Photo Based Update

 

I’ve been working to get out and about and go on adventures, this is one of my favorite spots to adventure. It’s on the Duck Hollow Trail and is an old dock for loading coal or something else into barges. This is a picture of the first time I made it out to the far end, most times I visit now I just go up to the highest place and just sit up on my perch looking over the river. I love bike adventures and I love abandoned things and this is the best mix of both and some terrifying heights to boot!

As you can see here is another photo from a bike adventure I went on, here I’m crossing over the bridge from McKees Rocks to the Northside.

Sometimes I go on bike adventures with this super cool person, this is Big S. They have been my main companion recently, whether it be bike adventures, or lazying around the house. Here is a photo from one of our bike adventures where we made our way to the Mattress Factory, ate June berries and explored some installation art.

I’ve ended up in a new job position at work. I’m the Service Manager, that means I’m in charge of the service department, the mechanics and the bikes getting fixed and built. I’m enjoying the new position and the raise that came with it. Also I have access to bonuses assuming we meet our goals – which we have been doing. I have noticed the jobs has led to a shift from working on bikes to managing others working on bikes and ensuring parts are in stock and dealing with customers. It’s definitely a different job but I enjoy it. On most days I love working with customers and my sense of ownership over the shop makes more sense now. Above is a photo of me late at work one day, trying to get the scheduled repairs done. We’ve been understaffed recently and I’ve ended up working long tiring hours. I’m starting to once again understand you can’t work all the hours and need to enjoy your life – I’ve been taking more time recently.

At the end of May Big S and I went on a bike trip down the GAP trail. It was super fun, I like her and the way they travel/experience the world. We only made it to Connellsvile and back on our 4 day trip but it was quite fun. Pictured above is one of the fun experiences I had on the trip, I crossed an abandoned rail road bridge found a pikachu hat, and then jumped on and road that train for 30 seconds. That’s me immediately after riding it.

Necessary picture of our bikes. Mine is on the left and Big S’s is on the right. with the delicious Trail Side Cafe in the background. We have another trip planned for the end of July with her roomie, we’re gonna start at D.C. and bike out 3 days before someone trains back to get the car that brought us to D.C. and drives us the rest of the way home.

Each day of our bike trip was filled with fun happenings. One day we were in a abandoned building in the enormous coal funnel, another day we jumped into a very cold stream near us, this day we got to play by this white waterfall.

 

New Work, New Me, New Year

Sorry for the distance between posts, recently I’ve been considering deleting this blog. Turns out more people read this than I thought. This feels odd because it is where I share lots of deep emotions and inner thoughts. I’ve received pressure from my family who have had people directing concern for me at them. I don’t want to be pressured to take this down, this blog means a lot to me and has been a great coping mechanism in the hard times in my life. I do want to let all who read it know that this is NOT a blog I use to update folks on my life, in fact the opposite probably happens. I normally go on here to process deep and difficult emotions. When I’m having a good time I just feel too busy to write (this is my main reason for the distance from the last post) and therefore you will primarily see bleak things being expressed often months after they’ve happened. Frankly it’s odd to hear how many people are reading this as it used to be an anonymous blog that few read. But until I decide it’s time to shut it down it’s gonna stay right here. I hope you enjoy.

Picture of the service area of the bike shop after being tidied up.

This past month has been a roller coaster I didn’t expect but it’s been a great ride. Lots of things changed at work. Trek Bicycles, one of the largest bike brands, bought out our struggling, underfunded store allowing the previous owner to retire and us to get the finances and support we need. I’ve also come to better understand my personality and how it has changed as I’ve come into myself. I’m not the introvert I thought I was, instead I’m an emotionally intense extrovert. I’ve been having a grand time extroverting around, going to shows, and just having a good time being me.

So first, comes first, the good news at my work. The previous owner of 5 bike shops in the Pittsburgh area let go of the stores that he had long prior stopped caring about. I’ve worked in this shop for over 2 years, 6 months recently but I also worked here about 5 years ago before I transitioned for a year and a half. The descent from good bike shop to chaotic bike shop started happening shortly before I got there. The well-known service manager stopped caring and eventually left to pursue another career, I left a few months later to transition. Since then it was understaffed and I was brought back into this chaotic scene that needed some serious organizing and was filled with shitty attitudes because of what the staff had experienced.

