Garbage and Houses...

Yesterday I didn't do much. I was kind of bummed about it, because I had every intention of being a useful member of society, but I slept poorly the night before and spent most of the day falling asleep repeatedly on the couch. I've been stressed that I haven't relaxed from the last school year, so I don't sleep well. Ironic, huh? But I did do one useful thing yesterday. I was taking out the garbage and found that one of my neighbors had moved out, leaving some really nice stuff in and beside the dumpster.

This tabley-drawer thing was one of those pieces of furniture. In Cleveland we used to do what we called "tree-lawn shopping", which involved us going out on big garbage day and taking home the best of the really crappy furniture that was on the tree-lawn awaiting pickup. So I was no stranger to this pass-time. (So many hyphens! Need more perentheses!)

I looked at this tabley-drawer thing, expecting from my former forays into reclaimation that it would be made of cheap particle board with a thin vinyl veneer pasted on it, or if the tossers were high class that it would be a laminate wood. I was, however, surprised to find it was in fact hardwood. At least most of it is. I don't know for sure, but I think that makes it pretty nice. I mean I think you'd pay tens if not a ten of tens of dollars for this piece of furniture. I didn't really have any use for it, but I decided at the very least I should bring it inside and take it to the DI later.

The thing about hardwood and iron is that it is heavy, which meant that I wasn't really strong enough to cary it up to the door and down the stairs safely by myself, especially not in flip-flops. I figured this out when I stumbled as my flip-flops, dragging on the ground caught the toe and rolled as I started down the stairs. For a moment I was sure I was going to end in a broken pile ontop of a broken pile of what used to me furniture at the bottom of the stairs, but by bravely using my elbow as a brake on the textured plaster wall and heroicly wrenching my back to maintain balance, I halted my downward motion. Eventually, I got it in the apartment, and now it sits classing up the place, but still without any other real purpose.

So that was yesterday.

Today I went an looked at houses with Rich. We found one that I really, really liked, but that will be beyond me. There's little chance I could make it work. It is in a fantastic neighborhood, near Laird where Dad grew up, in a house that is now worth about a million and a half dollars. He checked because he recently saw it was for sale. It is right on the edge of the gully there, and is almost like a partially earth sheltered house. It's surrounded by woods and has these huge cool sky lights and an enourmous fire place.

The problem is that the roof is basically falling in, and would not only have to be resurfaced but probably restructured. There's dry rot throughout the exterior, and all of the parquet wood flooring is buckling and coming up. All of that said, it is priced at the top of my means, so if I bought it I probably wouldn't have money to fix it up enough to be liveable. But what a perfect house for me. I would love to be able to do it. I'd really, really love to be able to.

After that we looked at a couple of places I wasn't interested in, and that aren't very interesting, and as we were looking for one of them we saw a place that sold pupusas. I told Rich how good they were and he decided he wanted some lunch so we came back around the block to it. I think the place was just opening. The guy who was serving us was still fixing up the windows, and made some executive decisions about what should be on the menu while we were sitting there. I ordered two pupusas, and Rich got two pupusas and a tamale, and I was surprised at how big they were when they came. They were fantastic tasting too, as good as I've had.

When we went to pay the guy was embarassed when I gave him my card, and told me he couldn't run a card for less than five bucks. My total was only three eighty-something. It was an amazing deal, and Rich had to pay for me because I only had a dollar in cash. I'm definitely going back there. It's on the corner of 5th East and 27th South if you want to go.

After that we looked at a place around 33rd south. I liked it. It was small, but the guy who owned it was an artist, and he'd really done some great things with the place. The price was a little high for me, but besides being small I really liked it.

We went out to north Taylorsville after that and Rich showed me a split level that I think he wanted me to buy, because it was a good deal, but it was big, and in a crappy neighborhood, and I wasn't into it. It probably will be a good deal for someone, but the sureno graffitti at the entrance of the subdivision and the half wall out front that was new painted (presumably because of graffiti) pretty much sealed my decision.

