Settling In

Today was my fourth day at Erik's. Already the work that I am doing comes more naturally. I intuitively know which allen wrench to grab for a crank (8mm) or a pinch bolt (5mm). I still stupidly stand around sometimes when I don't know what to do next, but all the veterans understand. I'll get it some day.

Yesterday while biking to work a guy with a long beard on a fendered bicycle rode up behind me and introduced himself (Chris). I recognized him as the guy I had zipped by the day before during the same commute. (Theoretically I'm social, but when it comes to making new friends... I'm out of practice. And making new friends while cycling? For me there is no precedent.) I told him I had just gotten a job at Erik's. "Nice. As sales or a wrench?" His question caught me off guard. I ruled out sales and in doing so learned that I am now - by the nomenclature of some - a "wrench." Cool. We chatted for a bit - he's a 12-year bike mechanic veteran himself, quite coincidentally - and then rode off on our separate ways.

Coming home from work last night, after working my first 11-hour day, I was accompanied by my manager Alex on his bike. He's a nice guy - young and likable (I suppose you have to be to succeed enough in sales to become a manager) - and apparently he lives not far from my home. It was fun to chat with him during our ride. I guess I've officially been introduced to the culture of bike commuting. Now I just need the blaring yellow jacket...

One quick snapshot of Alex: Today I overheard him on the phone with a customer, agreeing with something, "Right on, sir."

My First Day of Work (and the Stuff That Preceded It)

The only thing about my first day of work that was not awesome and hopeful was this.

But let me go back a bit, as I haven't written for while. The reason behind my writing hiatus was a rather busy schedule: six days of full-time training last week, preceded by a similarly busy week. I was going to write a cute little blog last week, highlighting some of the sources of busyness, but that busyness prevented me from writing. Had I written that post you would have heard tales of getting pampered by the local squash club trying to secure my membership, taking a tour of a local brewery (with a few obligatory free beers at the end), a Lord of the Rings game night, fighting through the frenzy of the local REI's Scratch and Dent sale to come out with some high quality winter wear for an 1/8th of the original retail price, and much much more. But wouldn't you know, I have other things to do today as well.

I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I've mostly been occupied with fun things. AND one can't claim to be too busy when one stays up 'til 1:30 am finishing a 1000-piece puzzle...

On to training! So, a few posts ago I mentioned that I got hired as a bike mechanic. Now I actually am a bike mechanic - technically a service technician. In order to attain this status, however, I first had to complete a rigorous week of training. What I did not realize when I was first applying for this job was that this bike shop is actually a large, local franchise. In 1977 the name sake of this franchise opened the original shop - as a 13-year old (!) - in his parent's barn. Since then it's grown to have 16 stores in 2 states. What this means for me is that this is the largest company/corporation/business/organization that I have ever worked for! This only struck me after I began my training and was hit with such novelties as: a full-time employee trainer, an HR guy, benefits, computer-managed inventory database... even a company mission statement.

Unfortunately, though I was hired as a mechanic at a store location very near to my house, training was at corporate headquarters - a solid 30-minute drive. And we were supposed to be there early. And to drive there I had to pass through the heart of the cities where traffic was sure to be an issue. The commute was a drag (especially in a freak morning snowstorm on Wednesday), but the actual training was pretty fun.

Brad ('B-Rad' as his name tag read) was our trainer. A middle-aged father of two he was extremely friendly and helpful. One got a sense from the rapid-fire lectures and explanations he would deliver that he was a fountain of mechanical knowledge - so steeped in his course material that he didn't know which helpful trick to show us next. And he would challenge us, sneakily loosening crucial bolts in attempt to hone our diagnosing ability or snipping a laboriously installed brake cable so that practice would make perfect. It was a rigorous training course, but I enjoyed it and got a lot out of it.

The rest of the folk we met at corporate were equally nice. Doug (the HR guy) introduced all of us new trainees to the large corporate family we had become a part of. I was a bit wary of the corporate mumbo jumbo, full of mission statements, employee improvement goals and the like, but as we learned more I became of the opinion that while I was now employed by a large corporate entity, at least it was a pretty nice entity. We had forms to fill out that helped our managers know how we best deal with criticism. They are of the belief that ALL employees are peers and back it up with their open door policy - giving every employee the ability to contact anyone the company (even the founder/CEO) with need for help. Their training policy is that any employee can request more training at any time and it will be honored. Not to mention, they have a pretty sweet employee discount policy (though only for bikes/items purchased for me - sorry bike-loving family and friends). Good stuff.

