AlexWelch.com

Last weekend I took a trip to Ikea in Dallas to pick out my kitchen cabinets. I drove my car assuming that I wouldn’t be bringing the whole kitchen back with me, but ordering and going back to get it in a truck. The Ikea sales guy who helped me said “dude we have all that stuff in stock… take it home today”. I told him I was in a car, and he was very confident it would all fit. I liked the idea, but deep down I knew he was full of crap, so I said “okay, I’ll try to do it all today and save a 3.5 hour trip both ways in a gas guzzler”.

While I was going through buying all the pieces of my kitchen. I got this weird feeling about the two guys across from me at the other design station. What are two guys doing at Ikea? “Where are you guys from?”, “Tulsa”, “Is that Gary?”, “OH HEY Alex!!!….bla bla bla”. Gary is a person I have met only once, but is friend of a lot of my friends, and he is a person that even if you’ve only met him once, he is hard to miss. So another small world story, and I quickly forgot about seeing Tulsans, and continued my rigorous decision making processes.

I went down stairs to pick up all my stuff after about 3-4 hours of just trying to buy all these cabinets and things, and saw the cart with my number. I noticed the big 88″x24″ pieces were missing. I was looking for those, because I knew they would be the biggest challenge. The guy told me to hold my horses, and this wasn’t all my stuff. An hour later they had brought ALL my stuff out… Not a single cart but 4 HUGE carts, each one bigger than the last, and not shopping basket carts, but Lowes style lumber carts.

The next hour was spent in the most difficult Tetris match ever. I didn’t win, but for a very short time I thought I might pull it off. I actually managed to fit the 88″x24″ pieces into my little car!

I was going to have to come back the next day and get the rest, so I pushed my last cart back inside, but as I went in Gary and his friend were coming out. “what are you guys driving?”, “A truck”. That was it, my solution, and being the very nice people they were, they took back the rest of my stuff, even the KITCHEN SINK (sorry for the lame joke, but it’s true).

no wall 3, originally uploaded by anwdesign.

The wall is gone!
I spent some late nights removing the wall and doing all the cleanup. I will soon have another trailer full of debris. I also pulled the floor up, which wasn’t bad at all, even though it was vinyl tile over linoleum. I was expecting a nightmare.

Kitchen Chaos, originally uploaded by anwdesign.

The demolition begins… Last night BS (Brad Spear) came over and helped me destroy my kitchen. THANKS BRAD!

Seeing some old friends at races asking me what I have been up to? Well quite a lot believe it or not, since a year ago I have got a new job as a web developer in downtown Tulsa, crashed my car, then bought a new car just days after closing on a new house, credit score has some healing to do. The couple I was living with before are finally getting married and that is what motivated me to finally look for a house of my own… I worked with an Ex-Pro cyclist here in Tulsa named Greg Saunders, who is now a real-estate agent… He was awesome and a huge help, we found a great little house near brookside and a few blocks from the river, so the area is perfect for me. I also have a lot of friends/acquaintances in the neighborhood.

I have been racing too, just not on the same level… It’s been nice honestly I don’t have any pressure this year.

Here are some pictures of the New house