As the election nears and we hear the candidates for president spout their plug for change, it makes one wonder about the direction that change will go. This week began with a big change in the financial markets that I'm confident left many worried who or what might be next. About six weeks ago I received a letter in the mail from a small community bank explaining that their two offices here in Utah would be closing down effective October 31st, 2008. They are part of a bank based out of New Mexico that is reeling from the effects of an inflated real estate market turned upside down, inside out and every direction in between. Due to defaulting loans and the subsequent higher reserve requirements, their bank, like many others is attempting to liquidate and consolidate exposure to remain solvent.
Eighteen months ago I was introduced to a new banker. I was dressed in my finest suit and tie. I was nervous. From my banking background I knew I needed to impress and wanted to look the part. I was looking to finance a multi-million dollar truck wash facility. We met in a board room on the second floor of their office in Salt Lake City. It was a nice board room, complete with fine wood furniture and accents and plush leather chairs. My new banker was wearing a polo shirt and slacks but no tie. His boss was there also and similarly dressed. My banker seemed genuine but a little shifty or uncomfortable. They fired questions at me and I answered the best I could. It seemed to be going well. Near the end we made arrangements for another meeting to further discuss details. They told me not to dress up so much that it wasn't necessary and they always dressed casually. Over the past eighteen months I became close friends with my banker. I came to trust him and I confided a lot in him and he helped me tremendously to accomplish my objectives with my project. We transacted other business besides the truck wash. Through the course of construction I visited him on occasion in his office wearing work wranglers and an old shirt. He had a great office with huge windows and great views of the city and the mountains. I was always comfortable in his office. We developed a great level of trust.
I was surprised when I got the letter. I called my banker immediately to find out what the deal was. I could tell he was stressed. He'd been interviewing for other jobs and didn't know what direction he would end up going. He still asked about my project and my family and how things were going. I told him to let me know where he ended up. It brought back memories of when I departed the banking industry to get my real estate license and be my own boss. I remember the panic that came when I realized there wouldn't be a check every two weeks, and oh yea pay your own health care insurance and enjoy your now non-paid holidays. A week later we found out we were expecting Luke. Was I crazy? Could I make it self employed?
Weeks later I heard from my banker. He had taken a job with one of the largest financial institutions in the country. The big bully on the playground of small community banking. I could tell it pained him to tell me that he had landed there. But as he said they're solid and I've got to look out for my family. I concurred that was important. Last week I contacted him about doing a line of credit for one of my business ventures. We had to meet to discuss some items today so we arranged a meeting at his office downtown. He told me to park in the parking structure to the east of his building and he was on the 11th floor.
As I walked into the huge glass and granite building to the elevators I passed the KUTV Channel 2 news suite. I was sort of awe struck and I felt a bit under dressed. I was wearing some wranglers and my white Real Estate Group polo. I felt like an idiot when I got on the elevator with several people in fancy suits and didn't realize until we were headed up that they had an odd numbered floor elevator and an even numbered floor elevator and I was on the wrong one. I got off and found my way to the right one. I had to be buzzed into the suite. I bit of a snobby old fella looked me up and down judging that I probably had no business being there, and asked me what I needed. He then led me down a hallway and into a large room with probably 50 cubicles stacked all together. He led me to the very center to my banker's cubicle. He stood up to greet me. He was wearing a button down shirt and a tie. He looked uncomfortable and miserable. I can't adequately describe the look in his eye when we met there today. He looked like a caged animal. Don't get me wrong the cubicles were a nice grey color and the top 3 feet or so were glass, presumably so you could see who was where. I said, "Hey nice building." He responded, "Yea do you like my space here? Not quite like my old office is it?" No it definitely wasn't. We had a good talk. He was adjusting to it all but I could tell he wasn't the same happy guy I had always known him to be. At the end of our meeting he led me through the cubicle maze to get validation stickers to cover my parking from a very grumpy lady even deeper in the maze. He walked me to the elevators and we made arrangements to meet again.
