Other Jobs...

I forgot some jobs:

Roofer, Age 24? - Dad and I put a new roof on the cabin.  Took off everything down to the decking, then replaced it all.  Except this time instead of asphalt shingles we did an aluminum roof.

Shelving Installer, 25 - When USU decided to knock down the Sci-Tech library and re-build it with a super cool robotic shelving retrieval system, there was only one person to call.  I don't know that person.  There were a bunch of shelves in the that weren't part of the robot system.   They were done by a firm here in Salt Lake called Heinricksen-Butler?  Anyway, I got hired on to a temp crew to do them.  It was me and three other guys working under this black guy named Ivan.  He had something going on with his lower lip.  It looked like he'd just been punched really hard.  He was a funny guy.  Really nice.  He'd just joined the church and married a mormon girl.  On this job I did my first and only overnight work travelling.  We did about three fourths of the shelves at the new South Jordan Library by the Harmons on 17th West and a little past 104th south.  They put us up in individual rooms at the Crystal Inn.  Wow.

Writing Center Tutor, 23-26 - I spent three semesters I think at the end of my second tour through USU working in the Writing Center.  It was in the basement of the English Building, on the south side of the quad, kitty corner to Old Main.  We counseled English 1010 and 2010 students on how to write their papers.  Also we were periodically given individual responsibility for College of Education students who were trying to pass the written test for the Secondary or Elementary graduation requirement.  I counseled a guy named Colby who was majoring in technical education.  He'd already failed the test twice when he was assigned to me.  He was one of those guys who grew up in the sticks, who never had much use for literacy, but now found himself in a hard spot.  He was a really good guy, and I'm sure he's made a great teacher.  It was a rough go though because the education department only let you take the test three times, and if you failed you weren't awarded a degree.  Pretty awful considering the students who were taking it had just spent four years and many thousands of dollars to get to that point.  Colby obviously had some learning disabilities, so we found some workarounds for his problems that got him through it.

Employment History...

I was sitting here trying to remember all the jobs I'd had, so I thought I'd work up a list.  Here it goes.

Moving Pipe, Age 6 to 9 - Don't know if it was really a job.  Mostly it was Steve Theurer's job, and I tagged along.  His dad paid me anyway.  It was only pocket change.  We used to ride our bikes, or very ocasionally their three-wheeler down to the farm, about two blocks away.  We'd move the sprinkler pipes up and down the upper and lower fields, one row at a time.  There were about four or five aluminum pipes, about 12 feet long each and maybe three inches in diameter.  There were like four runs of pipe per field, that connected to plugs, and rows would alternate pulgs, so we'd move the row to the next two plugs up and seal the old one.  I think we earned 7 cents a pipe.  It was enough to keep us in soda refills of our Maveric Mugs.  25 cents a piece.  We'd just mix all the non-caffinated drinks on the fountain.  Sometimes I'd get daring and add caffinated Mt. Dew.

Dishwasher, Age 16 - I worked one night at the Copper Mill washing dishes.  I got the job through a kid I was kind of freindly with at school.  I think his name was Kenny Fluckinger.  Anyway, he was talking about how he was quiting the job in the locker room at school and I over heard him and asked if he'd introduce me and put in a good word.  I went in and met him there, and he introduced me to the line cook.  He gave me the job on the spot and told me to be there to work the next day.  The next afternoon Sue, my swim coach, pulled me aside and told me she was worried that I'd have to miss practices to work there.  She said if I quit then went through the guard program she'd give me a job at the pool.  I went in and worked that night because I didn't want to leave them un-staffed for the shift.  I earned more that night than I'd ever earned in one day.  More than minimum wage, which was $4.25 at the time I think.  I think I earned like $5 an hour.

Lifeguard, Age 16-19 - I worked at the pool for three years in high school.  We'd guard in I think 20 minute intervals.  In the off time we'd clean.  Sue was obsessive about cleanliness.  Her house was crazy clean.  This was considerable since she spent about 14 or 15 hours a day at school and the pool.  To think she went home then and cleaned two or three hours each day, and still graded papers was amazing.  Actually, a lot of times I ended up grading papers for her.  I don't know if that was really all right, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time that she trusted me enough to grade the papers of people ahead of me in school.  Anyway, we also taught swim lessons in the summer.  I really, really liked working with little kids.  I also periodically taught aquasize classes, so I got to work with senior citizens too.  The old ladies loved me.  I really made them lift those thighs.  They said that the girls always took it too easy on them.  But I felt no pity.  Infirmity be damned!  I think I started at like $6.50 guarding, then went up to $7.50 when I became a head guard.  We got like $8.00 for swim lessons, and $25.00 I think for private lessons.

