Police Auction...

So, I still haven't bought a truck.  I've gone and looked at some, but just haven't found anything I wanted to buy.  Mike Forsberg was kind enough to go look at this '89 Ranger for me out in Clarkston, and report back to me so that I didn't have to drive up there.  I feel a little iffy about it, but I think I'm probably going to buy it.  I just can't wait around anymore looking for the perfect deal.  I mean, I think that my hesitation so far has even been more about hesitation itself than about the trucks.  Probably better to just bite the bullet.  I keep trying to tell myself that the trucks I've looked at have only cost a fraction of what I paid for my motorcycle, so I shouldn't be so uptight.  But I'm still me, so what can you do.

Anyway, I went out to the salvage auction again today and looked at a couple of trucks.  There was a bright orange '89 F150 that I thought about bidding on, but when I got out there I found that if they'd had a key for it, it was now lost, and that the doors and hood were locked, and that the passenger side door didn't even have key mechanism in it.  So I looked at the undercarriage and it all seemed to be there, with about the amount of rust you'd expect for an '89.  Maybe a little bit more.  Oh well.

Then  I went out to the police auction, which starts after the viewing on the salvage auction, but before the bidding.  I was worried that they would charge for registration at the police auction, but they didn't.  You just had to show your driver's licence and they gave you a number.

The police auction was full of interesting characters.  Mostly they were hispanic men dressed in cheap flashy clothes.  There were even portions of hard, angry looking guys and jovial smilers among them.  Later it became apparent that the smilers were dangerous in the bidding.  A couple of them would start bidding after it got down to two guys fighting up the price, then one dropped out.  The winner of that first combat would have relief written all over him, and it would be going once, going twice, then one or two of the smilers would bid it up $20 more.  The guy would look stunned, then keep bidding.  The smilers would laugh, and read the other bidder's expression, then let him get it, after a few more jumps.

There was one smiler though who was doing it and unexpectedly won the truck I'd initially been interested in.  He grinned ruefully as he walked up to the shed, and his buddies all laughed at him.  I laughed a little too.  He seemed like a happy guy.  I'd spoken to the auctioneer earlier and he said these two or three guys would drive it up for fun like that and every once in a while they got stuck with something, and would just sell it on later at a small loss.  They were there every week.

There were also a couple of guys I think were Armenian.  At least I overheard someone say that they were.  I guess they were regulars too, and were pretty close dealers.  They stood together and bid viciously, looking furiously at the auctioneer and no one else as they stabbed their placards up in bidding wars.  They bid on two late '90's Chevy Impalas, and won one of them.  They left after getting their claim ticket.

Then there were a few white trash guys, who weren't together, but strangely all had women with them.  Both male and female they looked like methheads, bodies about 40 years older than their age.  The guys were all bald ontop, but had long greasy or frizzy strings of hair down around their shoulders.  And invariably, the women wore taktops and sweatpants and the men wore tshirts with the sleeves cut off.  And they were all sunburned.

And there were a couple of other white guys, young and it looked like half-way hipsters.  They were both goofy, but not in that way that has been embraced by the hipsters, rather just regular goofy.  They had spotted faces and their grins were guileless.  One of them won one of the Impalas after a bidding war with the Armenians that took the price over a thousand dollars.

There was a slick looking black fellow in a silk tshirt who lost the first lot, a huge '70's cabin cruiser boat with faded Nevada tags, to a fat old white fellow who looked a little bewildered at the end of their bidding war.  He looked like a first timer too.  Someone's grandpa who had somehow seen this boat and fallen for it.  The black fellow was bidding for a third party on the telephone, and both he and the old guy went higher and higher.  Everyone else dropped our around $450, but those two went on in $20 increments up to $1680.  When the black fellow ran out of juice he frowned with one side of his mouth and shrugged, then said goodbye to whomever was on the other side of his phone.  The old man was wearing a fleece sweater with a picture of forest, mountains and a sliver moon on a snowy night.  I don't think he entirely believed what he'd just done.

The belle of the ball though was this truck.  It was a '99 Mazda truck, a 4 cylinder manual.  Pretty much just was I'd have liked to buy.  It looks pretty good in the picture, but the description said it had been impounded as evidence.  That might mean that someone had stolen it and gotten caught, but the owner didn't claim it after, or... something else.

Turns out, this time it was something else.  You can't really see it from the picture, but in person the something else became obvious.  That scuff in the racing stripe is a bullet hole.  There are three more in the windshield.  The rear window and the passenger's window are both broken out, and the they are sealed up with plastic that is peppered with stickers that warn of biohazard.  The bed was also sealed with plastic, with the stickers.  It seems that bits of scalp, skull, brains and blood were dried up in there.  There was dried blood on the seat backs, and a large, rumpled piece of butcher's paper covered the bottom part of the driver's seat.  When I asked the cop walking around the lot about it, she said that was where most of the blood had pooled, and that the sphincters had gone in death, so there was feces and urine.

It all belonged to this girl.  Apparently, she and a girl friend had been on a spree of between 9 and 12 armed robberies all over the valley.  I guess it was mostly restaurants at the end of busy nights, and supermarkets.  Initially the police thought it was a guy and a girl, because this one went in and did the robberies while the other drove.  I guess she was kind of big, and she wore a disguise with a top hat, and Groucho Marx glasses, with the nose, eyebrows, and mustache   But in one of the later robberies witnesses identified her as a female when they heard her speak to a restaurant hostess.

She was killed when the police went to serve a warrant on her.  She jumped into the truck and tried to hit the officers.  Also, either she or the other girl had shot at a West Jordan officer at one of the last robberies when he got into a foot chase with her.  So when she went after the cop with the truck they just opened fire.  There were a few bullet holes in the back passenger's side too, and the truck had mashed into a parked car in the street after she'd been hit.  This happened over by Liberty Park.

Her partner was arrested at the Smith's on 8th south and 9th east I think, after having come from robbing another supermarket.  The cops called her on her cell phone and told her they knew where she was, and that they were coming to the store to get her.  She gave herself up.

The dead girl's father couldn't believe it.  He admitted she'd had a heroin problem years ago, but he thought she was clean, and had been for a long time.  She made a living painting murals, and was renting a house.  She played bass at their church services and taught sunday school.

Her mother had asked the other girl not to come around anymore in the old days, because she was still using after the dead girl had been arrested for heroin and had gone to rehab.  The dad didn't know that they'd been hanging out together again.