As I exited the elevators and strolled by the fancy office suites I stopped for a moment and took it all in. People were running here and there. Things were moving, things were happening it was all very fascinating. I was reminded of several trips down town to interview with the higher ups at Zions Bank when I had applied for management positions. I remembered the fancy buildings and the excitement of it all. Did a part of me miss it I asked myself? Mmmmm......... Not even a little bit. I loved that I was heading home to change into some dirtier wranglers and a t-shirt so I could go and stack a rock wall for an older lady from Tennessee with a cool accent. I loved that I received three calls on the way home about real estate listings I have and I didn't even have to dress up or down to take those calls. It's a bit of a scary time these days in this current market we find ourselves in. There are many factors that play a part in the uncertainty we face. There's not a simple solution to any of it. There are days a secure job at the bank and a steady income sound really appealing. Today just wasn't one of those days.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Golden Mud
I guess all my posts about my buggy are a bit too boring. At least that's the gist I got from my wife's comment on my last post. She asked, "Are you just going to write about your buggy?" I thought maybe I would, but I guess I won't. So here it goes on another topic.
Golden Mud. One of the many pleasures of owning car washes is the sludge you get to deal with. I like to call it golden mud. To think of it this way makes it less annoying when you have to do something with it. Unless you've handled it before you're probably wondering what on earth I'm talking about. Next time you wash your car in a self serve bay or an automatic look at the floor in the center of the bay. There you'll find one of the treasure chests that holds/collects the golden mud. It may look like a storm grate you see in a city street. You can drive on it, stand on it, drop things in between the metal bars, some people dump their used motor oil in it late at night, some don't even wait for night time. It's basically the local dumping ground for liquids and small items.
These treasure chests all vary in size. Most of them are about 3 to 4 feet deep by about 3 feet wide and 6 feet long. A pretty good size treasure chest if you ask me. They are usually made of concrete and have a 4 or 6 inch pipe coming out of them near the top where the water drains off to another series of even larger treasure chest buried under asphalt in the parking lot/drive way. These larger treasure chests fill up much slower because the idea is that most of the gold mud will settle in the first chest. However as the dirty water flows from chest to chest it carries with it bits and pieces of debris that settles along the way.
As time goes by this golden mud builds up and gets deeper and deeper until it can eventually block your outlets. This results in a flooded bay because the water cannot properly exit the system. When this happens you know it's time to clean out the treasure chest. Most car wash owners will hire a pump truck company to come and pump it out and dispose of it properly. We like to do ours ourselves. Not really, but it's cheaper and you can't beat the smell of it all. Believe it or not this is something you want to have happen as often as possible because it means you're washing a lot of cars. Thus comes the term "Golden Mud."
My first experience with this golden mud came in the summer of 2007. We had owned our car washes for about 3 months and then our bays started flooding. We thought it would be handy to just clean them out with a shovel and a five gallon bucket. That may be the hardest most back breaking work known to man. Not to mention how sloppy, dirty, messy, smelly it is and there is no way in the world to avoid getting it all over you. That worked as a short term fix to keep the water flowing.
I like to run equipment. I always have. From a very young age I liked to run equipment to do a job. I remember using my Tonka front end loader to try and clean up the Christmas tree pine needles off of the floor when my dad hauled it outside after the season. It didn't work very well, but it was better then doing it by hand. Anyway after unclogging 4 of these clogged bays with a shovel, I thought to myself, "Self...there's a better way." I rented a mini-excavator and used it to fill my skid steer bucket and then dumped that in a vacant lot down the street. It wasn't any less messy, in fact it splashed probably a whole lot higher, but the back breaking work was removed and you can't discount the entertainment value of getting to run equipment. That worked marvelously. We did it that way probably 3 or 4 times over the past year. When I got into the excavation business a little more this past spring I bought a dump truck and a mini-excavator so I don't even have to rent a machine or dump it illegally on somebody else's lot.