Following that we went to a place further south in Taylorsville that was in a really nice neighborhood, and looked really good. It hit the market two days before and already had several offers on it, none of which had been accepted by the bank, and the sellers realtor was refusing to let it be shown anymore, which Rich thought was actually against the law. We couldn't go in it, but he thought we should submit a high offer and see if I outbid the other buyers. That scared me. He asked me how high I would be willing to go, and when I told him how far I could go he agreed that from what we'd seen I probably wouldn't be able to outbid the other people.

We were talking about the competition in this price range and he was really surprised. He just sold his daughter's house in St. George, and is helping her find a new one up here, and he said that things in my range are going really really fast, and they taper off up to around three hundred and fifty or three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, where houses seem to be languishing on the market for months until their sellers are forced to mark them down into the active range.

I think that all the people who can just pay a little over a hundred thousand, like me, watch the news and said to themselves, "Maybe now I can actually buy," and they all hit the market at once. Whatever it is, our experience seems to be that if you don't get an offer in in the first day or two that it is listed, and if it isn't accepted, that you don't really have a chance unless the money falls through for the person who did.

We had one more house to look at back near downtown on the east side, but we were both tired of it, and didn't have a lot of hope, but Rich said we were going back to my place and me might as well drive by.

For the price, and the neighborhood, I was expecting it to be old and in really bad shape. Besides, it was a short sale, which is good for the seller, and less bad for the bank than forclosure, but I don't think lives up to its marketing for the buyer. The price at which the selling agent lists it is pretty arbitrary. It can mean that even if the buyer offers more than the asking price, it is still subject to the bank's approval. They often end up spending up to six months maundering on whether it is better to sell at that price or forclose. It's not a quick process where you are paying pennies on the dollar like the market seems to want to portray it.

Anyway, for all of this, when we found the place I was blown away. It was in great condition, and priced even below the house on Roosevelt that I'd thought would be a great deal. What was better was that this was the first day it had been listed. We called the selling agent and she said that the sellers were expecting someone else to come look at it so to just go and knock. We did and got in to see it. The design is nothing to write home about, but it was well kept, and it was in the right neighborhood, and the asking price was amazing as far as quality to dollars as far as what we'd seen so far.

We were both pretty excited as we drove back to my place and we decided to make an offer on the spot. It took a while to make up the papers, but I submitted it tonight. I offered the asking price minus closing costs. By 5:00 PM tomorrow we'll know if the seller has accepted the offer. If they do, it will be off to the bank. When we talked to the selling agent as we were prepping to send it off she said she'd already got another offer on it, but it was a lowball offer. Rich said it was probably an investor. This area in the city and the price range has a lot of speculators buying up these houses and hoping to make cosmetic improvements and sell them for a profit as soon as "the downturn" ends. Anyway, I'm sure there are going to be several more offers in the next couple days, and if the other houses we've seen are any guide, I'll probably get outbid. But my fingers are crossed anyway.

Condos and Townhouses...

Well, I've been avoiding looking at condo's and townhouses because my intent in getting out of my apartment was to get out of a situation where a landlord should be taking care of stuff but isn't, and where I don't have to worry about things making it so I don't get a deposit back. Also, I'm not that into the idea of neighbor's who share a wall or ceiling with me. Especially if they have kids.

But I thought I might make an exception for this place. It might be a little bit of a stretch with the money, but hey, its downtown. I'll be able to afford the monthly payment if I put a little more into the downpayment. Its not that far from 20% to 95%. By the way, can anyone spare a few bucks to help out with that?

Let me know what you all think.

Sheesh, with the houses...

Rich, my agent (did I mention he mostly guides hunting and fishing trips for a living? That's a big fish,) called today at 12:30 and said he had appointments to see some places starting at 3:00, but that all but one of them were "under contract" which seems to mean that they have had offers that the owners have accepted and they're just waiting for the money to come through. I was still really anxious. I'm trying to be non-chalant, but this kind of thing is really hard for me.

