Sep 24

Overdue update

adventure, blahblahblah, chaos, night, photo Add Comment (1)

Welp, I still exist. I know it has been a long time since I posted last, but hey, busy and all. So, here is an update.

Last time I was up in Utah, I found an apartment for rent in Layton. I can’t move in until October 10th, but at least I have it set up. It is a 2 bedroom 2 bath. I will be living about 15 miles north of where I work in North Salt Lake.

My job is really good, and I am really enjoying it. It is pretty challenging sometimes, but in a good way.

Money, as always, is tight right now, but if I can stay the course for a while longer, I think I can come out of this doing alright.

I’ve also been dating someone for a while. Her name is Amanda. Here is a picture of her. Things are going pretty well.

TruTech, the company I work for in Utah, rented me a moving truck:

Yeah, a tad bigger than my pickup. It has a cargo capacity of 8000 pounds, and a box that is 26 foot long, 8 foot wide and 8 foot tall. 210 horsepower inline 6 International diesel. I highly recommend that if you need to rent a moving truck, rent a Penske. They always have brand new trucks, and mine had cruise control, AC, and a CD player. Drove really well.

Back up a tad here.. I rode the motorcycle to Albuquerque last Saturday, and made it to Josephine’s house around 6PM. Mel came over a couple of hours later, and we went out to dinner and had fun talking about this and that. Back at Jo’s, we looked through some old pictures, had a couple of beers, and caught up pretty well. I fell asleep hard after having ridden 12 hours on a few hours sleep and a couple of beers, man.

Sunday I headed up through Santa Fe and met up with Dave, who had recently bought a Triumph Daytona sport bike. He followed me up to Whiterock so I could get rid of my gear and go for a proper ride with him up in the mountains. Going up the main hill to Los Alamos, I kind of dusted him. He had not been riding long, and he had not yet had the cornering epiphany that took me a good 5,000 miles to find. We made it to Whiterock and after he stated his surprise about watching ‘Steve on his dual-sport with all his gear on just leave me on the corners’, I explained to him the trick I had learned. Ditched the gear and we headed out. By the time we made it to the back gate, he had picked up the trick and was grinning ear from ear. We had an excellent, well paced ride over and back. Unfortunately, he lost his wallet somewhere, but it was a great day overall.

Monday Mariel took me down to Santa Fe and I picked up the truck. Brought it home, and spent the next day or so packing all of Kija’s stuff into the truck by myself. Bob came over Wednesday, helped me pack up the rest, and we took it all down to Albuquerque and put in her apartment. It felt pretty good to get her stuff out so I could see what I had left to do and to pack.

The rest of the week I spent packing my things in the truck. Chris came up on Thursday and helped me pack up the heavy items and work on the house. I was able to finish all the drywall and a lot of the trim with his help, as well as put down a new floor in the ‘other’ bathroom. By Friday evening, most of my stuff was packed up and the house was going pretty well.

Saturday morning Kija came up to clean, and I finished packing up most things. I left maybe a quarter of my tools, and a few other items as I just ran out of time and had to get on the road, plus I have to come back and finish the house in a couple of weeks. With luck, Kija will come back and help me finish cleaning, but judging from an email she sent me the other day, I have a feeling she doesn’t really care anymore. Ah well.

Saturday afternoon I drove the truck up north. Around Durango it started raining.

I was stuck at a red light on the highway just inside the Utah border and I took this picture of the rainy night:

After a few interesting sections of road in the rain and many hours, I arrived at the shop in North Salt Lake. The plan was to drop off the truck, get my pickup out of the warehouse, and head up to Layton to stay with Brian. However, the door to the warehouse was blocked by another company’s truck, so I had to take the Penske to Layton.

Sunday (today), I took the truck back down to the shop, and Brian pulled out the forklift. About an hour later, we had unloaded the entire truck and put it in the warehouse. Ah, the beauty of having a forklift at your disposal.

So, I am back in Layton, staying with Brian again for a while until I can move into my apartment. I will be back in Los Alamos probably the weekend of the 13th, and my folks are coming up to help me get the yard cleaned and finish the house so I can put it on the market and sell it. I’ll try to update more, now that maybe some of the really hectic stuff has died down, but we will see, eh?