Straight shot, mo money, another reason, angry elephant

I was a bit worried I wasn’t going to be able to do my ride to the gym on the Ninebot One as I drove through some small areas of precipitation on the way home.  When I pulled out of the driveway a little after 6PM the roads were wet but no rain was actively coming down, good enough.  Riding at that time of day was not ideal because of the large volume of traffic from commuters coming home.  I had to use the pedestrian crossing buttons to be able to get a break in the cars to cross.

I am getting a bit better with being able to log long distances on the wheel.  My feet still start to ache and burn but it takes longer to start and I can put up with it longer.  Besides crossing the roads, I only stepped off once during the 8.5 mile ride for a quick foot break.  I was very concerned about again hitting a low battery condition which is what caused me to crash in the past.  I tried to keep my speed at around 11-12 mph to prevent excessive battery depletion.

I pulled into the gym parking lot a minute or two after Cindy texted me saying she was done which was pretty perfect timing.  I threw the Ninebot One in the behind the seat after checking it’s odometer on the app.  I now have logged 122 miles on one wheel.  Of course I had the GoPro along for the ride so if you want the cliff notes version of the ride take a look below.

Speaking of video, I was looking at my YouTube/AdSense dollars for this current month.  It looks like again I have accumulated enough money in the account to get paid for the third consecutive month in a row.  In fact, I still have something like a week before they pay out and I am already ahead of what I made last month.  It’s very cool to see my channel building momentum.

The other day I saw somebody ripped off one of my Tacoma videos and posted it on their channel, a common scam.  Reposting other’s content without their consent is not cool but done very often.  When I looked at my options for reporting the user there wasn’t really an option for “they ripped off my content” so I just let it go.  The account has 4 subscribers so I don’t think he is going to get rich off my stuff for a long time.  I will surely be keeping an eye on him however.

So when I talked about our decision to postpone our planned road trip I didn’t really talk much about the money factor.  In 2016 I have spent a small fortune already.  In this calendar year I have bought the new Tacoma, the new TV, all new kitchen appliances, an engagement ring, three personal transportation devices, two trips to Comic-Super Cons along with tons of smaller things in the $50-$300 range.  There is no doubt that this year has been the largest ever in terms of outgoing dollars so sacrificing the road trip this year really makes more sense the more I examine things.

I had a very weird dream last night where my dad and I drove up to some remote area that seemed to be like a zoo.  We walked through a building to an outside area with a fence.  On the other side of the fence were a ton of animals you would see on a safari like a couple lions, a black panther, elephant, rhino, hippo and even a water buffalo.  There were other people by the fence line.  One dumb person got too close to the fence and was heckling the panther.  The animal hissed and then swiped at his tormentor, smacking him on the side of the head, knocking him down.

The dream moved forward and for some reason some of the lions were fighting.  It was pretty gruesome as it seemed two of the lions were attacking a third.  There was a lot of blood.  It was disturbing enough that I woke up momentarily.

When I fell back asleep the dream continued.  My dad and I had gone back into the building and fallen asleep. We awoke to discover the animals had somehow escaped the fence.  When my dad opened the door to the parking lot the hippo and a small elephant were there.  I yelled at my dad to close the door but the animals already tried to push their way in and they seemed agitated.   There was a big blue plastic drink cooler on the floor.  I picked it up and placed it front of me as a shield as I tried to squeeze by the wild animals, trying to calm them down with “hey guys, good boys, good boys…”

We got by the two animals but saw the other much more dangerous animals outside the door nearby.  They appeared to be sleeping but I was worried the noise would wake them up.  The moment we got one step past the sleeping predators they started to stir.  We sprinted for the car and took off, never looking back.  That’s it.