Keeping Busy
Yesterday, Kim and I made the trip from our home to Ventura, which, for those not familiar with California geography, is 175 miles north of here on the Pacific coast north of Los Angeles. I had ordered that new motorcycle seat for the new bike and I didn’t want to trust or suffer the over-burdened package delivery services since I had to both get my new seats and drop off my old seats (you may recall that the man with the pan calls that shot). It would also get us out of the house for the day and who doesn’t like a road trip in the Coronavirus era. While driving up, I spoke to my colleague in Palermo, Italy. He has been quarantined (and compared to our gentle stay-at-home advisory, Italians are truly QUARANTINED) for about ten weeks. If he steps out of his apartment or drives out of his garage, he tells me that he gets stopped by the Carabinieri or the Polizia Stradale and given a ticket if he is not out for a mandatory reason. He was envious of my road trip. It was quite a pleasant ride with minimal traffic, mostly dominated by commercial vehicles. We drove right up the #5 through Orange County, past a closed Disneyland, through L.A. with its clear, smog-free skies, up the Hollywood Freeway past a closed Universal Studios and westward on the #101 through the San Fernando Valley. By the time we got to Calabasas, one of the new “it” places to live since the Kardashians have moved here, I was struck by how rural things looked this close to downtown L.A. It’s not that it has gotten more rural lately, but that without traffic and smog, it comes up fast and it looks so nice. Before we knew it, we were in Ventura in 2 hours and twenty-five minutes.
Let’s do the math on that. This was a Thursday morning and we averaged 72 mph driving through some of the most congested roadways in America. And I will note that I was passed by more cars than I passed, so I wasn’t gunning it for speed. We pulled into the shop an hour early, picked up the seats, dropped off the seats and then headed over to my wife’s sister’s house in Camarillo. We called and she was surprised we were so early. We stopped for a take-out cold drink just to be polite and not arrive too early. When we got there we sat on their lovely patio looking out at the farmland of the Santa Paula / Ojai Valley and had a light catered (a.k.a. Take-out) lunch seated at either end from each other at a long patio table. When lunch was over we observed social distancing protocol and went off to the back bushes to pee rather than leave Escondido germs in the Camarillo bathroom. We drove back south along the Pacific Coast Highway marveling at all the ticky-tacky houses and clam bars scattered among the multi-million dollar Malibu properties owned by Barbara Streisand and the like. I will never understand people who don’t mind messy telephone poles and wires and why California doesn’t impose some sort of beautification standards to such an otherwise magnificent coastline. I guess its a vestige of the old Wild West individualism. We then bee lined it on the #10 to the #405 to the #5 and after passing Camp Pendleton and that big stretch of uninhabited coastline to the #78 and back home to our little boulder-strewn hilltop.
Normally that trip would have been grueling and tiring and instead it was a fun and pleasant ride in the country broken up by a nice social lunch with family. This lockdown has its positive moments.
After all that excitement on Thursday, I figured I deserved a calm and peaceful Friday, but that was not to be. Today bordered on the hectic. I woke late at 7am, obviously worn out by that 350-mile drive, and had more business calls than I can recall in one day for some time. I barely got to catch up on all the global Coronavirus news and my email inbox before they began. And, of course, as the rest of the working world is trying to finish off its Friday in the early part of my Pacific Daylight Time day, the local working population that wants to help me keep my house in good form (and their bank accounts positive) tries to get an early jump on the day. I had Juventino here for the day starting at 7am to work on the back forty. This may be a zero-scape, but it still needs maintenance and weeding, especially in the Spring. Juventino is a second-generation Mexican landscaper who works non-stop (no-joke) for ten hours doing work that would kill me in about five hours. I hear nothing from him all day and then give him cash (more than I’ve been told to pay him because I am in awe of his work ethic). He only comes when we call and he keeps the place looking magnificent for peanuts by comparison to East Coast gardeners. I do not know if he is here legally, I do not care if he is here legally, I believe the United States benefits greatly from people like Juventino here and I hope he and more like him stay to help make America actually great instead of put-it-on-a-hat great.
At 8am Matthew comes from All-American Septic. He spends over an hour looking for where my septic is located so he can pump the tank. He has a map he has downloaded from the county archives. He gives up and says he will try again next week after he buys an electronic tracer that we can flush and then locate with an electronic poop-chute finder. Matthew is a nice guy and he’s embarrassed that he cannot find it since that is one of the things he is supposed to be able to do. I ask Juventino if he knows where the septic is (my Spanish is fine for regular stuff, but septic technicalities are hard for me to get across). Sure enough, in twenty minutes, Juventino comes to find me to show me that he has found it and has cleared that area for Matthew to return to do his pumping. I call Matthew and he is even more embarrassed that Juventino has done what he could not. Juventino is out back weed-whacking and gardening with total humility. I find myself thinking that paying him 33% above market is not enough. I love immigrants, not because I am a liberal, which I am, but because they are the best of America.
At 9am Handy Brad shows up and he and I jointly figure out how and where to install my new Solar-Powered Ring Video Doorbell and Solar-Powered Motion-Activated Security Camera. I am in charge of connecting the devices to the app and the WiFi and Handy Brad is in charge of attaching them both properly to the house and garage. I assure you that Handy Brad did a far better and perfectionist job with the installation than I ever would. It all worked fine and he and I settled up for the week and we agree he will skip tomorrow (Brad is generally willing to work six days a week) and start on our next project on Monday. Brad is the beneficiary of the Coronavirus because I am using this at-home time to get everything I can possibly think of fixed around the house. Next week he starts on some stucco repair and replacement on some miscellaneous spots around the house and some power washing of some of the parapet along the northern and western sides of the house. Lucky Brad and lucky Rich, but mostly lucky house.
By midday I am so busy with all these managerial issues that I almost forget about a business Zoom call for which I am the host. I go do that and then take a ride on my new motorcycle seat to the bank to refresh my cash horde for all my workmen. By the time I get back, the sun is going down and I am spent from another day keeping busy. It used to be so much easier when I was just a working stiff strapping on my suit every day and doing battle. Then I heard Kim on a board call talking to her Charity CFO arguing about proper governance and compliance and I thought to myself, I like my new form of keeping busy.