Who Wants To Work

I’ll be the first to admit that moving fitness equipment—the weight machines, racks, benches and cardio machines y’all like to work out on—isn’t the easiest thing to do.

Last week, when Body Tech (of Esparza Sr.) needed help, I called to ask who in the family could aid on an installation in Bakersfield.

The first thing I thought that made me laugh was that the list of available family members was short. Turns out we’ve all got jobs these days. Who’da thought?!

But still, Bosco came to the rescue.

We left Santa Barbara at 6am on Thursday.

There were 31 pieces of equipment that came on a semi trailer. Some we had to dismantle into smaller sections that could be carried and fit through doorways and passageways. We tried to keep it to 200 pounds per piece, but there were some things that we couldn’t manage to take apart. That meant some things weighing 400 pounds.

Of course, its not like we could just put things on a dolly and roll them through the door. That would be easy. No, we had to take them up a flight of stairs with a 180-degree turn at the landing. We had help from others of course. But when it takes 4 guys to carry an item up the stairs, and each guy ends up sweating and breathing hard after one piece, you know it’s got to be heavy.

We left the site at 2:30am Friday morning and rolled into Santa Barbara at 6am—exactly 24 hours after we’d left, with 13 hours of backbreaking work, 6 hours of driving, 5 hours of waiting, and no sleep.

Bosco was getting paid for the job, cash no less, and he told me on the way home, “Hey, you know, if your dad ever has any other jobs and if he needs help again: tell him not to call me!”

Ah, that was good times.