Tech to Wreck

I was bouncing around on the occasional contract. I was mentally and physically drained.  I had plenty saved up to coast for a long while, so I decided to travel some. I visited Ireland at first because I had spent some time back there in 1997 after having met some wonderful Irish interns at a Sun Microsystems contract. Their way of life, so simple, and unpretentious really rubbed off on me. I came back with  new perspective. I decided to go nomad and see what jobs I liked outside of tech. I knew I wouldn't make much money, but I had some side jobs that kept me busy.

My first choice:  Wrecking, AKA towing, aka repossession. I had  friend involved in the business for quite some time. I decided to give it a shot just to see what it was all about.

I ended up with several crews over a couple of years. The money wasn't bad, actually. But the work was brutal. And the hours were brutal. Fortunately most of the time I was able to bring ROman with me(the greyhound I picked up in a previous post..or later post..or..uh..). He was very good at riding shotgun and always accompanied me on my journeys in or out of work. This job lasted nearly 4 years from 2002 to 2006 before the heat and lack of sleep nearly killed me. Also ROmans health began to deteriorate, so I wanted to spend more time with him and look after him. He had become a very important part of my life since i had few friends in the Austin area to spend time with - most were married or in other states or countries.

This is my wrecking gallery:

http://www.pbase.com/wyk/wrecking_in_texas

It took a while to get the hang of driving a big truck and towing and recovering vehicles. I got most of my training on the job, and I certainly did plenty of damage on my way to learning.

I also lost a lot of sleep. A lot. Other operators were abusing meth or aderol etc. I was in too much pain since I had hurt my back and usually was on Ibuprofen. Sometimes the pain was so bad I would take 3200-4800mg of IB a day. I also had fire ants and mosquitoes attacking me day and night. And then there were the bums. Occasionally one would try to steal something off my truck late at night or just get too close for comfort. Those I dealt with accordingly. One I used a 25 lb safety tie down chain on. I didn't take kindly to folks stealing from me since anything that disappeared from the truck came out of my paycheck. One week I barely broke even after damaging someone's exhaust. You learn the hard way on the job.

I tried my hand at repo briefly. Briefly. I quit the second time I was shot at.