emotionally ready.

When we got back to the Sol Duc Falls parking lot, we ran into this Steller’s jay hanging around like he owned the place. I thought he looked beautiful, so naturally I chased him around with my camera like a completely normal adult man who had already spent the day photographing water, trees, and suspiciously confident wildlife. He finally gave me a decent pose, probably out of pity. Not a bad way to end a waterfall hike.

After the rain forest, we drove to Ruby Beach to see the sea stacks and tide pools. We even planned around low tide, because apparently we are now the kind of people who coordinate vacation activities with the moon. The sea stacks were incredible, and we did our best climbing around the rocks to find whatever tide pools we could reach without needing a rescue team. It was a very cool place to explore, although calling it a “beach” in June felt a little generous. In my mind, beaches come with sunshine, warmth, and a strong chance of complaining about sand. Ruby Beach came with sweatshirts, ocean wind, and the Pacific Northwest reminding us not to get too comfortable.

Ruby Beach looks less like a normal beach and more like a lumberyard lost a fight with the Pacific Ocean. All that driftwood gets carried down from the forests by rivers, then the tides and storms shove it back on shore in giant piles like the ocean is redecorating. It gives the whole place this wild, rugged feel you don’t get at beaches where the biggest hazard is someone’s Bluetooth speaker. It’s beautiful, a little chaotic, and a good reminder that when the ocean is done with a tree, it just throws it on shore like, “You deal with this.”

Miss Sheri asked me to pose for a classic “Shortarmguy Shot” on the beach, because apparently every scenic location needs at least one photo of me throwing my arms in the air like I just discovered tourism. I was thrilled when Abby suddenly jumped into the shot with me. She’s been a Swank for less than a year, but moments like this make me think she’s really starting to fit in with the family. Either that, or she’s already learned that when we embarrass ourselves, we prefer to do it together.

On Thursday we took the ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria, British Columbia, which gave us the exciting chance to use our passports and briefly feel like international travelers. There’s something fun about crossing water into another country, even if my dreams of struggling through a foreign language were immediately crushed when everyone spoke English. Still, Victoria was beautiful, the harbor was impressive, and for a few hours we got to pretend we were much more worldly than we actually are.

We stopped for lunch at The Flying Otter on the harbor, because when you’re visiting Canada near the water, fish and chips feels less like a choice and more like a civic duty. The food was good, the view was better, and the whole place had that nice vacation-lunch feeling where nobody is in a hurry and everyone pretends fried food is part of the cultural experience.

On our way out of town, we stopped at Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, which turned out to be way more fun than expected. Llamas, elk, zebras, bears, and other critters came right up to the car, and several grizzlies were separated from us by what felt like a couple of very optimistic fences. They sold special animal bread for $5 a loaf, so naturally we started with two and ended up going through six, because apparently our family’s wildlife strategy is handing carbs to anything with hooves and hoping the bears respect boundaries.

The employee told us nothing would bite, which was comforting right up until a buffalo shoved half his head through the window like he had a dinner reservation in our car. They were powerful, pushy, and completely shameless about using those giant tongues to retrieve every last piece of bread. I’m not saying things got inappropriate, but after feeding one of these guys, I felt I needed a cigarette and a quiet moment to myself.

@toddswank Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, Washington lets you feed bread to grizzly bears! #bears #grizzlies #brownbear #sequim ♬ original sound - Martin dutch

@toddswank Incredible experience in Port Angeles, Washington watching humpback whales! #humpback #whales #portangeles #pugetsound ♬ Imperial Orchestra Pirates of the Caribbean - Imperial Orchestra

@toddswank Whale watching on the Puget Sound Express in Port Angeles, Washington gave us this incredible experience! #humpback #whale #portangeles ♬ original sound - Todd Swank

@toddswank Grandma Linda heard this song and, completely out of the blue, announced, “I want you to play this at my funeral.” 😳 Nothing like casually dropping your final playlist request in the middle of the afternoon. Guess I better write it down before she changes it to something by Pitbull. #whatsup #grandma #funeralsong ♬ original sound - Todd Swank

Oracle FY27 Sales Kickoff: Fired Up in Las Vegas

 

Oracle FY27 Sales Kickoff: Fired Up in Las Vegas

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 14, 2026

I flew into Las Vegas Monday morning and flew home Friday, and this picture is about as much of the Strip as I saw all week. Normally Vegas offers temptation, bad decisions, and stories you probably shouldn’t publish on the internet. This time I was there with 4,500 Oracle coworkers getting fired up for FY27, talking AI data centers, and behaving like a responsible adult. Which is really disappointing for my brand.

The Venetian was our home base for the week, which sounds glamorous until you realize we basically turned it into a very fancy corporate ant farm. Oracle somehow moved 4,500 of us through meetings, meals, security, and caffeine refueling stations without the whole thing collapsing into chaos. Honestly, watching them feed that many salespeople in a two-hour window may have been the most impressive infrastructure demo of the week. And yes, the bomb-sniffing dogs were everywhere, which is reassuring right up until you start wondering what they know that you don’t.

You may remember from last week’s post, A Beautiful Day to Quit Golf, that I lost my temporary tooth, flipper, and retainer in Clear Lake two days before this trip. I couldn’t get a replacement in time, and my emergency Shark Tank-style TempTooth science project went about as well as you’d expect. I even thought about skipping Vegas, but then I reminded myself I’ve looked different my entire life. This wasn’t the hand I wanted, but I’ve been dealt this hand before. So I decided to own it, smile anyway, and not let one missing tooth stop me from doing what I love most: talking to strangers who didn’t ask for it.

