Culmination of Gear

It's coming quick, the bike trip is only weeks away! Curtis and I have been slaving over our computers, ordering gear and back checking every little item that we think we may need, then ordering more. I budgeted myself $1000 for gear, and have reached that limit. The purchase list includes:

-Riding jeans that have sewn in Kevlar lining and inserted hip and knee armor
-Throttle lock so I'll have cruise control
-Down vest for cold weather
-Wheel security lock
-Saddle bags
-Cooling vest for that hot desert sun

Over the last few days we've booked our accommodation for a bunch of stops, which was pretty much a necessity in places like Moab and the Grand Canyon, which is still very busy during September. We got the second last available hotel room in Moab on Hotwire! I've been hard at work researching hiking trails we can do in the national parks, and a few notable ones I've found are the Zion Narrows in Zion N.P., the Devil's Garden Trail in Arches N.P., and the South Rim Trail in Grand Canyon N.P.

Next week I take my bike for it's 8000km service, which will give me peace of mind that the bike has been completely checked over and will be good to go for this trip. Also next week I will do a dry run on packing the bike with everything I'll need. Shit is getting real.

As for the rest of my summer, it's been a lot of working on my backyard, which has produced amazing results:

My Uncle Maurice and I have been hard at work grading the backyard, disposing of twelve tons of waste soil, dumping another twelve of good top soil back in, tamping a pad of road crush which I laid my stone patio on, building a fence to keep the riff raff next door out of sight and out of mind (except for her barking ass dogs), and laying 1200 square feet of sod. After all of that, it's looking great! 

And for the rest of the house, I had some plumbers bust up the concrete floor in the basement to lay drain and water lines for the new laundry room, which will replace the old location so I can turn it into a second bedroom. And I had that old beast of a furnace replaced with this new, shiny Cadillac of a furnace that also blows cool air from my basement upstairs and makes summer nights in my house quite pleasant!

On a Steel Horse I Ride

And the official start to my summer is here! It would have been last month, but working 27 days of the month kind of limits how much a person can enjoy their free time. That doesn't sound like many days, but when you work 12 hour shifts, it definitely is. And now that I been makin Arab money, I can actually enjoy myself:

I had thrown out the idea of a motorcycle trip to a few friends, but nothing was able to be set in stone, until a couple weeks ago when I pitched it to my cousin, Curtis. He hummed and hawed about it, but finally gave me a solid "I'm in". The plan is a 23 day trip from September 12th to October 3rd, covering a ton of ground and seeing some of the most spectacular scenery North America has to offer. The maps I've posted are interactive, so feel free to explore.

The trip from Edmonton to Vegas:


I've noticed that the route from Moab to the Grand Canyon didn't set to the 163 through Monument Valley but we will be taking that way, in the footsteps of Forrest Gump.

Las Vegas seemed like a good place to call a halfway point, also due to the fact that Google Maps won't let me input any more destinations on the route, pfft. And since we're two single, handsome motherfuckers, it's a good place to chill for a couple days and do some partying. September should still be fairly hot in the desert, from what I've read the daily average high will be around 35, but it's really the sweet spot for this trip, since any earlier it would be too hot in the desert, and any later it will be getting cold in the Rocky Mountains on the way back home.

The return home:



The ride through Death Valley is a maybe. Why? Because they call it Death Valley for a reason. I was there years ago in July and it was 51 degrees at 9pm. I doubt it will be that hot in September, but it seems like every year we're breaking temperature records so if that's the case, I don't want to be sweating my balls off on top of a hot motorcycle engine at 51 degrees. We'll also do a couple day stop in San Francisco since Curtis has never been there before and it's an awesome city to spend a few days in. And then it's a few days of working our way up the coast of California and Oregon, which should be some of the best motorcycle riding in the world. That's right Bon Jovi, eat your heart out.

This trip is going to be fan-fucking-tastic, the first every long haul I've done on my bike. There will be a lot of preparation for it; I'll be putting an oil cooler on my engine to keep it cooler during the desert rides, and I'm going to buy a cooling vest for the hot weather, along with a pair of Rokker waterproof riding jeans. The money I will have to put into that will pay itself back tenfold in comfortability while riding. Curtis and I have also vowed to get ourselves back into good shape, which for me will include a combination of weight training and yoga, hopefully 6-7 days a week, as well as a regimented diet so I can gain back all the muscle I've lost from neglecting to exercise properly when I was renovating my house.

And now to that topic. I've decided to hold off my plans for registering a basement suite and opted instead to have contractors build the two bedrooms and bathroom downstairs so my room mate can take that part of the house. After working so much in May and realizing that if I keep going on the grind of dedicating so much time to this house, I'm going to miss my summer and wear myself out. Instead, this month I will continue on the landscaping that my uncle Maurice and I have been working on. We dug out the backyard with his tractor and laid drainage pipe under the new window wells on the west side of the house that drain to the street, and another one along the back of the garage to drain the backyard into the walking path next door. And in the next couple weeks we will build the steps coming down from the back door, lay a flagstone patio down and fill and sod the rest of the yard. Hopefully soon after that I'll have a fence put in so no more pesky neighbour dogs shit in my yard, and I can start building my garden!

