travel

Home Sweet Home

Being a business owner has a lot of challenges that employees don’t have, but one of the perks is being able to make key life choices without a boss or management looking over your shoulder all of the time.  One of my life choices has been not to travel being a father and a husband.  I know many men that have had to travel for business and it takes its toll over time.  There is the allure of seeing new cities and places and people.  However, after a few weeks living out of a suit case either alone or with people you don’t know that well, the toll is taken.  You miss your wife and kids and home.

With the state of the economy and lack of any business activity going on out there, I have had to rethink things and take whatever opportunities that may arise.  I have been fortunate to be doing business with Home Depot for many years and was given the opportunity to do a lot of work in a very short period of time.  The opportunity is to replace all of the air conditioning equipment on the roof of five Home Depots throughout southern California in six weeks.  We will have removed and replaced 150 pieces of equipment in that time.  Our record day, and company best ever, was in Hemet when we craned down 37 old units and 29 new units in one day.  We’ve been on a fast track schedule with cranes, semi’s, forklifts, recyclers, manufacturer’s, plumbers, electricians, sheet metal workers and more for the past month.  The schedule is so fast and so much is going on that I am running all of the projects myself with a crew of ten men.  We have been gone for a month.

It was a close call between staying in a hotel or just commuting.  All of my employees really wanted to start work at 6am, to beat the sun and the heat.  It has been really hot in SoCal the last month.  This put me in the decision of getting up at 3:30 to 4:00am on a daily basis to drive the freeways and then make the drive back in the evenings or just staying in a hotel.  It was a no brainer for me.  If I had to get up at 4am everyday, I could just not function well.  I packed my bags and off I went. 

Here I am, my last night in a hotel for awhile and I’m blogging:)  I am usually on the roof of a Home Depot at 6:00am and usually am not done until three or four in the afternoon.  By that time, the sun has taken the life force out of you and it’s off to the hotel room to sit in front of the air conditioner in your underwear until you cool down enough to take a shower.  I must commend the crew because there has been little to no drama the entire time.  Yes, men can be dramatic.  We finally had some stuff go down on our last job.  We had one guy  arrested and I haven’t heard from him.  I had another guy have a tizzy on the roof today and quit on the spot.  I’ve been doing this so long, these type of things don’t surprise me or bother me anymore.

I can’t wait to get back to San Diego County.  I will never complain again about how crowded San Diego is getting.  You spend a few days in the realm of Los Angeles and there is a density of people that you really can’t notice or comprehend on a day trip or weekend sojourn.  Once you’ve spent a week up here, the crush of humanity is noticeable.  The other thing you notice is the police presence.  I have never seen so many squad cars in my life.  We were hearing sirens going off every half hour up here.

Here I come, home sweet home.

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