A week ago, we discovered that whenever the automatic ran, water would shoot out of the sewer man hole which is the lid on one of the buried treasure chests in the asphalt. That is a bad sign. That means that your treasure chests in the parking area are full of mud and nothing is draining to the sewer system. Dealing with this problem isn't so easy. While these are larger treasure chests, the openings are 24 inch round sewer man hole covers. The only way to clean these out is to suck the mud out. Just for your information, a trash pump is not the best way to do this. It's fine for the water, but it takes forever to get the mud out. My brother Tabor and I cleaned out a large underground settling tank like this at our truck wash, so I knew it could be done. We gave it a whirl on this tank/treasure chest and it wasn't so easy.
First keep in mind these chests have about 300-400 gallons of water in them on top of the mud. We had it set up to pump into my dump truck but we were letting the water just run by into our storm drain. We pumped and pumped and pumped until we finally discovered that the outlets for our larger treasure chests were located about a foot off of the bottom. Which explains why they filled up and clogged so easily. What a horrible design.
I was on my hands and knees, covered with mud and muck working on keeping the pump primed so it would keep pumping when all of a sudden I heard someone yelling at me over the roar of the motor running our trash pump. I looked up and there was a little old man that was bright red in the face with anger. He kept yelling at me about filling up something and how I was going to clean up something or he was going to kick my beeep-beeep or see my beeep-beeep in court. I was really confused in the first place to be startled like that out of nowhere, but then this little old man who maybe tips the scales at a buck 10 soaking wet standing over me threatening me...well I finally had enough so I stood up and asked him to explain a little clearer what he was so upset about. The top of his bright red head hit me about a little below chest level. He toned down quite a bit, but still was visibly disturbed. We walked over and he showed me the source of all his red fury. The water we'd been pumping out had filled up our storm drain and it was now spilling over and running down the street and it had filled up a drain box that collects water off of the back street behind our wash and then distributes it out into a modified french drain. He apparently thought our pump was doing a better job then it was because he was certain we had filled his tank with mud. Besides being really mad he was snapping pictures of everything and here I was looking all a mess for the photo shoot!
I argued with him about the mud issue and assured him it was just filled beyond it's capacity with water. He threatened to whip up on me again and I told him he better not pick a fight he couldn't win. Then he told me he was just going to sue me. That sounded like fun. Then before I knew it the Mayor of Payson showed up, followed by several public works employees for the city. They were also taking a bunch of pictures. Had I known we were going to have a city council meeting I would have brought some of my proposals for the strip mall we want to build down on our other car wash sites. Most of them didn't find that very humorous as it was about 7 pm when this all transpired and I'm sure they weren't just wrapping up their days on the job. Anyway I told Mr. grumpy that we'd pump his tank out and he assured me he would be checking it.
So after we pumped his out, we pumped our storm drain out and then finished our other tanks. All and all it was a blissful 14 hour day and our car wash should be ready for the dirty hunting season. I love dirty four wheelers...those guys spend a lot of time cleaning those up. At the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with a little golden mud.
Golden Mud. One of the many pleasures of owning car washes is the sludge you get to deal with. I like to call it golden mud. To think of it this way makes it less annoying when you have to do something with it. Unless you've handled it before you're probably wondering what on earth I'm talking about. Next time you wash your car in a self serve bay or an automatic look at the floor in the center of the bay. There you'll find one of the treasure chests that holds/collects the golden mud. It may look like a storm grate you see in a city street. You can drive on it, stand on it, drop things in between the metal bars, some people dump their used motor oil in it late at night, some don't even wait for night time. It's basically the local dumping ground for liquids and small items.
These treasure chests all vary in size. Most of them are about 3 to 4 feet deep by about 3 feet wide and 6 feet long. A pretty good size treasure chest if you ask me. They are usually made of concrete and have a 4 or 6 inch pipe coming out of them near the top where the water drains off to another series of even larger treasure chest buried under asphalt in the parking lot/drive way. These larger treasure chests fill up much slower because the idea is that most of the gold mud will settle in the first chest. However as the dirty water flows from chest to chest it carries with it bits and pieces of debris that settles along the way.