Trek has come in and turned that around – we cleaned up the shop, reorganizing and reduced the clutter everywhere. We got rid of lots of products that simply weren’t selling and got in new products, new bikes and generally got the place looking a lot nicer. We are all working full-time, which is absurd for winter and really exciting. The three of us who remain at the shop are learning and adjusting to the expectations that Trek has for us and are generally excited for the change I think all of us are. From what the Trek folks say to us we are the store most excited for the change. Being able to switch to positive, hopeful attitudes is really really nice. As is getting new cleaning supplies, tools and soon new work benches and training. I just gotta navigate getting myself a raise too.

They also are employing all 3 of us full-time. This has me excited and kind of dumbfounded. I’ve never worked full time in the winter in a bike shop, that’s a privilege afforded only to management. But here I am trying to adjust from working 16 hours a week to 40 while having to figure out my company health benefits. I’m really glad for the increased hours, while I was starting to figure out how to deal with working so little now I feel more productive with my time and I don’t have the luxury to constantly analyze and second-guess myself. This combined with the positivity of Trek and helped me break out and be more my authentic self.

Being myself didn’t start just cause of Trek but it certainly pushed me along in the process. The first time I really noticed it was on New Years Eve when I was at a party with my friends. The venue was some rich guy’s flat with an eclectic group of queers and friends, music profs, and generally fancy people. I disliked some of the people there but acted as though I liked them. Even engaging in polite conversation with some of them. This got to me and just before midnight I lost it and felt a strong desire to flip tables and destroy things. Instead I went on a walk. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that I was frustrated because I was holding myself back from being myself. This led me to more realizations about exactly who I am.

The first thing I stumbled upon was a webpage talking about people who are emotionally intense. I realized that I am emotionally intense. Not long after realizing that I took the Meyers Brigg’s Personality Test. I hadn’t taken one in years but for the longest time I was INFJ, or Introversion, Intuition, Feeling and Judging. I had even read the book, Quiet by Susan Cain about the power of introverts. I strongly identified as an introvert one who got energy from one on one conversations but still needed to retreat and be alone. The test revealed that I wasn’t INFJ anymore instead I’m ENFP. Stunned that two letters changed I discovered I’m more extrovert than introvert and I’m not judging, or structed to perceiving or open and flexible.

While I was always on the cusp, especially for introvert/extrovert, embracing that I’m an extrovert (and not just a cusp extrovert) felt terrific and made so much more sense. I have noticed that I love being the center of attention, I’ve noticed that I’m high energy and I don’t need as much time to reflect as I ended up giving myself. Instead the alone time would make me feel bad, as a thirsted for interaction. It’s so relieving to come more and more into myself. I no longer feel the need to ponder over my actions and to have a 1 or 2 second delay before responded as a figure out how I feel. Now I just respond. I’m certainly not as calculated as I was but I’m so much more authentic than I’ve ever been.

Two weekends ago I really thrived while being one of the most authentic versions of myself I’ve ever been. I went to an after party from 1am to 4am and danced and partied in ways I never have before. I felt free – I lacked the normal self consciousness I have. Instead I felt like I was care free partying like I was in my early 20s. After the party me and my friend, PunkRock, had brunch at 5am at the 24-hour diner. We were both in awe of the previous few hours and that it was 5am. We lost most of the next day as we slept until noon and avoided the light in favor of chatting in the dark and watching Face/Off. I think we both just felt like we were truly living our best lives. I still feel like I’m living my best life 9 days later. Here’s to 2019, as I’ve said to myself for the last several years – 2019 is looking to be the best year of my life thus far.

