Hasta Luego!

Well the chapter of working at the tree service company is over and I am attempting to reflect on what I learned, how fast the time went by, and just the craziness of it all. Some of you know my good friend Ryan Opganorth, well as O and I were passing through Texas and trying to figure out how I would provide financially for us, Ryan got me in touch with his uncle Jeff who owns Aesthetic Tree Service, a tree trimming, removal, and family business. I'll be completely honest. I had no desire whatsoever to do this job during my time in CO, but I guess God had other plans.

I do not think one can make a job description of what we do in this company but some helpful adjectives are: manual labor, dangerous, a black finger nail, new scars, cross cultural, and beer. I don't think I have to go in to great detail about how this job was full of labor but tasks such as: splitting logs, cleaning up branches from tree trimmings and putting them into a chipper machine, and then stump removal was by no means an easy task, not even mentioning that clean up job.

Dangerous. Never have I worked for a company that every day, every new job had a new set of potential harmful situations that you had to constantly be aware of. It was almost like living in Nairobi and having to be constantly turned on to your surroundings and what has happening. I definitely had some close calls with the chipper when I would get slammed to the ground by a branch, or not be aware of someone cutting something above me and almost getting hit by it. Thankfully I had some good colleagues who would look out for me.

So the black finger story is one that I will remember for awhile because I see it every day. So if you have ever worked with a wood splitter, you'll understand this story, if not, well just be glad you don't. So basically you get piece of wood, load it onto a tray, push the lever for the axe to split the wood for you rather than using a ton of wasted energy on an axe, even though "Duck Dynasty" did have a good episode on how that is a great workout. Now these machines are insanely powerful and this particular one could split wood with up to 35tons of pressure. That's a lot. So what happened. Well my finger got caught one day behind the log that I was splitting and there's all that pressure on my thumb! Thankfully I was able to stop the machine before it got really bad, but that thing hurt like nothing else. My aunt Mary Anne was extremely helpful as she encouraged me to ice my finger for 20min every hour otherwise I might lose my finger nail. So naturally with those odds I was religious about that ice. And what do you know, I still have the finger nail!

New scars are basically part of what the job entails because with all the limbs, trunks, equipment that you're using, something is guaranteed to get ya. Oh well at least I don't have anything like Scar from the Lion King and I am extremely grateful for that.

I guess I'm meant to work with every cultural group because I think I am getting pretty close of doing that. With this workforce we consisted of Americans, Mexican, and El Salvador. It was fun and I learned a lot about their home culture, what it's like to transition to the US and raise a family here, and lots of other things.

Beer! This was an interesting element of this job because so much of jobs like this consist of work and then drinking a cold one, or two, or three, or more for whatever reason. Whether its alcoholism, just wanting something cold, or because you like the taste, this was a huge motivational piece to our work. It's crazy what one can accomplish when that is used as a reward to the get the job done. This of course was my observation as I was an outsider to these guys and learned how they operate. And this was a big aspect for them.

So I'm done all of that. It was fun, adventurous, insightful, and I am so motivated to get back into the world of sports. Never have I missed being in that industry so much. But in hindsight, sometimes to get somewhere you have to make sacrifices and even though this job was very demanding, taxing, and draining I am extremely grateful for those guys  at Aesthetic and for their openness to teach me on the fly.

So let the new journey begin. Here's to those stories and lessons, but here's to a new mission, a new setting that I cannot wait to dive into! Cheers.