The first house we saw was the one on Sunset Ave, and it was truly awful. It was really, really bad. The floor was about as rotten as the back bedroom in the cabin was when Mom and Dad had it fixed. The babysitter, who didn't speak english was the only one there and I had a hard time with her spanish, but she seemed to be saying that the furnace didn't work at all, that the electricity only worked sometimes, that the water came out brown half the time and then shut down. The design of the home was terrible, and the yard was really bad. The garage looked big from the outside, but when you went in it it was small. Then we saw a door on the side and opened it up to find that they were using half the garage as an illegal apartment. There was no bathroom or kitchen in it. It was really bad.

The second place we went was the one on 9th west (it seems to be so sold it doesn't show up on the website anymore). It was "under contract", so it was unlikely that I'd have been able to get it, but it was well taken care of. It was very out dated, and the furnace was ancient, and the addition on the back seemed to slant down a little, but everything else was in good shape. It was a little creepy. There was no one there and we used one of those remote key boxes to get in. The old lady who had lived there's stuff was all around still, like her clothes, and old pictures, and a bunch of catholic pictures and crosses, and it smelled like old people. But, like I said, it was the best place.

We drove by the one on Jeremy St., but they had wanted 24 hrs notice before anyone came by and Rich didn't get it. It was "under contract" too anyway. It looked ok from the outside, but the street definitely didn't look good.

Then we went to the one on Roosevelt (which is no longer showing on the website either) which had been my greatest hope, but when we went in it was really awful, almost as bad as the first one. It smelled terribly of cigarette smoke, and there were cigarette burns in two of the four different styles of bad carpet. The kitchen was pretty awful, and it was hard to imagine anyone fixing food there. There was a bunch of panneling on the walls, some of which was ripped out exposing pipes. The addition on the back was leaning pretty badly, and wen we went around to the front again we found that it was too. There was a big picture window in the front and as we were looking at it it looked like the window was a straight rectangle, but the hole for the frame was a parallelogram. The people who were there were inspecting the house for the buyer, and they'd left their level out, so we put it up there for confirmation. The window was in fact square.

Here are the other houses that I was interested in, upon which my hopes have bit the dust. The one on center street in Midvale (off the website aready, sheesh), the one in West Jordan, and the one in Sandy.

So, all in all, my first house hunting expedition to the interiors was pretty discouraging. If all of these houses that were bad, or in bad locations (for me at least) were being sold as fast as they were it doesn't bode well for my search. I think what it said to me was that I neither have, nor make enough money to be choosy about where or in what I live, as long as I want to buy a single family home.

Waffle Makers, Bikes, and How I Spent My Saturday...

Mark LaRocco and I decided to go for a bike ride on Saturday. The chance of rain was 30%. Despite the fact that it had rained about every day for like a month we decided 30% was a safe number.

I slept poorly the night before, worrying about whether I made a poor decision in purchasing a waffle iron. It's an ongoing saga. I started out buying this one at Walmart. It was twice as much as the Durabrand one, but I'm a huge waffle fan, so I thought it would be worth it. It required a 3 prong plug, which I found I didn't have at counter level in my kitchen (actually I don't have any plugs at counter level, and use an extension cord,) so I cooked them on the ground. What I failed to realize is that the outside of the waffle maker is heated too. I can't figure out what possible function they have for that. People make waffles with little kids. Why would they make an appliance that burns you unless you handle it just with the little tiny handles? So I burned my arm when I reached over it for something. It burned the waffles even though you can supposedly adjust the heat, which I did to the lowest setting, and the waffles are square, which has always been a second-best waffle shape to me. Circles are tops. Anyway, it went back.

