At this point, he had been “packing” for some 30-odd hours, aided no doubt by some kind of uppers. And a great help they had been–the truck, while lamentably still across the street, was piled high with what I can only describe as a a precarious and random pile of rubbish. No beds were yet in sight, which made us think that another night of being neighbors with him + criminal consorts was in store.

7:25 am. I leave for work, my mind filled with fantasies of not coming home to more of this view:

But at this rate, expectations were low.

5:30 pm. I turn onto our street on my way home from work, and broken down on the corner, hood up, a mere block from where it was in the morning, is the now ex-neighbor’s truck. Fail! After all that, the ex neighbor is still within line of site and ear shot of our living room.

6:30 pm. More puzzled efforts and discussion among (ex) neighbor’s peer group. With the boon of enforced residence a block away, they apparently decide it may be worth it, after all, to take the mattresses. Two young ruffians escape from the pack and carry the beds out of his old house, down the street to his new sidewalk.

As the evening concludes, (ex) neighbor and all of his earthly goods that meth could possibly help him load onto the truck are a block away. To say we had an abundance of schadenfreude would be an understatement.

Either way, we’re all going to have a good time!

4:05 am. Friends of neighbor begin to arrive.

6:00 am. The increasing volume of evictee’s efforts are an effective alarm clock.

6:00:07 am. Standing in living room window, spying on watching the “progress.” So far, they have succeeded in loading the defunct Harley in the FRONT of the trailer. This took no small effort, as merely days before, neighbor had lost a key part to the bike in his lawn. It happened to be essential to starting that lovely piece of…work.

We did not offer to help him find it.

6:45 am. Two bicycles have now joined the Harley in the front of the trailer. I spy a cardboard box on the premises. This is promising. How long can it possibly take to pack a crack pipe and several empty Jack Daniels bottles? And once the 4-year-old’s stuff is packed, dad’s stuff can surely fit into an additional few boxes.

7:25 am. I leave for work. Trailer contents remain unchanged. Evictee + friends huddle on front porch in a scene more than slightly reminiscent of the beginning of 2001: Space Odyssey. You know, the part where the early humans stare uncomprehendingly at each other and long wordlessly for, I don’t know, fire. Ability to walk upright. More freely available raw meat.

3:30 pm. Home from work (I have a late call with some people on the other side of the blue planet, and thus have taken off early to drive home. Plus, I was all agog to find out what the hells was going on). Truck is still there. Harley has now been moved to back of trailer, but contents have not otherwise been much altered. A few boxes are packed.

3:35 pm. Men trying to hitch trailer to truck. This is hard work. Much consternation is obvious on their part, as the weight of the 3,000-pound Harley in the back of the trailer is causing the front to lift up beyond a height where they could conceivably hitch it to the truck. I laugh maniacally.

6:20 pm. Much progress has occurred! There are now possibly ten boxes loaded, the Harley is lovingly swaddled in a sleeping bag, and the boys are contemplating the various options for loading the couch in on top of the load.

6:35 pm. It appears that putting the couch on upside down, on top of the Harley, is the winning choice. We watch from the living room; a small, dilapidated crowd has gathered. Skankiness abounds. Two cross over to our yard and (really, I am not making this up) steal a handful of bark mulch.

6:40-7:20pm. We go for a walk to the St Johns Bridge and back. Brooks bets me a beer that truck will still be there. Ever optimistic, I accept.

7:21 pm. The truck is in fact still there. Numerous meth-y looking people loiter promiscuously about. Motorcycles are of course being ridden up and down the side walk. We note that there are no beds on the trailer.

This is a bad sign. I open a beer for Brooks.

9:00 pm-ish. It is now dark enough to take up our customary seats in the living room and settle in for some more eviction watching. Michelle cannot resist the draw, and abandons her studies to join us. We attempt to decipher the cell phone calls, listen shamelessly to conversations with some of the more mentally ill neighbors, and note that child is running wild, in and outside of the house.

Fortunately, neighbor’s hooker friends are around to keep an eye on him.

11:30 ish. We grow tired, mainly of not being able to make out every word, and head to bed. Pillow talk revolves around the possibility of the truck being gone in the morning.

That’s enough for now. I’d love to say that things are as exciting Thursday morning as they were Wednesday morning, but…you’ll have to wait to hear about the climactic third-act duel.