Kind of a sad story.  They were a few years older than me.

That grinning latino guy got the truck by accident for four hundred dollars.

The Salvage Auction...

So a few days ago I bid online on a 1991 Chevy S10 on a national salvage auction site.  They have a local lot by the railroad tracks, across the street from the refinery.  I didn't go look at it.  It was kind of a spur of the moment thing.  They said it ran and moved under it's own power when it hit the lot, and I thought it was worth a try.  The best bid was $400, and I bid $425.  Six seconds later I had won.  Oh, happy day.

Then, I found out this auction had a minimum price that the seller had set.  It was $550.  They had the option for 24hrs to approve the sale at my $425, or I could just pay the $550.  I decided to stay at the $425, and wait to see if they went for it.  They didn't, and it was to go back to auction today.

This time I decided to go out there and look at it to see if I thought it was worth $550.  I got there late, and didn't know my member registration number, but they looked it up and let me out into the lot.  It was kind of fun.  You walk around in this enormous muddy lot full of rows and rows of smashed up vehicles.  Some of them are whole, like the one that I was thinking of bidding on.  They are usually ones that have been donated to some charity that contracts with the auction company to sell them.

So I went out and poked around, and eventually found the truck.  It was terrible.  In way worse shape than it had appeared in the pictures, and when I opened it up and put the key in it wouldn't start up. The frame was straight, but super rusty.  And the front tires were almost totally bald.  I'm not speaking hyperbolically.  You almost couldn't see any tread, except in the middle.  Bad, bad shape.  And worst of all, it wasn't a manual transmission, like it said in the ad.

Also, the instruments in the dash are about the grimmest, most terribly dull design I've ever seen.  Seriously.  it's the Soviet apartment bloc of vehicle interiors.

The other truck I was considering was in even worse shape.  It looked like a complete derelict.  It seemed like one of those cars that gets left to rust away at the edge of a field.  You couldn't even get in to try the engine, which like the other was supposed to run, because the door handles didn't work.

I did however find a 1979 Ford F150, with an amazing, though austere interior.  I love the old gauges.  They are so much cooler.  And even though dash boards now are made of soft plastics and rubbers so your face doesn't split open when you crash, I so much prefer the look of the steel dash.  In fact, everything about the looks of the truck were better than what you see today.

So I stuck the key in and turned, figuring that given it was as old as I was, and had obviously not been maintained or refurbished  that I wouldn't even get spark, but it started right up and ran beautifully.

If only I could get past the fact that I'd be lucky to get gas mileage in the low teens from it.  I'd definitely have preferred it to any of the others.  Not only do I prefer the style of these old trucks, I like that they are so simple.  I look at vehicles today and all I see are networks upon networks of gadgets that can break.  And even though they aren't necessary to the essential function of the vehicle, if they break the can render it undriveable, or at the very least, unsaleable.

I'd be very happy to just have something that was just an engine, some gauges, windows you can open and close, a heater, and that's all.  I don't even need a stereo.  I'm happy to listen to my little mp3 player.

Oh well.  I'd better go back to the classifieds, because I can't get over that gas mileage thing.

Beardless...

Yesterday I was cutting my hair, standing there looking in the bathroom mirror, and decided to cut it all off.  Well, not the eyebrows.  Or the little bit under my lower lip.  I haven't cut that bit since my mission.  And I haven't shaved my eyebrows since... never?

It's been two years since I've been totally beardless.  The first counselor at church today said he thought it looked good, but I think it makes my face look too short.  Like it needs a couple more inches on the bottom.  I think it's also the fact that my neck has gotten thicker and saggier.  Aging.  What can you do?

Anyway.  Here's my face.

Oh.  And Scooter is officially gone.  I sold the car to the Pull and Save.  I contacted six different scrap yards, but the Pull and Save bid the highest.  The guy hassled me a little about the title, but we worked it out.  It was a little bit of a do to get it to the lot.  It's out by Magna, and I'd siphoned most of the gas out of the tank.  There should have been a couple gallons left, but I found out that the fuel pump doesn't go all the way down into the tank.  And there was a lot of rusty sludge down in the bottom.

Anyway, I only got two blocks away before I ran out of gas.  I'd arranged with Mark LaRocco to meet me there and give me a ride back, so I was really worried about the time.  I ran home as fast as I could, and got the gas can and strapped it on my motorcycle and went back down there.  I put about a gallon of what I'd siphoned out back in.  I also sloshed a bunch all over.

Gas cans are horrible these days.  They have these new nozzles mandated by California law.  They have preventative emissions and safety measures, which make it almost impossible to get any gas out of them.  I disabled two of the three, but there is a little plastic bit on the end that is supposed to make it open a little spring loaded gate in the nozzle when the weight of the gas depresses the nozzle end.

Unfortunately the plastic bit hits the edge of the gas tube before the nozzle makes it in to the little trap door that guards the gas tube.  So the weight of the gas in the can on the catch depresses the nozzle and opens the spring loaded trap door in the nozzle, opening it up and dumping gas all over in the mouth of the fill tube.  Problem.

So you have to wrangle the can and nozzle in a weird way to get them all the way into the fill tube.  It's just irritating.

Anyway, I put in a gallon of what I'd painstakingly siphoned out, and got on the road.  Then it started dying again by the time I got to the 21st south freeway.  So I got off and put another gallon in at a gas station.  By the time I finally got to the Pull and Save I was half an hour later than I told Mark I would be.  Luckily he got lost, and arrived only a couple minutes before me.

It was nice of Mark to drive me back.  He had Jameson with him, and they came in for a few minutes.  These few minutes were enough to teach me that I have the least toddler-proof apartment in the world.  Mostly we just chased him from one dangerous or delicate thing to another until it became obvious that it was time to go.

That was a long and rambling post.

Siphoning...

For three days I've been trying to siphon gas out of the Hyundai's tank.  I foolishly filled it up right before the registration ended.  It is I found out very, very difficult or maybe impossible to get a siphon hose down the gas filling tube in a modern car.  There is a little plastic blocker tied to the housing with springs.  The weight of the gas coming down the tube pushes the blocker down the tube just enough for the gas to fill around it.  But it doesn't really open up enough for a siphon hose to get past it.  At least I wasn't able to make it happen.

