Initiate Solo-moto!

Two good things happened today. I finished my first week at my new job without finding anything that makes me regret my decision and my FZ arrived early!

The first day of work was an New Employee Orientation Workshop that was held at Pacific Gas and Electric's training facility; the San Ramon Valley Conference Center.  In... You guessed it... San Ramon.

I will say this; if you think that people aren't hiring and you don't know where to find a job or you're looking for something new check PG&E's job openings on their website!  They are definitely hiring and they do an orientation every week and they are full!  But Juan, I'm not an electrician.  Think of it this way, PG&E is like a mini city if they hire for everything from custodians to engineers to linemen to lawyers to system operators.  There is likely something that you can do at this company and the benefits are good.  Okay, sidebar over.

The orientation was informative and they do a good job of keeping 8 hours of company info interesting.  I left at the end of the day feeling even better with my decision to move to across the country to join their team.  The next day was more or less getting settled in, I had some issues with passwords and getting access to the online training modules so I spent most of the day getting to know my co-workers and the login issues were resolved by the end of the day.  Wednesday I took CPR and first responder training so now I know what to do in a number of emergency situations.  Should I end up on a group ride (which I don't do much of anymore) and someone goes down I now have a much larger toolkit of skills to draw on if they are hurt.  Of course the training wasn't done for that it was to benefit PG&E and protect their employees while they are on the job.  It's entirely possible that I might need them in the control center but as a motorcyclist the probability is much higher that I will end up needing the skills on the road.  Thursday was more training in the morning and the latter half of the day shadowing my new co-workers and getting to know them.  All guys all under 35 and while they are very professional in the office I have the sneaking suspicion that if should the proper liquids be ingested it could be a pretty fun crew on a night out as well.  Today I toured the Pittsburg Substation and observed some crewmen switching out a pair of series capacitors on the 230KV system and then toured the Pittsburg Converter Station at one end of the Trans Bay Cable a very neat one of a kind underwater high voltage direct current (HVDC) cable that supplies San Francisco an alternate route for power (since it is on a peninsula).  I thought that was really cool but I get kind of nerdy around high voltage equipment.  After that we had lunch at the New Mecca Cafe which has amazing, authentic Mexican cuisine.  I was so stuffed from the lunch that I haven't eaten anything else and I still feel full at 2100!

On the way home came the best news of the day the bike was going to arrive this afternoon!  I was very surprised because they had told me the delivery window was from 4-29 to 5-3 but I'll take two days early.  I took the rental back to the shop and I was officially cage-free at 1600 today!  The bike came, we checked everything out and all was as it was when we left the guys even let me keep the "canyon-dancer-like" straps that they used on the front forks to strap the bike down so bonus there! I took the bike to the gas station and filled the tank since I had to take it down to 1/8 of a tank before shipping.  On first startup it fired just as it did when I rode it around to the truck to be loaded in Madison so that was one concern allayed.  If anyone can give me advice on the proper way to fuel up a motorcycle in California I would sure appreciate.  For some reason I like to see where the fuel level is at as I fill the tank so I had to push back the rubber sheath on the nozzle or it wouldn't fill and it is a pain in the ass.  Do motorcyclists in California really just shove the nozzle in and wait for it to click off?

After that I took the bike for a little ride around town and the outskirts of Vacaville.  I had originally planned on sticking my iPhone in the clear portion of the tank bad and looking at the GPS and having a single ear bud in (per California regulations) to listen to the audio instructions.  But I decided that would be too much of a distraction so I use my standard issue iPhone 5 ear bud in my left ear since that is the side with the volume control and the mic in it do I can adjust the volume of the audio cues for in-town and highway riding and I just let the right one dangle inside my jacket.  It seems to be working well thus far.

So here I am on a Friday, sitting at a Starbucks, I'm not a "Starbucks Guy" but I have a bunch of gift cards for here from family.  The cruel joke is that I forgot them so I had to pay with my own money which I’d rather give to a local café, coffee shop.  Oh well I have yet to find one I like here in Vacaville anyhow.  I'm not sure what other solo-moto guys (and gals) do on a Friday night but really I’m unwilling to drink at all and ride so getting drunk at a bar is out.  I knew it was going to be that way though and really it’s not a good idea for me to be going out an drinking when I have no one to call for a ride or for bail money etc… so I'll just leave here, go for a quick cruise around town and polish up this little bit of motoblogging up for you, the viewer while having one or two of the Guinness Black lagers that have in my fridge (I've been meaning to try them).  That paired with the coffee will give me the quick energy to get this out to you by bedtime!

