Closing complete. Then the fun shit began.

Well, I closed on the house one week ago. Right now I'm sitting at my desk among a sea of boxes and bikes in my new office.

Closing went smoothly. The realtor and mortgage broker told me it went as smoothly as a sale could possibly go. Then I started moving in. I took a couple of boxes of random shit up on Tuesday, so I could "camp" at the new house, then started running load after load on Wednesday, with my UHaul reserved for Thursday.

When I woke up on Thursday morning, it was raining. Not pouring. Not drizzling. Just a hard, steady rain. I picked up the UHaul, a 14-footer. As soon as I got it to the apartment, I saw a problem. Metal ramp. Rain. The exact shoes I broke my leg while wearing. Whatever. It took a lot of effort, but I got the refrigerator out. When I was trying to get it up the ramp, though, I couldn't trust my grip on the slippery ramp, and eventually got pissed enough that I just pushed the thing over in the middle of the road. My temper is nothing to fuck with. I eventually polished everything off but the dryer, when I flipped out again. It was a shitty ride to my parents house, where they calmed me down and helped me take my gargantuan dresser out of my old room, down the stairs, and into the truck.

The hard part behind us, I was met by my riding buddy Jarrod at the house, where moving everything in went incredibly smoothly. Jarrod and I bought a bunch of alcohol after one more trip to Greensburg, and got royally shit-faced upon returning to the new house. Jarrod barfed for the first time in four years.

We woke up around 11:00 to pick up my Dad's Subaru and then drive to Monroeville to get Crustin. I had bought tickets in early October to see my favorite band, Cave In, play in Philadelphia. We stopped, hung over, at Mad Mex, then drove for 5 hours to the other side of the state.

The show was incredible, and we got on the road at 11:30, headed for Pittsburgh. Jarrod did a good job of keeping me awake on the drive home, and it was hell trying to wake up Crustin to get his address so I could plug it into the GPS. We dropped him off and eventually returned to Bear Rocks at 5:30 AM.

The next day, I woke up late, and made several more runs moving things in. As of now, I've been back to the apartment a few times to pick up a car-load here, a car-load there, but one solid day will pretty much clean that place out.

I have a wood burner at my new house, and have yet to even turn my oil furnace on. It's free heat, it makes the house smell nice, and gives me some exercise with the log splitter and carrying all the wood. I have two sheds, and I turned one of them into wood storage, and with all the wood my Dad gave me today, I should have enough for at least a week. I NEED MY CHAINSAW BACK, though. That's going to be key.

I started working on the backyard trails, although November to March is pretty much a lost cause when it comes to riding. At least I'm building, though. One trail has been started, and another is mostly scoped out. I'd like to set it up like some sort of bizarre pump-track abomination where you can just lap the entire yard forever. But that will come with time. Right now, I need to get some dirt moved and some wood installed. I'll be doing some more work by the end of the week, after I move the rest of the junk out of the old apartment.

Sleep Deprivation

So I had to be up today at 7:30 for SPT training up at Seven Springs, for my winter job in the terrain park. I think I'm sucking down a bit too much caffeine, because after trying to fall asleep at 1:00 am, I watched two and a half movies, chugged two cups of supposedly relaxing, calming tea, and could not fall asleep. I think 4:30 had come and gone by the time I finally passed out.

Now I'm trying to fight back the urge to collapse on the couch or crawl into bed, because in 2 hours, I need to go to the pizza shop and work until 1:30 AM. If I get it right and manage to stay awake, I'll crash as soon as I get home, wake up early tomorrow, and get back on a normal sleep schedule.

See, when I'm not working a morning job, I'm instinctively awake until 3 or 4. I don't know why, but I think it has to do with the fact that I habitually sleep in. It's not uncommon that it'll be 2:00 in the afternoon when I wake up. Then I go to work, come home, wind down, and winding down inevitably ends up with me getting stoked on something and not wanting to go to sleep. Then, the next thing I know, it's 4:00 am and the cycle repeats itself.

Shit

It's been a beast of a summer. Since I last posted, I finally got hired up at Seven Springs for the purpose of building trails. Dream job? Sort of. There's a lot of mundane shit that goes into that job, not much of which is exciting or fun. But the payoff is getting your ass out there with some hand tools and busting out a new section of gnar to shred.

We built a ladder drop my first week there.




And then on to a new trail, Frankenstein. We added the ladder bridges at the end later in the season.






Then we started working on a few new features and a new trail. The Tank, The Battleship, and Slingshot. The Tank:




We're getting started (supposedly) on a slopestyle section at the top of the park at the beginning of next season, hopefully we can fire this out there before all the snow melts. To be continued in the next post.