When I moved to the new house one of the early things I bought was a cheap Workmate knock off that Harbor Freight sells. I had an original Workmate at my old house that I left for the new owners. I have used the Harbor Freight table a few times but have not been impressed. It’s too small to be used for bigger wheels and is weakly constructed. I have bent several metal parts of it already.
I decided last week I was going to spend the money for a real Workmate. I opted for the beefier one that can support over 500LBS. The box had arrived Friday but I had not taken the time to put it together until last night. It took maybe 20 minutes to complete the rather simple assembly.
After I got it together I wasted little time giving it a test run with the ET Max. The wheel fit well and the 110 lb weight didn’t make the table break a sweat. The Harbor Freight table will likely hit the curb this weekend.
As I was working I got a knock on my door. It was a neighbor from across the street. She rarely talks to or acknowledges me. I think she thinks that I am very strange since I film myself riding one wheeled things. I was curious what would bring her to my front door. She asked if I knew if my next door neighbor was home. I told her I wasn’t sure. She said their garage door was open all last night and all day. I guess she was concerned maybe they were away and forgot to close it.
I walked next door with her. One car was in the garage but it didn’t seem like anyone was home. She thought we should just close the garage just to be safe. They didn’t have an external keypad to close it so the across the street neighbor, who is probably in her 70s suggested I just hit the button on the far wall and just run out before the door closes, um ok. So I hit the button and did the mad dash for the door as it descended, managing to skip over the electric eyes while doing so. When I was out putting something away in the garage shortly afterward I saw the across the street neighbor again. She said my next door neighbor was actually home after all, weird. Maybe I was too helpful.
I got an email from one of my channel subscribers. He used AI to created four songs that are about my well established tradition of drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee on my wheels. It’s pretty funny and creative. Here is one example.
I have been watching 3 Body Problem on Netflix and enjoying it. I already mentioned how end of world scenarios fascinate me. When you give it an aliens/sci fi spin it’s even better. I only have an episode and a half left in the series.
Tonight I am running Elsa out to Babcock Ranch to stay with Ali and Shugs for a long weekend. I know she will have fun out there but it will be weird/sad for me walking around the house without her. She has not been up there to visit since I went to PA in mid-January. Having her away while I am out of town is not a big deal but doing it when I am here is a different scenario. All three of them will have fun for sure.
Last year I was mired in a too slow for me moving cabinet project. I also had the gutter installation happening.
Yesterday I received my bill from my ER visit which was around a month prior. I knew based on my visit to the ER 5-6 years ago the number would be big, despite my only being there for roughly 3 hours. I did not expect it to be 5 digits big. The total charges for the visit came to $10,366.
There was no itemized breakdown of charges which I am going to request to identify how this number came to be. My portion of this came to around $1300. It is a testament to just how f’d up the US healthcare system is. It of course reaffirms my resolve to try to avoid interacting with the medical profession as much as humanly possible. The issue is insurance and medical lobbyists are dug in so deep in Washington that appreciable change just will never happen, IMO.
When I got home last night I got inspired to give the Tesla a quick bath. The car was cruddy. After roughly 30 minutes of work it was looking much better. I also have been enjoying the free month of the full self driving software that Tesla has made available. Last night I decided to use some of my Tesla spiff points I received for referrals to buy 3 months of FSD. It was a good use of those points. I am kicking myself that I wasted several thousand of them allowing my ex to buy stuff, one of the many, many things I regret in that arena. Anyway, doing this removes the urgency for having to get more videos done on FSD in only a week.
Last night I also went out for a quick ride once it got dark to shoot a video about the ET Max at night, specifically how it looks and how the headlight performs. It was a quick ride that didn’t take that long to edit. I am expecting to be done with the demo wheel within a week.
This was a weekend that deviated from my norms in a number of ways. My normal Saturday and Sunday morning pickleball sessions were both missing as a result of my friend moving out of Talis Park and having other stuff to do. I also did not go out to eat at a restaurant/bar all weekend either. But I definitely DID do a number of things that filled up my time, and then some.