Just in case you'd somehow missed it, siphoning gas is a huge pain.  And if you're doing it in a small tight garage it is even worse.  I spent about three hours today pulling up the back seat in the Hyundai, prying off a sealed plate, pulling out the fuel pump, and siphoning gas out the top of the tank.  I did it a gallon at a time with a cheap piece of crap siphon I bought at walmart.  The siphon didn't work at first because it didn't seal where the hoses connected to the pump ball.  I had to take cut up strips of bicycle inner tube and wrap them up and zip tie them on tight to create a seal.

For reasons I don't understand the gas came out of the Hyundai at a trickle that filled the gallon jug I was using in about twenty minutes or half an hour per go.  And there was a lot of fiddling to get it to work each time in the first place.  Then I would transfer the gallon to the Mazda, and that would go fast, but take a while to set up.  And always there were unexpected gas leaks as the pump or the hoses dribbled unseen bits of gas.  So pretty much it got on everything.  What a mess.  But what can you do?  I'm not taking the Hyundai to the scrap yard full of gas.  I finally contacted them and they offered $450 for it.  No sense giving them $35 of gas along with it.

The Grind...

So.  For a long, few weeks I've been working on a tree.  It is a Chinese Elm.  It was my neighbor's tree.  I cut 2/3rds of it down, with his permission of course.  It was quite tall.  Perhaps fifty or sixty feet tall, and the 2/3rds that I cut down were overhanging where I am planning to build my shed.  I was a little worried about it dropping on it, since it seemed to drop branches quite regularly.  There were always dead ones.

I've been working on it for far too long.  Usually about four hours at a time in the afternoons.  Cutting up the big stuff was a job, but doing the little stuff is far worse.  I might be foolish, but I've hoped to build a jtube rocket mass heater and I thought binding the twigs together I might burn them in bundles.  I have no idea if that would work, but we'll see.  I'd rather that than spend a bunch of money hauling and disposing of them at the dump.  Really, it is I would imagine eight or nine truck loads of twigginess.

Also, in the background of some of these pics you can see the chainlink fence I built.  Honestly I've been meaning to put pictures up on my blog for some time, but I keep forgetting my camera each time I go out to Magna.  But then, this time I forgot to shoot the fence specifically.  Oh well.

Cars...

I'm thinking that the Hyundai has finally had it.  It's time for it to go to that good rest that awaits all vehicles, the Pick and Save.  My parents bought the Hyundai in I think 2003(ish ?) from Larry Knowles.  He was one of my dad's counselors in the bishopric, and rehabilitates cars and sells them on the side of his fencing business.  It was relatively new.  A '98 I think.  It had lived the first few years of it's life in Reno Nevada, where one unfortunate day it was rear ended by a truck with a lift kit.  It mashed the trunk lid and busted the rear lights.  Might have crunched the rear side fenders some.  

Hyundai's now are different from Hyundai's then.  They're really competing, and in some models, beating the Japanese brands in quality.  But then, even though it was a relatively new car, and the damage was cosmetic, there was just no resale value.  Especially not for a base model Accent with a salvage title.  So the insurance company wrote it of as totaled, and sold it to a scrapper.  Larry Knowles bought it from them, slapped some new body parts on it and sold it to us.

I actually quite liked it.  It was obviously a gas sipper.  And it wasn't cool by any stretch of the imagination.  But it had a little zip.  Not much, but a little.  And the gas mileage was really quite good.  I usually got between 30 and 35mpg, depending on my town to highway driving ratio.

But there were always some problems.  I don't know if it was from the accident it suffered, or just that it was really kind of a low quality auto.  There were always gremlins in the electrics.  Especially the dash lights.  The check engine light would go on and off and on and off, and after taking it to the dealership, and the mechanic, and the tester at autozone, basically, no one thought there was anything wrong with it.  Except that the check engine light was busted.

And, not long after we got it the solenoid crapped out.  We got that fixed.

Then the reverse light switch went out, so my reverse lights wouldn't go on when I was backing up.  We took it to the dealership to have it fixed.  Bad idea.  They charged about a hundred dollars to reach in, pull a wire, unscrew the old switch, screw in the new switch, and plug the wire back in.  A hundred bucks is the price of ignorance I guess.  I ended up doing it myself about six years later when that switch burned out.

While it was at the dealership they tested and found out that there was a leak somewhere in the line for the air conditioning.  I'd known that the air conditioning didn't really work well, but didn't care because I never ever used it.  It reduces gas mileage, and cars have windows.  Yeah.  I know having the windows open reduces gas mileage too, but not as much.  And a lot of times I would just sweat it with the windows closed.  I'm weird that way.  Comfort isn't worth money to me a lot of times.

Anyway, the mechanic at the dealership said that if Cache Valley ever started requiring emissions checks, it wouldn't pass because of the air conditioning leak.  So there was that.

Also, about three or four years ago that fuel gauge died.  It kind of died.  When you filled the tank it would go up to half on the gauge.  Then it would go down to nothing and stay there for about half a tank.  Eventually the gas light would come on, and it was pretty reliable.  It was the only light in the dash cluster that worked reliably.

One that didn't was the oil light.  This was problematic, because somewhere along the way about a year back, a seal somewhere failed.  And I started burning oil.  And the oil light failed to go on.  And I ran it pretty near dry before I figured out something was wrong.  It almost certainly burned up the rings on the piston heads, which ruined compression.  The dumb thing was that I didn't realize how bad the oil burning was, and almost ran it out again just driving home to salt lake.  Again, burning the rings.  I was careful after that to always keep an eye on the oil level.  But the damage was done.

Anyway, despite the problems the car still runs.  Surprisingly.  It just doesn't want to die.  It is in terrible cosmetic condition.  There is exterior damage from two separate hit and run accidents in parking lots.  The pain was always crap, so there are scratches from the slightest brushes by bushes, your clothes, pretty much any other surface that contacts it.  The paint has peeled on the front bumper, grill and hood from insects crashing though the paint at freeway speed.  And I actually wore a hole all the way through the carpet where my heel rested in front of the gas pedal within the first couple years of owning it.  But it still runs.  And I'll drive it to the scrapper.

Yes, I am a man I must assure you, before I admit that in my head, and never spoken aloud... I gave the car a name.  It think it fair to disclose it now as it goes to its demise.  I named the car Scooter.

Like motorcyclists pull up to a light next to a scooter rider and smile patronisingly in their helmets, so might other motorists who pull up next to the Hyundai smirk.  But like it's namesake, though shamefully under-powered and somewhat shameful to be seen with, in town it is cheap, manuverable and even, at times, fun.