Read part one of the great eviction

Background: ex-felon who rents the house across the street is a nuisance. He hits on the women in the neighborhood, married and single, and doesn’t get the standard social cues of “leave me alone, you freak. I’m not interested.” He rides his Harley on the street (and on the sidewalk, because why wouldn’t you?), at incredible speeds and with incredible amounts of noise, any time of the day or night. He neglects his child. He shouts. He accuses. He has a parade of skanky people in and out of his house, day and night. Some leave so high they can hardly walk and also try to engage in conversation with cars.

He is, in other words, a bad-ass MoFo who is pathetic (and even sympathetic) in his own ways.

But he’s, at last, no longer a neighbor. Here’s how it went down; times are somewhat approximate.

Tuesday evening, 8 pm. We note suspiciously normal older couple at house across the street. They haven’t arrived on loud Harleys, they haven’t driven motorcycles down the sidewalk at 50 mph, and they do not appear interested in either buying or selling meth. They are clean, and it’s even possible that they shower regularly.

Tuesday evening, 8:01 pm. I find Brooks downstairs and ask if he’d recognize neighbor’s landlords, since I think they may be across the street.

8:01:14 pm. Brooks is now in the front yard, innocently watering. Watching from the window, I realize I was right–those were the landlords.

8:02 pm. Brooks waves at landlords, who cross street and engage in conversation.

8:09 pm. Animated conversation continues.

8:15 pm. Brooks comes inside, confirms that they are the landlords, and gives me the GLORIOUS news that the problematic tenant is being evicted for non-payment of rent.

8:15:10 pm. Celebration ensues.

8:20 pm. More details. Neighbor has promised landlord he will be out by the following morning. We prepare for an even longer, louder night than usual.

10 pm. Sitting in the dark in living room, watching neighbor. No packing is happening.

10:30 pm. Still surveilling. Still no packing. Some cell phone conversations. I wonder about installing microphones in the maple tree.

11:15 pm (or so). We go to bed.

More to come, folks…but for now, here’s a preview of what you can look forward to in my history of Wednesday:

4:05 am. Friends of neighbor begin to arrive.

The one confounding factor to my newly-minted weather predictor is that I had a wee bicycle accident last weekend. More of a falling over than an actual crash, it involved trying to go up a hill and finding the limit of my atrophied muscles. However, I did fall over on the offending foot, so…maybe it won’t rain today. Either way, life is good.

The recipe he is using is from Cook’s Illustrated The New Best Recipe. I hear the sound of the food processor cutting the butter into the flour now. Yum.

Since the garage is separated from the house by a patio area that is outfitted with a grill, I suggested that he might want to consider making that wall of the garage out of some kind of glass door. This would expand the patio area if needed, allow for balmy summer breezes, and inspire envy the next time he has a motorcycle work party. And then I found these. And they totally work.

But what’s even better is the website itself. Clearly, The Folding Sliding Door Company devotes most of their energy to making super fly doors, not web design or copywriting. And while the site is functional enough–you can, for example, get a “quotation”–it is full of charming near-use of the English language. The best part is their “why buy from us” page. Apparently, there are MANY manufacturers out there masquerading as “folding sliding door specialists.”  Many.  And that information is accompanied with the following dire warning:

We specialise in folding sliding doors only. The design and manufacture of folding sliding doors is an exact science. Do not buy from chancers.

Do not buy from chancers! Love it! Love their doors too, so the website is an added bonus.

It’s a pity the break rooms at our campus aren’t anything like the one in the video; I would totally wear the t-shirt, though.

Somehow, the weather god smiled on us and granted sunny, clear skies all day. We stopped a thousand or so times (Brooks was very patient!) and as a result, there are some pictures.

I meandered to the edge of a small bluff and looked over, and what do you know, there the ocean was, straight below me. This is totally unlike the beaches I grew up with, where you could sidle up to ocean over a huge distance of flat land, which is right next to…another huge stretch of flat land.

Highway 101, on this stretch of the coast, often feels like it’s hanging over the ocean. You get these stunning views of sea on one side and forest on the other.

Of course, there are also plenty of places where the FREEZING water is more accessible. Had to fight off the urge to jump right in…

That’s all for now.