Last year on this date I posted that Brett Farve is a tool. Well here we are one year later exactly and Farve apparently has once again agreed to bless us with his presence after another off season of back and forth bullshit. I am so sick of his sideshow at this point that a broken leg on the first play of the season would not make me feel very bad at all.
Great player, annoying person.
Last night I practiced removing a road bike tire. My Dawes front tire conveniently developed a flat since I put the Trek into service. I figured it is something I need to be proficient at since you WILL get a flat tire on the road sooner or later. I watched a video on YouTube for reference. When I got the tire off I found that I did have a pin hole in the tube. It could probably be patched but I think I will just snag another tube and a patch kit. The old tube can be my new spare.
Yesterday I headed home around lunch time to meet the guy picking up the Moto Guzzi. I got back ahead of the driver so I would have time to reconnect the battery and drive the bike from the shed to the garage.
I expected the truck to be either a big tractor trailer or a long straight body truck. It was neither. Instead it was a long pull behind trailer, like an extended version of what a landscaper tows around. The driver was a friendly guy named Scott. He told me about the motorcycle delivery business. His trailer holds about a dozen bikes and he is usually on the road for around 12 days at a time.
Scott said the vast majority of the bikes on his trailer were Ebay transactions. He said that Ebay is responsible for the majority of their business. I knew people bought cars/bikes on Ebay but I didn’t know it was THAT popular.
He said he used to work construction but when that dried up he got into this. He asked me about the bike and was surprised that it ran. He started it up and drove it down to the trailer where it got loaded up in a narrow spot between two other bikes.
I snapped the picture a few moments before he closed the door, knowing I would never see the bike again. The part of me that gets sentimental about inanimate objects felt a little twinge as the door was closed. The bike was owned by my dad since the early 90’s. In a way I felt bad to be sending it off to the mid-west but in the big picture I know it made sense. What is the point of it just sitting in my shed?
So I completed my first cross country vehicle transaction. It wasn’t as troublesome as I anticipated.
Yesterday at work I was presented with my 10 year service ring. I started my job here back in 2000 a week or two after picking up and moving to Florida. When I think back to that time period it was really a pretty bold move, probably one of the boldest things I ever did in my life. I relocated to Florida with no job lined up.
Ali had work but it wasn’t anything that was going to be workable long term, it was up in Venice, over an hour away. I clearly remember the excitement and anxiety about changing everything I have known as familiar for the first 32 years of my life.
Luckily for me it all worked out as I got a call for the interview here during our drive to Naples. After a year in an apartment Ali and I had our modest home built that we have lived in ever since.
The past 10 years has gone by incredibly fast. It seems impossible that I have been in Florida for a decade already yet that is the case.
Living in Florida hasn’t exactly been what I imagined it would be prior to moving. I had visions of me playing volleyball all the time, going to the beaches often and living in a tropical paradise where troubles are far and few between. Reality has been a bit less rosy.
Florida summers are something that truly need to be experienced. It’s not that it gets significantly hotter than a PA summer, it just goes on for twice as long. On the flip side, mild winters are simply fantastic. I no longer have the seasonal depression that used to bother me so much, I found other things to depress me instead. 🙂
You would think that living in paradise would naturally make people more friendly and happy. Unfortunately I have seen about the same percentage of shitheads in Naples as anywhere else.
Despite it’s warts, living in Naples overall still was a huge upgrade for us over living in PA. I would never consider moving back there. If this last 10 years went this fast I can only imagine how quickly the next 10 years will expire. Who knows where I will find myself by that time?
Friday after work Ali and I once again met up with the local triathlete group for a training swim in the gulf. I once again elected to stick with Ali and Christy and do the “short” swim. None of us were happy to see the water again was rough and choppy.
It didn’t take long till Ali was annoyed with me. She didn’t like that I stopped to see where she was. She barked that I should just go so I did. I think it frustrates her that she was the one that took all of the swimming lessons yet I still manage to pull ahead of her with my unorthodox, sloppy form.
I actually did better this time around. I still only swam less than half what the real swimmers did but what I did do felt better. The first time I was in the gulf I would set short term goals, swim to that house, swim to that deck and I for the most part failed to make it to even those short term goals, having to stop, gasping for breath.
