Surprise Surprise!

On the twists and turns of life there are many surprises, and I had quite a big one today...

I was headed into the city centre after work to meet a friend for dinner. I was riding my little yellow SV650 motorcycle through end of day city traffic and all of a sudden some guy in a car decides to do a U-turn right in front of me!

I was moving at full speed and there were no other cars near me - I had pulled away from traffic just before because someone was turning left from the left lane (two lanes of traffic each way) and someone was parallel parking from the right lane, so I could get through on the bike but other cars could not.
Anyway, the guy in front just didn't see me and decided to use the same break in traffic as an opportunity to execute a quick U-turn (completely ilegal in that location by the way). He turned quickly and was right across both lanes before I could do anything. - I slammed on the brakes and locked up the front wheel but still had just about full speed when the bike and I piled straight into the side pillar of his car! There was no time for me to do anything but know that I was going to hit hard.; So thats exactly what I did!    :(

The bike stopped very suddenly and I didn't.
First thing that I felt was a very hard impact in my groin on the tank; Then the face of my helmet hit the roof line of the car followed closely by my right shoulder. Fortunately (and that is a huge understatement!) my weight was high enough and I had got some rotation on my body so that it was a "glancing blow" and I basically moved over the top of the car and not into it!
Over the top I went (more or less on my back in a tucked position) and then came down some meters clear of the car on the other side. I clipped my right ankle hard on the car as I went over and I landed hard on my left shoulder on the road...

I came to a stop in the middle of the road and was pretty well intact but had a VERY strong pain in my groin!!!
I immediately got myself up and started cursing at the pain and hobbled to the side of the road.
I sat down and then people started to help out. They were all very nice, thoughtful and helpful, including the guy who did the U-turn. Ambulance and fire truck arrived quickly and I was checked over but nothing serious appeared to have been damaged - Well if you don't count my reproductive abilities! :))) so they didnt need me to go to the hospital.

So then the other driver and I swapped details for the insurance and someone volunteered their name and number to me as a witness. And another bike rider who had also seen the accident helped me move my bike to a safe location to park it (which I had not even seen till now)...
It still rolls but its not very pretty any more!
The front forks are very badly bent and the radiator is "had it". The fairings are crunched too but the big surprise is that there is a sizeable dent in the fuel tank (Right on the nose of the tank with the tight curves where it should be really hard to dent!) that can only have come from my groin!!! Yep, I really did hit it hard....

I then made my way back home thanks to the friend I was going to meet, coming out to get me and take me home. We decided that home delivery pizza was the best idea and then watched a DVD for the evening.
After that, my neighbor arrived home and I went out to the street to talk to him. He has a really nice big low loader vehicle trailer and I was hoping he could help me get my bike home. He was very happy to help out and we did it imediately. So, by 2am I had the bike safely back in my garage and was tucked into bed (with a couple of pain killer tablets rappidly disolving inside :)

So that was my surprise for the day... Haven't digested it all yet but I'm sure that I am very very lucky not to have been killed or seriously injured.
Note: This is the first time I have ever had a motorbike accident that involved another vehicle and I have been riding for twenty years.
I was wearing all my gear and I'm sure the helmet, gloves, boots and hard armor in the jacket really helped but it seems to me that that is the minor aspect. The major aspect is the "providence"... It seems life has something important for me to do yet before I leave - probably just important for me and not the world but apparently very important...

The bike is probably a write-off and I'm fine with that - though, a year ago I would have expected to feel more loss but the current version of me does not (just gratefulness). It was one of the few things that I was intending to keep even when I leave Vancouver for a few years. I was just about finished building the storage container in my back yard which was specifically built mostly for the bike!... Not sure what significance I will find in that yet...
Like I said, I have not digested it all yet :)

I'll be very stiff and sore tomorrow and don't think I'll go into work but I should be OK after that. I guess tomorrow I'll fill in insurance papers and take it easy.


A big surprise, but a very good day :))))))

Back to the Grind!

Time for another update.

I have found myself some paying work... Well, actually, it more or less found me!

I have of course dropped in to say hello to my assorted friends over the past couple of months that I have been back here in Vancouver. And Ive been telling them about my "plan" to do some work here for a while but then to do something else (though not really sure what).
Well, one of those friends at my old employment mentioned this to some people in one of the engineering groups that was very hard pressed for people at the moment. One of the managers in that group then phoned me up and asked me if I was interested in a contract position for a couple of months (till about the end of November) doing some testing for them...

Now, a year ago, I probably would not have been interested in a contract position, and probably even less interested in working for that company again; But now, after my year of wanderings and reflections, I find that it doesnt bother me at all, and that the short term aspect of the position is exactly what I want. The pay is not nearly what I used to earn but thats also a good thing I think since it is enough for me to pay the bills and save some for later but its not enough to make me want to continue to do the job for more than a few months. Likewise, the responsibility of the position is minimal (other than the quality of my own work of course) and again, that seems to be just what I want at the moment.

