Edge of insanity, thankful, Atari, double decoration, bear crawl, Vacation, down the street, paid off

So I will do my best to recap four days packed with more stuff than my memory is comfortable regurgitating.  Wednesday I left work early after reports of the mob scene at the running store with hundreds of people signing up last minute for the Thanksgiving race.  I got to the store and saw people lined up 10 deep.  There was no way I would have room to set up my laptop at the registration table so I instead went into the back room of the store and made my own desk comprised of a white board laid across two piles of shirt boxes. I worked back there on data entry non-stop for a couple hours.  The pile of paper I had to burn through during the last two days was just ridiculous.

When I got home Cindy had loaded most of the race equipment in the truck which was a huge help, allowing me to concentrate on getting  the data from the last minute entries handled.  We tried to get to bed as early as possible to be some version of rested for what surely was going to be a mentally demanding morning.

I was quite unhappy when I woke up at 1AM and rolled around unsuccessfully for 90 minutes trying to fall asleep a bit before the 3:30 alarm went off. At 2:30 I had enough, Cindy was already awake as well.  We got up and got ready to leave an hour or so earlier than we planned.  I knew the running club equipment truck was going to be there so I figured we could get a head start on the set up.  We wound up pulling into the start line area at a ridiculously early 4AM.

We immediately started working on laying out the start mats.  We had the 8 rubber mats in place and had just started laying the first cable when we saw a pair of headlights approaching.  The vehicle appeared to be approaching a little faster than it should be and we had a 10 meter coax cord loose in the road so I stood up and started waving my arms and yelling for the vehicle to slow down.  Well as the car got closer I saw the lights on the roof, it was a city cop.  He stopped right in front of the mats and started giving me shit.

He didn’t appreciate my tone of voice as I was yelling for him to slow down.  I didn’t appreciate him not appreciating it.  We had a rather angry back and forth exchange. He was quite put off that I was not nice in asking him to slow down and probably further put off that once I saw he was a cop that I did not drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness.  I told him that I had a loose cable on the ground and did not want it getting caught in his vehicle and damaging the equipment.  The cop asked where the safety cones were, which I had not grabbed from the equipment truck yet.  I guess I foolishly assumed two bodies on their knees in the middle of the street were a good sign to slow down, although I should have had cones there from the get go. I pulled the wire out of the way and told the cop he could go now.  He definitely won’t be sending me a Christmas card this year. Wouldn’t it have been awesome if the race timer got arrested?

registration-X2[1]As we were finishing up another vehicle rolled across the mats faster than he should have.  Again we yelled for him to slow down.  He thanked us for the warning with a stream of expletives as he drove away, a Happy Thanksgiving to you too buddy.  I did post about 8 cones around the start line mats, many of which adorned with SLOW signs to dissuade drivers from flying over them.  They were not successful.  When I returned to the start line later the mats were buckled and shifted from idiots going too fast over them.  I guess my ideas about leaving mats across the road prior to the race start just isn’t going to work out.

So as we started setting up the registration area other volunteers started showing up to help get everything rolling.  I had asked Chris to show up to help me handle race day registrations since I knew I had to make sure all of my timing equipment was up and running before the race started.  After I got done setting up the finish line equipment I returned to the registration area where the line of people signing up on race day had swollen greatly.  I was flabbergasted that this many people waited to the absolute last minute to sign up, especially considering the huge influx of people that already signed up the last couple days.  It was nuts.  I told Chris, who was also running in the event to just do as many as he could before he had to head to the start line.  I had to get there to get the start equipment up and running.  I told him whatever entries that were left I could enter at the finish line.

So the race start group was huge as you can imagine.  Having roughly 3000 people compacted into roughly a block of roadway creates quite the crowd.  I had to wait nearly 5 minutes until I could disconnect the start box.  I ran over to the registration desk and grabbed an incredibly thick pile of yet to be entered paper entries and the main laptop and ran back to the start.  I threw the timing box  and computer in the back of the golf cart and hauled ass to the finish line.  This race is brutal logistically because not only do I have to wait at the start line forever for all the runners to clear, the event also has some VERY fast participants.  The winning runner crossed around the 15:30 mark.  I got the finish line up and configured with literally less than 60 seconds before he crossed the finish mats.