Phase 2: Commence

I have a lot of catching up to do. I'll start first with life:

During mid February I was beginning to feel really burnt out. I had went hard on this house for five months, dedicating a lot of my time and effort to working on making it liveable again, and dealing with a lot of stress from all the contractor bullshit that I've posted on this blog. Couple that with breaking up with a girl who I had the strongest feelings for of any woman I've ever dated, the result was I badly needed a vacation. A buddy at work, Jason, had been searching for vacation spots to spend a week in March, and was planning on going by himself. He had asked me before but due to money constraints I had said no. One day I asked him what the price difference between single and double occupancy was, and it turned out to be $500 less. I was in. Cancun here we come.

It was spring break in Cancun during the time we went, and just I remembered it twelve years earlier, it was insane. The clubs there are like none I've ever seen, and even though I'm not a big club guy, I loved it. We partied like it was the last big party we'll ever have in our lives. And that is the reality of the situation: I'm in my 30's and starting to wind down those parts of my life. I still like to go out and get wasted with friends, but the up until 7am fucked up messes we were every night was a magnitude I doubt I'll every be able replicate again. We did it and we did it hard. 

And when I got back home it was back to business: get the house in order. And it's getting there. The upstairs is nearly done, all I have left to do is change some lights, plugs and switches, touch up the window trim, and hang the mirror and towel rack in the bathroom. I just had a lady come by today to replace blinds in a few of the rooms, as well. At the end of the month my friend (who is also named Kyle) will be moving in, so that extra money will definitely help finance the basement suite, which has the green light since I got approved for another $42.5k line of credit. 

One of the most significant things I've done to make this house feel like home is hang the fridge magnets that I've collected on my travels. I swore I would never put them up until I had my own home, and now here I am: grounded. And speaking of my fridge, the original one already crapped out. After only three months of being plugged in, I arrived home from Mexico to find the freezer defrosting. Verdict: cracked compressor lines. Thankfully the new one is working just fine.

In the next couple weeks I will start doing the backyard, which will include putting up a fence between my house and the murder house, re-grading the yard to fix drainage problems, re-sodding the grass, building a staircase from the backdoor leading onto a new flagstone patio with a fire pit, and possibly putting in a hot tub that I might buy from my parents. Soon enough I will put some shelving units and a work bench in the garage, which has been drywalled! 

Oh, and speaking of the murder neighbours, they moved out! The case still hasn't been solved, to my knowledge, so I'm assuming that's why they're leaving. The house still isn't for sale and there's a half jug of milk that's been sitting on the step in the warm weather we've been having for the past three weeks, but they're out of my hair. I'm assuming the place will be sold as is, since the dead vehicles and junk in the back yard is still there. I would never have wished them gone under the circumstances that forced them to leave, but it's definitely a relief to not have to deal with them anymore.

The Ball Is Rolling

Nearly more has been done in these past two weeks than the whole time I've been working on this house. The tilers spent all last week finishing the tile on the floors and bathroom, tomorrow the counter tops and hot water tank will be installed, the plumber is installing the fixtures on Friday, and the carpets and baseboards are being installed on Monday. The ball is rolling fast, and is not stopping for anything. I already dismissed a sub contractor that my general contractor tried to set up, because they were holding up production (they took a month to give me a quote for the furnace and hot water tank). Production will not be stopped. I've been working on this bitch for almost five months now, and I want to move into it. My life has been complete chaos this past month, and having my home base intact will allow me to start reorganizing it again and stop stressing, maybe grow some hair back. Oh wait, that won't happen...

Here are some sneak peeks at the cabinets and flooring, which are both looking F'ing fucking awesome:

Tomorrow I'm going to work on getting the shelves painted so I can start storing stuff in them to facilitate some heavy cleaning that needs to be done. The doors are primed and ready to be painted, and I will start preparing the trim to be painted on sunday. And I will hopefully get my appliances hooked up that day.

Update on the murder investigation next door: I have been told that it was a home invasion gone wrong; someone had a personal beef with the neighbour's son next door. I'm not sure how it all went down but one of the home invaders is dead now, and I'm pretty sure my neighbours haven't been living there since, most likely in fear of retaliation. It does make me feel better with the fact that it wasn't a random murder, so I am 99.9% sure I don't have anything to worry about.

