8 beers and two videos later
So my weekend of solitude started off a bit silly but settled down as the weekend progressed.
The first thing I wanted to get done Friday night was my first attempt at the August Bar-barian challenge which is max continuous push ups. I’ve done a lot of push ups in my life but in retrospect a lot of them were only partial reps. The motion in this video had to be full up and down with no pause at the top. I managed to squeeze out 35 although a few at the end didn’t go as high as I would have liked. For reference there are people on the forums that have done as many as 60.
Once that was over with it was time to crack open my first of 8 Bud Lights. I planned to shave my head and I thought doing so after drinking a few beers might add to the experience. I wanted my second head shaving video to be somewhat different. In addition to being somewhat drunk when I shot it I also went to a shorter cutting attachment for the process, 1/4″.
The head shaving task went more or less smoothly. Thankfully I did notice before work today that I had a crop of 3 inch hairs shooting out the back of my head.
After the head shaving was done and the video posted I spent the rest of the night drinking beer and playing games on my pc, harmless fun.
I woke up Saturday feeling a little fuzzy and dehydrated from my night of drinking alone. Regardless of how I felt I wanted to get pretty much any and all housework done during the day. I plugged away throughout the day and got pretty much everything done that I wanted to, well at least I tried.
Two of the things I worked on was the Moto Guzzi and the one weedwhacker. My neighbor said he would look at the carbs on the Moto Guzzi for me if I pulled them off. While I was working on it I once again hooked the battery back up to see if I could get it to crank. Even if the carbs were adjusted, if I couldn’t start the bike I would never be able to test them. I hooked the cables back up, hit the key and nothing, dead as a door nail. Argh.
After removing the carbs from the bike I turned my attention to the weed whacker. My neighbor said that there is a rubber diaphragm, which if it had a hole in it, could cause the symptoms I was seeing. I pulled the carb off the whacker and got access to the diaphragm. It looked fine to me. While I had it apart I sprayed some carb and choke cleaner inside.
I put everything back together, laid the weed whacker on the ground and gave it a pull. It fired right up but as soon as I tried to move the choke off the FULL setting the motor would die, the exact same problem. F. I angrily tossed the weed whacker back in the shed. I hate when I fail.
Well I asked if I could drop the Moto Guzzi carbs off. I went next door around 4:30. My neighbor came out and inspected the carbs. He said they basically looked clean so he focused on the float adjustment. After he got done tweaking that he said I should put the carbs back on and see how it acts.
I told him that I can’t test them since I can’t get the bike to turn over due to the weird electrical issue that developed since I got a new battery. He said he would come over and look at it. He grabbed his multi-meter and we headed to the small shed.
He did a few checks for voltage. He pointed to a secondary cable near the battery that I forgot to hook up. I told him that was hooked up to the negative battery terminal before. I reattached it and still, the bike was dead.
I pulled out the shop manual that my dad included with the motorcycle and showed it to Neal. It included a schematic of the electrical system that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. After looking at it briefly he said “according to this that second cable is supposed to be attached to the positive terminal” We switched the cable, hit the key and BAM, everything lit up. I was both happy that the bike had juice again and angry at myself for such a stupid blunder. Evidently when I pulled the old battery I didn’t pay close enough attention to what was connected where, dumb ass.
I thanked him for solving that mystery and asked if he minded taking a quick look at the weed whacker while he was there. Again we pulled it apart and he verified the diaphragm looked ok. He said he would take the tiny carb over to his place to clean it out. He was over there for quite awhile. I went over to check on him, he was sitting in a plastic adirondak chair in the driveway still working on it. He said he some of the same gunk that clogged the fuel filter was inside the carb and he was able to clean it out.
I took the carb back over to my shed and installed it. The weed whacker fired right up and for the first time in months was able to keep running at something other than FULL CHOKE. It had a high idle speed but that didn’t really matter to me. Nice, two for two.
I asked Neal if he wanted to come inside for a quick tour of our house. After the tour was done he sat down and we talked for awhile. He told me about various aspects of his life. Let’s just say he has been through an incredibly rough last 8 years or so. I don’t think I would be able to endure what he has. It gave me both a better appreciation of him and made me thankful that I haven’t had to undergo something similar, knock on wood. After we were done shooting the breeze I again thanked him for all of his help and offered mine if he needed it for anything.
