Industrial: Word of the Day

Industrial:  Massive in scale or quantity.

Our last day in Barcelona was full of the little experiences that make travel such a joy and such a burden. The challenges that I don't want to face followed by the joy of transcending the challenge, of finding that the challenge wasn't so challenging and what exactly was I so wrought up about anyhow, goddammit?  There's easy - which is easy - and there's a challenge - which isn't but is so satisfying later on.

I like 'em both, for different reasons.  When I'm in the easy stuff I get bored but when I'm in the difficult stuff I start thinking: "What the hell am I putting myself through this difficult stuff when I could be doing something easy instead?"  It's never the right thing with me.

Anyway, we got up and walked down to the car rental place which went very well, ruining my attempts to make it very stressful.  We forgot to bring our passports but lovely Esther at Eurocar came up with a work-around.  I'm the driver and I piloted the car out into the Barcelona traffic.  I had worried about this, too - roads in Europe are approximately the size of an alley in the United States and roads in the Medieval quarter are approximately the size of my left foot in a tennis shoe.  It was a no-sweat experience as well and we found the parking garage pretty close to our apartment.  The garage was a beautiful example of managing to fit 2,000 cars into a space approximately the size of my foot in an over-sized tennis shoe.  We loaded up our stuff and hit the road to France, using the directions Barcelona K had given me.  Smooth sailing, no obstacles, no problems on a list of several things that I had queued up to worry about.

Before we left the owner of the apartment in France had sent a note, poorly translated as: "Work has started out front.  I didn't know about it.  It shouldn't be too bad."  We decided it would be OK.

We pulled up in front of a 10 story building completely covered in industrial scaffolding.  There was an overwhelming smell of paint or solvent.  The small porch was sealed up with plastic sheeting.

This was the first evening where I really could have used a meeting.  I was not happy and overwhelmed by my unhappiness.  I plopped down on the couch and tried to calm down.  SuperK is the Make The Best Of It member of the Seaweed team and she skillfully steered me away from phones, computers, and any other possible way I could contact . . . you know . . . any living beings.

I went to the Worst Case Scenario: the owner knew about this work, lied to us, and would be most uncooperative about any remediation.  I emailed her before we went to bed.

At 7:30 the next morning a worker appeared in our living room window, startling the shit out of me after a long bout of trying to figure out a new coffee system, and sealed it up with industrial plastic, entombing us.  A racket started up in the bedroom where SuperK was sleeping in . .  . you know . . . pajamas.   She staggered out groggily.

"Jesus Christ," she said.  "They're right in the bedroom."

I walked in and, indeed, a man had wrenched open the shutters which he was attacking with an industrial sander.  One of the hallmarks of the industrial sander is its size, power, and speed.  It's one of the noisier sanders available.  It rattled the bedroom windows.  He was standing right there on the industrial scaffolding, pointedly not looking at us.

I got some excellent video  of this - unpleasant at the time, priceless as a story.