1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
|
Everything accelerates toward beginnings. But then there's that moment where things suspend there at the starting line, thin, ephemeral, balanced there with every decision waiting to propel you into the future.
After we left Fort Yargo things got slightly crazy in a hurry. Work piled up, we got an offer on the house, then another. The first fell through, the second didn't. But then we waited, because it still could, it still could and it still could. Still we packed things, we order things, I worked on the bus.
In finished out the cockpit area, repainted the dash and finally we made a decision on the floor and a week later it arrived. I laid in the floor and that's when things really started to pick up. Letters from closing attorneys arrived, details were negotiated and then we realized the house was really going to close this time. Oh crap, we're about to be homeless.
Corrinne called around to find someone to recover the seats and after a few people declined or couldn't make our deadline we found someone about an hour a way who had a week between two big jobs and was will to take it on. I packed up the seats, drive to Atlanta and worked out the details. Two weeks later the bus was done.
But that skips the part where neither of the two mechanics I trust could get the bus in until about four days before our closing date and we're moving out of the house and suddenly the bus is off to get a new carburator, electronic ignition, manual choke cabel, new exhaust mainfolds and half a dozen other odds and ends I wasn't going to have time (or the knowledge) to do in a week.
We were forced to confront a problem most of you have not --where do you put your stuff when your home is at the shop? Answer: boxes? We shoved everything in boxes and stuffed them in the van, at my in-law's house and in the storage unit we rented to hold a few items.
The best time of course for work to start pouring in is right about when all this is hitting fever pitch so of course jobs kept rolling in one on top of the next until I had to step back and say no to a couple and but others on some tight schedules. It mostly worked out.
But you know, i'd be liying if I said it was all work and moving. We took a day off to visit a friend's farm so the kids could drive around in massive tracktors. Heck, even corrinne and I drove the tractors. How often do you get to drive something with a wheel that's taller than you are?
Working farms, that is to say, real farms, not those little vegetrable patches on ten acres that the hipsters have been buying up, are a healthy reminder that I've never really worked a day in my life. Not worked like a farmer does. It's humbling just to listen to someone tell you about their day to day work on a farm. There are things I dislike about the modern world, but I am frequently thankful that I don't have to farm.
|
