SB 1613

I was somewhere on the 15 South between Hesperia and San Bernardino, making my way back from Needles to Compton when I got the call. It was from an unfamiliar area code. My instincts would tell me this wasn't just a typical cell phone scam. I wanted to believe it might be an important phone call.

It's a winding road that twists and turns on a steep, downhill grade up in the hills between Hesperia and San Bernardino, just before the 15 South forks into the 215. I've made this drive before in my eclipse. It still gives me chills from time to time...even in a flat sports car that keeps its weight near the bottom of the frame.

Truck 15 was getting its ass kicked by random gusts of wind, barreling down the freeway...unstoppable and awkward...bouncing about like a pizza box on a skateboard. And I would look over to the side occasionally, between sudden jerks at the wheel, and watch the hills rolling down, down, farther down until I couldn't see beyond the drop. It really is a wonderful scenic drive when you're in the passenger seat...but these days I'm occasionally afraid to drive. I'm turning into my dad.

I answer the phone and it's a recruiter from Northrop Grumman.

When I first found out that the truck depot was in Compton, bells and whistles started going off. It wasn't the first time in my life that I felt like my laziness had gotten the best of me. No one likes to be a minority...and technically, by blood, I am one. But no one who sees the color of my skin can see that. No one who hears about my level of education or hears the way I talk can see that. As a person who looks, speaks...and perhaps, dare I say it, "acts" white, my first impression of the situation was that I would stand out far too much -- too much for my own good -- in a place like Compton:

The reality is that like most people, I have probably watched too many movies. Compton is just like any other place. It has houses and businesses, schools and mini marts, restaurants and strip malls...that and perhaps the most notorious history of gang violence this country has ever seen.

So I started the blanket applications...because I knew right away that I didn't belong there. If I'm going to get mugged because of where I work, I'd prefer it be in a place I'm familiar with rather than a place notorious for its violent crime...all because I've been forced to take a working-class job at the hands of the worst economy we've had in this country since the 1970s.

She asks me if I'm available to talk. I shift the phone from one hand to the other, trying to maintain this death grip on the steering wheel and keep the wobbling truck from running off the side of the road into the canyon.

"Yes, I'm free to talk," I say, because this kind of opportunity does not happen twice.

We talked for a good ten minutes or so about a job opportunity in Chantilly, Virginia, a small town roughly 25 miles outside of Washington, DC. It was for a junior engineering position, and they were looking for someone with my background and coursework.

This is my chance to sell myself over the phone as the perfect candidate...so if she asks me if I have experience with something I don't have experience with, I tell her that I'm anxious to learn. If she asks me about my level of interest in the position, I tell her it would be an excellent opportunity. There's no room to fuck up at this point, so long as I can keep the Goddamned truck on the road.

After talking to the recruiter for a good ten minutes or so, she arranges for me to have an official phone interview with a hiring manager the following day. She schedules it in the morning due to the three hour time zone difference, and this becomes the most exciting thing that has happened to me since my official graduation from CSUF. Coming home from the worst Fourth of July weekend I have ever had...this was definitely one thing I needed to keep me going.

The next day, I did not receive a call from the hiring manager.

Should I have been surprised by this? I really don't know at this point. Finding a job where I can start a "career" has proven to be equally as difficult as finding a girl who is actually worth liking.

I wasn't surprised by this at all. Rather than let it discourage me I made it a point to figure out what had happened. I called the recruiter a few times and she ended up apologizing. The hiring manager had left the office for a meeting and was far too busy for an interview...so we rescheduled. Sometimes I guess you just have to keep the ball rolling yourself...this wouldn't be the first time I've learned that the world isn't going to do everything for you.

It had only been a couple of weeks since I began the blanket applications, and Northrop Grumman was already showing enough interest to make some phone calls in my favor. Over 600 job applications...and I got one interview.

He told me that hiring me would be an enduring process...that nothing would happen over night...that being three time zones behind made the logistics more complicated. He told me that although I should be open to any other opportunities that come my way...he was still interested in "moving forward." And then he told me that he would make arrangements for a second phone interview with a program manager...someone with more direct control over the hiring process.

A close friend of mine who graduated with me has been reporting numerous lay-offs within his respective company. It's an alarming time for everyone, because while there is a perceived difficulty in finding jobs, there is also an escalated fear of not being able to hold one's current job...at least for a while there was. We are now at a point where so many people have been laid off, there aren't really a whole lot of people left to lose their jobs...so the process has actually slowed down a bit. The economy seems to have recoiled into a position where the only people who are hire-able in my field are people who cost the least amount of money...people with security clearance...people who can manage their own relocation expenses...people who don't need a great deal of training.

I can apply to 600 jobs. I can apply to a thousand. No one is going to hire me in this economy unless I'm able to prove that I'm the most affordable commodity on the market.

It has been over a month since all of this happened. I have not spoken to a program manager.

I could argue that I "risked my life" to handle an important job call while driving home from Needles that day. I'm just glad I didn't get pulled over for it.

I could have lost my job.

Truck 15

When I first started working for Street Blimps my supervisor was telling me about how all of the trucks lacked air conditioning. All of them except for one.