Normally by the time I am at the finish line I am just collecting times and posting/printing them.  Because of the deluge of paper entries I instead found myself doing data entry for the majority of the race.  I had over 50 paper entries that were handed in last minute.  Chris didn’t stop keying them in until 7:23.   Almost all of these people were out of towners that I did not have in my participant database that made the process very slow, made slower by trying to publish some finisher results while getting peppered with questions from participants who assume I know everything since I am sitting behind a computer.  I did not get my last paper entry into the system until after the one hour mark of the race, utterly ridiculous.

Finally I was able to breathe and realize I was officially past the worst part of the worst race I had left to time.  I may have actually smiled just a little bit for the first time all morning.  The timing for the race went smoothly overall.  I had a couple problem times which is pretty unavoidable with an event this size.  I fixed those problems and have heard only a couple post race issues which again is great with a 3000 person 5K.

Cindy once again reclaimed her role as the event mascot, spending a good portion of the morning in a turkey suit encouraging the runners, especially the kids.  She really excels in this role. We rolled off site around 9:45 after helping to clean up the majority of the race equipment.  The DD coffee on the way home felt especially satisfying, we survived our last Thanksgiving race, the largest event I have ever been involved with to date.

There was little time to relax when we got home.  I had post race stuff to attend to, Cindy had a big Thanksgiving dinner to coordinate.  Her family was due to show up around 4.  We both buzzed around for a good portion of the afternoon prepping despite both of us having low energy reserves from the skimpy sleep followed by the race craziness.  We combated it with some afternoon coffee.  I followed up with a 5 hour energy just as people were starting to show up.

I did watch some of the Eagles embarrassment on tv during the afternoon but don’t even feel like wasting time typing about it.  It was a horrible, horrible game on a national stage.  Chip Kelly has been exposed as a miserable NFL personnel manger and a one trick pony when it comes to game plans. That is all I can say about it.

12294847_10205401965393896_1938038356891076475_nIn addition to Cindy’s family, a friend of ours came over with her dog, Sage, who is a high energy labradoodle.  Before we let her into the backyard we corralled all the chickens back into the run for safety.  As we expected Sage was very interested in the chickens, running around the coop barking at them.  The chickens of course did not realize they were completely safe in there and started freaking out.  We tried to distract Sage and get her to play in other areas of the yard but her interest always turned back to the chickens so we headed back inside with her.

We had a lot of people under the roof, double digits including ourselves.  Cindy prepared a varied meal that was very tasty, she got good feedback from all.  The 5 hour energy and the natural energy from having all of those people around helped me stave off tiredness.

Kim was the last one there.  As her and Cindy talked I was hanging with Sage on the floor.  She was laying next to me and very content to let me rub her for as long as I wanted to.  It was cute.  When they left Cindy and I got most of the stuff cleaned up before retiring for a much needed night of sleep.  I slept like a rock with no recollection of the time in between closing my eyes and waking up around 7:30 Friday morning.

In the past I have messed around with the Black Friday scene, doing some occasional shopping.  This year I was not all that into it.  Cindy had her 9AM walking class to run so I used that time to get stuff done around the house outside, taking advantage of the cooler temps and lower humidity.  Once she got home we headed out to run some errands.  We took the SSR to add enjoyment to the trip.

One of the stops was Sam’s Club.  We took a look at some of the Black Friday stuff they had out.  One thing that caught our interest was an Atari 2600 package.  It’s basically an Atari looking console with some updates like wireless controllers and over 100 classic Atari games built in.  Cindy had an Atari 2600 as a kid and was very excited by it.  I never had one, opting for the more high end Mattel Intellivision as my first video game console.  I made an impulse buy and spent 40 bucks on the Atari system.  Later in the day when I hooked it up it did not take very long for me to realize that it was probably $40 wasted as any game I played normally was only briefly before I tired of the block graphics and klutzy controls.  Cindy, whose excitement was the main drive behind the purchase did not seem very excited about playing either.  Nostalgia sometimes sounds better than it actually is.

On Saturday I had plans to start with a run which were scuttled by an unsettled feeling stomach.   Instead we picked up Sadie and brought her home for a weekend visit.  We then got busy on part one of the two day Christmas decoration project.  I wanted to get the exterior decorations done on Saturday and the inside stuff done Sunday.  Our decorations got a few new additions this year with four fresh sets of colored string lights for the two front palm trees and a set of “AppLights” icicles for the front of the house, which are controlled via a smart phone.

