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5am: Beep beep beep goes the most dreaded sound of my day; I try and shut the alarm off quickly in case it hasn’t woken Jaime up. I often wake up before it these days. I drag myself out of bed with the enthusiasm of a three toed sloth and begin my morning routine of making lunch, eating a bowl of cereal and putting on my dirty work clothes. The heater is on full, but I have to sit close to it to receive any of its warmth.

 

5.40am: I step out into the cold dark morning, my Ipod playing relaxing music to help pretend that I’d not rather still be asleep. A brisk walk to the bus does little more than keep the cold at bay. My journey involves a bus to the sky train station of Surrey Central, then the sky train to Metrotown followed by another bus to North Vancouver, a total trip time of 90 minutes. I am half asleep most of the way.

 

7am: Arriving at the “shop” which is the roofing home base, warehouse and office, I am greeted by the site of many rough looking characters smoking in the front lot. I say little and walk by them to be greeted by Walter, a 350 pound giant who is the main warehouse guy, keeps things organized and really built most of the building. He used to be a builder with a 25 guy crew, but went bankrupt and now works here. He is one of the few people who aren’t ruffian airheads. I usually help him around the place before being sent off with either Andreas (fingers crossed!) or the tar and gravel roofing crew (nooooooooooo).

A day with Andreas is quite pleasant, he is a nice guy and has much to teach me, a day with the flat crew however is another story. These guys are literally the bottom of the barrel, at least half of them have been in jail, most have substance abuse problems and more than a couple smoke dope on the job. They are rude, crude and lewd.

 

8am: There is lots of swearing and shouting that goes on, amid ripping up the roof with sharp shovels and tossing it into a big bin on the ground. Sometimes we have to build a slide of sorts so that the tear-off doesn’t miss the bin.

There are a couple of especially grating characters whom I have even had the occasion to blow up at, lowering myself to the roofing standard.

 

3-5pm: After a long day, it’s back on the public transport for me and another hour and a half trip home.

So after 3 months of roofing, that’s all there is to say about that! Time to move on…

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