Baker, 21 - I got a job at The Old Gristmill on 4th North in Logan soon after my mission.  I went to a ton of places that I thought I might like working and asked for applications.  I had been trying to apply at Hastings (they weren't hiring) and I went into The Old Gristmill on a whim.  Andrea? Turley, a girl from the 5th ward before it split into the 10th, was behind the counter, and when I asked if they were hiring and she took me into the back I ran into Elder Ballard (Steve?), an AP from my mission.  They were looking for a mixer, and they both gave me good references.  The bosses were Val someone, who was really cool, and Curtis Heaton, who was a little harder to like.  Val gave me a job on the spot.  The pay was I think $8.25 an hour.  I was the first into the store at 4AM, where I would turn on the oven, and start mixing up the doughs for the day.  Lots of good stuff.  The guys were mixers, and the girls did everything else.  It was sometimes hard for the girls to move sixty pound bags of flour and 90 pounds mixing bowls of dough.  I wasn't great at it.  I'd lose track of measurements.  They tried me out baking, and I'd space timing and sometimes I'd miss the baking tray as it spun around.  That meant it would go a couple minutes too long.  They'd be a little over done.  Not bad, but it's all about consistancy in a bakery like that.  So they moved me off mixing, and I did customer service.  Not as interesting.  They didn't fire people.  They just gave them fewer and fewer hours till they quit.  And I did eventually, because I couldn't afford to work there any more.

Deck Builder, 21 (or 22?) - The deck on the cabin collapsed under a big snow load that year, so Mom and Dad wanted something new for the family reunion.  I read a lot of books, designed it, and (over) built it with dad that summer.  My first real-ish construction experience.  I don't remember what they paid me.  Maybe $8.00 an hour.

Cell Phone Salesman, 22 or 23? - I got this job through Mace Johnson.  Diamond Wireless, in the Pinecrest Shopping Village on 14th North in Logan.  We had to work a shift in the store each week, but mostly it was what I think is called "outside sales".  We got paid totally on commission.  I think we made $40 or $50 on each plan sale.  We sold for Verizon wireless, but we weren't the factory store, so that was kind of weird.  Sales sales sales.  I could sell, but mostly I felt guilty when I did, because I really didn't believe in the product.  Cell phones were just becoming the thing, but I didn't think they were really a good thing for most people.  People were using them as fashion, and I didn't think they would fullfil the lifestyle promise they dangled.  Now everyone spends $100+ a month on smart phones, and I still don't think they are necessarily good for people.  I have a prepaid cell phone myself.  I spend about $15 a month.  I spent the whole summer working there.  I never really liked it much.

Unpaid Intern, 23 - I did an internship with one of my tech writing professors.  I didn't get paid.  I also didn't learn much.  I also wasn't very usefull to they guy.  Probably a good thing I wasn't getting paid.

Rock Wall Builder 23? - Mom wanted a rock wall where the rock garden was between the terraces.  So I read a bunch of books and designed something for her, and did a mock up with photoshop.  And they gave me the job.  I ended up spending almost the whole summer digging the foundation.  It was a huge amount of excavation, and doing it by hand alone was insane.  They wasted a ton of money paying me to dig and dig and dig with a hammer and crowbar, a mattock and shovel.  It took forever because it turns out that it was part of the old course of Spring Creek, and the ground was packed with river rock.  In the end Dad and I built the wall out of block, and faced it with stones we dug out of the foundation and split there in the yard.  I wasn't super pleased with the top cap.  It was too slumpy.  I wish I'd made a better mold.  They paid me $8 an hour again.

Parts Picker, 23? - When I graduated with my degree in tech writing I couldn't get a job to save my life.  I remember talking to Peter about it, asking his advice on how to deal with the rejection.  He said he didn't know, because he'd never failed to get a job he'd applied for.  Awesome.  I had committed to move into a house with Mark LaRocco and Devin Healey in Logan, and I didn't have any money to pay rent.  It was terrifying, and I needed to make some cash.  So I went to Don Pence, who was in charge of shipping for Proform, or whatever the exercise machine company is called now, and asked for a job.  He gave it to me.  Minimum wage, $7.25, right out of college.  I was amazingly stressed and super anxious.  Then the night I moved into the house I had the biggest anxiety attack of my life.  I spent the next week lying on my back on Mom and Dad's couch.  The anxiety attack never abated, until the fifth day when I was proscribed Xanax for the first time.  Like magic.  It was good for about thirty minutes of sleep at a time.  On the eighth day I went back to the house and spent my first night there.  I didn't sleep for the first five days of that anxiety attack, didn't drink anything for the first three days, and didn't eat for seven.  I lost 25 pounds.  And I never showed up for my first day of work.  So did I really have the job?