There's an adage something to the effect that it is more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.  And such has been the case with the Hyundai.

Surprisingly, (or not?), over the ten years I've been driving it, despite several trips to California, and other such distant locals, I only put about forty thousand miles on it.  It's going to it's grave having only run just over eighty thousand miles.

Can that be right?  I'd go out to the garage and double check it but I don't care that much.

Anyway, goodbye to Scooter.  I'm now looking for a small truck to use through the construction process.  Hopefully I'll find something cheap.

Raisin Bran, Bikes and Visits to the Great Outdoors...

This week I got confused and thought that Friday was Saturday.  I went out to the lot and cut down the rest of the wild rose brambles.  It wasn't terribly easy, because it is the nature of  wild rose to grow outward from the stem.  That means you have to try to crouch down in the six inches of snow and try to work into the stems through the hanging, thorny ends that seem determined to poke you in your bald scalp and face.  Then you cut them as close to the ground as you can without dipping your trusty circular saw (totally what it was made for) in the snow, where it will melt some with the hot electric motor, short and shock the crap out of you.  Then when you have cut the stalk you try to avoid the thorns as it falls directly on top of you.

Awesome job.  Anyway, I finished with them.  By the end I was absurdly cold.  It was in the high teens.

Later that night, I got an amazing hankering for Raisin Bran.  I don't know why.  But I went to Smith's to get some, and made it just before they closed at midnight.  I bought two boxes, and went home.  I got really tired though and fell asleep without opening one.  The next morning, which I eventually realized was Saturday, I opened a box and found this.

Yup.  That's as full as the bag was inside the box.  I looked at the net weight and started laughing.  8oz.  Oh well.  They were only about $1.75 a box.  And each was almost enough for two bowls.  So it goes.

After that I jumped on my bike on the rollers, and watched... I can't remember.  I usually watch foreign films while I ride my bike, because I can read the subs and not have to turn up the volume to irritating levels to understand the dialogue over the noise of the bike and rollers.  This time I watched some action movie that I'd seen a thousand times, so I didn't need dialogue.

But I hit a milestone with the ride.  1000 miles since I put the odometer on the bike.  Not too bad.  Except I think I put the odometer on almost two years ago.  It looks like 10000 in the picture, but there is a decimal point before the last zero.  So.  Maybe not so impressive.  Oh well.

I decided to go out to the lot and tackle putting the wire fabric on the fence.  It has taken me way too long to get to this point.  And I feel bad, because it means Tony's been waiting on it for a really long time.  I don't know why I have been so anxious about it.  It's just one of those things that stresses you out and you start putting it off.  That's happened to me a fair amount lately.  I get this feeling that I have to be prepared before I try some things.  It has to feel right.  I don't know what makes it right.  It is the reason that I'm always ready to go anywhere I have an appointment fifteen minutes before I need to leave, but then end up sitting there until I can move, till the time is right.  Then I end up being ten minutes late.

Anyway, I went out and got to it. It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be.  It was an easier process   I thought it was going to end up being way more complicated to splice the two fifty foot pieces of wire fabric, and too put the tension bars in and secure them to the terminal posts.  But it was harder because the rolls of wire fabric, which were about 75lbs originally, had a bunch of ice in them that made them about 125lbs.  The snow on top of them had melted, then refroze inside.  Also, difficult was the fact that I had really mangled the rolls getting them in and out of the car.  The good folks at Lowe's had tied the rolls together with wire at the store to make it so they didn't all fall apart and fall off the pallet while they were stocking them in the garden center.  I got impatient when I was trying to put them in the car, because some nice guy who was walking into the store stopped to help me, and it was taking an absurdly long time to get them in. I felt bad that I was taking his time.  I was doubly frustrated trying to take them out alone in Magna.   The result was that they were hopelessly tangled by the time I got them out of the car, and some of the wire fabric had been deformed when they were snagged and I was relentlessly manhandling them.  The point was that when I was trying to put them up I kept having to work out snags.

The problem was that the temperature was in the low teens, and my little black cloth gloves kept melting a little snow then freezing to the metal of whatever piece I was working on.  I was getting really cold and frustrated, so when the sun went behind the ridge of the Oquirrhs I decided to call it a day.  The fabric is up, and temporarily tied to the fence, but I still have to stretch it, place the tension bar at the end and secure it to the end post, then remove the additional 34ft of wire fabric, cut the last toprail to fit, then go back and do permanent ties to the posts and rails.  Probably about another hour of work.  Monday I guess.

Prisoner of 2nd Avenue...

This pic is how I've felt today.  It's the fire escape outside my rear window.  I tried desperately to get out of the apartment.  Tried to escape.  I didn't make it though.  I haven't, except once this week.

Last night I went to dinner with Mark and Holly LaRocco and their kid, Chad and Val Rawlinson and Chad's kid sister and her husband.  It was a little weird to see his sister as a married adult.  I taught her swim lessons when she was about three feet tall.  We went to Crown Burger.  M. Russel Ballard was there, eating with his wife.

Dinner was the first time I'd seen Chad in a few years.  We emailed back and forth from time to time about motorcycles mostly, then at about the same time I lost my job and he and his wife lost a pregnancy in the third trimester.  We wrote a series of really emotionally fraught emails.  Then we just stopped, and I worried I'd dug in too deeply with him when he was still too raw.  His experience was worse than mine.  Really hard.

Anyway, it was nice seeing them.  And it was good to get out.  I really tried hard today.  Really hard.

Before dinner I went to the library, and after to Lowe's.  I went to Lowe's to get something to use as spreader bars for the hammock I made with my Mom and Dad over Christmas.

I made Dad do all the math of measuring.  It is pretty complex.  Then Mom helped a lot with the sewing.  It was a bit of a mess.  We ended up not having enough fabric, and other odds and ends.  It was a bit of a hassle.  Both Mom and Dad had minor meltdowns at various points.  I was really grateful for their help.

It is relatively easy to tell the seams Mom did, and the ones I did.  I did the one above.  You can see how two seams became one.  Not so straight.  The one below was Mom's.  Very straight.  But I got a lot better as time went on.

This is the final product.  Not bad if I do say so myself.  It's just good that we changed methods on the second end cap vs the first.  It gave a little more room at the foot, which ended up being necessary.

See Laura? I'm Alive...