The first night I had dinner with several of my recent teammates. At Oracle, every June feels a little like corporate musical chairs, except the music stops and suddenly you have a new manager, a new team, a new product focus, and three fresh acronyms you’re expected to care deeply about. Honestly, it’s not a bad thing. You get exposed to new styles, new ideas, and new ways of doing the job. Plus, changing managers every year keeps you sharp. Mainly because by the time you figure out what one of them wants, congratulations, here comes another one.

We had dinner at WAKUDA inside The Venetian, and the sushi was incredible. But honestly, I spent half the meal staring at the art on the walls. It had this erotic modern punk thing going on, like the first time I saw The Matrix and realized movies could be cool, confusing, and slightly dangerous all at once. I didn’t totally understand what any of it meant, but I knew it was working on me. The whole place felt like Tokyo, Las Vegas, and a tattoo parlor got together and made excellent sushi. That’s how they get you hooked before the bill arrives and commits a second-degree felony against your wallet.

People always ask why I love Las Vegas so much, and the answer is simple: it’s Disney World for adults. There is no other place on earth where you can walk through a fake Italian shopping mall inside a fake Venetian hotel, stumble past a full Wizard of Oz display promoting a show at a giant Sphere, and have every single part of that feel completely normal. Nobody here is pretending to be something they’re not, which is ironic because everything here is pretending to be something it’s not. That’s the magic of Vegas, and I fall for it every single time.

Tuesday morning the FY27 Sales Kickoff officially kicked off, and that’s Mark Hura, Oracle’s President of Global Field Operations, on stage. Mark has a way of making 4,500 salespeople feel like they’re part of something bigger than a quota, which is harder than it sounds. The FY26 numbers were record-breaking across the board, but honestly, what got me wasn’t the revenue figures. It was the AI story. Oracle is building data center infrastructure at a scale most people can’t picture, powering technology that’s going to change how doctors treat patients, how drugs get developed, and how the world actually works. I know AI makes a lot of people nervous. I get it. But sitting in that room, I walked away genuinely excited about the future. Not the scary sci-fi version. The one where people actually get helped.

Tuesday morning the FY27 Sales Kickoff moved from Vegas spectacle to full-on business mode, and this was my first time seeing Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia speak in person. He laid out a vision for an AI-enabled future that felt less like corporate hype and more like the ground shifting under every industry at once. On the earnings call, he talked about customers moving past AI experiments and into real enterprise solutions that improve productivity, service, and competitive advantage. That’s the part that gets me fired up. Not the doom-scrolling version of AI where everyone argues with strangers for sport, but the version where we solve harder problems, move faster, and build things that actually help people. He said the world will look very different three years from now. I believed him.

Tuesday night was the awards ceremony for the North America OCI organization, called The Larrys in honor of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. They do a really nice job turning it into our version of the Oscars, with presenters, nominees, big production value, and plenty of people dressed like they’re one acceptance speech away from thanking their agent. I’ve never been cool enough to be nominated for one of these awards, which I’m totally fine with because I also haven’t been cool enough to own a tuxedo. So really, the system is working.

We had around 120 partners in attendance too, which meant the happy hour invitations started piling up fast. I actually had to turn down several of them, which is wildly out of character for me and frankly not the kind of personal growth I signed up for. I did make it to a few, though, and they were a blast. There’s something energizing about being in a room full of smart people, good conversations, and appetizers you only eat because they’re on tiny plates and therefore legally don’t count.

I also got to spend more time with my new teammates, including Chris in the middle and my new boss, Michael. We were both more than happy to accept the free cowboy hat swag, because I am nothing if not easily bribed by accessories. I honestly can’t remember ever wearing a cowboy hat before, but now that I’ve seen the evidence, I think I pull it off. If this whole thing ever falls apart, I may ride into a dusty border town, clean up corruption, win the respect of the locals, and still be home by dinner because my horse has sleep apnea.

Just like that, it was the final day. Four and a half days, 4,500 people, more sessions, hallway conversations, and tiny appetizers than I can fully account for, and somehow I walked out the other side genuinely fired up. Navigating an event this size is its own endurance sport, but the energy in that room never really dropped. One Team. One Goal. No Limits. Easy to put on a slide, harder to actually feel, but by the end of the week I felt it. We still had one more session to go though, and let’s just say the closing speaker made staying in my seat an easy decision.

The week ended with Oracle founder Larry Ellison speaking to us, which was pretty incredible. I’ve always viewed him as one of the top technology visionaries of all time, so hearing him talk about Oracle’s future and the AI-enabled world ahead was a great way to close things out. At one point he was asked if he owned a Tesla Optimus robot yet. He said no, but he did have one from Unitree, then casually predicted that within five years we may see more humanoid robots walking around than actual humans. The part that hit me was when he said finger dexterity is still one of the hardest problems to solve. The base robot might cost around $16,000, but the one with really good hands is more than $50,000. As a guy who has spent his entire life navigating a world built for hands that work better than mine, I found that oddly validating. Apparently functional fingers are the premium upgrade. Tell me something I don’t know.