And then it started to rain...
Now that we've signed the papers and started spending money, the real fun begins. And so does the rain.
Anyone that lives in Austin knows that the average annual rainfall invariably falls in about 3.5 days a year. We are in a constant state of drought, only briefly interrupted by flooding rains. However, about 12 hours after construction started on the building, Austin became a virtual rainforest. This had a somewhat detrimental effect on our ability to complete construction. And no matter how hard we rode Rodney's backend (Rodney being the guy that owned the building), he wouldn't make it stop raining.
Nevertheless, we plodded forward, heartened by the cheers of our charter members, who forked over money to us before the building was even ready. (Hooray!) Note that some of these cheers later become less enthusiastic as construction dragged on.
And it did drag on. So much so that we actually had spin bikes delivered before the flooring was finished. (Oops, forgot to reschedule the equipment deliveries...) A few other of our favorite anecdotes related to the construction phase of this endeavor...
Julie got pregnant. Technically, this wasn't really related to the construction of the building (as far as I can tell), but the timing was perfect. However, because of the delay, Julie was able to deliver the baby before she actually had to start teaching classes. In fact, the delay actually saved Ryan from the somewhat dubious task of carrying Cash in a Baby Bjorn while Julie taught Ballworks.
Flooring is supposed to sit in a room for about 6 weeks before you install it. This is so that the flooring can get its zen on and get in the right mood for the room. Ours was allowed to sit for about 6 hours before we installed it because we had to open the gym about 3 days after it was installed. So if you sense a bad karma from the floors, you'll know why.
Big burly men that deliver fitness equipment for a living will not walk-up 7 stairs (that's right, 7 steps!). It's against their sense of moral duty (or maybe just their better judgement). Therefore, every single piece of fitness equipment in the gym was left in the parking lot so that we could lug it upstairs ourselves. (Is this a great job or what?) This happened only after I threw myself in front of the moving truck to keep them from leaving with our equipment 2 days before we opened the doors.
So we finally made it through construction and opened the doors in July 2006, about 16 months after we started. And it's been some fun ever since...
Alica
