Ok,
here we go...I just got back from an evening of encap touchup on the traffic lanes of a medical product company in Petaluma. This morning I cleaned up the truck and then extracted a Chinese tufted wool rug made from shoddy wool owned by a client who is a local bank president....about 9 hrs of cleaning today.
I grew up in a family bike shop. My dad retired as an auto mechanic to spent time with me in our bike shop. He was a first rate GM automotive mechanic specializing in Buick Dynaflow transmissions. I never got to use a crescent wrench. I had to look at the part and KNOW which wrench to use....fast forward. I got a degree in English Lit in college, then had to find a job. I started teaching in a continuation high school but dropped the program. It wasn't much fun. My parents were always avid collectors: my Dad collected Leica, Canon, Nikon cameras, early tube radios and Art Deco furniture; my Mom collected M. Augustine dolls, Lenox, Steuben, Roseville pottery, etc.
My great grandpa was Chief Justice of Canada and knighted by the Queen in 1903. His son, the family black sheep, married a senator's daughter, and shortly after her father's demise, made their way to CA with a $60,000 inheritence in 1903 (millions today). My grandpa taught law and science at Loyola University, when he wasn't drinking....He invented the Fisher Oil well-capping process, used widely in the '20's. My grandma's family were statesmen, philosophers, musicians, artistic. My Mom loved to take things apart, clean them up and make them work. We fixed old clocks, made fingers for plaster statues, painted, polished, and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned everything....so before the
IICRC there was my Mom's instruction.
Summers in between semesters in college I worked for my brother-in-law on construction projects. I learned a lot about construction and cleaning at the same time....who do you suppose got to scoop the pee out of the bathtubs from workers too lazy to use the portapotty before the plumbers would install thefinal plumbing...you guessed it.
After college I moved up to the Bay area and got a job in a bike shop. I was riding about 35=40 hrs a week at that time. I lived in Mill Valley and climbed
Mt.Tam every day...often on my track bike with a 75" gear and no hand brakes. Strong legs back then.
I heard about some guys blowing glass in Sausalito and rode my bike down to watch them. It was fascinating, and I went back every night. One of the guys that shared the studio was planning to leave and I happened to overhear that conversation. I was able to take his spot. So in November 1970 I started blowing glass. I was hooked. I read everything I could about glass and stayed every night watching the other guys blow bubbles. We were all learning together...just like now...I lived in a little back house in Mill Valley with lots of windows...soon there was glass on every sill. I started selling it at the Sausalito flea market and somehow people liked and bought it. I approached an art gallery in Sausalito, Shelby Galleries, and he said, "Yes". A shop in the Cannery in SF also took on my work, then a gallery in Tiburon and I was on my way. I spent 10 years blowing glass full time, went back for a masters in fine arts, making my batch from scratch, studing the chemicals used and their toxicity (after I poisoned myself), building my furnaces, benches, annealing ovens. I managed to have about 30 Gallery Shows, won awards in a number of juried Art Competitions, including Best of Show at the MIll Valley Fall Arts Festival where they jury 1200 applicants, accept 225 people into the show and give out 4 awards, three honorable mentions and the cash award for Best of Show. I won that in 1978.....all was not well in Denmark, however....I had been making a high lead content reactive glass with silver and uranium oxide...you kept it in a oxidized state until the final reheat, where you'd turn up the flame and reduce it. The piece would mirror itself magically, then I'd fume it with Stannous Chloride with a little Muriatic acid in it and the piece would turn rainbow colors....Gorgeous but the fumes weren't healthy. I was dizzy a lot of the time and went to a Toxicology lab in SF to get checked out. Heavy metals were at a dangerous threshold in my system so I had to stop blowing. As luck would have it, a woman that I had sold a couple of second goblets to at the flea market turned out to be the director of the De Young Museum. She came to the bike shop where I was working and offered me a commission for 300 goblets at $62.00 ea wholesale and would write me a check for half on the spot. Tempting? Way more than I'd ever made, I thanked her and told her I couldn't do it. She insisted saying she'd be back the next week and please say. "yes!" I tossed and turned all week rationalizing that this was my big chance then thinking it would probably kill me because I loved glass and it was hard to let it go. I turned her down when she came back the next week. Shortly after we sold our first little house in Santa Rosa and I borrowed some money to open my own shop. ....Might as well do something you love and know. The shop was tiny but built a reputation fast. I was a pretty good rider back then and had fun designing bikes for my clients. I was the first shop in the Bay Area to have an adjustable sizing fixture. Ben Serotta made it to show at the Reno Bike Show and I took it home. My sizing charts were published in Bicycling and my bike made the front cover. Racers I helped won a lot of races and would send in their friends for