Friday evening I headed over to the pickleball facility to watch some of the US open on center court, once again taking an EUC to get there. My buddy works for the county and was able to get us into the venue. For somewhere around 3 years I have wanted to catch center court matches at the Open but have been unable to do so. Tickets are very expensive and hard to obtain. It felt awesome to finally get to see the center court action.
After the matches finished I was able to go play a handful of games with my buddy on some of the outside courts. We played two different teams, one of them had competed in the tournament in mixed doubles. We lost but were competitive at least. It was fun to get to play a little bit.
Saturday morning I tended to whatever needed to get done around the house so I could clear out the rest of it for stuff I wanted to do. One of those things was to do my speed runs on the ET Max. Going really fast on an electric unicycle is never one of my favorite experiences but it needed to be done as a tester. I squeezed out a top speed of 49MPH which is a mile or two mph more than my prior best. This wheel is capable of going much faster as some riders have approached 65 mph on it.
For me the amount of wind pressure that is hitting my body at near 50mph makes it feel difficult and unsettling to try to push for more, regardless of the wheel I am on. I also had someone pick up the GoPro camera I had filming on the ground, the fourth time this has happened. I stopped the guy and got it back. He said he thought someone lost it. I pointed out it was actively recording as I took it back from him. People frustrate me.
Saturday evening I went back over to the Open. This was the final day when all the big pro matches take place. My buddy already warned me that the place was sold out and it was unlikely he could get me in. I told him it was no big deal and that I was happy watching matches on the outside courts while I drank. However once I got there he told me he thought he could squeeze me in, awesome.
The stands were indeed packed but I got to watch the finals of the mixed, women’s and men’s pro division. It was very cool seeing some players that up until this point I only have seen play online. The amount of skill and and speed these players possess is crazy. The games were fun to watch. I originally planned to be there an hour or two but instead wound up hanging out more than four hours.
When I got home it was after 8:30 PM but I had wanted to get a live stream in talking about a new wheel that was announced earlier in the day. I wound up not starting the stream until a very late for me 10PM.
The stream was going fine and I surprisingly was not feeling as tired as I would expect when a little after midnight Dawn signed on and then asked to come on the stream with me. As is normally the case when her and I interact things got funny/silly and continued on and on and on. Somehow I kept going until after 3:15 AM making this the latest and longest live stream I ever produced at a ridiculous five hours, give or take a few minutes. The weirdest part of it all was I did not find myself getting tired like I would normally expect. I probably did not fall asleep until close to 4AM and expected to sleep until late morning.
That expectation was dismantled when I heard the sound of Elsa getting ready to puke at 8:30 AM. I rocketed out of bed and got her onto the hard flooring to avoid the headache of a carpet clean up. I then realized that even though I only had four and a half hours of sleep I felt fine. This was not usual, at all, but I figured I may as well get my Sunday rolling. I went through the rest of the weekend not feeling any significant side effects from that stupid late Saturday night.
After eating breakfast, I completed my weekly bill paying/balancing session. I made a simple change recently that I don’t know why I did not do sooner, real time credit card use notifications. Part of my process has always been to go through my monthly credit card statement and match it up to my entries I post in Quicken to make sure nothing fraudulent is going on. It’s a long and tedious process with the amount of use my credit card gets. Sure it is a way to spot fraudulent charges but depending on when they occurred I would only know about it as much as a month afterwards because of statement cycle.
A week ago I went into the CC company app and set up push notifications for all credit card activity. This way I know instantly when a charge hits my card. If it is something I do not recognize I can respond appropriately and quickly. I have no idea why I did not set this up sooner as the capability to do so has been around for years. Better late than never.
Early Sunday afternoon I loaded up the ET Max in the back of the Tacoma to go ride in the swamp, another staple of my wheel testing gauntlet. It was a warm day as I rolled towards the destination. As I got near I saw a large gator sticking out of a culvert pipe. He was so large I was concerned that he may have been stuck, when I checked later he was gone. I had not been to the swamp since Wayne and Dawn joined me in early March. Things had changed.
Evidently they went over the trail with some sort of heavy equipment that was designed to widen and clear the path some. The path was clearly wider but it now was much more challenging to ride. It seemed like this was done when the ground was still soft and the end result was deep gulleys on either side along with bumpy/rocky areas in the middle. It made a ride that is already challenging, more so. The ET Max, despite it’s weight of 110lbs was fairly maneuverable in these slow conditions but by the time I left my legs were pretty beat from the average suspension this wheel has.
