The Sweating Season

90 degrees today with dewpoints in the lower 60's. Yuck. This Atlanta-type weather I can do without. This year I actually planned ahead and installed the air conditioners before it got too hot. The house was relatively comfortable today when I got home.

I ended up going to both jobs today. I had to run payroll for Jon and Doug and then it was back down to Used Bike World Domination Headquarters to help with the mess down there. Jamie the owner is out of town for two weeks working as a mechanic on RAGBRAI (the ride across Iowa) and then on the Habitat for Humanity 500 mile ride. While he is gone his employees are conspiring to create some order out of the chaos that is Sunrise Cyclery. I sure hope we make some progress.

We're finally a complete family again. KyKy was at her cousin's cabin for 4 days so we had to plod along without her.

TOYH is stressing out a bit about work and stuff. She's been helping out with Gabe's mom's stuff while she's gone in Costa Rica. This helpfulness has been cutting into the paperwork time at her real job. I must say, though, I'm proud of her right now. Normally she overdoes it on the helpfulness front in situations like this and ends up a wreck because she doesn't have enough time in the day for work and helping. This time she's let others carry some of the burden. Now she's only mildly freaked out about how much stuff has to be done. That's real progress.

It looks like Gabe is coming home tomorrow. He's doing well, recovering more sensation and his reflexes are getting stronger. He's got a long road ahead though.

A Bit Of Relaxation

Our neighbor Gabe is making some progress and has moved out of ICU in San Jose. He might be able to come home midweek if the docs think it's o.k. For travel purposes his neck is not the concern, there are titanium plates in it to keep it stable and he only has a soft collar around it. There are other worries for such a long journey. In this type of accident there are always secondary problems - shallow breathing and the risk of pnemonia, fever, no bowel movements. A Caringbridge site has been set up and you can follow his progres here.

TOYH, Madster, 'Nika and I got out of town for a bit yesterday afternoon with some friends. It was nice to get a little physical separation from all the heaviness that's associated with what's going on with Gabe. We're back at it today with a bunch of friends this afternoon. We'll be trying to get Carolyn's house picked up for a possible mid week return. I talked to Matthew, Gabe's dad, on the phone for a bit yesterday. He sounds exhausted. He hasn't been getting very much sleep. I simply can't imagine what they are all going through.

Trying To Figure Out My New Job

This was my first "full" week at the bike shop. First conclusion: I know jack crap about bikes. It's quite intimidating to have a customer come in and ask you specific questions about a bike part and not know what the heck the person is talking about. It's not just intimidating, it's painful. Hopefully this will change with time. Here's an example - just today I had a customer who wanted a tune up on her bike. Miracle of miracles, I actually replaced a brake cable and made her rear brake work. Unfortunately, I told her that we could replace old, cracked, rotting tires on her bike. I took the old tire off and went to search for a new one, a 26 x 1 3/8 tire. I found some new tires that were stamped 26 x 1 3/8 to 26 x 1 1/4. Close enough, I thought. It ought to work on this rim. I installed the first tire. It did not work. The tire would obviously not stay on the rim. I asked a fellow employee about this and he said, "What you need to do is find a tire that fits only to 26 x 1 3/8. If it has an extra dimension stamped on it, it won't work. And by the way, I sold the last new 26 x 1 3/8 specific tire the other day, so go look in the basement for a used tire that only has 26 x 1 3/8 stamped on it." So I go down to the basement of the shop, and I'm amazed to find two tires of the correct size. Triumphantly, I go up to put these used tires on the rims, and I find the same problem I had with the new tires I had tried previously. I go back to said fellow employee and tell him that the 26 x 1 3/8 specific tires are not fitting correctly and would easily come off the rim. "Oh," he said, "You have 26 x 3/8 Schwinn tires that will only fit on Schwinn rims. If you try them on any other type of rim for 26 x 1 3/8 , they won't work." Sigh. Take that particular situation and multiply it by about 1 million and you'll get an idea of the permutations and combinations of bikes, bike parts and the bike business. The nice thing about bike esoterica is that I'm actually interested in this kind of bike minutiae, as opposed to the specifications of a Hewlitt Packard 8720B with options 001 and 1E1 in my previous job. It will take years of observing and experimenting to feel comfortable in the bike biz, but I want to take that plunge.

Can It Get Any Worse? Why Yes It Can.