Thanks to everyone for reading!

The Trek West

First, let’s have a reality check.  I am under no impression that my trek west could even be considered difficult or arduous when you place it in the grand scheme of the millions of people who have ventured to where the sun sets in search of good fortune.  I could imagine me regaling a member of the Donner Party who also started their trip west from Illinois of my “misfortunes.”  Had everything went to plan the trip would have only taken them 5 months and they would have eaten zero party members!  Never-the-less this blog is about me not them so here is the story of my one day trip to California.

I woke up at 0520 in the morning; ten minutes before I had set my alarm.  I had went to bed before Anne's parents had gotten home, was tired and figured I would need my rest for the day of travel I had hoped that I would have had some time to chat with Anne's parents in the morning but the weather had other plans.  I showered and went downstairs to have a light breakfast.  The basement door was open and I heard a distinct sound of water sloshing around.  FUUUCK!  Anne's parents have long had issues with their basement flooding and in the last five years have been doing all they could do to keep it from re-occurring they sealed the basement, and installed an anti-backflow valve on the basement drain but it turns out this morning that those efforts had failed.  Anne's poor Mom was down in the basement trying to get the important things up off the ground.  The water was about ankle deep.  She had checked the basement around 0400 and things were fine but a lot had happened in the hour and a half since.  Both Anne's Mom and Dad were running around doing their best to keep the water at bay.  I felt like an ass needing a ride to Midway airport at that point but Anne volunteered to help her mother get the important things off the ground while her dad drove me to the airport.

Leaving the house it became clear that all was not well in town.  I had commented the previous day on our drive in to Anne how there seemed to be a lot of standing water in the area and it was much worse now on street away from their house there was water bubbling out from a storm sewer manhole and the rain was still coming down!  I there was talk of street and highway closings, I was afraid that I would not be making my flight.  We made it to the Airport with plenty of time to spare.  My flight was originally scheduled for an 0835 departure and it had been delayed until 0935.

Both of my checked bags were over-weight and I was charged $75 per bag because of it but what are you supposed when you are moving across the country you don't really have a choice; you need what you need!  The big black one must have weighed 70 pounds and the green duffel which had all the riding gear that I listed off in my first post plus a helmet and a Joe Rocket Reactor perforated riding jacket along with everything else that I could stuff in there must have weighed about 100 pounds.  If you can’t tell by the photo the green duffel is the same length from that emblem in the center so it’s huge.  When I walked with it hanging from my shoulder by its shoulder strap I could feel the plastic clips flexing under the weight in a springy manner with each step I took.  I could only pray that it didn’t fail before the trip was over.   The flight was delayed two more times first to 10:30 and again to 11:10 which ended up being the right time.  With boarding and everything I felt the wheels leave the ground during take-off at exactly 11:38:15 central time.  I made a point to look at my watch because that was the moment I officially left the Midwest.

 I took extra care to make note of the wheels down time when and by my watch that was 13:38:45 Pacific Time; the flight had taken dam near exactly four hours quite impressive.  The sailing kept getting smoother after that too!  My luggage had arrived at the correct place; I later found that the TSA had inspected my huge green duffel thanks to a little pamphlet inside it.  Things looked exactly as I left it though.  My guess is the guy opened the thing took one look at it and said, “Fuck It” and zipped it back closed.  When I walked out the door of Oakland International Airport and made my way across the first lane of traffic low and behold the shuttle to the car rental station was pulling up at that exact moment and the luck didn’t stop there either.

I had reserved a compact car and when I got there they were out of them so I was upgraded to a mid-size for free!  I had a choice of a Dodge Avenger or a Hyundai Elantra.  I have liked the way the last few years of Hyundais have been looking and I hate the way the Avenger looks so I picked the pretty girl.

It turns out that the Elantra was brand new just off the truck with only 6 miles on it.  I would find out later after doing some research that the beauty of the car is only skin deep.  It has a god-awful 148 horsepower 1.8 liter I-4 engine that would have sucked in a compact car let alone this mid-sized cage.  I found that out on the first on-ramp.  On the good side though; I made it out of Oakland without getting stuck in rush hour and the ride there was much smoother than my first trip to Vacaville.