Substitute Teacher, 23-25 - I started substitute teaching because I had kind of been interested in teaching forever, but avoided it as a major because I was afraid I wouldn't make enough money to support a family.  Now I wasn't married and I didn't have prospects and I kind of felt like maybe it was a mistake not to consider it in the first place anyway.  So I gave substitute teaching a go.  And I liked it a lot.  They paid us I think $45 a day.  Doesn't seem really good.  Can that be right?  That's like $5.65.  Jeez.

Sprint PCS Customer Service, 25-26 - Going to the phones.  It's the old standby in Logan.  Chad Rawlinson and Mark LaRocco were working at Convergy's and the money wasn't bad.  $8.25 an hour, plus little bonuses for sales.  I made a fair amount on sales.  It was all pretty underhanded stuff.  Again I felt like I was fooling people into buying stuff they didn't need.  And I was really decieving them this time.  These were the "Clear Pay" customers, which is to say people with credit so bad no one else would give them a phone plan.  They had a $125 credit limit on their accounts, which they were constantly bumping up against.  So their phones would get cut off and they'd call us furious that they couldn't make calls.  We'd tell them if they made a small payment to get themselves under the $125 limit we could get their phones on and we'd even throw in free internet service for a month.  We'd get the commission, and they would forget to cancel it before they'd get charged the next month, which would take them over the limit, and they'd call back furious.  And we'd give them a free month of texting, and take the commision on it.  Clever, huh?  I was good at talking people into it, and unlike a lot of the people I'd even tell the customer that they would have to pay for it after the first month.  That's what made me feel like I could actually deal with working there.

Web Designer, 26 - I did a page for Josh and Joe Chambers' law practice.  I don't think it ever saw the light of day.  It was pretty basic.  The web was really changing right then.  I was doing what I could with basic Dreamweaver knowledge, but the fact of the matter was that there were a lot of new services coming out then that were offering web hosting and basic web templates that would have been comparable to what I gave them.  In the end I don't think they used either option.  At that point I was looking for teaching jobs anyway, and I wasn't that into it.

Rock Wall Builder Part 2, 27 - After Mom and Dad got back from their first mission in Brazil, Mom wanted the other side of the terrace done in a rock wall.  So Dad and I did it.  This time they paid Mike Cooper to come in and excavate it and lay the foundation.  What took me almost a whole summer took him an afternoon.  The rest was pretty much the same, but we worked faster and did it better.  I think it is a much more attractive wall too.  I think they were paying $8 an hour again, but as often as not I didn't collect.  I didn't need the money, and I liked feeling like I was giving something back to my parents.

High School Teacher, 26-32 - I applied for about 12 teaching jobs, interviewed for about maybe 10.  I had soft offers from three other schools.  One was a middle school in Afton Wyoming.  I didn't want to live in Afton Wyoming.  I thought the chances of finding someone to marry in Afton Wyoming was about 0.000%  Another offer was from a high school in Knab Utah.  Same problem.  You don't move to Knab unless you have a family and you're settling down.  The other was from a kind of American fundementalist charter school in Salem Utah.  So besides the lack of where-withall, I'm pretty sure I'd be really out of place there.  These fundementalist charters are really springing up in Utah right now.  I don't get it, but it seems like they can't go straight up Mormon, so they go with the thing they worship almost as much, The American Revolution.  Why has it become so popular and romanticized around here?  It's not even the constitution they like.  It's the patriotism.  It's just weird to me.  Especially considering the Mormon church ran away from the United States to what was Mexico with angry mobs at their backs.  It was just our luck that the United States caught up with us.  Anyway, I spent five years at EHHS earning the princely sum of $28,000 a year.  I started at $27,500 and got bumped up to $28,000 after the first year.  We all stopped getting raises that year.  The pay stayed the same for the next four.  Not bad for a single guy, but around the bottom of the pay scale for full time high school teachers.  I taught English classes for all grades but the freshmen, and after the first year I took over yearbook and the media center.  But that's over now.

