Hot, .66 tri, 4:50, Lost 2
It has been sweltering hot and humid the past couple weeks. I went outside before 9 am on Saturday to start working outside and was covered in sweat in no time. Despite the heat I stayed out there working on various things. I am trying to get things in order so when we get back from our trip things will be alive/intact for the most part.
One of the items I attended to was the Moto Guzzi. I haven’t looked further into why the new battery I bought doesn’t appear to power the bike. I thought it would be a good idea to drain the remaining gas from the bike since the ethanol laced gas appears to wreak havoc on the carbs. When I dropped the bowls on both carbs the floats on each side were a sticky mess once again. I had to pull them down so gas would start to flow. Once the gas tank was full drained I put everything back together. It will be sitting that way for awhile until I figure out where to sell the damn thing.
I’ll tell ya, adding ethanol to gas is more trouble than it’s worth. If you have gas in something that sits for prolonged periods of time like generators, yard equipment over the winter or 83 Moto Guzzi’s, the ethanol will destroy seals and rubber components in the fuel system as it separates from the gas. The only way to prevent this is to either drain the gas or add a stabilizer that prevents the separation. However in the Moto Guzzi’s case it seems to hate ethanol supplemented gas no matter what it’s age is, lucky me.
I kept busy almost all day Saturday running through the various checklist of items in my head that need to be addressed before we leave. I put off mowing the grass. I want to mow it right before we leave so it stays looking as nice as possible as long as possible.
Sunday morning Ali was doing a team triathlon in Naples. Originally it was supposed to be a 3 person team with Christy swimming, Michelle biking, and Ali running. Late last week Michelle came down with a nasty illness so she had to drop out. Instead of picking up a replacement Ali just said she would do the run and bike.
We got on site very early, before 6am. Even arriving at that time we wound up parking a long way from the registration area for the 7:30 start time race. When we got to the check in area I instantly recognized the ankle mounted timing chips as Ipico, the same company I use to time the running races. I was very interested in seeing how they implemented the system for a triathlon.
Even at 6AM it was very warm and muggy. By the time the race started at 7:30 I was sweated through my shirt and I was just walking around. This triathlon does things in reverse of normal tri order which is swim, bike, run. In the Naples Tri you run a 5k, bike a 15k and finish with a 1/4 mile swim.
Ali had a good 5k run and made a quick transition to her bike. She seemed to be out on the bike course longer than I would have expected, by the time she got back in the clock was at around 1:12. Later I discovered that Ali didn’t realize she was in 7th gear instead of 14th, no wonder she had issues.
As we waited for Ali to arrive we saw a number of accidents in the transition. People would come screaming around the corner on their bikes and then slam on the brakes, often causing others behind them to have problems. We saw a number of riders fall and even one guy go over the handlebars.
Christy took over for the swim and did a fantastic job. The transition to the swim was not laid out well, they had to run close to a half mile, barefoot, until they hit the water. Even so Christy managed to put in a great swim, crossing the finish line at 1:26 and some change.
After the finish we hung out in a courtyard for a little while. They had a nice spread of food for the participants. I was getting a bit antsy eventually and was ready to head out. I told Ali I like going to her races and supporting her but when it is that hot and that humid, once the race is done I don’t want hang forever. I can understand her wanting to savor the accomplishment. However since I didn’t accomplish anything I have nothing to savor. Maybe I need to start doing these with her.
I was busy making more videos this weekend as well. On Saturday I shot a brief clip of my improved L sit technique, a major improvement from first video. I also shot my 2nd attempt at the 50-50-50 workout as well as some footage from Ali’s triathlon.
In the 50-50-50 video there is a pretty funny moment right around the 4:50 mark. I was annoyed that people kept pulling up in the foreclosed house driveway while I was trying to do something important like shoot pull up videos.
All weekend there was a nearly non-stop flood of cars checking out the house next door. Evidently the sales contract on it fell through so it is back on the open market. Based on the car volume I would say that the interest in the house has greatly escalated.
I still have been plowing through season 2 of Lost. At this point I only have one more episode to go. It’s a weird thing being able to take in so much storyline in such a brief period of time as opposed to one week at a time. I am still very much into it.