I started off my Sunday with a training brick. I wanted to get on the road early to beat the heat and humidity somewhat. I also caught a break as it was mostly overcast in the morning. Of course my goal was to beat my time from last week. I had just received a handlebar mount for my GPS so I could have the numbers right in front of me which I found was a good way to keep pushing.
On the ride out to Publix I made some good time. On the long 5 mile straight away I paced pretty solidly around 19 mph. On the way back my pace dropped somewhat as it always does from headwind/fatigue. I was probably right around 17mph on average.
During the last half mile or so I hit a STRONG head wind that knocked me down in the 15’s.
I clocked in at 59.11 which is around 20 seconds faster than last week. In reality it was a better improvement than it seems. Last week I hit almost every red light which resulted in me stopping and starting the clock several times. Those stops and starts result in lost distance. Last week I showed 17.29 miles, this week it showed 17.41 since the GPS and clock was running the entire time except the short water break at the halfway point.
After the ride I stripped down to just my tri shorts, ate a small granola bar and hopped on the treadmill. I am not sure if the small intake of sugar helped me but for the first time I was able to log the three miles on the treadmill instead of two after a Publix ride. I felt pretty decent.
I followed up with a full swimming session where I did 50 laps in the pool (sets of 10) which put me somewhere in the 1/4 mile range. The swimming while still very hard for me went better endurance wise. I emerged from the pool having completed my longest brick ever. I was pretty beat but felt like I accomplished something.
After I was done and chilling on a chair by the pool I assumed I would physically crash later. I crashed last week doing much less. Imagine my surprise when I didn’t feel the need to nap the rest of the day.
I made a quick run to Home Depot, I had a few small items I needed to pick up. There was a weird moment. When I was ready to check out I was behind two people. The first was some pissy looking guy that was paying with a check. There was obviously some sort of difficulty as in total it took him at least 5 minutes to finish the transaction. I mean who pays with checks anymore, it’s so 1989.
Next was a couple that I let in line ahead of me because I was feeling generous. They had a lot of stuff in their cart, much more than me but I insisted they go ahead. The cashier gets done ringing them up and THEN says if they open a Home Depot charge card they can save 10% on the $600 purchase.
The woman decided to take him up on the offer. So now myself and the growing line behind me waited until the application process was over. Then, the clerk had to ring her stuff all over again so it was applied to the HD card.
All of this bullshit wasn’t the weird part, my reaction to it was. Normally I would be crawling out of my skin in this situation. I’d be cursing myself for once again picking the line that was the most annoying as I always do. But instead I was calm and couldn’t care less.
On the way to HD I had grabbed a cup of coffee. I am not sure if sipping the coffee relaxed me, I was too spent from my brick to care or the knowledge that all of hard work for this weekend was behind me, but I was just as mellow as you could be. Hell I even said to the woman, “I don’t blame you, $60 is worth doing it for” Weird, very weird.
One of the items I got at Home Depot were a few clamps to make a dragonflag anchor point. I wanted to attach this to my pull up station so I could easily do the exercise outside.
All I did was cut a piece of schedule 40 pvc and mount it inside three clamps. The clamps aren’t super heavy duty so I was a bit concerned about their ability to hold up when my body weight is pulling against them. Just to make sure I did a three rep set of dragonflags after I was done and it felt just fine.
I watched The Messenger on Sunday. It’s a movie regarding the people that notify families about their loved ones being killed in battle. It stars Woody Harrelson and was nominated for some academy awards I think. As always Woody did a great job in the role. He always excels in playing a character that is somewhat eccentric.
The movie itself was good but not great in my book. There were a lot of powerful scenes and good moments but as a whole there were some things that just didn’t make a lot sense to me like why the one messenger fixated on one of the widows he delivered a message to. It still was worth seeing and I’d give it a B+.
I finished up my weekend by playing some more Starcraft 2. This game is mind blowing. It is like being part of an epic movie. The cut scenes and plot are so well done. The actual action is amazing. Many times you can have hundreds of units on screen blowing the hell out of each other in incredible detail. It’s such a good game, even if you don’t normally play RTS games you may want to give this one a chance.
I am FINALLY done with 1983 V. It had some of the corniest acting and fight scenes I’ve ever seen. I made myself finish the show just to say I did for no real good reason. The current version of V on ABC is miles better IMO.
Ali flies back home tomorrow. The funny thing is she might be coming BACK from PA with a tan. Normally you go to Florida to work on that however she has logged large amounts of time at the pool with my nieces during this trip.