So rather than get the crappy Walmart brand which I'd done once before, and liked so much that I left it at my parents house when I moved to Salt Lake, I decided to search around. I went to a couple places before finding this one at Smith's Marketplace, (formerly Fred Meyer's), that I decided would be adequate. But I found to my horror when I opened it that the waffle patterna made a lot of little tiny divots rather than fewer deeper ones. That was totally unacceptable, so back it went.

In exasperation I bought the only other option at Smiths. This one. I was nervous about the stainless steel surface again, but it was round, and it says it has extra deep grids. So, even though it was $30, I bought it. I was so worried about the purchase that I got up at 4:00AM after tossing and turning, and started looking at it. It advertises "Cool-Touch" handles, which I think turns out meaning "extra-burning-hot other exterior surfaces". Not only that but the design makes it so that when you over fill it it leakes over at the lower handle, where there is an in-explicable opening in the plastic were the batter goes down into the interior and shorts out the controls. So, it's going back. Anyway, it's a big headache and I don't think the product I'm looking for is actually on the market right now. I've bought three other waffle irons in my life, for other people, and used two of those and the experience and product were great. I guess times have moved on.

So much for waffle makers.

I was awake anyway, so I took the early train down to Sandy to get the bus to Provo to go ride bikes with Mark, but to my chagrin, when I arrived at the bus both bike spaces were taken, and I had to wait an hour for the next bus. So I rode around and looked at houses that I'd mapped for possible purchase. But then I get lost and barely made it back in time to get the bus. This is the route I took. It rained the whole time I was riding around.

When I got to Provo I got off the bus and rode to Mark's place, and we decided to ride the Provo River Parkway from Utah Lake to Vivian Park in Provo Canyon. We read about it on a website by a guy who calls himself the Mad Scientist. He mentioned that there would be "BYU students and other young hardbodies," so we thought it was a pretty good choice. This is a picture of the guy that he put on the site. We smiled.

The sky was relatively cloudy in the north but we were trusting in the 30% from the weather service. Mark went out with his bike before me and I turned back into the apartment to get something. By the time I turned around it was a pelting downpour and Mark was instantly soaked. So that was fun. It rained off and on all day.

The website said that the trail was 14 miles long. We failed to include the ride out to Utah Lake in our estimation of the ride, and we definitely failed to take into account all the times that we'd get lost. Also, I don't really think I thought about the fact that the 14 miles was one way.

We arrived in a downpour at Vivian Park. We sat under a pavilian and talked about things like pedophilia, desert reclamation, and Daisyworld for about half an hour until the rain let up a little and started back.

At one point on 9th east we went through an intersection where a woman was stuck in the left hand turn lane in a huge stalled camper. Mark and I started trying to push her, but it was too big for us. Everyone was honking and angry, but then a father and son got out of their truck and helped us get her to the side of the road.

After we got back Mark's girlfriend, Holly, came over and Mark made some breaded fish that he'd caught on a fishing trip to Cabo San Lucas the week before. I don't like fish, and only remember enjoying eating once before, when Mark's dad Rich made it. Mark's was the second best fish I've ever had, but just not quite un-fishy tasting to enjoy. He gets an A for effort though.

Eventually they drove me to the bus stop, because I was worried I was too late to ride, (and I was pretty tired of riding anyway), and after two more hours on public transit I rode from the Trax to my apartment building just as night was falling. In the end I think my tally for the day was about 46 miles. Not bad.

That wasn't even a very interesting story to me. Oh well.

Videos from the Trail...

North of Ensign Peak...

Because Cami got the joke...

Houses and Bikes...

I spent the first week after school lying on my couch feeling crappy because I wasn't doing anything about finding a house. I guess that's not true. I spent most of the week analyzing an mls site (cityhomessaltlake.com) in minute detail trying to figure out all I could without actually calling anyone and setting up appointments to see properties. I've spent the better part of this week trying to figure out how all of this works. It turns out there doesn't seem to be much chance of me being able to buy a house without a realtor, and there doesn't seem to be much for a realtor to do until I get pre-approved for a loan, so I buckled down and got an appointment to see the mortgage lady at my credit union. I still don't know if I'm suposed to shop around for the best pre-approval.