My First Few Days Alone

That first night, I felt free, I felt liberated and proud. After my phone call with Majesty I ended up wandering through a street fair in Bloomfield called Little Italy Day’s. I didn’t find anyone I knew but as I walked my bike through it I felt powerful and so few worries. My tank top was baggy and long and my tights were short, so short you could hardly see them under my tank top. I didn’t care. I was excited for what the world had for me, for days where I could live and experience my life instead of running through it too fast to even notice much less process what occurred. The first night was full of socializing as was the following day. I tried to keep up the momentum but quickly I found it impossible. Instead I was left with nothing to do and nowhere to be. The novelty of free time turned into a burden of what to do. Time went by hour by hour and the first few days felt like weeks.

When I got to Grease’s house that first night they let me spill out my whole story. I felt like I was overflowing with feelings and thoughts and trying to make sense of what had happened in the last 4 hours that had altered my entire week. My plan was to stay at the house with the family until Thursday night. Now I was suddenly free 5 days early, having not packed or prepared. The following morning Grease skipped work to hear more about my story and my life over the past couple years. We chatted about life, bikes, gender, and how to live out of a tiny home built in the forgotten woods of Pittsburgh. I had been stewing over building something in the woods to live in for weeks, they told me their partner’s friend had done just that with a wood stove for heat/cooking and all and had been living in their little house for a couple of years so far.

The fact that their friend already had built something really excited me. My original plan after leaving the family was to live out of my car for a couple of months. In those first few weeks on my own I had wanted to sell possessions to fund my road trip to Philly, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado and maybe even Vermont. I had talked to Cook about this and he referred me to several webpages on how to live out of your car. I was prepared for the trip to fail at some point, but I expected it to fail when I was on it with my car breaking down, or running out of money. Three weeks before I was supposed to leave the family my car broke down. At this time Clarity was using it as her car. It needed Power Steering Fluid, and snapped a belt because it didn’t have any, turns out there was also no oil in the car so there were metal shavings inside the engine. The engine was shot, the car was shot. I figured Clarity would fix it, but she made minimal effort to.

As that reality set in for me I realized I wasn’t going to be living out of a car I was going to be living off of my bike, and that’s not really a thing, that just called experiencing homelessness. I kept trying to wrap my brain around it and it made me feel unsettled, I’d have no space of my own, none at all. That’s when I stumbled upon something I’d viewed years ago, a post about a guy building homes for the homeless people out of garbage. I became inspired because it gave me something to do when I was free in the world, somewhere to put my things, and a possible back up plan in case I couldn’t stay at a friends house. This worried some friends I told about it but I reassured them this was temporary. After this conversation with Grease I was excited to know that someone else had already done the crazy feeling plan I had. I planned to retrieve materials for my project in the coming days.

A tiny tiny house, I wanted to emulate the basics of this and especially the rain barrel roof which lit up the interior.

I left Grease’s house at 4:30 and called some friends to check-in with them and talk more about what had just happened. No one picked up. But that was okay, I had some time to just chill before going to Librarian’s place for sleep around 9:30. I ate some food, rode around and just waited. It was Sunday so the library was already closed, and most things were about to close meaning there was nowhere for me to really go. I ended up sitting in a park most of the time. Eating and sticking my feet in the water fountain as I waited for it to be 9:30. When Librarian got home she was worn out from the day. We talked briefly, which was alright because I had to wake up early to get to the kids school so I could see the kids off for their first day of school.

When I awoke in the morning I got ready real quick. Librarian made sure I had something with me to eat before I left, I was too filled with anxiety to eat then but I took a snack bar with me. I got to the kids school building super early not sure if Clarity would be early or late and I waited outside of the school. After about 30 minutes of waiting they all arrived. The kids showed off their new shoes and first day of school outfits. The oldest hurriedly went into the building with Clarity for his first day at his new school building. I stayed outside with the other two, they go to a different building. When Clarity came out we all got in the car for the half mile drive. I sat in the back shoved in between the little two happy to be in their presence and doing my best to avoid any encounter with Clarity. After the middle one was dropped off I left Clarity and the littlest one (whose first day of Kindergarten was Wednesday) and walked back to my bike.