I only saw a couple baby gators out on the trail but I am sure I missed a bunch that I could not see because I had to focus too much on the difficult terrain I was riding over. After the ride I celebrated having my second boba tea, ever.
I spent the majority of what was left of my weekend editing the footage and getting myself prepped for the week ahead. Speaking of the week ahead, I originally was loosely planning to fly out to California for a few days next weekend but those plans unraveled. However I had also made arrangements for Ali and Shuggs to watch Elsa while I was away. I decided that despite my staying home I would still take her up there to spend the weekend. They miss seeing her and Elsa loves spending time there as well. I may have visitors from the east coast on Saturday so it may simplify things for me logistically to have her up there.
It will be nice to be able to get back on my more normal pickleball schedule this week. Playing only once all of last week felt foreign.
Last night was the least amount of fun I have had playing Thursday volleyball. I had a woman on my team that I used to play with on Tuesdays with the group that had a lot of low skill players. I really do not enjoy playing with her at all as she is wildly inconsistent. My frame of mind went south as soon as I found out she was on my team, which is a failure on my part. We only had three on our team so there was nowhere to hide.
My play was inconsistent and each unforced error that myself/our team committed just frustrated me more, making me play worse instead of better. We only won one game during the two hours of play. I am hoping to be able to avoid playing with her going forward. She is a nice person but just like anything in life there are people you like doing things with and people you dislike doing those same things with.
I feel like I have a large backlog of videos I need to get done this weekend. I need to come up with some sort of mental framework to get some of these knocked out. Not only do I have a limited time to shoot content with the ET Max, the Tesla FSD free month ends in 11 days so I have a handful of scenarios I wanted to make videos on. I’ll do my best to get what I can done. I should have a little more free time as going forward I will likely only be playing pickleball one morning a weekend instead of two.
I will have to mix video creation in with other things I would like to get done like catching more of the US Open as it ends on Saturday. Last night as I was having dinner after playing I was briefly talking to a table of women that had just played in the tournament during the day, it was cool.
I have found myself feeling a little emotionally numb recently. I feel callous and cynical towards women for a number of reasons both from first hand experiences and the culture in general. I think so many women have unrealistic expectations of the dynamics of a relationship which has been fostered by decades of female role definition mutation. Ironically the push for female equity has resulted in inequity with what men are expected to bring to the equation versus a woman.
When women get angry if a man says women and men are not equal it tells me they have been indoctrinated into this mindset. Men and women are not equal to each other, they both have different strengths and weaknesses that are meant to compliment one another, not be a source of contention. Venting here of course matters very little. Suffice it to say that my current outlook on finding a partner that compliments and enhances my quality of life is on the dimmer side of things.
Last year ironically I was proclaiming how great it was to have reversed my outlook in this same area in the span of a couple weeks. Could it happen again? Sure. Am I optimistic about that happening at this date and time? Nope.
Last night after work I decided to roll on over to the US Open once again on my Patton. This time I had on a small backpack that had one pickleball paddle and ball in it, just in case…
There were a number of matches still going on. I watched a few of them while eating pizza and drinking a couple black cherry vodka seltzers. I had one woman that came up to me and talked to me for a little while about the wheel and other things. I got the sense that she was slightly drunk and slightly flirtatious.
If I wanted I probably could have played. As matches finished the courts were backfilled with players just playing pick up games. After drinking a few I didn’t really want to get out there and potentially embarrass myself. As usual I got asked about the wheel several times and stared at much, much more. The one guy that just came off losing his playoff game even asked me about it, funny. I will probably go over there at least one more time if not twice before the tournament ends Saturday evening.
Tonight I am signed up for another volleyball session. I have been feeling a little beat up lately so I am hoping a couple Advil will mask the pain so I can play up to par.
Here is what happens when I asked AI to come up with an abstract version of myself after I got my haircut. It is bizarre, to say the least.