On Friday I once again set some short term goals and I was able to actually hit most of them. I also managed to drink less gulf water than two weeks ago. I forced myself to breath to the left when I was swimming south to keep my head turned away from the incoming waves.
I still found myself getting very tired but my swimming stamina was definitely a few clicks above where it was before. I emerged from the water spent but satisfied with the progress from my initial attempt. After the rest of the people got back we hung out for a little bit before heading home. We actually were able to still score a later than normal pizza and Tivo session.
On Saturday morning I was out early working outside in an attempt to beat the brutal heat and humidity. The garden, which typically in the summer is nothing but a collection of failed attempts to grow stuff actually has one huge success, corn.
I installed a raised bed in the garden and filled it with nothing but that expensive Miracle-Grow garden soil. I planted beets, carrots and onions in there as well but the corn is the star of the show.
We have tried to grow corn several times over the years with no success. The plants got to maybe a foot tall before they would submit to the hot summers and the relentless insects. Well this year the corn has really seemed to enjoy the raised bed. I also have allowed the sprinklers in the garden area to continue to run nightly as I have read that corn needs a steady water supply, especially in a Florida summer.
Some of the plants are 6 foot tall at this point. The raised bed has dense, tall, healthy corn plants. In contrast, I also planted some corn in the regular garden area. I don’t have a plant over a couple feet tall in that soil. It would be an awesome thing to actually harvest real corn form our garden.
Earlier in the day our ex-neighbor dropped off their dog Zoe for us to dog sit. Zoe was Nicki’s first dog friend. They spent many hours together years ago. Ironically Nicki was also the first dog that Zoe didn’t snarl and growl at.
Even though we hadn’t seen Zoe in a long time she immediately re acclimated herself with both Nicki and Sadie. The three of them had fun trotting around the back yard.
I was busy as hell on Saturday scurrying from task to task. Before I knew it it was late afternoon. I told Ali earlier I wanted to run to Home Depot and thought we could stop by my mom’s work to drop off the shoo fly pie Ali got for her.
We all piled into the van and headed out. Zoe spent a lot of time on Ali’s lap which surprisingly didn’t seem to bother Sadie that much. At one point we had a dog in each chair and Nicki back in her bed, it looked funny.
Mom came out and said hi to the dogs. She looked like she was getting around better on her surgically repaired knee. We said something to mom about how she needs to come out to our place. Mom commented that she hadn’t been out since Christmas. It seemed hard to believe it has been that long already. I wasn’t sure if mom’s comment was supposed to mean we don’t ask her out enough or not. It’s weird because it seems that when I even skirt around the idea of having her out she usually is quick to offer up reasons why she can’t come.
Saturday night we finally got around to watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind which I had sitting in it’s Netflix envelope for weeks. I rented it because of it’s focus on Devil’s Tower, one of the places we stopped during our road trip.
I forgot just how awesome the special effects were in this movie, especially when you consider it is more than 30 years old. Hell they would hold up today. I told Ali while we were watching it that this was the movie that made me think aliens are real. I also described how it frightened me as a child at points like when the little kid gets pulled out the dog door by the aliens.
I also forgot just how strange the ending was. Richard Dreyfuss shows up uninvited to the big alien orgy and somehow gets handed an orange jumpsuit to be included in the group of humans that were going to willingly be abducted. He did this with a wife and three kids at home that he apparently lost all interest in. (well the wife left when he turned the living room into a mini Devil’s Tower) I was too young when I saw it before to realize just how odd this was.
On Saturday night I also performed surgery on one of my Roombas. The brushes had stopped turning on this unit. After ripping it apart twice I discovered a stripped gear in the brush motor transmission. Luckily I had a spare gear in the remains of one of my cannibalized Roombas. The counter looked like I dropped a grenade in a Roomba, parts were scattered everywhere.
Sunday morning I wanted to do more training. I thought I would switch things up a bit. I decided to stretch my bike ride to Dunkin Donuts and then swim afterward, skipping the run. I wasn’t quite sure how much farther Dunkin Donuts was. It turned out to be almost exactly 10 miles from our door.