After hemming and hawing I decided now would be a good time to bike back to my old house in Brookline to get some things. Clarity had already said that she had to go to work so I didn’t need to worry about her being there. I talked to Amber on the phone on the way there which felt great. I ended up walking most of the hills causing it to take me 3 hours to get there. When I got there I settled in and enjoyed myself. It was nice and cool in the house. I drank some apple juice and cooked some pot stickers, I even watched a show. This ended up being the last time I was at this home when it felt like home. After eating I gathered the things I needed, extra clothes I neglected to bring, more stuff sacks to organize my things, my camera, a replacement rear wheel for my bike. And shoved in a backpack all my equipment to build my tiny little house: Screws, screwdriver, saw, hand drill. I loaded up everything and went to attach the bike trailer and realize I couldn’t find the mount to put on my bike. I searched all around and still couldn’t find it.

“Fuck!” I said under my breath. I had to go, the kids were coming home soon, I wanted to be as far away as possible. I put the trailer in the basement and shoved everything on my bike, attaching it with string. Half way through my ride the wheel got loose and started wobbling around, making the whole rest of the ride unsettling as this wheel flopped from side to side shaking the entire bike with it. I biked to the bike shop I used to work at with plans to fix up my bike including installing my new rear wheel.

The shop was in the same state of disarray as the last time I was there. My old coworker and one of the new guys talked about being understaffed. I said I’d be interested in a job. He talked in circles a little bit about having someone hire me. There was no manager so technically no one was in charge and no one was able to hire me. The new guy said something like, no one would stop you if you came in and punched in on Saturday. Eventually I just said to him, “When should I start? Saturday?” After that he tried calling the owner, who didn’t answer. I got a text later that evening from the new guy and he said I could “start anytime.” I asked if Wednesday would work, he replied, “totally.” Day 3 I’ve already got myself a job, 3 days before I was even planning on leaving! I was stoked.

Me biking over a bridge one cool summer morning

After I left I got some food, ate by a fountain in the park. I got ahold of my friend Boots from Philly and chatted with her for a while, which felt really nice. It started to drizzle a little and looking at the forecast it called for rain. I went over to Target and spent $10 of my 110 dollars on a tarp. I hadn’t found a place to sleep tonight, so this was my first night trying out the good old outdoors. I had a hammock, a sleeping bag, string and now a tarp, I was ready to go.

I set up my hammock and tarp and tried to get some sleep. The cloudy sky had made it not cool off at all from the day. Instead it was hot and humid. Too hot for a sleeping bag, but I hadn’t a choice because the mosquitoes were out with vengeance. It took me a long time to fall asleep, As I walked the line between overheating my body and being bitten by mosquitoes. When I finally fell asleep I kept being awoken, by texts from Clarity, a passenger train passing, foxes barking (which scared the shit out of me until I found out what they were) and finally a steady rain that made the loudest noise on my tarp. I slept for only a few hours until the sun came up and I was finally able to have some uninterrupted sleep.

Eventually the sun was too bright and my body was somewhat rested, I woke up. I packed up all my things and shoved them on my bike. I wandered over to Pitt’s campus and found a single occupancy bathroom that I could shave in and try and clean myself up. I felt filthy from all the sweat, and had gotten a good bit of mud on me from the trek out in that rainy morning. I vowed to buy a mosquito net so my back up plan of having somewhere to stay if no one would have me wouldn’t be as horrible as that night. I had already made plans to stay at Red Beards house the next night, something I was very happy about.

That day I had nothing to do until 3:40pm when I picked up the kids from school. I waited with anxiety for that time to come. I didn’t have anywhere to go so I hung out near a water fountain while I read about what to eat while you’re homeless. I settled on cheese and refried beans burritos. I made them myself and ate trail mix for snack/lunch and oats and brown sugar for breakfast. Food was so uninteresting to me so eating food as unpalatable as that didn’t bother me. As I waited I began to realize the most unsettling thing for me about not having a home or a space of your own is that you can never relax knowing your stuff is safe where it is. Both you and your stuff are always loitering, always unsecured. It leads to a constant anxiety a constant thought in your mind about everything you own/have access to being stolen and suddenly not having the luxury of a change of clothes, or a sleeping bag.