12279147_10154142734562841_8589693929709588780_nThe colored string lights are a first for our property.  Ali had a deep dislike for colored Christmas lights so as a result I bought/hung nothing but white lights during the last 15 years or so.  I continued the all white thing even after we split for no particular reason.  Well both Cindy and I were very happy with the addition of color to the holiday landscape.  It looked really cool and I suspect next year it will expand to the second set of four palm trees.

The icicle applights looked cool as well as they cycled through dozens of patterns and light combos.  When combined with our LED snowmen heads and techno LED string light tree we bought last year the front of the house is very busy.

12308513_10154142734522841_3863751802297865027_nWe also got the chicken coop into the holiday spirit, stringing a long set of lights around the front of the run and roof line of the coop.  When it got dark out we walked the property admiring our handiwork, we were pleased.

Mid-afternoon I took part in an odd physical challenge.  When I posted about my shoulder issues last week an older calisthenics buddy of mind on FB who happens to be a physical therapist mentioned that bear crawling is a different type of way to help build up the shoulders.  I decided I would put that theory to the test in a rather large way.

bbcdfI have done bear/death crawls in the backyard a few times.  Once I crawled out to the back fence line and back.  Another time I did it while towing the tractor with Ali steering it.  I thought I would up the stakes and crawl the perimeter of the fence line this time, more than doubling the total distance.  Of course I did it on video and had a stop watch running.  As expected the crawl got very uncomfortable very quickly.  I paused multiple times during the attempt but never let my knees touch the ground.  I returned to the start line after about seven and a half minutes, completely out of breath.

Cindy, who was filming my attempt then said she wanted to try it which I thought was a bad idea.  Cindy never has done bear crawls, to make her first one just short of a 1/4 mile seemed excessive.  When she started out her pace seemed slower than mine but she kept going, pausing much less than I did.  At first I thought she would stop rather early in the attempt.  Instead she kept plugging away and actually completed the circuit almost a full minute faster than I did.  My ego was officially deflated but I took it in stride.  It was a testament to Cindy’s competitiveness and determination.  We both have been feeling the side effects of the bear crawl since with some pretty major back and shoulder soreness/pain.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched our Netflix rental, Vacation, the reboot of the National Lampoon series I have always loved.  My hopes of it delivering the same level of entertainment as the original films was probably unrealistic.  There were plenty of laughs in the film but overall it fell pretty short of the bar Chevy Chase and the gang set 20-25 years ago.  Seeing Chevy in the film for a small cameo role did nothing but depress me.  Man, he looks just awful nowadays with no hair and an extra 100 pounds or so on his body.  Beverly D’Angelo looks like she has botox for breakfast every morning which was scary in a different way.  Overall the film was ok, I guess I can give it a B+ rating despite it failing to capture the magic of the originals.

Sunday morning we finally got that run in.  We decided to keep it simple and just run to the end of our dead end road and back, which worked out to be a bit more than 3.5 miles.  The cooler temps made the run feel more comfortable although Cindy’s GPS indicated we ran it at a slower pace than it felt.

When we got back we let Sadie out and noticed she had diarrhea going on, something that she has from time to time.  Cindy made rice to supplement her meals to help her solidify things.   Ali had told me she gave Sadie turkey from their Thanksgiving meal and we had given her left over turkey Ali gave to us.  I later found out that giving a dog turkey skin is actually a really bad thing.  The sky high fat content in the skin can cause big problems for dogs ranging from diarrhea to full blown pancreatitis depending how much is consumed compared to the size of the dog.   I asked Cindy if the turkey we got from Ali had skin on it, she confirmed it did. I was quite surprised by this revelation and amazed I had not ever heard it before in my many years of dog ownership.

12321290_10154145465757841_1485143886082924430_nAfter doing a coffee run we got started on the inside decorations which included setting up the tree and other decorations which have been reduced significantly over the last few years.  Cindy spent a lot of time tweaking the branches of it to make it look as full and pretty as possible.  The interior of the house looked warm and festive by the time we wrapped up around lunch time.

The rest of Sunday was more relaxing, the first real relaxing we did during the four days off.  I did still need to pay my bills which included a pretty big accomplishment, making the last payment on the SSR roughly a year ahead  of time.  Owning the muscle truck free and clear has been a goal of mine for quite awhile.  The removal of that loan payment means the only long term debt I am currently holding is on the house in the form of the main mortgage and the HELOC.  It feels good. I plan to continue adding to my car payment budget column even though I won’t be having a payment.  I figure it will come in handy when I finally decide to replace the venerable Tacoma.