The ride was definitely more of a struggle than last week. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky to block any of the intense sun. The increased heat also kicked up the wind, ratcheting up the difficulty further. When I reached Dunkin Donuts I had at least a 10-15 minute break while I drank a small coffee and had a couple munchkins. The extended break probably cut into the effectiveness of the training session but it was a nice break regardless.
Mother nature kept the worst headwind for the last 2.5 miles of the ride, I really appreciated it. I covered the 20 miles in 69 minutes and change. My average pace was 17 mph which wasn’t bad and actually better than I expected it would be based on how much I was struggling.
After changing I hopped in the pool and started doing laps. The calm pool water felt fantastic to swim in compared to the undulating water in the gulf. I could tell early on that my endurance in the pool also felt better than the week prior where I did 5 sets of 10 laps each. I doubled up my laps and did three sets of 20 laps for a total of 60. I was encouraged to see such marked improvement in a weeks time.
Ali had headed off to go train with Christy at the water park. They ran and then headed inside to swim laps. She called me from the park asking if I wanted to come hang out. I told her I couldn’t because I still had a lot to do around the house and Zoe was still with us and I couldn’t leave her until she got picked back up later in the day.
I also had just fallen into an unexpected Craigs List transaction. I went online to check into just buying the small little gear that failed on the Roomba since I have had that strip out several times before. I was appalled when I saw the going rate for the part as $20 plus shipping. What a f’ing rip off for a tiny part that probably costs a nickel to make.
Well my outrage sparked an impromptu Craigslist search for used Roombas, my thought being I could simply have one waiting in the wings for parts. I was excited to see someone selling a 4000 series for $55. Supposedly it worked great and had all of the accessories.
When I contacted the seller she told me not only did she still have the Roomba, she had a second one given to her father for parts. She said she would throw the second one in for $10! I threw the customary Craigs List negotiation out the window since the price was already low and I felt bad since the woman said she was selling the Roomba because she was hard up for cash. I’m a sucker for a woman in distress.
I made arrangements to meet her at a midway point between me and where she lived in Fort Myers. I piled the three dogs in the van and headed out. I completed the transaction without incident. When we got home I tested the Roombas out. Both were operational although one of them had an issue commonly caused by a dirty bumper sensor which is easily fixed. This same Roomba also was evidently NEVER cleaned. I have to take a before picture of this thing before I give it a thorough once over. I have never seen so much shit wrapped around the brushes. The Roombas also came with two drive on floor chargers and two virtual walls. Any way you look at it I scored a hell of a deal.
We have had a bug problem indoors. It isn’t something nasty like spiders or roaches, it’s gnats. These annoying pests enter the house most likely via the lanai. Once they get inside they seem to multiply. I noticed that they seem to really enjoy hanging out in the various plants we have around the great room.
I decided to carry every plant we have outside. After doing so I grabbed the hose and attached the sprayer that has insecticidal oil on it and sprayed the plants liberally. I let the plants bake out in the sun for a few hours to dry and give the gnats an opportunity to fly off somewhere else to annoy something. My actions seemed to work, I didn’t see a single gnat on the plants as I carried them back indoors. Now only time will tell if it is a long term fix.
Despite busting my ass almost all day Saturday I still found myself doing housework late into the day Sunday, something I detest. Doing the extended training sessions on a Sunday morning sort of moves everything back a few hours.
I got everything ready to go for the Moto Guzzi pick up. I packed up the extra parts, charged the battery and cleaned up whatever I had in the shed that was motorcycle related. I received the check on Friday and hope to mail off the title via certified mail today. If all goes as planned the bike should be on it’s way to Missouri by mid-week.
Late Sunday I went outside to shoot a little video of me doing some of the moves I have been referring to lately like dragonflags, german hangs as well as some brief ring work. If you are curious about what exactly I am doing you can see it all here.
Yesterday the dealer in Missouri called me to work out details of the Moto Guzzi transaction. I should have a check over-nighted to me today and there should be a truck coming to pick up the bike Monday or Tuesday. I’ll be sending the title to him separately via certified mail.
I called my dad later in the day to let him know the bike was being sold to a dealer who plans to restore it to like new condition. Dad asked who the dealer was. When I told him it was Harper’s Moto Guzzi in Missouri he laughed. Harper’s is where dad bought the majority of his parts for the bike over the years.