I've been in contact with two realtors by email, one of whom is really helpful, the other of whom is horrible, but when it comes down to it, I'd far rather use someone I know and like. To this end I asked Mark LaRocco to put me in contact with his dad, Rich. He spends most of his time guiding big game hunts now, but he's still got his realty licence, and does a little now and again.

I realized yesterday that 1) I was feeling guilty for not actively doing something, which indicated that lying around for a week didn't decompress me from the recently completed teaching year (at least for me that is very necessary), and 2) that sitting around totally sedentary and alone probably wasn't a good combination for my emotional and physical health. So I went for a bike ride.

I'd been curious for a while where the end of The Avenues was, and if the mountain behind it was accessible, so I spent some time playing on Google Maps and found the highest point (that I could see right then) was Terrace Hills Dr., and that beyond it were a couple of trails. I hopped on my bike and started riding up there with the intention of locking my bike and walking up the trail to the top of the mountain. It's not a very big mountain, kind of a big hill, and the road takes you most of the way up. So this is the ride.

I think it was about when I was crossing 11th Ave. that I realized my heart was about to explode. I mean really, it was doing very unpleasant and frightening things, so I got off of my bike and lay down on the tree lawn. After it felt like it was kind of like "normal way overworked because I'm not in as good of shape as I think I am", I got back on the bike and kept riding. I was about about half way up Northcrest Dr. when I realized my heart hated me. I walked then rode, then walked, then rode the rest of the way up to the top.

When I got to the top I got off of my bike and sat on a green electricity box and contemplated locking my bike and continuing up the mountain, (which the sign informed me was part of the Bonneville Shore Line Trail). As I sat there I found that blisters were spontaneously forming on my arm where I'd burned myself a week and a half before, and on my left index finger. That seemed really weird, and kind of freaked me out. I'd never heard of strenuous exercise causing that, so I just decided to ride home. I took a slightly different route, a couple blocks down for part of it.

When I got home I mapped the route on Bikely and was disappointed to see that it only showed an 873 foot climb. I thought it was more. It felt like more. Still, that's 873 feet over 2 miles (it was 4 miles round trip). I guess that really isn't that impressive.

Pride scarred (and bored and anxious) I decided to go for another ride today. I mapped out a route that seemed to take a back utility road from just below Ensign Peak above the Staker/Parson gravel pits and over the mountain to Bountiful (I guess its actually North Salt Lake, but Bountiful sounds better). It was pretty strenuous riding up above Capitol Hill. To my credit I rode the whole way.

This ride was a much more respectable 1890 ft. climb and just under 13 miles. I shot some little videos of some of the scenic bits of the trail, and one foolishly long sequence of me riding through a meadowy part that probably looks like what ended up on the editing room floor when they were cutting Cloverfield. But this post is too long already, so maybe I'll put the videos up later.

Let it suffice to say that it was really lovely in some bits. There was a storm chasing me from the south but the mountain stopped it and it was sunny on the other side as I came down from the summit. One part I was not pleased with was that on the Salt Lake Side I had to go around a gate that rich people put up. I was (self)righteously disgusted by the wealth, but it was far worse on the other side. The development has crept up the mountain since the satellite pictures were taken for Google. It was a sea of these terrible "mini-mansions" that all look very similar, cost obscene amounts, and are terribly wasteful. I felt some pleasure to see how many of them were for sale. However, I don't doubt that in my lifetime the development on either side of the hill will grow up to the summit and join. It won't be a trail ride then; just a ride through suburb streets, that is if they don't put better gates up to keep the riff-raff out.

Oh, by the way, I've been listening to this song today, over and over.

School's Out for Summer...