As time goes by this golden mud builds up and gets deeper and deeper until it can eventually block your outlets. This results in a flooded bay because the water cannot properly exit the system. When this happens you know it's time to clean out the treasure chest. Most car wash owners will hire a pump truck company to come and pump it out and dispose of it properly. We like to do ours ourselves. Not really, but it's cheaper and you can't beat the smell of it all. Believe it or not this is something you want to have happen as often as possible because it means you're washing a lot of cars. Thus comes the term "Golden Mud."
My first experience with this golden mud came in the summer of 2007. We had owned our car washes for about 3 months and then our bays started flooding. We thought it would be handy to just clean them out with a shovel and a five gallon bucket. That may be the hardest most back breaking work known to man. Not to mention how sloppy, dirty, messy, smelly it is and there is no way in the world to avoid getting it all over you. That worked as a short term fix to keep the water flowing.
I like to run equipment. I always have. From a very young age I liked to run equipment to do a job. I remember using my Tonka front end loader to try and clean up the Christmas tree pine needles off of the floor when my dad hauled it outside after the season. It didn't work very well, but it was better then doing it by hand. Anyway after unclogging 4 of these clogged bays with a shovel, I thought to myself, "Self...there's a better way." I rented a mini-excavator and used it to fill my skid steer bucket and then dumped that in a vacant lot down the street. It wasn't any less messy, in fact it splashed probably a whole lot higher, but the back breaking work was removed and you can't discount the entertainment value of getting to run equipment. That worked marvelously. We did it that way probably 3 or 4 times over the past year. When I got into the excavation business a little more this past spring I bought a dump truck and a mini-excavator so I don't even have to rent a machine or dump it illegally on somebody else's lot.
A week ago, we discovered that whenever the automatic ran, water would shoot out of the sewer man hole which is the lid on one of the buried treasure chests in the asphalt. That is a bad sign. That means that your treasure chests in the parking area are full of mud and nothing is draining to the sewer system. Dealing with this problem isn't so easy. While these are larger treasure chests, the openings are 24 inch round sewer man hole covers. The only way to clean these out is to suck the mud out. Just for your information, a trash pump is not the best way to do this. It's fine for the water, but it takes forever to get the mud out. My brother Tabor and I cleaned out a large underground settling tank like this at our truck wash, so I knew it could be done. We gave it a whirl on this tank/treasure chest and it wasn't so easy.
First keep in mind these chests have about 300-400 gallons of water in them on top of the mud. We had it set up to pump into my dump truck but we were letting the water just run by into our storm drain. We pumped and pumped and pumped until we finally discovered that the outlets for our larger treasure chests were located about a foot off of the bottom. Which explains why they filled up and clogged so easily. What a horrible design.
I was on my hands and knees, covered with mud and muck working on keeping the pump primed so it would keep pumping when all of a sudden I heard someone yelling at me over the roar of the motor running our trash pump. I looked up and there was a little old man that was bright red in the face with anger. He kept yelling at me about filling up something and how I was going to clean up something or he was going to kick my beeep-beeep or see my beeep-beeep in court. I was really confused in the first place to be startled like that out of nowhere, but then this little old man who maybe tips the scales at a buck 10 soaking wet standing over me threatening me...well I finally had enough so I stood up and asked him to explain a little clearer what he was so upset about. The top of his bright red head hit me about a little below chest level. He toned down quite a bit, but still was visibly disturbed. We walked over and he showed me the source of all his red fury. The water we'd been pumping out had filled up our storm drain and it was now spilling over and running down the street and it had filled up a drain box that collects water off of the back street behind our wash and then distributes it out into a modified french drain. He apparently thought our pump was doing a better job then it was because he was certain we had filled his tank with mud. Besides being really mad he was snapping pictures of everything and here I was looking all a mess for the photo shoot!
