Closing Re-Cycle

3/27/15



An hour and twenty minutes. Record time. We left an hour and a half behind schedule (not too bad), so I kept up with the faster cars on the road. No stops. Saved forty minutes!

We're here to unload a truck-full of scrap wood. We have a truck-full of scrap wood because Re-Cycle is closed. The bike shop I started ten years ago is done. We couldn't make it work. We tried for three seasons to bring it back to profitability but last fall we finally faced the facts.



The original Re-Cycle logo.




Re-Cycle served it's purpose. I'm trying to think of it as the booster rocket that got used up shooting the space capsule into orbit. Recovery Bike Shop is still moving toward the moon and there's just no way that would have happened without Re-Cycle. But my shop wasn't designed to be disposable.




We hauled the scrap lumber out of the basement of Re-Cycle. 3/27/15




There's some relief in letting go of a problem. And I dreamt about my landlord last night, a man that scares the hell out of me. Really he is a stellar landlord. Class A service. I discovered a leak at 9:00 one night and he had a maintenance guy on the scene in thirty minutes. That's how he operates.

I'm afraid of him because he unknowingly put me through hell a year after I signed a twelve month lease for the space. We had to renegotiate. During those twelve months he had gone from being part of the executive team to president of the company (25,000 residential units or something gigantic like that). And my lease went from one page to FORTY pages. I'd never seen anything like it and I thought I was being swindled. The negotiation went on for four months. I thought I was going to lose my business. I had to get a lawyer. My beard turned gray.

Turns out it was forty pages of pretty standard stuff. I just didn't know it yet.

So we finally threw in the towel last fall. We closed the day before Thanksgiving and we've been slowly moving out ever since. Thursday was the final day and it included piles of plywood and 2x4s that we'd used to build shelving for bikes. The 2x4s are short and may turn out to be firewood, but Elizabeth is going to use the plywood as underlayment for the hardwood floor in the loft.

See, it was relevant to the schoolhouse.




3/28/15



Feed the fire
Walk the dog
Kill some flies
Snack
Work on the laptop
Repeat. Ah the simple life.




In the Solona State Forest with Brie, off-leash for the first time. 3/28/15




3/29/15



Yesterday we gave Brie the thrill of a lifetime. Probably. We let her run around at the Solana State Forest. She stayed within a hundred feet of us right up until the end of our walk. Twenty minutes before sundown and a quarter mile from the highway she bolted. I'm sure she saw something in the woods and went after it. We tried to be patient. We tried to calmly call her back. But she had her own priorities.

She was gone for five minutes perhaps. Long enough for us to start to feel the cold fingers of panic. We waded out into the trees where she'd left the path. We turned up the volume and the urgency of our calls. And eventually she came running down the path from who knows where. She was just calm and happy and ready for the leash.



Best

Day

Ever. 3/28/15


The forecast called for rain overnight and during our drive time the next morning. Reluctantly we packed up and headed out last night. Only an hour or two of reading and tending the fire was lost to our early departure (that and eight or so hours with our eyes closed), but it still felt like a sacrifice. Time at the schoolhouse is selfish. The rest of the world barely exists.

Brie slept in the truck on the way home. A first.






NEXT POST: Martha Kills a Deer
The first buds of pussy willow in the Solona State Forest. 3/28/15