Happily my Mom decided that the weather was too rotten for me to ride my motorcycle, and insisted that she and my Dad drive down and pick me up.  I'm glad she did.  All that snow fell yesterday while I would have been trying to get home.  Like 7 or 8 inches.  Not so fun on a bike.  I definitely wasn't dreaming of a white Christmas yesterday morning.  None the less... white.

PS - Lookit!  A photo!

I Should Have a Picture but I Don't...

I always feel kind of bad when I post without a picture.  People who read blogs like pictures, but for some reason for the last five or six years I couldn't bother myself to take any.  There are very few.  In fact the years seem to have just disappeared.  I wonder what memories I'll have from these years.  These blog posts (which I stopped for a long time), are the only chronicle I have of this time, aside from a journal I've written during sometimes somewhat infrequent Sacrament Meeting attendance.  That, and I guess yearbooks from school.  That's where I did most of my living anyway.  But it wasn't real.  It was only a safe proxy for real life.  I could leave and be alone.  My relationships with people there were on some level play acting at real life, to fool myself into feeling like I was still living.  That sounds pretty sad, but it is what it is.  I'm working on it.

Anyway, on Friday I paid the impact fees to the fire district for my house, printed out the corrections that the County Building Dept asked for and turned them in.  If I didn't make any new mistakes that require correction in my corrections, I may soon have a building permit.  And it's snowing.  It's been colder this winter than it has for the last few.  So the snow has stuck a little longer than it usually does.

The cold has created a bit of a problem too.  When I bought my bike the guy said it was a little cold blooded and pointed out that he'd installed a battery tender, with I guess the addition of a part he didn't give me, you can plug it into the wall and trickle charge it in the winter.  I thought nothing of it, but when I got back from Thanksgiving at Dave's in Seattle the battery was dead.  I had to push start it.  I thing I might have injured the battery a little while ago, when doing some routine maintenance on it I checked the battery cells and found them low on electrolytes   So I got some Brondo... Not really.  I put some tap water in, only to discover that the last owner had installed an after market gel battery.  From what I read it doesn't necessarily destroy it to add water to a gel battery, but you definitely want it to be distilled water.  The process of the battery can concentrate minerals present in the water, and that can ruin the battery.  I of course added tap water, which fills my shower head with hard water deposits and boiler scale about once every two or three weeks.  You live you learn, huh?

Anyway, in the cold weather the battery isn't charging while running.  I can only charge it enough for one electric start if I'm lucky.  If not I end up riding down the hill in front of my apartment, either on the sidewalk or the wrong way on the one way street, so that I can start by compression.  I tried for about an hour on Friday to get running fast enough on level ground to get it to turn over.  No dice.

So I need to take at least the battery home to Cache Valley to trickle charge it over Christmas.  And I'm thinking I might ride the bike.  It's raining right now, in Salt Lake, and snowing in Cache Valley.  And I'd drive my car, but I'm pretty worried about it.  There's a nail in the rear passenger side tire that is slow leaking, and I discovered on Saturday why it won't hold any oil.  I thought it was because I burned the rings when I ran it out of oil because the electrics in the dash failed and the check oil light didn't go on.  I probably did that, so it is almost surely burning oil there, and the compression is nearly gone.  The 0-60 time had roughly doubled.  The big problem I found however, is a big crack in the engine block.  Oil is spitting out of it all over the engine compartment.  That could conceivably lead to the car starting on fire as I drive it down the freeway.  Hence, my thinking about riding the bike, even with the rain and snow.  I don't know.  I guess I'll figure it out.

Saturday I went out to Magna and worked on the fence.  I finally got all the materials and started installing the top rail.  It ended up really ugly.  I was so far off that I took the top rails off and re-cut several of the line posts to try to equalize the height.  I also got a couple new terminal posts.  I placed one at the north east corner of the lot, and replaced the one at the north west corner.  I did this partly because the one at the north west was out of line, but also because some friends who are redoing their back yard offered me the chainlink fence that surrounds it, and it is a foot taller than I cut the original north west terminal post.

While I was working, Tony, the guy next door who had been over the lot line came out and chatted.  He's a super friendly guy, and pretty funny.  He just had a pace maker put in, and he said he was going to the shopping center so he could ups the pace maker to start and boost Christmas shoppers cars.  He also had some useful advice on fence building.  He's done chainlink a few times before.  I tried one of them, but learned a useful caveat.

If you are going to dispense with the bucket and mix the concrete directly in the hole, make sure you place the post before you mix it.  I just poured in the ready mix then the water and went to town.  The hole openings were small, so you couldn't get in there to stir it up very well, and I don't think the stuff at the bottom got very well mixed.  As a result it was super dense and hard, and even hammering on the top of the posts didn't drive them far enough in for comfort.  So place the pole in the hole, then mix the ready mix and the water incrementally around it.  Now you know.

The guy next door on the north is also super nice.  He saw me hauling milk jugs full of water that I'd brought from home and came out and told me I could use his hose spigots in addition to the power outlet he'd already offered.  I had enough water, but I took him up on the power outlet.  I had borrowed Dad's circular saw to cut the pipes once I placed them.  But I started to get really irritated by some wild rose bushes that are right by the fence line.  I kept getting snagged by thorns as I walked by, so I put the ripping blade on the saw and went to town.  I'd cut about a quarter of them down when I severed the power cord.  Sorry Dad.  That was the end of the work I could do Saturday, so I took it home and fixed it by patching it with a soldering iron.  It was a pain, but it worked.  Hopefully the solder won't be too brittle and break.

Anyway, I'd better figure out about going to Cache Valley.  It's 10:00AM on Christmas Eve.

Library?

So, today I applied for a part time job at the Salt Lake Library.  If I get it, it should be just enough to pay my rent after all is said and done.  I hope I get it.  Although it is a relatively low paying part time job, I've always kind of wanted to work at the library.  We'll see what happens.

They wanted a cover letter, and I think I might have over-shared, but I wanted them to get an idea of me.  Here is the text:


Dear Selector,

I am applying for a Library Assistant position.

My pre-teen and early teen years were... awkward. I quickly realized that a good fat book made an excellent shield against the interest of girls and other types of friends. And libraries, the repositories of these marvelous shields became my Fortress of Solitude. For me, the library was the happiest place on earth. Disney Land didn’t stack up to the stacks at all, in my opinion.