I argued with him about the mud issue and assured him it was just filled beyond it's capacity with water. He threatened to whip up on me again and I told him he better not pick a fight he couldn't win. Then he told me he was just going to sue me. That sounded like fun. Then before I knew it the Mayor of Payson showed up, followed by several public works employees for the city. They were also taking a bunch of pictures. Had I known we were going to have a city council meeting I would have brought some of my proposals for the strip mall we want to build down on our other car wash sites. Most of them didn't find that very humorous as it was about 7 pm when this all transpired and I'm sure they weren't just wrapping up their days on the job. Anyway I told Mr. grumpy that we'd pump his tank out and he assured me he would be checking it.
So after we pumped his out, we pumped our storm drain out and then finished our other tanks. All and all it was a blissful 14 hour day and our car wash should be ready for the dirty hunting season. I love dirty four wheelers...those guys spend a lot of time cleaning those up. At the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with a little golden mud.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
The Fix
It's been awhile since I last posted. My buggy was down for a day or two but is now repaired. 
On the suggestion of my wise father I decided to rebuild the broken brace from scratch. Complete with tenon joints,
the same type of wood and I'm still trying to match the stain.
In an effort to get it back on the circuit I worked a late Saturday evening and had it ready to assemble for use on Sunday afternoon.
On the suggestion of my wise father I decided to rebuild the broken brace from scratch. Complete with tenon joints, the same type of wood and I'm still trying to match the stain. In an effort to get it back on the circuit I worked a late Saturday evening and had it ready to assemble for use on Sunday afternoon. 
I took it for another quick trip to make sure it would work and then loaded up the whole family and off we went. Isaiah was a little nervous about riding in the back. Luke was oblivious to it all and Jen held Savannah on the seat next to me.
One minor but important detail was still left unresolved. The quarter straps that keep the buggy from running up onto Dan won't stay tight around the shavs and therefore require the use of the brake to keep it from running Dan over going down hill. This can be tricky while driving with one hand, holding on to a squirmy Luke with another and trying to apply the brake with a.... some thing's gotta give...what a buggy ride. We made it fine until we passed by the Hazard's and saw my buddy Scot outside his house. I drove up his steep driveway without considering the fact that we'd have to come back down. After all this was an opportunity to show off the new rig. My wife probably uttered some words of hessitation...caution...etc...but I wasn't listening. We had a nice talk with Scot, then I turned the buggy around and saw the steep decline which was cemented this past spring. Nothing like having your most precious cargo loaded on an old relic buggy with limited braking power going down a roughly 9% grade... You guessed it...Jen suggested she and the boys and Savannah get off and they'd walk down the hill. She handed Savannah to Scot and off they all went. I nervously looked down the hill and thought to myself, "Self, what are we doing here?" No time for hesitation now, down we went. It wasn't that bad. With less overall mass in gravity's favor, we did just fine. I rode the brake and Dan did great. At the bottom of the drive we reloaded and off we went. As we went down hills Dan's natural reaction to get the buggy off of his rear end was to try to out run it. This was fine with Luke and me (remember he was oblivious) I thought I can drive him as fast as he can run, but to Isaiah and white knuckled Jennifer it was...well...sort of a buggy ride! A little uncomfortable at that. We all made it home fine and it was really a good time. I took pictures of the fix I made on the buggy.
I've made a few modifications since these photos to strengthen the brace and to eliminate the running over aspect of the hills. My brilliant father made some rings that we attached to the shavs to secure the quarter straps too. I haven't yet tried them out as Dan is a bit sore from his injured leg. I hope to get him back out on the buggy trail again this week if he's feeling up to it. The weather is absolutely perfect for buggy rides.
I've made a few modifications since these photos to strengthen the brace and to eliminate the running over aspect of the hills. My brilliant father made some rings that we attached to the shavs to secure the quarter straps too. I haven't yet tried them out as Dan is a bit sore from his injured leg. I hope to get him back out on the buggy trail again this week if he's feeling up to it. The weather is absolutely perfect for buggy rides.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