Last year at this time my garage was filled with kitchen/bathroom cabinetry. I also went to dinner with Don who had recently lost his dog Lucky, whom I was very fond of.
After work last night I headed to go get my hair cut. I have extended a week or two longer than I normally do between cuts and I was feeling shaggy. I had Suzanne as my stylist whom I have had a number of times. She always seems happy to see me and does a good job on my hair, or at least I think she does.
By the time I got done it was 5:30, the heart of rush hour. I decided to give Tesla supervised full self driving a pretty significant test, to see if it could navigate the sea of vehicles cleanly and get me to my house, without intervention. It did it cleanly. This latest iteration of FSD truly acts more and more human in it’s reactions and responses to situations. There were multiple times I was thinking that if I was driving I would make this decision and just as the thought entered my head, the car did it. There is none of that startling braking or unexplained direction change. It basically just works. I need to make the time to shoot some more videos about it as well as test other features.
I did several things last night, one of them was install a new kickstand on my V13 to replace the unit that was bent and deformed from it’s journey with UPS. I got a sweet deal on the part, paying probably a fifth of what I normally would pay via a parts blowout one dealer was having. Installation took 5 minutes and I now have the ability to have the wheel standing on it’s own without being overly tipsy.
I have been plowing through episodes of Fallout, the new series on Amazon Prime based on a popular video game that I never played. Despite having no real game experience I have latched onto the series and have been enjoying it quite a bit. End of world as we know it scenarios always appeal to me, for some odd reason.
Last night as I was walking Elsa after work I found myself thinking about some of the changes I have made that I have sustained in the last few months. Walking Elsa was one of them. For most of her life formalized walks were not a thing, I would just let her outside to do her thing and she would almost immediately return once she does her business. However now the first thing we do when I get home is leash her up and walk her to the end of our development and back. It gives her a set time to poop, exercise and the walking on sidewalk also helps keep her nails in check. When we started she was very resistant but now I think she almost kind of likes and looks forward to it. It also gives me an opportunity to interact with any neighbors we see along the route.
I also have implemented my own daily walks during the work week where I walk the outer perimeter of the government complex which is about a mile, every afternoon. I put my air pods in and just let my mind wander as I stroll the pathway. It is a good way to break up the monotony of a job that has me sitting in front of a computer 8 hours a day. There are other things that have recently shifted. I now try to shave several times a week instead of every week or two. I also pay more attention to what I am wearing. Looking good is tied in with feeling good.
I think one of the bigger things I have been trying to change is being more open to interacting with other people. I am an introvert by nature but I realize that especially with being single, that tendency can lead to isolation that just is not good for me. I am trying to keep that door open, sticking a two by four in there if necessary to keep it open.
Last year the cabinet/counter project had begun in earnest. I also had started mentioning Christine in the blog regularly as I was happy to have a fresh start with someone that was a genuine person. I’m not sure if that relationship would have continued on or not if other events had not unfolded. If I have learned anything in the last year it’s that I value my peace more than anything else. If I can not find that peace in a relationship with a person I would rather just be alone. That statement is a big one as I have spent years upon years doing exactly the opposite of that, sacrificing my peace for someone else.
On Friday after work I met up with Clay at Brookside Market to hang. The place was an absolute zoo because everyone wanted a burger from the burger tent. Evidently this guy recently won the best burger in Naples award and the word is out. The line was at least 50 people long.
I got there before Clay so I went in and grabbed a beer. I was surprised when my neighbor and his wife that live a couple doors down from me said hi. Evidently they are frequent patrons of the place and come a couple times a week. When Clay and his One Wheel buddy Cam got there they hopped right in the burger line. I talked to them as they waited and then threw Clay a couple bucks to grab me a grilled cheese when he finally got to order. I rode the ET Max there and got the customary looks of bewilderment. It makes me laugh.
I both played and watched pickleball on Saturday and Sunday. I played with the woman I am friends with at Talis Park just like I have for almost a year. I’m not quite sure what that is going to look like going forward since she sold her place and is moving out this week. The other residents there we play with all know, like, and enjoy playing with me so I might still show up if invited.
I also rode an EUC over to the US Open both days to watch some of the tournament. It was packed. I grabbed myself some nice pickleball shirts to play in, lunch on Sunday and answered a dozen questions about EUCs while I was there.