Truck 15.

He was telling me about how they only send truck 15 on routes where the temperature gets to be as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. July 4th weekend was coming up and my supervisor decided I was the best fit for a route up in Needles, California...a small town near the tri-state junction of Arizona, California, and Nevada.

During the 4th of July weekend, people from all over the country like to come here and stay near the Colorado river. They ride their Jet Skis and WaveRunners and motor boats and all the while The Department of Boating and Waterways does its best to keep people informed about boat safety. This is where Street Blimps comes in.

Lake Havasu, Laughlin, Bullhead City...these are all river-side communities and I'd like to think most of the people who "live there" are staying in summer homes or renting out houses. The idea that a person could live in this part of the country blows my fuckin' mind. I was convinced that I had experienced the worst heat this country has to offer when I lived in Las Vegas for three months, but I completely changed my mind about this after my stay in Needles for only three days.

Truck 15 is an old, diesel engine Mitsubishi with automatic transmission and roughly 215,000 miles on it. All of the Street Blimps have a cab that sits on top of the engine - so to run maintenance on anything internal you have to literally lift the entire cab and tilt it forward:


The drive from Compton to Needles was no easy task. Unfortunately the truck is so old that it struggles to shift gears automatically. Apparently, once you've reached about 48mph, you either have to be on a negative grade or you have to have enough built up acceleration to get the truck to shift to the next highest gear and break 50mph. The accelerator is roughly half an inch off the floor, so no matter how hard you press down on it with your foot, the truck WILL NOT go any fucking faster than 68mph on a flat surface (of which there pretty much aren't any between LA and Needles).

To make a potentially longer story short, I drove through LA traffic from Compton to Needles averaging about 50mph. It took me roughly seven hours and twenty minutes to get to the hotel, a distance I could have covered in roughly four and a half hours with my Eclipse. HAHA, AT LEAST I GOT PAID FOR IT, RIGHT? Yeah...you say that shit now.

Anyway, a fifteen minute truck check is necessary every single day, especially when you're driving an old ass truck over 100 miles into another state. I suppose this is alright if your route is in a place like Seattle or anywhere farther north during the summer. But in Needles, during 4th of July weekend, at 8 o' clock in the morning it's already about 100 degrees outside.

Truck 15 had what the guys in the shop liked to call a "conehead" cab. This means the roof of the cab narrows and runs all the way up to the top of the poster board...turning it into sort of a tear-drop shape...or a "conehead" if you will. Normally, for me, this feature would be of no consequence...except for the fact that access to checking the engine fluids is only possible by tilting the entire cab forward, and doing so with a conehead requires lifting an extra 5 feet worth of metal. This may sound like a piece of cake, but with two people it's fucking hard...so if you're on a route by yourself with a conehead, it fucking isn't a piece of cake.

To say my weekend in Needles was the worst experience I ever had would be quite an exaggeration. However, I distinctly remember driving past a large sign in Bullhead city on the second day of my route. It said the temperature outside was 123 degrees. Truck 15 DOES have air conditioning, but this doesn't change the fact that I still had to get out of the truck occasionally to put diesel in it or take pictures of it for Street Blimps corporate.

If you've never experienced this kind of weather, allow me to draw a simple analogy for those of you who have played Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When you finally get inside the caldera at the top of Death Mountain for the first time, the game gives you one minute and fifteen seconds to do shit before you start dying from the heat:


This is pretty much what it was like every time I had to get out of the truck in Lake Havasu, Laughlin and Bullhead City. After one minute of being exposed to the heat I would start dying.

Aside from the outrageous heat, the fact that I had to figure out the routes on my own, had no form of transportation at the end of the day, was staying in a hotel that had no microwave, had to pay three dollars a night for an internet connection and spent all of 4th of July weekend by myself...I had a great time.

On Independence Day, I made a stop at the Denny's next to the Motel 6 and ate at a table by myself. I texted people who were spending time with friends at the beach, watching fireworks and getting drunk. I talked to my parents on the phone. I did not eat one hot dog.

I went back to the room and went to bed at around 9pm. I never saw one firework.

I spent six years of my life studying physics in school...a subject that has been advertised numerous times throughout my life as a key to finding careers in various private industries such as aerospace, computer science, defense, financing, etc...

I stopped taking physics seriously after three years of college because I realized that it's not cool, no one cares about it, and everyone makes fun of people who study it. I spent so many years of my life trying to prove to the world that I wasn't stupid, and all of a sudden I realized I had gone too far...I just wanted people to go back to thinking I was "stupid" again.

I now have a master's degree in physics...and on Independence Day I felt like I had really fucked up my life.

Forecasting

As I gradually make the transition from monthly cluster-fuck entries to semi-regular, situational entries, you might notice some changes in the style of prose...along with a moderate increase in detail. Rather than try to remember everything all at once and add as much flavor as possible to all of my mishaps, it might be easier for me to just put more detail into the highlights and forgo hours of digging through saved conversations in an attempt to recreate authenticity. And yes, I do save conversations...almost all of them...

...all for fun.

That being said, the next few entries will be somewhat experimental. It is entirely likely that I will just return to posting monthly cluster-fuck entries.