TGIM

Happy Monday everyone. My weekend begins now. It is kinda weird having Tuesday and Wednesday replace my Saturday and Sunday, but that’s how it goes when the busiest days in the shop are on the weekend. My “weekend” here isn’t very fun anyways. Sometimes I go work on more bikes for no pay at the co-op. Otherwise I just lounge around at the house.

There just ain’t much here that excites me. When I think about going on a ride, I usually stop myself by asking, “What’s the point?” It used to be fun to ride because I could get to somewhere cool. Last Wednesday, Jared and I went riding on the lakefront path. On the way out, things were fine. Then we turned around. The wind was insane, and my feet were wet from all the snow, so I was freezing. I felt like a pansy but I was whimpering because my foot was burning it was so cold. Then when we were off the lake, we crossed the street and I almost got hit by a car as we were making a left turn. After that I just started crying about how much I hate it here.

I just want to be back in las montanas. Don’t really care which ones…I JUST NEED the fucking mountains. There is something monumental about hanging out on top of the product of tectonic plates colliding.

I want to be back here…having my birthday party on top of Tucson’s Mt. Lemmon with Jared. We went up the mountain and camped 3 times that week. Good times!:

I’ve tried the multicultural urban experience out here for a while. Beyond the food, it’s not been very satisfying. Though there are a lot of different kinds of people in this neighborhood and they do intermingle, it still manages to be very segregated. I guess that teaches you something about people, class divisions, and how racism can manifest itself.

Work is still very frustrating because of the pay. I understand that it’s a hole in the wall in the ghetto and is barely surviving, but my “training” is over now. They expect me to work fast now, so where is the dough? It’s ok…I’ve established my own ethics now about working in the shop.

Since I’m not being adequately compensated in the first place, I just give more to the customers and get more experience in the process. I try to work fast so I can do extra stuff to a lot of the tune-ups. Sometimes I sneak in a hub overhaul when the boss isn’t looking. Trust me, that’s kinda hard to pull off when it comes to rear wheels. Yesterday, I got yelled at for pulling a pair of V-brake calipers off the posts to regrease them because they were gunked.

It’s so absurd that I’m making less than I did at my first job ever when I was in 10th grade. I worked at a hot dog and snow cone stand on the boardwalk of Virginia Beach. It was co-owned by my geometry and math analysis teachers. If I remember correctly I did pretty darn well at the hot dog stand.

I could get used to a shop like this one. These guys don’t actually fix bikes, they just clean them and dance around them and go on test rides. These lyrics are very cryptic. I can’t tell if the song is about cocaine or bikes or both. It’s almost as though they’re speaking a different language:

Rip Slyme – Blow

Maka | MySpace Video
-L

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