This morning TOYH went over to Carolyn's to let the dog out and discovered that the house had been burglarized overnight. A first floor window had been left unlocked and that was all that was needed. As far as we can tell, nothing of great monetary value was taken, but a violin with great sentimental value was. I stuck around to walk the cops throught the mess and ended up spending more time on my cell phone today than I have for all the previous months of the year. This whole situation is very, very wearying for me and TOYH. The latest medical reports we have heard are not so encouraging. Matthew is having a very hard time keeping together emotionally down there in C.R. Carolyn just arrived last night and I'm sure she's going through the same thing as Matthew. Then crap like this burglary happens and we end up being involved in trying to sort out the mess. By no means are we the only ones who are doing things in Carolyn's absence. It's just that our proximity to Carolyn and her house put us at ground zero. We're very, very tired.

Today's Drama

Last night we received a call from our neighbor Carolyn telling us that her son Gabe, who we've known since he's been in diapers, was involved in a mishap in Costa Rica. Gabe is spending a month there as an exchange student through AFS. The word last night was that Gabe suffered a concussion in a swimming accident and was being transported to San Jose for treatment. This morning we woke up to the news that Gabe had broken his neck and the doctors had taken some bone from his hip and implanted it in his spine. Not good news. I spent some time with Carolyn this morning and this afternoon trying to help anyway I could. Another friend, Kelly, was spearheading the effort to get Carolyn's passport in order, and get her out of the country to be with her son. As the day wore on, there was no new news on his condition. All we knew was that he had come out of surgery and was awake. Naturally, everyone gravitates to the worst possible scenario. We had heard that Gabe had no feeling in his fingers or toes when he was transported to the hospital, and that the doctors knew that there was swelling around the spinal cord. Conclusion drawn by those of us thousands of miles away? Paralysis. This was driving me crazy. After having worked in an emergency room for two years, I can tell you that jumping to conclusions about the status of a patient is just about the easiest thing in the world to do. I didn't want to tell Carolyn that everything was going to be alright, nor did I want to jump on the doom and gloom bandwagon. The lack of information was excruciating.

We did get some happy news later on tonight. Gabe called his mom and said that he could raise his arm above his head and wiggle his toes. This is good news. But.... just as we shouldn't have jumped to negative conclusions when we first heard about the accident, neither should we conclude from the information we have now that Gabe will make a full recovery. Time will tell and we'll hope and pray for the best outcome.

Of Bike Rides And Bridges

This morning the lovely TOYH and I went for a bike ride to take a look at the new 35W bridge. By the end of this weekend they will probably be finishing up the span across the river, which is utterly remarkable. Believe it or not, I took pictures and they are posted on my Picasa page. I had to fiddle around with some of the images because I'm not a good photographer. It' really hard to capture the immensity of the project and how strange it looks to see two spans of a bridge, unconnected, cantilevered out over the water.

This afternoon we're off to Kent and Ann's for the 4th. Usually we walk all of 4 blocks to Powderhorn Park and catch fireworks there after having cooked out with the neighbors. This year a bunch of neigbors are AWOL so we're going to spend the evening with family. I'm gonna miss the Powderhorn fireworks. It's not that the display is so spectacular, it's because it seems like the whole neighborhood, and this is a fairly diverse neighborhood, is gathered together for an hour or so and is enjoying something in common. It's pretty cool

The Transition Has Begun

Today I went into Test Equipment World Domination Headquarters to officially end my employment there. It amounted to me opening up QuickBooks and entering my termination date. When I put in June 29th as my final day (the last day of my last pay period), QB asked if I was deceased. Well not exactly, so I didn't check that box. I'll still be putting in some hours with Jon, but not as an employee. I am now a highly paid consultant to Northern Test. I'll be coming in to do some mercenary work and leave. Ahhhh the life of an independent contractor.

Monday I went into the bike shop to help Jamie and Jen do inventory. Not much got done. The point of sale software that the shop uses asks for a bunch of information that cannot be transfered from the current program. If we set it up right, it ought to work pretty well, but the initial data entry is going to take a while. Jamie's plan for training me in consists of this - follow him and the other employees around for a couple of weeks. It's actually not a bad plan. There's really no chance of training during off hours. On Mondays the shop is closed (hence the time to do inventory). In the 4 hours I was there for inventory, there were probably a dozen or so people wanting to come in and look around. Eventually I want to be able to get in and keep the shop open on Mondays and extend the hours the rest of the week. The idea of working at this shop has been such a long time coming, it hardly seems real now that it's happening. I really hope it will work out.

I would like to post here more, but since I don't have a job sitting staring at a computer screen all day, it will probably be a bit more difficult to do it as often as I used to. The quality of the posts will suffer too, if that is at all possible.