So.  What's next?

Before and After...

Before:

My first bike.  A 2007 (or 2008?) Suzuki GZ250.  I'm not sure why I decided I wanted to start riding motorcycles.  I think it was about the gas mileage.  

I bought the bike from an ex-BYU Idaho Public Health professor who was dying of bone cancer.  It was priced way under Blue Book.  $1700?  I think.  I bought it in December 2010, and went up to Cache Valley to learn to ride from Mike Forsberg every other weekend or so.  

I got my licence in February and rode it back to Salt Lake in the second week of that month.  It was the first time I'd been on the highway.  First time I'd gone over 35 mph.  I left Cache Valley at dusk, Mark LaRocco following me in my car as I pushed it to its limit up Wellsville Canyon.  I couldn't do the speed limit.  And I knew I had no chance of making it on the freeway.  I rode in a hoodie, my rainbow vest, mittens and a half-helmet.  Coldest ride of my life.

I rode the bike almost every day, even through the winter.  When I sold it to one of my students from East Hollywood in May of 2012 I'd put, I think five and a half thousand miles on it.  I sold it because it really just couldn't hack it on the freeway.  I'd ride down I-15, and merge onto the 21st South freeway every day on my way to work, and back the same way.  There were so many close calls at the merge with careless drivers coming from I-80.  At 65mph there was no acceleration left, so those close calls involved me slamming the brakes and hoping there was space behind the careless merger.  It was a terrifying affair.  I'd always end up frantically going for the horn, but I'd only end up hitting the lights.  It didn't matter if I did get the horn, because at freeway speeds not even I could hear it.

There was one time in the spring when I was feeling good, returning from work.  I'd come off the entrance at 32nd West onto the 201.  I had the accelerator pegged, coming over that small hill after the entrance to I-215.  I felt like I was flying.  And right at the top of the hill I looked to my right and saw a cop pointing his speed laser right at me.  My right wrist was cranked, and I knew in that instant I was had.  Then I looked at the speedometer and realized I was going five miles under the speed limit.  And so it went.

And so it went.  I sold it for $1700.  In the end I'd only paid for gas, insurance, a couple oil changes and filters, a bigger front sprocket and some brake pads.  Not bad.

It wasn't until I'd test ridden a bunch of other bikes looking for something new that I realized what I'd had in the little Suzi.  It was a great runner.  Smooth power band.  Light and maneuverable.  And it got 75mpg.  If only it had had a little more top end.  

After:

Bought this 2009 KLR650 in the middle of June 2012.  It was again quite a deal. Priced at $4200 it was $300 below the NADA average value, and it came with saddle bags, a collapsible trunk bag and a tank bag.  And it only had a little over 2500 miles on it.  In the spring, 09's with tens of thousands of miles were selling for up to five hundred over the NADA average without any extras.  When we were discussing price, the guy dropped his asking price to $4000 without being prompted.  He just seemed scared of riding.  Spooked.

I came back and picked it up the next day.

Unfortunately I haven't really warmed up to it.  It's tall.  Too tall really for me, although I'm relatively comfortable with it now.  But there are still moments where I have to make a short stop because of a driver trying to beat the right of way through an intersection, and I put my foot down to find the ground missing.  It doesn't take a deep gutter, or steep incline for it to be father than I can reach.  And I'm on the lowest setting on the rear shock.  

Not only that, but setting the sag so low seems to make the kickstand too long.  It is standing almost level on level ground.  Unfortunately the kick stand is on the left and roads almost all slope considerably down to the gutter.  It causes problems for parking.  I really have to push it over on the stand and hope there are no strong breezes.

And that's not the only time breezes are problematic.  It presents a copious amount of surface area to the wind when it is coming from the side.  There have been a couple times on the freeway when gusts have pushed me into the next lane at 80mph, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The freeway is a problem.  I bought the bike with ideas of long rides.  California, then maybe up the coast to Seattle.  But it only takes fifteen minutes for the vibes to numb my hands.  And twenty more for the numbness to creep into my shoulders.

But the power is good.  A little off road capability is nice.  The mileage isn't horrible if I don't push it.  I got 57.5mpg out of the last tank.  And the insurance is lower than any other 650 except maybe a DR650 or an XR650L.  So I'll stick with it.  At least until next spring. Then I might be able to sell it for a profit.  

I've already put about 1500 miles on it.

The Other Before:

This is a year of concentrated beard growing.

After:

This is five minutes of scissors and clipping.