The days I’d experience went so slowly. There seeming to be no point or purpose, I began to just wait for the next thing to happen. Wait until 3:40pm to see the kids and then wait until my friend came home so I could talk to someone and eventually go to sleep. I didn’t feel particularly driven to do any of the things I had wanted to. I just wanted human connection, I wanted something to do some purpose. But I had very few. I picked up the kids on Tuesday and Thursday from school, and I started work on Wednesday. Life felt empty, like a wide open space with nothing in it, nowhere to go nothing to do, just wide open space.

Winter Solstice 2014

Happy winter solstice friends, family and readers,

I hope everyone had as heartwarming of a year as I did. My friends and my family has gone above and beyond and helped me more than I ever expected. I feel truly humbled and extremely happy to write this. The last two years can best be summed up by two tarot cards I drew last new years. One was for 2013 one was for 2014. My card for 2013 was the 8 of arrows, struggle. My card for 2014 was the 9 of arrows, dedication.

Over the last year I went from slowly dying and saving money to buy a house in Pittsburgh to quitting my job and working on being happy now. I vowed to spend my savings on things that made me happy and in becoming who I truly am – a woman. In August I went on a bike trip to remind myself of who I was and to start telling other about who I am.

Along my trip I had great responses and lots of support. I don’t know where I’d be without all my friends and family. The people near and dear to me stood by me and offered more support than ever. They picked me up when I fell and urged me to keep moving forward. Thinking of them and their unwavering love and support makes me feel free to do and be who I am no matter how scary that seems.

This past year was hard, but rewarding. I struggled but I found myself. I kicked depression and started meditating and being more mindful and present. I haven’t given up on anything but fake me. I left the bike shop world for good and am about to try to get a job working with mentally challenged adults. After that I plan on going to grad school to become a counsellor. My life is coming together and next year is setting itself up to be an even better year than this one.

Planned for next year is a solo backpacking trip to kick it off. After that I have an appointment to get hormones on the 9th of January. Second puberty here I come! I can’t wait to have my body fit my view of it. The next two years will be an exciting long awaited feminizing of myself. All the while I’ll be continuing to find my trueself and find love and happiness within myself instead of in others. As Arcade Fire says, “it’s never over” but that doesn’t mean that everyday it isn’t getting better and better.

States that begin with an I, and some that don’t

Captain Andirus and myself recently went on a trip out to some of the I states. Crossing through Ohio and West Virgina, we finally made it out to visit Anthro Cook, Majesty, The Durn and an unexpected trip to Madison. The trip was quick fun and relieving to finally see this farm of sorts that Majesty works on. Everyone seems to be doing pretty well, everyone was very welcoming of the new me, oh and I can’t forget all the delicious food.

Our first stop is Anthro Cook who now lives in Champagne Illinois with his wife who both work at University of Illinois. They got lucky and found a program that hired the both of them for the same department. They live in a pretty nice house in suburbia right now until they feel out where they’d want to buy a house. Champaign/Urbana is very nice, wide streets, nice campus, but there isn’t a hill in the entire place. No, not even a little one, it is flat flat flat. This is where my dad went to town and while he loved the program he was in he hated the town. I think the town has improved somewhat since, but it certainly hasn’t gotten any hillier since then.

And of course can’t forget the most important part about Illinois, corn. Like the Morrow Plot the second oldest continuously used crop rotation plots, first planted in 1876. Corn matters so much here that then built the library underground because the didn’t want to shade the Morrow Plot.

Anthro Cook caught us up on life in Canada, South Carolina and expressed much more glee in living in Illinois, not nearly as cold or racist. And he obviously didn’t and never disappoints with the food and cooked us both delicious food that filled us to the brink every day. It was great to see him, hopefully it won’t be another three years before the next time.