bikes, fitting etc. I could and did work 90 hours a week...didn't make much money but had lots of friends to ride with. I was a fair wrench, worked at the World Championships with the US Time Trial squad, had a lot of riders set national records on bikes I built. The Bane in the ointment, sorry Bill, was getting parts when you needed them. In the mid '80's when index shifting came out, suddenly each MFG changed each group every year, so no wholesaler stocked deeply any more...no one wanted to get stuck with obsolete parts that you paid retail for and had to discount to get rid of. In 1997. I was pretty weary of the bike shop parts game. The straw that broke the camels' back was race prepping a bike ridden by a pro who had won overall Ironman Japan and Ironman Fiji. He qualified to go to the World Championships and his dad brought his bike up on a tuesday. His plane left Sat morning at 6 am for Switzerland. I put his bike on the stand, spun the wheels and cranks and felt the BB creaking with a rough feel through the frame tubing. The bike was a Hatta Carbon monocoque designed by Lotus, with a pair of Sweet Wings tubular steel ultralight fabricated cranks. The bearings were proprietary. I called and asked for two bearing second day air so I could button the bike up on Thursday, test ride it, then break it down into it's frame box for shipping. Thursday afternoon, around 3pm , UPS finally shows up. I'm waiting, the truck goes by and I wave it down. "No Bearings" say the driver. I called Sweet Wings and asked for the shipping number, they assured me the bearings would be there "tomorrow",.... "but what if they're not," I asked, "who else has bought a set of those cranks around here?" A shop in Sausalito bought the only one sold in Nor Cal. I knew the owner and called him about the cranks. He had sold them the day before to Robin Williams, but the bike wouldn't be ready for a couple weeks so I could borrow the bearings if mine didn't show up by Friday. Friday, UPS finally came by at 3:45 pm, I was waiting at the curb with my hand out, palm up. The driver, an old friend, comes by , gives me a resounding whack and "Happy Weekend"! Where's my Bearings! I cried...Nothing on the truck for you, Paul.
That was a tense week. It took 2.5 hrs to drive to Sausalito on a Friday to get two miserable bearing's out of my friend's mailbox because he had an engagement and couldn't wait...and another three hours to drive 55 miles home. Then crunch time. I finished the bike at 1:55 am. the Dad showed up at 2 am, picked up the box, went back to Marin to grab his son and be at SFO by 4am. I went to bed completely exhausted, physically and mentally. I decided to do something else...anything else!
Don't you love this stream of consciousness stuff? totally bored?, I'm just getting started...........It's all mikey's fault!
Cut to the chase, Paul, like already!
One of my clients was a carpet cleaner and invited me to go out on a job with him...he knew I was ready for a change, had watched me painstakingly clean his and other bikes, and thought it might be a good fit. I spent two afternoons with him, and then he loaned me his new truck for a day to clean a couple of my friends houses. I made $405 the first day cleaning. It was SO EASY! all the parts were waiting for me on the carpet....all I had to do was take them out to get paid. No lacing wheels, facing BB shells, Building frames, modifying components. EASY!
I had a 1978 Ducati 900SS. Mint! I sold it and bought my first brand new Fox with a Nissan a-12 and a Tuthill 45 blower. I put it in the "discovery" van, a 1980 Chevy I bought for a mere $1000, painted, and discovered little things it needed...like a transmission, tires, brakes, diaper, shocks, springs...minor details. I was on my way.
Concurrently, I was taking all the certification classes to become a State Certified Water Plant Operator, when that finally came through I was too far gone in discovering just how much I didn't know about textiles and carpet cleaning.
I always have flown solo. I learn stuff better when I have to figure out why the results I expected and what I got didn't mesh.
I had a lot of potential clients from the bike shop. They knew me because I saw them every week for a ride or to work on their stuff. the shop was popular. I built bikes for people who were pretty well known. I was a naive kid...now I'm a naive old geezer. One of my clients was CFO for Arthur Anderson, the largest accounting firm in the World. Three of the four founders of Autodesk bought custom
bikes.The Mayor of Ross and his wife, both doctors, were customers, The owner of the SFWholesale Furniture Market brought his bike up for me to work on. He would drive up in his Rolls, and ask me to patch his tube. He owned 1 square block of Market Street...from 5th to 6th and from Market to Howard St.. Over a million sq ft of office and display space. He'd come into the shop and I'd give him the same bad time I'd give evryone else. He sent his friends, and they sent theirs. I never needed advertising or business cards. The scary part was the responsibility of cleaning really valuable furnishings well. My folks schooled me well...I knew what I was looking at and what it might be worth.
IICRC classes gave me a good start. I've always been curious and my variety of background makes me want to know what does what. I've spent all night searching the internet more than once. I practice on junk furniture and rugs from the dump. If I ruin them, cheap education, if I save them I can sell them at garage sales and recoup something for the time.