On Sunday afternoon I made arrangements to meet up with Jason to do some riding. I suggested he just meet me at my house and we can leave from there. Although I have ridden with him a number of times he never had been to my home yet. As usual Elsa was timid but after awhile allowed Jason to pet her, a little.
Before we headed out I let him try the various wheels I have obtained since I last saw him a couple months ago, the Mten Mini, V13, V8S, and the demo ET Max. He couldn’t ride the Mini but he liked the other three wheels. For the main ride I was on the ET Max and Jason was on his Veteran Patton.
We rode to the beach via the Greenway. I took him on some routes he had not been on before, including a brief stop at the Cabana for a beer. By the time we got back my ET Max was getting low on battery. I encouraged Jason to try the ET Max some more, just inside my development since it is closed off to traffic. He agreed to try it some more.
He did a number of loops up and down the road. I eventually hopped on my V13 to follow him and see how he was liking it. I was about 100 feet behind him when I saw it happen, a speed wobble. Wobbles are a thing while riding EUCs where the wheel can start oscillating back and forth and can amplify. If they are not controlled they can result in a rider coming off the wheel. Well all of a sudden I see Jason wobbling and within a second or two he fell off the wheel backwards, ass first. The wheel tumbled end over end as he came to a stop. Geezus.
I rode up and checked on him. I think he was embarrassed and angry that he fell. He almost immediately got back up and hopped back on the wheel. I think he didn’t want to let the crash deter him. He did a few more slower laps as I waited in the driveway. When he finally stopped riding I could tell he was a bit freaked out. He said that was the worst crash he ever had. I told him I thought he was doing at least 20 when he went down. He said he was doing closer to 30 based on the wheel speedometer.
He said the wheel started to wobble and he just could not bring it under control. The ET Max is 20 pounds heavier than his Veteran Patton and has a much taller profile. Jason is not a big/tall guy and only weighs around 135lbs so I think it was physically difficult for him to control the wobble. When he came back I got to do a quick inspection of the wheel. It seemed at first that it just took some scrapes on the front metal frame which was good news. Jason hung for a little bit and drank a Cayman Jack with me as we talked about the crash and other things.
After he headed home I gave the wheel another once over. This time I realized there was more damage than I initially thought. The rear top frame took a shot that bent the metal in and down, misaligning it with the top cover, ugh. I needed to try to fix that. Demo wheels routinely get beaten up but I typically am not the one that does it. Sunday night I did charge the wheel to full as I intended to do a range test on Monday, the day I took off.
After playing pickleball I stopped and got myself a deadblow hammer on the way home, the tool I hoped to use to fix the bent frame. These type of hammers have no rebound and generate a lot more impact force. It took some patience but after a lot of Forged in Fire style hammering I got the bent metal close to it’s original shape which made me feel better. I didn’t wind up pushing off for my range test until almost 2PM, later than I hoped.
The ride out to my old house was long, totaling over three hours and windy, which is never fun. The cross wind made it difficult at times for me to stay in the bike lane and puts strain on my lower body which has to fight the wind pressure. When I rolled by my old house I didn’t see anything noticeably different other than a pile of mulch in the driveway. It always feels weird when I go by my old place. It’s not so much nostalgia as much as being thankful I am no longer chained to the self imposed constraints that living there placed upon me.
When I stopped and checked my roughly halfway stats I thought I should be in the clear to get home. It turned out to be much more challenging than expected. The wheel started to generate low battery beeps around 49 miles into the ride. The bad news was I had 3-4 miles remaining to get home. Those miles were long and slow as I had to reduce speed greatly to make sure I could get home without pushing the wheel. I was underwhelmed with the range I wound up getting, around 53 miles.
I was beat up and tired after the ride. I spent the remainder of the night working editing the video. I was so tired that I didn’t even to open the three boxes that came for me on Monday. One of those boxes was my new GoPro 12.