Then two great things happened  I fell in love with the content of the books I was reading, and I developed some social skills. The library was still the happiest place on earth, but it became for me a platform for sharing the literature that I found so valuable with others. Through high school I was the bane some English teachers, and the primary collaborator with others, because I had already read the material we covered in the classes. I did whatever I could to promote the stories to other students. I became a big believer in the idea of bibliotherapy, that there is a right time for a right book for everyone, and I was constantly giving friends reading recommendations. I also began to write.

On my first tour through Utah State University I decided I should do something sensible and marketable. I got a degree in Tech Writing, and did an internship at the Interactive Media Research Lab. At the end of it I realized there were no tech writing jobs at the time, so it wasn’t so marketable, and that I didn’t want to write instructions for programming your DVR or legal warnings for prescription drugs anyway. So it wasn’t so sensible a decision either.

I went back to my love of literature, and back to school. I got a degree in English Education and a School Library Media Certification. Originally I had decided only to look for media center jobs, but was eventually recruited to teach Language Arts at East Hollywood High, a charter school in West Valley, with the understanding that I’d take over the media center after the current director retired the next year. I did so in ‘08, and ran it actively through that school year. Unfortunately the crash in home prices cut property tax revenues, out of which schools budgets are taken. Budget cuts meant that we didn’t have any money for the library. I bought books with my own money for a while, but after that year the principal realized we could meet the accreditation requirement of having a full time Library/Media teacher, even if I wasn’t in the Media Center. I was returned full time to teaching English and Yearbook/Journalism, and though I was the titular Director, the Media Center was turned over to an office aide. I was unhappy with the principal’s decision, but I loved my students and loved the material I was teaching. I continued at the school for two more years.

When I went into contract negotiations at the end the last school year the principal informed me he wasn’t bringing me back for 2012/13. The vice principal had suddenly quit, and he had a friend he wanted to give the position to. Unfortunately it was only a part time position and his friend taught English and Yearbook too, so he increased the English class sizes to accommodate cutting two sections of it, and gave his friend my job and the vice principal job. I was crushed. It was the middle of June, and all the schools do their hiring for the next year in March, April and May. I applied for a couple of the remaining jobs but was left without a teaching position this year.

This was all particularly dismaying because I was in the early stages of building myself a house, and I’d counted on my salary for my maintenance while I dedicated my savings to the construction. I’m still in the early stages of building, but I find myself needing at least part time employment to pay rent while I work on the house.

So, I’m applying for a Library Assistant position. The hours I can work are flexible, and I think I have all the requisite skills. I’m familiar with library procedures  cataloging and circulation. I have computer technology, design and photography skills. I understand, speak and write passable Spanish. I love literature, film and music, and I think working for the Salt Lake Library would be a very cool job. I hope you’ll give me the chance.

Thanks,
Mike Jones

Crap.  I just realized that I sent the un-spell checked version.

Ham...

For Thanksgiving Dinner up at Dave's in Washington, Nic made a ham.  After returning to Salt Lake I found myself caving it, and I remembered a couple years ago getting one for a good deal after some holiday.  I don't remember which.  So I decided to go buy one.  They were three bucks a pound, and each was 7lbs+. I wondered if $21 was reasonable, given I'm trying so hard to be frugal, living off savings as I am.  I decided to do it.

So I have been eating it for two meals a day for four days, since Sunday.  I cut off all the spiral cut stuff, and froze the bone and the rest.  I've made it through all the spiral, which I estimate as 4lbs.  Now I'm going to make a white bean soup out of the bone and the rest of it.  I suspect I'll be eating that for at least one meal for the next three days.  All in all, I think eating for a week on $29 (the ham and the soup stuff) was a pretty decent deal.  But I probably won't eat any more ham for a couple more years.

Post-Thanksgiving discounted pie, on the other hand...

Lots and Lots of Trouble...

I've been waiting six weeks for the County Building Inspectors Office to get to inspecting my plans, but an issue came up a couple weeks ago.  I was out at the lot and realized that it wasn't as large as I'd marked it on my house plan.  So I went and looked at the plat at the county and I realized that I'd gotten the dimensions written down wrong a long time back.  It meant I was very close to the edge of the buildable area, so I went out and started looking for survey pins and realized that there was a fence with the neighbor several feet onto my lot.  I wasn't going to say anything, but eventually I changed my mind when I realized that it would make it impossible to build an accessory structure that I was going to build before the house and use to stay in while I'm building the house.  Paying six hundred dollars a month for rent when is a bit of a drain on the savings when you have no income.

The red bit in the photo is the encroachment.

I contacted the surveyor who did the survey on file at the county and he found it in his records.  It indeed shows that the fence is seven feet into my lot.  This is because there used to be an alleyway, through the block between my neighbor's yard and mine, several owners back.  The fence was built one foot from the edge of the alley.  Then the county vacated the alley and gave the land up to the center line to the lots on either side.  The previous owner never moved the fence to reflect the new border, and the guy next door just used the space.

So I went out there yesterday and measured it just to make sure.  The result was clear.  He was seven feet onto my lot, so I took a letter with me explaining that I was going to move the fence.  This was on the advice of the people in the planning office, because it might lead to problems with the building inspector when he comes to measure setbacks when I'm getting ready to lay a foundation.  Also several people pointed out to me that I was paying property taxes for land I didn't have access to, which didn't make a lot of sense.

I was really worried that it was going to lead to litigation, so I talked to Mark LaRocco and Mr. Forsberg, who are both lawyers, about it, and they both thought I was legally ok.  They thought if the guy tried to sue me over it I'd win.  But when I went to the guy's door and explained things and gave him the letter he was really cool about it.  He knew he was encroaching, and had just asked the original owner of my lot if it bothered him, and he'd allowed it.  The original owner was using it as a garden for his deli, Collosimo's, down 90th west on main street.  So he wasn't too concerned about the seven feet when the county gave up the alley.

Obviously it isn't going to be a done deal until it is done, but I think things are working out without problems or bad feelings.  The guy said that he was going to get some friends to help him move his sheds this weekend.  I offered to help, and told him to email me if he needed me.  I'm planning on starting the new fence monday.    Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, during the wait on the plans I've tackled a couple projects.  I cut down my motorcycle seat.  I said before it was too tall for me.  I saw a tutorial on the internet and decided to give it a go.  I thought that I could get a bit lower.  I found an upholsterer near by and went and bought some foam and vinyl from him.  I also found some rebond carpet pad by dumpster diving at a carpet outlet store.  I also bought a blue camp pad made of closed cell foam at Walmart for seven bucks.