Gary Heacock steered me straight when i got started. I drove up to Portland to see him and meet Jim Rymer that started Bio-kleen. Great trip. I went home and doubled my prices and started seriously researching "green" cleaning products. this was in 1998.
Stamina. I used to be apretty good distance rider. I've ridden around a 100 centuries and 23 double Centuries...three of them on a track bike, direct drive, no coasting with a 75" gear and no brakes...just my legs to slow it down.
I'm a lot slower after I hit the car that pulled into my path 2.5 years ago, but still have pretty good stamina. The crash into the car broke my right scapula in 40 pieces, pushed in 9 ibs, crumbled C6 and C7 in my neck, and tore the medial collateral ligaments in my left knee. No Fun! but I didn't die or get paralyzed, so even though my back, neck and knee hurts daily, I can live with it. Distance riders develop a high pain threshold.
I have cleaned 24000 sq ft of traffic lanes with a wand in 17 hours with a friend pulling hoses for me. and solo with a Whittaker, 26000 sq ft in one night. I used to have a steady crew. all friends that were professionals in their own fields that I trained and set up with Labor Ready for when I needed them. I paid them $30 an hour cash, a 1099 Misc, for their comissions as great salesmen, and paid Labor Ready for the insured great laborers they sent me. One of these friends that recently moved away was a doctor. He LOVED to clean....this is dirty, this is CLEAN! This is DIRTY , this is clean! Theraphy for him. He didn't have the same success pushing pills...the patients never got better...... another What About Bob? story. I think he would have paid me to clean for me.
I clean a lot of fancy stuff, and some not so fancy stuff and charge ridiculously high prices with a smile. Somehow, the price helps qualifies me in the client's eyes.
Some people will pay more for the bragging rights. I sold a new Columbine bike in 1999 for $6989.00 after whittling the price down before the client arrived to pick it up so it didn't look too expensive to him. He asked me what else could he put on it so he'd have bragging rights of owning a $7000 bike. Go Fish!
I'm a tinkerer. I like evaluating and tweaking my tools, protocol, chems and evaluating what differences the changes make. I realize I;m never going to know what I'd really like to about fabrics or oriental rugs. I don't have Barry O'Connell's encyclopedic knowledge of how many warts that woman had on her nose and who was her sister in law the next tribe over, but I'd like to. One of my clients has her grandpa's couches and rugs. He bought the Fairmont Hotels in 1946 or so. Nice old linen woodblock print down filled handmade furniture and not replaceable..... I cleaned Robert Mondavi's suede loveseat that he had lunch on for 40 some years before it went in the Mondavi Museum.
I haven't a clue why I get these jobs. They do stretch me out though and give me pause and info gathering frenzy before I start cleaning.
The art of making a long stem blown glass goblet is practise and control. The art of cleaning fabric and not devaluing it is practice and control. You have to understand the parameters before you cut loose on the scary stuff.
I like the move to the ETM. I don't worry about a big gas tm taking a crap now and then anymore. I've been a mechanic for a long time and understand how important routine maintenance is to keep a TM running optimally. The ETM is much simpler. The early Savage 1 I have is all stainless steel, the build quality is wonderful. It works well. I like the internal dialogue that goes on while I focus my cleaning abilities and make adjustments for my machinery.
I generally use a booster at the front door, the Mytee AirHog Plus with auto pumpout. I have a Mini Devastator in front of the Air Hog. It gets pretty reasonable cfm, right at 400 cfm at the front door with just over 12"hg lift. It requires the booster to get the same airflow as the Fox, but the Exteck doesn't lie. I'm not giving up much. I have a quiet 60 decibel Yamaha generator that'll power the Savage if there's no power or it's too much of a hassle to pull cords. the LG#3 gives me more heat than the Fox did. Maintenance is a piece of cake, drain the recovery tank and wash the filter media. DONE! It costs about $30 a week for fuel to run it., usually less. I'm doing the same volume of jobs, about 40/60 residential to commercial. I don't use HWE on commercial unless I have to. I have three Whittakers, a Rotowash, a Cobb
CRB, three Cimex, two dual speed rotaries for CGD. I'm going to buy a
Trinity OP machine in the near future. Those that know me know I sold and used Oreck LowBoy and Orbiter machines for several years.
I generally use a rotary jet extractor these days to save my shoulder. I have a trusty old RX and am testing the new T Rex. they are different machines. The TRex cleans more deeply and leaves the carpet drier than the RX. The new bonnet drive plate is a welcome addition especially with the adjustable speed contol of more delicate rugs.
Yawn. I'm tired. More later. ask away....