So, school's over.  What now.  On Friday, our teacher check out day, I decided on the spur of the moment to go scout a route I'd come up with on bikely.com for a bike ride.  I found a road that went up a canyon from Herriman and over to Tooele.  The streetview on Google Maps showed what looked like a gentle ride up a flatish road, but didn't go all the way through.  I assumed it was because the road crosses a spur of the Camp Williams Military Reserve, and it was some kind of no-no to photograph.  So I drove it.

Bikely has a nifty elevation profile that you've seen on some of my ride maps.  I didn't bother checking it

since it looked so docile on Google Maps.  I failed to take into account that the Oquihrrs are some big freaking mountains.

Driving up it was amazing.  The road is about ten feet wide, and

 leaves the floor of the canyon to wind along the mountainside.  There are some really steep pitches with tons of hairpin curves.  It felt like driving in the Alps.  (That's a suspect statement since I've never left the continent.)  There was a lot of rock fall from the heavy rains we've been

 having, so even through the road was paved it didn't seem paved.  I definitely wouldn't want to try to ride on in on a road bike.  Also, with the curves and

 the steepness, there were a couple of close calls with other traffic.  It's really just one lane.  After one of them I had a huge adrenaline rush and wondered what I was doing there.  It was scary.

The other side of the pass isn't paved, and I was really getting scared.  I was praying that I was on the right road.  There was no sign, and there were several other roads that went elsewhere.  I just stayed with the widest one.  But after falling fast through some tight curves it levels out and becomes paved.

I drove out of the canyon and past Tooele on a country road that dropped me in Stansbury Park, just south of where you catch I-80.  I was looking to see if there was any way to get around having to ride on the freeway.  I've done it before on some of the big rides we took when I was a little kid, but now that I think of it it is kind of terrifying.  Anyway, there's no chance.  I-80 seems to be the only road that passes on the north side of the mountains.

As I was driving past I saw the exit to Saltaire and decided to go out and walk down to the water line.  I'd been to the water at the Great Salt Lake once when I was a kid and thought I'd regret it if I didn't stop for a moment.  So I did.  Walking down to the water was absolutely disgusting.  I was wearing flip-flops and my first step on the half mile long "beach" resulted in my foot sinking in really foul smelling quicksand.  This continued for a while, but eventually I made it to the water and washed my feet.  The thing was that the water smelled just as bad as the muck I'd walked through.  The lake was pretty though.  There was a rain storm that squalled over while I was there, and the water was blowing in toward me.  It wasn't like the tide you sometimes get at Bear Lake.  Rather, it looked almost like a river flowing very shallowly toward and away from me at the same time.

Anyway, on the way back my flip-flops got stuck in the muck and I had to walk back to the water to wash them off.  Then I walked back to the parkinglot barefoot.  I found a shower station at the building that I'd missed before, and washed off, but everything still smelled, and I wished I had soap.  Come to think of it I should sanitize my steering wheel and gearshift.  I used my hands to get some of the muck off.

I found that there was a really bizarre frontage road that runs from Saltaire to the Airport by driving along it.  At one point it is just a bunch of uneven unlined cement slabs.  Strangely there was a bunch of very slow moving semi-truck traffic on it.  I kept passing these weird little derelict buildings too, that were covered in graffiti.  At one point I saw a tag that one of my stranger students had put on her class binder during second term.  She'd written that it was some meaningful mark to her in one of her journals.  I wondered how she'd gotten all the way out here to make it on a chunk of cement by this road, and with whom she'd come.  I'd never heard any of the kids talk about this place.

Anyway, it was kind of a weird adventure that day.  More stuff happened, but I'm tired of writing and it wasn't as interesting as the rest.  Mostly it involved me driving around looking for houses that had for sale signs, but weren't listed.  Not much to say on that.  Then I got dinner and went home.  Oh, well.

Now I've got ten weeks stretching in front of me, and it's both far too short and far too long, and I don't know what I'm going to do.  Such is life.  My life anyway.