It took about a month of experimenting, during which time I learned a lot about foam and ergonomics, but I finished it off.  I started out with just several layers of the rebond.  But it was too soft.  Foam is measured both by its density and amount of weight required to compress it by 25% of its unstressed size.  I think.  Anyway, the rebond was too soft and lead to back pain.  The closed cell was too hard by itself, and led to back pain.  What followed were several iterations of combinations of the two.  Eventually I figured out that I'd made it too low.  I took off about four inches, but it pulled me too far forward and took all the weight off my feet and wrists, which put it all on my lower back, which led to back pain.  Anyway, back pain and again and again, but finally I figured it out and got it to the point that it felt alright.  Putting a layer of soft, thin smoothing foam on top was good for comfort.

There are a couple things I'd do different next time.  One mistake is that while I was testing different configurations I covered it in plastic sheeting.  Doing different layer configurations I needed to be able to get at it, so I slit the plastic down the sides of the seat.  That meant that when I finished with it, before covering it in the vinyl I had to patch it up and put it together with a heat gun.  This left big melted plastic seams that show through the vinyl after I stretched it on.  The other was that I pulled the vinyl really tight so it would be smooth.  That compressed the thin layer of soft smoothing foam.  The result was that it wasn't as comfortable as it had been before covering it.

As for my other project, my lcd computer monitor went out after a power outage.  I'd been having troubles with it before, not turning on when I pushed the button after it went out from the power saving setting on the screen saver.  Eventually I'd just turned that setting off and forgotten about it.

But when it went out I couldn't get it turned back on for anything.  So I was looking for a new monitor online when I realized I needed the model number of the old monitor to search for a comparable one, I found out that this model was susceptible to this problem because of cheap capacitors.  I found a tutorial on how to replace the capacitors online, and went to an electronic components supply place to buy new ones.  Then I got a cheap soldering iron and some solder at Harbor Freight, and cracked the monitor open.  I was nervous because I'd never done anything like this before, never soldered at all, but I figured I didn't have anything to lose.

It took about four hours to dig the mother board out, remove the old capacitors and solder in the new ones.  I was quite anxious when I plugged it it and hit the switch, but it fired right up, better than new.  Good stuff.  I saved about a hundred and twenty bucks on it I figure.

Skyline Drive

I went for a ride up Skylline Drive in Bountiful this last Sunday.  The leaves were turning, and it was very pretty.  There were a whole lot of people, driving up in anything they could drive, 3-wheelers, 4-wheelers, trucks, motorcycles, cars, mini-vans.  Whatever.  Everyone was up there, and everyone was taking pictures. I made a panoramic.  Here are I guess is a small version.  If you want a bigger one I could email a copy..

Riding a Motorcycle...

I think it is fair to say that riding a motorcycle is one of the best things in my life.  When I was younger all I saw were the cliches.  Big fat guys on ridiculous Harley Davidsons.  My brother David and early memories of my father were touchstones to biking, but they never inspired in me the desire to take it up.  Later I had friends with four wheelers, and I rode those a couple times, but my dad steadfastly refused to get one when I asked.  That might have developed into a love of bikes.  But in the end it was about thrift.

I'm a cheap guy.  I just don't like spending money.  I save the great majority of whatever I earn, because to me money is security.  Saved money means that in that rainy day (now) I can pay my rent while I try to build my house.  Building the house myself all out of my savings is another cost saving measure.

So, when I realized I could get 75 miles to the gallon on a motorcycle instead of a lowly 30 in my car, I bought one and learned how to ride it.  I was 31 years old.

It was after that I started to get stupid and rhapsodic about bikes.  Maybe not rhapsodic, but it wasn't really about gas mileage anymore.  Now I've got a different bike, a dual sport (although a big fat one) which means its street legal and can go in the dirt (a little), and I realize that a big factor in how I feel is how much I ride.  There are moments of wonder on the back of a bike that I've just never had in a car.  Granted, I've never really driven an awe inspiring car, but even a dumb little economy bike can do that to me.  I remember riding my old bike through the early fall evening away from the Rice Eccles Stadium after my shift chaperoning prom the year before last.  There was a breeze, and the changing leaves where shivering against each other.  There was just enough chill to make wearing a jacket feel right.  The sun was setting, and the light was coming in rays through the shadows.  And I felt alright.  It would have been different in my car.  Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear has referred to my model of car as "a misery box".

Anyway, I went on three or four long rides last week, that had a salubrious effect on my mood.  I haven't been on one this week and it is telling.  Anyway, here are some of the rides that I mapped out with Google.

09-13-12

Started at my place in the Aves and went up to Virginia St, down past the law school, up around the stadium and up Emigration Canyon.  The Canyon was beautiful.  I went over Little Mountain without stopping at the summit, down past the reservoir and up toward the East Canyon summit.  This is a twisty road.  On a bike with a lower center of gravity it would be tremendous fun, but even on my bike it is good.  You can get pretty sideways.  At the top I stopped for a moment and looked down to the valley.  I've been there before.

Then I went down the other side, which is if anything more twisty.  It isn't quick with KLR brakes.  So, a guy in an SUV that he obviously though was made by Ferrari, spent the majority of the way down half way up my colon.  Not so fun.  But he got the clue and backed up after he tried to take a corner to quickly and almost lost it.  I thought I'd missed the turn off for Jeremy Ranch Rd, but kept on.

I was listening to the end of "Night Probe!" by Clive Cussler.  It was another of those Dirk Manly novels.  I always call him Dirk Manly in my head, even though its Dirk Pitt.  That was a flub by Jen Hancey when we first watched Sahara together.

I was a bit nervous on the dirt on Jeremy Ranch Rd.  I just don't have that much dirt experience, (read, I'd been on the dirt twice on this bike, and it went poorly the first time), so I took it easy.  It was fine though.  There wasn't any challenge to it.  It was just a regular dirt road.  After the dirt I ended up in Summit Park I guess.  The Jeremy Ranch area.  I stopped at the gas station before getting on I-80 so I could finish off the audio book and start another.  Dirk found an old secret treaty that ceded Canada to America.  As this book was written in the 80's we we've been living in "The United States of Canada".  Never knew it.  After Dirk Manly I began "The World is Flat," by Thomas Freidman, as I rode down I-80 and home.