Next stop was outside of Iowa city, The Durn’s house. A favorite, awesome anth professor of many and his equally radical wife who was managing editor of Voices of Central Pennsylvania (progressive magazine in SC). I also hadn’t seen them in 3 years and was happy to know that I was one of the several students The Durn had hoped would visit him. He was on some medication for a recent brain surgery and was a bit slower moving. But he gave a couple of impassioned rants and his wife made up for him by being super talkative and a great tour guide of their property. The property was very cool and large. They are working on bringing back some prairie land from invasive species and planting some fruit trees and a nice garden. We had a great time with them, spending our first night drinking with them and some other middle-aged ladies, wasn’t even a tad weird rather it was a great great time.

After a night and day at The Durns we finally saw Majesty, who (to our relief) wasn’t starving or beaten down but happy and upbeat as he planned his housing situation for the winter in Iowa. The stories of Versaland got scary the closer we got, describing a Lord of the Flies type farm with everything but the pig heads on sticks. The following day we saw the school bus Majesty was living in and all the trailers and all the trees that had worked to plant at Versaland. We met their fearless leader, The G Man, and all the other guys staying on the farm.

The farm was very nice, with a lot of cool projects being headed up by The G Man. The two other farm workers were very nice and friendly and The G Man was very intense but cool, the type of person who would buy a school bus and let Majesty live in it. Sadly our schedules didn’t align so we only spent a little time with The G Man but he certainly has a bunch of innovative projects going on there, and most of them are right up Majesty’s alley.

Our furthest destination was Madison, Wisconsin. This is where Big S went to school and I completely understand why she tried to go to grad school there too. The town is very spacious and not at all cramped like State College. There are tons of bike lanes and even more people biking around. I swear they even have more trees than Dark Forest, or at least just as many. And then we stayed at Nottingham, a coop on the edge of one of their two huge lakes. The place is beautiful, so beautiful. I even considered moving there for a couple of days, especially after hanging out with the people at Nottingham and after being offered a job at a bike shop that was a huge version of the shop in my basement.

On the way home we stopped at Anthro Cooks again, and made it back home to Pittsburgh the following night. What a whirlwind of a trip, I must say that Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin have it going on. Though Illinois is really really really flat, and most of Iowa isn’t to hilly either.

Book Review: The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter

My Mom gave me the book The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now a few months ago. After getting the courage to read it the whole way through I discovered a great deal and it has propelled me to move forward with my life.

The book is by psychologist, Dr. Meg Jay. She seems to have wrote the book after realizing how many of her clients had misunderstandings of what their twenties were all about and found themselves caught in ruts unable to move forward with their lives. My Mom gave me the book to help me get out of the ruts I was in and to get the most from my twenties. She is really into reading and understanding these things through books and has given me books before about finding out what I want to do with my life. I haven’t gotten around to reading most of the books she gave, but I’m happy I made it through this one.

I started reading this book and put it down after a chapter because it freaked me out too much. At the time there was a couple of other things haunted my thoughts and the last thing I needed was to think about how I wasn’t seizing my twenties. After a long hiatus I finally picked the book up and was able to read it all the way through despite the stresses it brought me at times.

The book talks about people’s twenties by examples of Dr. Jay’s clients. They each have something holding them back or making them unhappy. From working crappy jobs to dating crappy people. Dr. Jay explains a great deal of the twenties and how to enjoy them and make a good solid life for yourself.

One of my favorite clients is Ian, the bike mechanic. He doesn’t want to enter the real world (much like myself) and instead is working a job he doesn’t get satisfaction from. He in particular helped me realize that I need to break out of this rut and move on with what I actually want to do.

Ian viewed himself as being in an endless ocean, he didn’t seem to know where he came from and what he did enjoy doing and didn’t have any idea where he wanted to go in life. I felt much the same way, I had tried community organizing and hated it and found myself lucky enough to know how to work on bikes and be able to use that as a backup job. That backup became a real job and I found myself in the very same ocean. Until I had the courage to look at what I had wanted to do before, what I enjoyed as a kid and still enjoy today.

I spent the weekend in my home town stewing about all of this. I talked to old friends and professors and began realizing what I actually want to do with my life, counselling. This is something that I enjoy doing with friends and have been passionate about for a while. This book was instrumental in this realization and it will assure that I take steps towards this goal.