So, I'm all of a sudden back in the daily work routine of a "normal" person.
The down side of that is that at the moment I find this quite a challenge. I of course expected that it would be a bit difficult at first but thats not really what Im talking about.
The challenge is that I just dont feel any connection to the work or the role or the career or the people there any more... It just feels dead to me.
I have no problem doing the work and I hold myself to high standards of quality but its no longer the life for me! (at least for the present anyway)

I look around at the other people there and its clear that most of them are there simply because it pays them well and thats enough... its a job. Those people have other things in their lives that they live for and its usually their families but it aint the job! - I find that I am now one of these people but I dont have a family and Im now far less attached to the idea of having "stuff" and of living out my days in this expensive city and building myself another version of the same "Rut" that I left over a year ago...
Years ago when I first took a job with this company, I did feel some alignment with its goals and I had career aspirations and I wanted to make a difference and do some good and be a part of creating something successfull.... but thats all been gradually worn away over the years and I had lost sight of those lofty ideals in the daily struggles of life in the highTech industry.
But now I see my past in a different light... and I WILL NOT let it happen to me again :)



So, yes, I have a job and it is good that I have it and I am earning some money.
But, NO, it is absolutely not a job that will last beyond a few months.
And I am very happy with that :)

Whats been going on??

Ive been back in Vancouver for about seven weeks now and Ive posted almost nothing....
Whats been going on in my world??

Well, a bunch of stuff.
The plan in my mind as I rode back from Guatemala was to retain ownership of my house but to "dispose of" as much of my accumulated stuff as possible. I had more or less decided that the life I had been leading before my trip was not what I wanted and that if I didn't take definitive action and "Do something"; I was just going to fall back into the same old rut I had built for myself.... and before I knew it, another decade would have passed and Id have missed my chance to change...
So, I was intending to make some big changes, but I didn't want to "raise" my entire past... I wanted to step away from the old life and into a new life in a more or less orderly fashion :).... Another factor involved here is that I was not entirely sure what that "new life" would look like... but I knew I had to make some big changes so I may as well get started on them!

So, I put together something of a plan with a couple of options and milestones along the way:
1) I did not want to be burdened by my oppressive mortgage any more!
2) I wanted to do more motorbike "Adventure Touring" though not necessarily immediately.
3) I wanted to keep ownership of my house in Vancouver (Its a good investment, I like living in it and I may want to resume "the life that I had" in a year or three if "the new life" does not lead onward to somewhere different.
4) I wanted to go try living in a very simple way for a while... The loose plan here was to go live in San Pedro Guatemala with the friends I had made (Marie and Indy and others...)

So that was the rough plan, but how to get all the pieces into place was not straight forward.
For a start, I have accumulated quite a pile of "stuff" over the last decade or more in Vancouver. That stuff cost me thousands of dollars to store for a year, and I also left quite a bit of it in my house/garage which made it significantly harder to rent out!
So, the answer to that was to "get rid of the stuff!" - Should be possible but it was going to take me a few months to achieve it - if I am not going to just throw it out that is... (three or four at minimum).
Then there was the mortgage problem... I had been paying it off at a rapid rate while I was working, but that meant that the payments while traveling were painfully high... That had to change! Once I got back to Vancouver I looked into this challenge... The mortgage is at the end of a five year term this December and then I can easily renegotiate all the details. After some mathematical gymnastics, I have determined that I can rearrange this so that at current interest rates the rental income from the house will cover the mortgage and all other maintenance expenses - Just!
Its not actually that pretty - Long term low rate mortgage means I end up paying about one and a half times the principal of the loan in interest... But if it lets me be free of the burden of paying myself then thats good enough (at least for a couple of years or so).
Another twist here is that I'm sure interest rates will go up in the next few years, but how much??
So what I really needed to do was to pay down another lump sum of some tens of thousands of dollars off the mortgage..... This means work!

On the work front, I did not want to do what I had been doing and as I said, I wanted a change of life. However, being the sensible conservative intelligent engineer (substitute "afraid") that I am, I felt very uncomfortable about throwing away a perfectly good career with very large earning potential for a subsistence living. - I am over 40 years old and hi-tech engineering is a young persons world, and I was not solidly in the management stream so chances of me getting another job after a few years "in the wilderness" would probably be slim!!!
So; my plan to accommodate these issues was basically to accept that I was going to have to work for a year in order to get my freedom in the manner that I wanted it.
I decided Id try to get a job that was more in the "Project Manager" role than the technical engineering role since I figure that project management does not really change like the technical stuff, its always in use, its portable, and I like the job better than the technical one - Only down side is that it pays less, but these days, Im OK with that.
This plan allowed me the time to dispose of all my accumulated stuff without just throwing it out. It allowed me to transition to a new professional role that I could take up again at a later date, and it brought in a chunk of money to secure my mortgage and give me enough cash in hand to go play in the world for a year or two..... :))))


Sounds great but ironing out the wrinkles in that plan was going to take quite a bit of effort, and now that I'm here in Vancouver, that is what I have been doing...

Ive got my stuff out of storage and Ive gone through all the boxes and Ive been getting rid of it.
I have put dozens of advertisements on gear swap and Buy-N-Sell web sites and have sold thousands of dollars of my accumulated past life... I've been selling things off at really low prices just so that I get rid of them... In most cases I have no issues with doing it since the gear had not been used for years, but there were still a few things that were tough to let go (and so I grow)
As expected though, Ive found that there are some things that don't make sense to get rid of immediately (better to hold in storage for a couple of years and see if I want to come back) so for these things I decided that I would build a storage container in my back yard.
So I also got a pile of wood delivered and have started that construction job while it is still sunny (rather than doing it in the winter rainy season).
I'm definitely "on the program" and every day I'm figuring out how to get where I want to go as effectively as possible.
Trouble is though that I'm not much clearer on any details of where it is that I'm trying to get to...

I guess I'll figure it out later :))