I finished the check in at the Extended Stay America and as I walked into my room one plastic clips on my big green duffel gave up the ghost as I hit the kitchen; just enough strength to last the trip! I’ve been running around town and getting settled in for a long stay here (possibly 3 months) but I did take a short video of my new digs and I’ll leave you with that.  That brings you up to speed with everything so far look forward to more lifestyle transition experience type posts until I get the FZ here.

Shipping the FZ

There’s no way that writing about the shipping process for my motorcycle is not going to be a bitch-fest…

Where do I start?  It’s been hard to complain much about the relocation process thus far especially since everything has been covered by PG&E including the cost of shipping my motorcycle.  The relocation package had accommodations for the shipping of one vehicle to California.  Most times that would be a car because they are bigger and heavier thus more expensive to ship.  Anne had decided early in the process that she was going to drive her Saturn Vue to California herself so that meant that I would get to ship my motorcycle for free.  Maybe the fact that they are so bad at shipping a motorcycle has something to do with the fact that so few people ship motorcycles through their relocation program.  I did some preliminary investigation into shipping the bike myself before I knew for sure that we were going to have PG&E do it and I found that it was going to be $650-700 to ship the bike with a specialty shipper, who would take your bike and luggage as is and have it where you need it at the time you specify.  So here is where I get annoyed…

The company PG&E is using (Allied Van Lines) is DEFINITELY NOT the ideal motorcycle shipper if you need something right away.  And because like most big companies I’m sure; PG&E insisted on using “their shipper,” so I was stuck with them.  At first I thought it was going to be way worse than it was because they were telling me that they would not accept responsibility of anything in the luggage, only ship the bike with luggage attached to the bike (so no magnetic tank bag) and that I had to empty the gas tank entirely.  Shit like that matters when you have to take everything you need with you on a plane.  I didn’t have room for the stuff that normally sits in the bike and that I wanted to ship in the luggage.

Luckily after talking directly to the shipper they said that I just needed to provide them with an inventory of what is in/on the bike and drain the tank down to 1/8 full.  That still seems dumb; isn’t gasoline vapor more volatile than the liquid?  Wouldn’t a full tank be safer??? At least I will be able to get the bike to a gas station without siphoning gas out of an unsuspecting car now.  But I do have the equipment now!

But still here is where the big gripe comes from; they picked up the bike on 4-16-2013 and my window for delivery is between 4-29-2013 and 5-3-2013.  That is because the bise is going to a distribution hub and waiting until there is enough other stuff to fill an actual semi trailer that is heading to the same place.  That is ridiculous and borderline unacceptable.  With the car rental I am going to have to pay for until then I may net a $100 saving vs. shipping the bike on my own with a specialist shipper and I’m willing to bet that Allied Van Lines is charging PG&E more than the specialist shipper too.

Okay, enough bitching about principalities; let’s move on to the good things that I can say about the shipper.  They guy they sent was specifically charged with picking up motorcycles and only cycles and it showed.  He did know his stuff and he did a thorough walk-around and marked all the imperfections.  Actually, looking at all the marks on one sheet of paper made me feel like I need to do some work on cosmetics.

I’m not sure that I had mentioned earlier why I didn’t just have them pick up the bike earlier.  Well the reason for that was that they said that the bike could be delivered anywhere between 2 and 14 days after pickup.  I could have had it shipped to the Extended Stay America where I will be but whomever signs the form takes the responsibility for final inspection of the bike and releases the shipper of any responsibility for damage so I wasn’t about to leave that up to someone I had never met before.

Either way the bike will get to California when it does and at that point the real adventure will begin!

Now I said that I would be adding some other content about the move and some lifestyle-transition-type stories so I’d like to add the first one of these at the tail end of this post.  So whenever you move you end up wanting to throw a bunch of stuff out.  One thing that I have been lugging around for YEARS are old hard drives; one I know for sure has been with me since 1998.  

For the life of me I couldn't tell you what is on some of them but I have always been paranoid about throwing them out and an identity thief taking advantage of that.  They say that it's not enough to reformat a hard drive as a savvy identity thief could still fish the data off of a disposed hard drive.  Ideally what you need to do is fill the hard drive with garbage data and overwrite all your sensitive information. I didn't have the software or the time for that so I decided to (finally) render them useless with my cut-off wheel.  Enjoy the video!