Before all of this I figured I was feeling things no one had felt before and related only to other people trapped in the same situation. But that isn’t true. Everyone who is thirty made it through their twenties and I’m sure they loved it but I’m sure it was also hard for most of them. My Mom reminded me of this fact when she once again told me the story of how she worked at a bank after college. It wasn’t until she took the leap into joining what is now called AmeriCorps that she broke into doing what she enjoyed. I finally understood this story and how difficult (and fun) being in your twenties really is for just about everyone.

Moving up, err down in the world?

The bike shop I worked at just got kicked out of our space because the liquor store is expanding. Our bowling alley shaped space has been traded in for a much smaller box size room. Technically we did move up, there were 4 stairs to move up to get to our new space. We moved all of the stuff for the front end on Tuesday and Wednesday leaving the other room empty and desolate.

It also highlights how much space we had and how we actually needed a bit less and needed it a bit better organized. Here are pictures of the old space coming in from the front door.

The new space is a lot cozier and homey feeling. It’s also way better organized, you don’t have to pace back and forth just to sell a bike. Instead you can walk around a small circle, but don’t even have to do it that much! I’ll try and take picture of the new space soon.

Though we aren’t quite yet finished moving in. The mechanic’s area still needs to move. It was thought that we could move it before we got kicked out of the old space (The end of December) but it’s becoming clear that just isn’t as plausible as we thought. I’m going to be going in early the next few days to help out move, hopefully we have the place moved in a week or two.

Shop Children

Some bike shops have shop dogs, cats and the last one I worked at had shop squirrels for a couple of months. But the current shop I work at has shop children. They don’t live at the shop just nearby, but one of them, Ernie, did spend over 8 hours at the shop for 3 days in a row. During those days he even tidied up the place a bit, cleaning of bikes and learned how to work on them a bit.

The kids are all BMXers and I believe they started hanging out at the shop after meeting my coworkers at the BMX park. It started slow with them coming and hanging out only briefly but now it has intensified. There are 5 kids in the gang, but they rarely are all together at once. There age range from 13 to 19 or 21. With all but one being from 13 to 15 years old. Most of them are quite entertaining though sometimes they are overwhelming and hard to handle.

They all like us very much, one has even asked a couple of us if we could adopt him. It is nice having them around, they make the shop time much more enjoyable. Especially when they do silly things like Ernie did:

It’s nice also seeing all of us making a positive impact on their lives. They all really look up to us and we are able to teach them things. Sometimes it’s just how to work on their bike sometimes it’s about other things. I’ve even had the pleasure of showing Ernie how to solve the first two layers of a Rubik’s cube (he was so excited by solving them he went out and bought a cube the next day and figured out how to solve in by watching some videos online.

Having these kids around has reminded me how I hope to work with kids in my future, it’s fun for me to teach them how to do something, especially when they are already interested in it. But for now I just enjoy having them around, they make work go a lot faster and almost always have a positive attitude.

Life plans

Recently I’ve become increasingly frustrated working at bike shops. The work is skilled labor that is seasonal (at least up north) and the pay is mediocre. On top of that sales at my store are down and my hours have been cut to compensate for other’s failures to sell bikes.This along with many other recent happenings have opened my eyes to working with my hands not on bikes but on houses.

When I was still living in Philly I wanted to emulate my landlord/roommate, Half Dreadlock, She had bought the house we lived in and had begun fixing it up, charging us rent that covered the fixing it up part and the mortgage. I figured I could work on houses in at least the same regard as she did and was excited to save up my money to buy a house.

Then my desire began to grow stronger. My landlord explained how he bought houses fixed them up and rented them. Explaining that at the very least I should buy a house and rent out part of it to cover my housing and utility expenses. This was already my goal but he expanded it when we had a longer conversation a second time. This time he asked me, “If you don’t mind me asking what do you see yourself doing with your life?” I replied, “I have no idea.” He through around a bunch of ideas from hydroponic farm to working for the city as a sanitation worker (apparently you can retire after 20 years work with a pension). But the idea that clicked the most in my head was becoming an electrician. The work is skilled labor with your hands, you get paid well and can make over 50k a year. And I’d be able to work for myself once I had enough experience.