Saga of the Neighbours

So I had originally intended to write a post about the ongoing saga of my new neighbours, who happen to be the only ones I share a property line with. Well today something happened that completely overshadows any previous stories, so I'll sum them up quick. The past few months I have had some patience trying encounters with them: getting their two junk vehicles off my back pad so I could build my garage, their dog shitting in my yard, then the son talking shit about me for not giving them my old windows that I had replaced because they needed them to replace the broken panes on their basement windows, even though nobody had asked me for them. I did end up going over with the windows and calling them out on it, but the matter quickly was smoothed out and no more trouble ensued.

So today I get to my house around 8 am to do some work, and I find police cars lining the street and yellow tape all around my neighbours house. After asking the news crew that was parked out front I didn't get many details but enough to gather that it was a murder investigation. The police didn't seem to need any info from me about the neighbours, they only wanted to know if I had seen or heard anything suspicious, which I hadn't since I was not at home at the time.

The news articles haven't really shed much light on it, they basically say that police are treating it as suspicious. The real interesting details they have released are that a man was found dead inside the home, and there was another person inside the house at the time. They're not saying who or what gender, but I'm assuming it was the mom. The real big detail is one of the cars that was parked on my back pad during the summer was stolen from the front of their house, and police are currently looking for it. 

This is definitely keeping up with the trend of experiences with this house that have been anything but normal. I'm not really too worried about it, I'm not a person that looks for trouble so I'm not worried about finding it, but that being said, it might not be a bad idea to hasten my plans for getting a German Shepherd named Floyd.

As far as the house goes, more to follow tomorrow. It's bedtime.

Closer and Closer to a Finished Product

I haven't posted in a while, so I have quite a few updates. First thing I'll mention is that I have almost all of my appliances! The only thing left is the fridge, which will arrive tomorrow!

The garage is still ongoing, and seems to be the biggest issue thus far. The subcontractor that was hired to build the garage still has not fixed the leaking and improperly installed eves troughs that he was supposed to weeks ago. And when I asked him to install the board below the garage door (which will seal the door to the floor until the infill concrete is poured in the spring) he instead adjusted the door to sit on the concrete, which presents two problems: it doesn't sit flush on the right side due to a grading problem on the old pad and when he lowered the door it bent the lower wheel off the track. Couple that with a garage that should have been done months ago and you can understand my frustration. Needless to say this guy is a total deadbeat in my eyes and shouldn't be allowed on my property. At least the other people working on the garage are doing their job: Don insulated and poly'd the inside, and the mechanical company should have installed the gas line and garage heater yesterday (I will check it tomorrow).

A couple weeks ago the contractors finished installing the new windows, just in time for the cold snaps that immediately followed. The insulating value of the new vinyl windows compared to the old aluminum ones are going to save me some money on my heating bill. And the basement cracks have been repaired! I did my best to follow that up by sealing around the beams that are set in the foundation with caulking, which made a big difference around the main beam, which had a nasty draft running in through the gap.

I've been plugging away on the painting, bit by bit. I never appreciated how long it can take to paint the interior of a house! The kitchen and master bedroom are finished save for one more coat on the edging, which should take less than half an hour to complete. The flooring company came to measure the floors for the tile and carpet, and said they needed the old floor tile along the perimeter of the room removed to fasten the carpet down to the floor, which could be a problem if those tiles contain asbestos, which is very likely given their age. I should find out tomorrow what is happening with that. I'll also be meeting with the electrician soon to figure out the particulars of wiring in pot lights and installing the new electrical sub panel.

Leaky Toilet Blues

Lately my work on the house has been mainly shifted towards painting the upstairs, which is sort of a time sensitive affair given the flooring should be installed within the next couple weeks (the sub floor is already in). My mom, sister and brother in law have been helping me, and their time has been invaluable. I never realized painting would take as long as it does. So far we have the master bedroom and kitchen painted, and the two other bedrooms are almost all primed and ready to be painted; I just need to choose a colour for them. The hallway will have to wait until the old phone alcove is drywalled and mudded.

This week had an unfortunate surprise in store for me: a leaky toilet. I had known it leaked before, but the contractors insisted on keeping it in the house for the guys to use, so they fixed the leak. Or so I thought. What the last people hadn't done prior to me discovering this mess was make sure it didn't keep running, which it had a tendency to do since the flapper wouldn't seat properly unless it was attended to. So it leaked all over the place, into the basement and down the outside wall. So far it doesn't look like there was any permanent damage done, everything should dry out fine. Disaster averted, but these can be the headaches of dealing with contractors. 

As for other developments, I got a good deal on the dishwasher I wanted, so the only appliance I have left to buy for the kitchen is the microwave. I found a good deal on the washer and dryer combo I want, so I'll pick those out tomorrow. As for the garage, it's pretty much done! All that's left is for the electrician to hook up the power to the breaker, and the plumbers will hopefully be running the gas line and installing a heater in the next week! The company that is repairing the cracks in the foundation is coming on Friday, and I found ANOTHER one for them to fix, which brings it up to 4 cracks.