east coastin' and virginia beachin'

it has been a crazy ass week.  yes it's sunday but work has been a 7 day affair.  last week was spent rebuilding pizza ovens and then going to florida with fred to extract another set of pizza ovens.  we left thursday morning, headed to morehead city to drop off a 60qt mixer.  floor mixers are heavy.  this particular model was about 850lbs.  after dropping that off it took us about 4hrs to get back to 95.  gotta love those carolina backroads.  here are some highlights:

-not far into the trip wilson phillips' "hold on" came on the radio.  of course i start singing the shit out of it.  fred looks at me in disgust and grumbles something.  maybe 10hrs later heart's "what about love" comes on and i start belting.  fred goes "sing it boy!".  finally, we were headed back and styx's "sailing" comes on.  fred and i both sang the shit out of it.  i knew i could win him over.  fred has a great singing voice.  i'm going to write a country song for him to sing on.

-fred and i always inadvertently play good cop/bad cop on whatever poor soul(s) we happen to have to deal with in order to get our jobs done.  we rolled up into this spot in in palm beach gardens and meet our dude.  fred is cranky and starts firing off questions and laying out information that conveys a deep knowledge of how the restaurant equipment/auction industry works.  it can be quite intimidating.  dude man is befuddled.  so fred goes out to the truck and i start talking to the guy.  "he's a happy guy isn't he?  try riding 16 hours with him!"  usually this loosens them up and they usually end up in awe of fred.  this usually leads to us getting hooked up in some form or fashion: comped meals, free stuff, etc.

-i've really come to appreciate virginia's liberal knife carry laws.  in chicago you can't carry any folding blade longer than 2 inches and fixed blades are illegal.  pennsylvania has essentially made any sort of spring-assisted mechanisms illegal.  florida says anything other than a 'common pocketknife' is illegal.  so when i can't carry the ka-bar i carry around a massive 5 1/2 inch folding blade that is hair-splittingly sharp

cold steel xl voyager clip point with pencil for size reference

so today dustin, fred, aaron, a nice gentleman named andre and i went to va beach to extract two walk-in fridges and freezers.  they were at a nightclub that the owner shut down because of problems with violence.  about a year ago somebody got hit in the head with a champagne bottle.  he went to the hospital and died the next day after going into cardiac arrest from the head trauma.  owner dude decided to pull the plug on this club, which had been there for 23 years.

it was a relatively easy job.  it was nice to be not too far from home and to travel like a rockstar in dustin's ford excursion.  that is a comfortable vehicle but i don't want to think about what it costs to fuel that puppy up.  we loaded two trailers and truck beds full of walk-ins, walk-in accoutrements, a giant six-burner range and a couple of fryers.

sir frederick and the spoils of battle

life has been pretty stressful and money has been tight, especially since i've looking after my sick brother.  i'm really grateful to work with good dudes.  when i'm at work i am a lion warrior and i feel no pain.  someone i'm wonderfully close to told me not to worry so much and there was and is power in those words.  i have felt a lot better.  to that wonderful person:  thank you.

until the next adventure...