Then I went back to Philly and was talking to my old roomies. Half Dreadlocks had just begun expanding her house buying and was about to buy one and looking at a second property. We were talking about work and my work desires in the future when she brought the guy she was buying a house from, “Crazy Dave.” He began working on houses when he was in school for a PhD in physics. He worked for his landlord for some extra money, then one of his landlord’s friends, then some more landlords. Shortly after that he dropped out of school and 15 years later he found himself with over a million dollars in assets, owning 12 properties in Philadelphia. He decided to sell all of them and move to Oregon to work on a sustainable farm.

I began to get excited, realizing this is what I wanted to do and told Half Dreadlock that I may start working for my landlord very soon. She urged me to continue working at an over the table job until I got a mortgage (apparently they are impossible to get one without such a job).

I tried to put the idea on the back burner saying I’d do it after I bought a house, but hours went down and I began working for my landlord. I haven’t done much work but it’s interesting work, very labor intensive. He is very eager for me to work for him more, hoping that I take charge of all his houses and the work being done on them. Essentially being his property manager. I’ve told him I’m just looking for part time work right now but assuming the pay is better than my current job I’m sure I’ll work for him more. What is very cool is that he really wants me to learn a lot, including showing me a house that he wanted me to do the plumbing and electrical work on. I think he recognizes my youthfulness and drive to do good hard work for little money. Meanwhile I recognize his ability to teach me everything I would need to know about working on houses.

It’s all very exciting, I have a current goal of working for my landlord part time, eventually moving to full time. I also plan on buying a decrepit house fairly soon and fixing it up. After I gain my experience I plan on doing freelance work, and being the cheapest of cheap assholes so I can retire early and start doing what I want. Which, the more I’ve been thinking about, is probably teaching kids how to work on stuff. So I feel like working on stuff my whole life will be great experience for that.

Trek of PGH

Trek was my second choice of bike shops, my first wasn’t hiring, but by the things I’d heard about Trek I was excited to work there. I started work a few days after moving in and after a few days quickly realized that the position of mechanic that I applied for (and the position I thought I was hired to do) was not the position I had. I talked to the service manager and he told me that they didn’t have enough money to hire a service writer and a mechanic so they hired me as a service writer. I immediately expressed my frustration, he was unable to resolve many of my concerns which began to disappoint me. More or less he said I was the low man on the totem pole and that there was potential to be a mechanic in the future, but probably not this year.

I called Smiles after work and told her the situation and she urged me to look for work elsewhere so I could actually be a mechanic. She told me what I wanted to hear and what I was feeling getting me even more frustrated about being led on and lied to about my current job. Smiles helped me figure out a plan to deal with this. I reapplied to one bike shop I had applied to before later that day and set up an interview with them.

The interview went really well but I started to realize they were looking for someone with more experience than me. I’ve only been working in shops for just over a year. I have a lot of experience working on bikes, just not in shops. The person they were looking for was someone who could help open a new store they are trying to open in one of the parks up north. While I was okay with trying to do that I certainly wasn’t prepared to do that. They realized that too and didn’t hire me.

I was crushed. I didn’t really really want to work there, but I did really want to be a mechanic. I got really stressed about my future, and then I decided to not worry about it for a week or so. I hadn’t told the people at Trek much at all and continued working with them through this time.

Then a week passed and I realized that I was starting to enjoy Trek. The place is really laid back and low-stress. There is a lot of down time to hangout and talk, the customers are pretty nice. We get lots of tip money (which we use to go bowling, and go on other fun trips), lots of alcohol both beer and hard liquor.

Basically the place seems to be the epitome of bike shops (at least in comparison to my last job at Keswick). People like they job but their job isn’t their life, it’s their means, it’s what they enjoy doing. I’ve been working here for 3 weeks and so far I enjoy it here. I’m not ecstatic about being a service writer, especially because that means I have to help out more on sales, but I must say I enjoy working here quite a bit.