And just like that six days were over. I graduated basic training, received my 2 standard mechanic-blue shirts and walked out the door - only to walk in the door of my current workplace the very next day. And there I was met with friendly people, a very helpful service manager and a workbench and stand of my own, at which I began wrenching. I'm still fairly low on the totem pole of training (though I mean to soon change that) so most of the work I did yesterday was safety checks on outgoing new bikes sold, but it was a slow day and I'm sure I'll soon see plenty of interesting broken bike scenarios.

Oh yes... also, all the stores have satellite radio. The default station (which apparently no one changes, or is allowed to change) starts the day with some nice reggae and rock, yet in the afternoon it meandered into the realm of pop (like the song in the link above), one for which I don't much care. One small bone to pick. All in all I'd say I'm pretty lucky.

How Moses Leads Brooke and I From Exile

As it happened, the Saturday on which I was offered the bike mechanic job (a great source of relief) was the same Saturday that Brooke's car died (a great source of stress). The car - an old '96 Saturn with over 180,000 miles - was a perma-loan of sorts from Brooke's parents, and we had grown to rely upon it, Brooke commuting to school and me job searching all over the Cities. But its head was cracked (that's car lingo, not a metaphor), oil was leaking into the coolant system, and we weren't sure we wanted to pump money into a car that could soon easily die for other reasons. It had become an ex-car. And yet the passing of the Saturn was also in part a blessing - a chance to gain just a little more independence. (Not to mention, the car lacked personality - even a name! We memorialized it only by whispering a solemn "R.I.P. Little Saturn" as one of it's longer-lived brethren would pass.)

And thus began the long, car-less exile. For a short while, the possibility of not buying another car entered our minds. Yet in a matter of weeks I was to begin my six-day job training in a suburb half an hour away. Also, Brooke's parents and sister, as well as a number of friends, lived a good distance away. Furthermore, neither Brooke nor I particularly enjoyed being in a city every day, and a vehicle was the only real hope of escape to nearby state parks. No, we needed to get another car. But this was easier said than done, especially when we are both poor and our only vehicle just died!

Fortunately, I hadn't begun working yet and was at leisure to car search full-time. And with great generosity Brooke's parents offered to let us borrow one of their vehicles for a few weeks, so we wouldn't be totally stranded. Just when I had turned my back on Craigslist (after a successful job search) I had to come crawling back to look for cars!

So, where to begin? As mentioned before both Brooke and I are to a degree impecunious, so price was a good place to start. Fortunately, both of us were expecting decent tax returns (one benefit to not having money?), and pooling together these resources and other savings/expected income we made a purchasing purse large enough to work with. Fuel economy was the next consideration. We both wanting a cute little 4-cylinder car, so it wasn't too difficult to narrow down the options. Reliability was also a factor (not being able to afford a low-mileage car), so reputable longevity also helped weed out some candidates. The final contestants: the Toyota Tercel/Echo, Honda Civic, Nissan Sentra and Toyota Corolla. Let the search begin!

Me + Craigslist + several days + yadda yadda yadda. Plenty of instances of rising and falling hopes. Dream cars posted on Craigslist and sold within hours. (Once I replied 30 minutes after a Civic was listed [10:30pm], set up a time to meet first thing next morning, and called before I drove over that morning, only to find that he had sold the car the previous night[!].) To make a long story short we found a nice little Tercel at a dealership - only 79,000 miles on the odometer, mostly driven in California - got a mechanic friend (shout out to Bob!) to drive it around, and headed back to the dealer to buy it. When I had looked at it the day before, I think I expressed too much obvious interest (despite earnest attempts to appear indifferent) because though we got him down $500 from the listed price he wouldn't budge from a price we knew to be a bit too high. In the end, we counted the small price inflation a Release from Stress fee and considered ourselves winners.

As for the car itself, Brooke and I both love it. It is teal, cute, and 100% manual: transmission, locks, windows... There aren't even levers that open the trunk or gas lid! You have to get out and open them with the key! The interior feels cheap but cozy, it's clean, and it even has an after-market stereo and speakers. It drives like a dream AND fueleconomy.gov assures me that it should get 30-40 mpg. We love it. As Brooke and I drove back to the dealership at the conclusion of our test drive, she commented on how humble the limited features made her feel. "This car is so humble, like... who was that patriarch who claimed to be the humblest man on Earth? Abraham or Moses? I think it was Moses... plus Moses sounds better." "Okay," I said, "if we buy this car we'll name it Moses."

Thus Moses was brought into our lives and led us from the exile of immobility. And we love him.

(This reminds me that I owe my blog the story of how Guinevere and I parted ways...)