From I-80 there isn't much to say about the ride.  Except 70mph near the mouth of the canyon seems too fast, but it is the speed you have to go unless you want to risk getting flattened by semi trucks coming up behind you.  In case you couldn't tell I don't feel the need to ride too quickly.


09-13-12

This was a fun one.  Started at my place in the Aves, and went from I-15 to the 201 down to the last Magna exit.  From there I swung past my lot but didn't stop.  I got on the Old Bingham Highway, and headed south toward Herriman.  I turned right into Butterfield Canyon and went past the Burro Ranch place.  Butterfield Canyon is very cool.  Really twisty.  After the road starts its climb it goes up the side of the mountain and the views are pretty spectacular.  There are a few blind corners that are kind of scary.  It is one lane and there is traffic moving both ways, so you never know if there's going to be a truck coming head on when you get around the bend.  Also there is a lot of rock fall, so you have to keep an eye where your tires are, because you're moving pretty slowly, and one of them can make it messy.  The fact is that if I went down on this bike I'm pretty sure I couldn't lift it by myself.  So I don't want to do that.  At all.

Anyway the pavement ends at the summit.  The views both toward the Salt Lake Valley and Tooele are beautiful.  There's a little parking lot where I left the bike.  I walked up the mountain toward the peak where you can look down into the copper mine.  I went up there once before with Mike Forsberg, and Mykel and Brent Dougherty.  It got dark before we made it more than half way up, and we had to turn back.  I made it to exactly the same spot and ran into a truck parked across the road with a big stop sign hanging on it.  The guy in the truck said they were grading the road above and I couldn't continue on.  That was a bit of a bummer.  I went back to the bike and started down the other side.

The Tooele side isn't paved, although it looked like it had been graded at some point relatively recently.  The grading left loose soil and there were some pretty steep grade curves, so cornering was a little nervous.  After the steep section with the switchbacking the pavement starts again.  There are tons of camp and picnic grounds off the road, and a couple times I saw teenagers looking nervous and getting into cars.  Sex or drugs.  I didn't hear any rock and roll.  So I felt secure they were there for one or both of the other two.  I wasn't so into the idea of being on the road with them if it was the drugs.

Eventually I came across cows.  Quite a few cows.  Someone was running them in the canyon, and a big black bull with stubby but sharp looking horns was eyeing me funny.  I was just waiting for him to come after me.  My bike is red, and I felt confident he was one of those special bulls who wasn't colorblind, and had been raised like me to believe that as a bull he was supposed to be enraged by the color.  The bigger problem was the fat girl cow that I didn't see in the middle of the road peeing leisurely until I was close enough that stopping wasn't easy.  But stop I did.  There were two women trying to stop traffic, and my instinct was that they were wives of ranchers testily scolding people for using the canyon.  I rode by pretending I didn't see the woman grabbing at me and gesturing me off the road toward their trucks.  After I was a few hundred yards down I started to worry that they were having car trouble and just wanted help, and I felt almost guilty enough to go back and ask if they were ok.  I salved my conscience, because four cars went up the road while I was feeling guilty, in one of which was a very friendly looking older couple.

Out of the canyon, rather than going into Tooele turned right and went up the longest straightest road in Utah.  It must go for six or seven miles straight as an arrow through Erda.  Eventually, however, it runs out of pavement without any street signs.  It didn't look promising so I turned around and went west to the highway that runs north through Stansbury Park and Lake Pointe.  From there I got on I-80 east around the point, then got off at Saltaire.  I rode up the frontage road until the airport gets in the way.  It's a cool road.  It goes from pavement to slabby concrete.  When the lake is higher it there are salt fens by the road, and a million bugs in the air.  With the lake as low as it is right now, (low, low, low, with it seems like miles of stinky beach at Saltaire) it is just grass and weeds.  You go too fast on that road.  The freeway is right next to you, so you have the tendency to match the traffic.  You shouldn't, but you do.

After that there's nothing interesting.  Back on I-80 to 5th south, and home.

09-14-12

I decided to go home for the weekend.  I was going to go up Emigration over Little Mountain around the reservoir and through Morgan, but it was too late in the day.  So I started at my place went up to the Capitol, down Victory Ln.  I got on I-15 north and went as far as Farmington.  There I got off and got some gas.  Then up went up Highway 89 to I-84 up the canyon.  There I came out at Mountain Green, to which I'd never been.  I took Trappers Loop up over the mountain to Huntsville, past Snow Basin.  I'd never been up there before.  It was really beautiful.  The road was a fun drive, and I'd have loved it except for the brother of the guy from Little Mountain a couple days before, driving his Ferrari SUV.  This one was towing a boat.  I couldn't believe the speed this guy was going, and how close he was getting to me.  I was five or ten miles over the speeds on the corner speed signs, and this guy seemed like he wanted nothing more than to drive over me on his way to glory.  Crazy.  I was looking for a place to pull off and let him pass but I hit Huntsville first.

From there I turned right on 1st South and went up highway 39.  It wasn't very picturesque.  Nor was it a particularly fun road to ride.  The only remarkable thing was that there were approximately 1,000,000 church campgrounds, all of which were hosting youth groups that night.  It was really kind of weird.

It started getting really cold.  Really cold.  And the sun was as good as set since I was deep in the mountain. Eventually I hit the Ant Flat Rd turn off.  It was not bad.  It was a little washboardy, but you could drive any regular car over it without trouble if you took it relatively slow.  It was pretty.  Not as pretty as the road between Avon and Liberty, which you could see a few miles up the mountain.  But it was pretty still.  I was nervous looking at it on the map, because it was the longest stretch of dirt I'd done, almost 15 miles, but it was fine.  I saw some cows, and some sheep.  A couple of them were black.  That was about it.

On the far side of the Ant Flat Rd I emerged into Blacksmith Fork Canyon.  It was fantastic.  The funnest canyon I've ever run.  The curves are perfect for the lazy quick that I do on the KLR.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  There were port-a-potties at intervals down the road.  I didn't find out until later that they were running the Top of Utah Marathon down the canyon the next day.

Anyway, the rest of the ride home was... whatever.  It was twilight when I went through Blacksmith Fork, dark the last couple miles home.  That's all.

Remembered Another One...

Bookstore Clerk, 24ish - I worked at the USU Bookstore in the basement of the Student Center.  It was fun.  We moved big piles of text books around, and helped people find their books when they came at the beginning of the semester.  I think I got like $7 an hour.  That might be a job I could do again.

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.