Hey everyone!
Well I finished Day 1 at Harley today. It was truly a surreal moment as I walked through the front doors of the Harley-Davidson headquarters on Juneau Ave. in Milwaukee, WI at 7:45am this morning. As I walked in and sat in the waiting area, I just had this tremendous feeling of success. Just being there, sitting in those leather chairs, watching the other employees file in the door…all of it…it was great. I’ve been through so much shit and for the first time in a long time I could feel myself going somewhere. It’s so hard to put what I felt today into words.
I started out my day with human resources – filling out all sorts of paperwork and going over company benefits and all of that stuff. That lasted for 2-3 hours after which they gave me and another guy a tour of their main headquarters. For anyone unfamiliar with corporate America…it’s just a huge building with a bunch of floors, filled with cubicles. Except!…at Harley on top of all of their cubicles they have custom painted Harley gas tanks decorating them. There are hundreds of these things all over the place. Creative touch…gives the offices a cool feel. Anyways, after the tour I went to lunch with my roommate (the guy who I got a job there back in December of 07) and a few other guys. The cafeteria food was pretty good and I’ll probably munch on that everyday. After lunch, I went up to meet my manager. He introduced me to a bunch of people on my team that I’ll be working with. So what will I be doing? Well, as a Programmer Analyst…I will be working on their company website and a vendor/dealership website that they use with all of their dealers internationally to assist in getting the dealers Harley products. I’ll be working with 5 or 6 countries in Europe and their offices over their to develop the vendor website software…can’t talk too much more about this stuff due to confidentiality agreements so I’ll leave it at that. I think I’m really going to like it. After I met the team and learned a bit about what I was going to do, I went back to my cubicle to sit. Something got screwed up when they ordered my computer a few weeks ago so it wasn’t at my desk when I got there today. In fact, it might be a week or so before I can get one…therefore, the next week could be pretty slow for me. Not too sure what I can do without a computer. I’ll figure something out.
Lastly, I just want to thank all of you for all of the support you have given me up to this point. It has been on hell of a ride since Christmas Eve of 2007. Looking back on it…the day I was diagnosed over the phone…I had very low expectations of still being with all of you here today. Being my second bout with leukemia, everything looked more and more grim. Percent chances of everything all drop dramatically and the human body just isn’t built to tolerate these bone marrow transplants very well – so needing a second one was going to really kick the crap out of me. Needless to say, it’s been a very long 7-8 months. I wish I could share this incredible feeling inside with the entire world…if even for just a moment.
Love,
Eric