Yesterday the news that OJ died hit the news. I had not heard he was even sick but evidently he died from prostate cancer. I also did not realize he was 76 years old. I still remember quite clearly his murder trial in 92. I remember I was at the beach with my first wife and her family as we watched some of it on TV. His trial will go down as one of the most infamous in history which seemingly resulted in a man that clearly murdered two people walking free. I am not a subscriber to heaven and hell ideas but if there is a hell, OJ certainly would be roasting in it right now. Adios Juice.
Last night was volleyball night. The weather forecast was bad with high winds and rain predicted. Most of the people that were going to play canceled as a result. However we did still wind up with 8 hardcore players. We waited maybe a half hour until the steady rain stopped and then played in spotty drizzle from there on. Play was actually pretty fun and despite a wet ball I played decent, better than the prior week for sure. We played a little later than normal because of the late start.
One of the women that I played with shares the same name as my ex, although spelled differently. It felt weird calling out her name as well as congratulating her on good plays. (she is very good) It was a weird sort of deja vu.
Afterwards I decided to go to Carrabas to grab dinner. It was nearly empty with just myself and some rich old woman at the bar. She had a diamond on her finger that looked like a small satellite and she was talking about her Bentley. Helen was telling me about some commotion that happened there earlier when some clueless woman allowed her kid to watch a movie on an Ipad so loud that half of the restaurant could hear it. It turned into quite the fiasco when they asked her to turn it down. People are idiots.
So since my trip to the ER a few weeks ago with severe left side chest pains I of course have been monitoring how I feel. For awhile after the visit I continued to have pain in the area if I breathed deeply or suddenly. Later the pain moved to my shoulder blade on the same left side, it was very odd. However for the past several days I haven’t really felt anything unusual and I would like to keep it that way, knock on wood. I have been wondering if I would develop shingles as my buddy did after severe chest pains. Knock on wood again, nothing so far.
Just this morning I decided to give myself another extended weekend, taking Monday off. With the ET Max in hand I have a ton of riding and editing to do. I also like the idea of short work weeks, a lot.
Last year I was mulling over why it was going to cost so much to get gutters installed, along with a few other things. I also had just unloaded my second and final piece of property in Lehigh Acres, taking more than 60% loss and not giving a damn.
Yesterday my second mirrored visor for my LS2 helmet arrived. The first one I ordered was for the wrong model and would not quite fit. The new one on the other hand snapped right in with no tools in a matter of seconds. The mirrored finish just looks way cooler, IMO.
Last night I went out on my first official ride on the ET Max (meaning I recorded it). I zipped around the streets in my area and quickly found myself very comfortable on this big 100lb+ wheel. It’s powerful, good looking, and fun.
I got out a little later in the evening so I didn’t have a ton of time since I wanted to get the video edited as well before heading to bed. I’m looking forward to testing and enjoying this wheel. If things go well there is strong chance I may be adding one to my collection of wheels permanently.
Last year I finally came to the revelation of where my acute sciatic pain was originating from, my bed.
For my last day off I thought I would double up on my exercise by doing a lower body session followed by yoga. Before doing so I ran to the nearby Walmart/FedEx store to pick up the ET Max demo wheel that FedEx lied about the day prior. I was glad I brought my hand truck as this box was 130lbs plus.
Doing weight training on my legs prior to doing yoga was not the best idea. A lot of the holds we do require leg strength and I found a lot of them more difficult than normal after the workout. Oh well.
I’m not sure if it was the double workout but after lunch I felt extremely tired. I went and laid in my bed for maybe 20 minutes, never falling asleep but just feeling wiped. I rebounded and then got back to work.
I had to do some work on the ET Max before it was going to be ready for testing. The power distribution board had failed and a replacement was in the box. I never had replaced that particular component but it appeared straight forward. After less than an hour of work I had the repair completed and the wheel was ready to roll however I only did a very brief test ride just to verify functionality. The full testing will begin the remainder of this week and weekend.
I wound down my 4 day weekend chilling with Elsa. I really enjoyed the time and look forward to giving myself more extended weekends on a more regular basis.
Last year at this time I was keeping busy with new home related things and I hinted at 2023 becoming a very good year. I realized that what I was referring to was I had just started seeing Christine around this time last year and I was feeling hopeful about where that could go. Unfortunately for both her and I it became a soap opera because of a third party that had other ideas.