I told dad what I sold it for and how I intended to give him the money minus what I spent to register the bike. Dad said I should just hold onto the money until they come down to visit over the winter. I told him I’d put it under his pillow.
I could tell dad was a bit pained to hear I was getting rid of the bike but I had told him months before that was my intention. He agreed it was kind of cool that the bike would be getting restored and sold to someone that will take care of it. I just don’t have the interest or dollars to throw at a 25 year old motorcycle. A new Camaro is still my target. I am looking forward to clearing up the extra space in the smaller shed as well.
Yesterday at the gym I did some more dragon flag and skin the cat work. I did 3 sets of three of both exercise. Man I wish I got into gymnastic/body weight exercise more when I was 22 instead of 42. You see some of this big beasts bench pressing 400 pounds at the gym but if you asked them to try a dragon flag or do a German hang they would fail miserably.
My dimensions of 6’3″ and 185 pounds is about as far away from a gymnast’s build as you can get. Regardless of your dimensions, these moves really build dynamic, practical strength as long as you don’t hurt yourself in the progress. I am hoping to shoot a video of some of these movements this weekend out at the pull up station.
I have been watching the Little League World Series on the cardio equipment at the gym this week. I have found myself enjoying it more than I would typically enjoy a MLB game. Perhaps I like watching 12 year olds compete because it brings me back to when baseball was huge for me.
My best years as a baseball player were from the ages of 12-15. When you are that age if you can throw hard you instantly have a leg up on most everyone else. I have so many fond memories of pitching during that three year stretch. I think my best year was the summer of 1983 when I was playing for the Shillington Dodgers where I was a force on the mound and with a bat. There is something exhilarating about striking somebody out that I haven’t quite been able to match in other sports. A called third strike with a fastball that SMACKS into the catcher’s glove is a very vivid memory.
Unfortunately after the age of 15 my baseball career went downhill from a combination of injuries, bad luck and external influences. Anyway, watching those kids go at it brought a bit of the warm fuzzies to my heart.
Last night I decided to once again take a bite out of the weekend chore list and get the mowing done. The hard rain from a couple days ago had still left some wet spots on the property but I figured if I raised the deck a bit I would be ok. I also received my replacement for the broken mower deck spring yesterday so I installed that before beginning. I mowed into the twilight, finishing up with the headlights on. It took a bit longer than normal due to wet area slowdown but all in all it wasn’t a problem.
Tonight we are supposed to do another training swim in the gulf. I am hoping the water isn’t as rough as last time. I am hoping my endurance picks up from the last outing. I look at the swim training as a necessary evil, I definitely don’t look forward to it.
Saw another first at the gym today. There was an older guy with a big round upper body, skinny legs and shorts that were too short on the cable machine. He was doing one arm curls while talking on the phone. Now I have seen inappropriate phone use at the gym many times but normally that is just people walking around talking or sitting on equipment talking. Doing a set of curls and talking is a new one for me.
I saw a story that talked about how some Redskin fans are already giving McNabb a hard time at training camp. Evidently McNabb’s relocation down I-95 hasn’t cured him of the his regular diet of errant passing. Here is a quote from the article. Have fun with your new QB Skins fans. This was pretty funny too.
On the first day of Redskins training camp, a heckler stood near the front of the crowd and criticized every bad pass, every bobbled ball and pined out loud for the return of departed quarterback Jason Campbell.
“Must have been a great catch,” the fan yelled after McNabb completed one pass, “because it couldn’t have been a good throw.”
McNabb, a six-time Pro Bowler who spent 11 seasons with the Eagles, was traded in April to NFC East rival Washington.
As training camp continued, other fans might have felt that the heckler was on to something. McNabb seemed to be getting intercepted more than he should. He was throwing behind receivers, and earlier this week he unleashed a wounded duck downfield that was picked off easily by Carlos Rogers.
Yesterday at the gym I did another lunch time brick. I expanded my last gym brick effort by running a 1/4 mile further as well as running the last half mile at an 8:30 pace. I was extremely sweaty, thank goodness for the spare t-shirt, deodorant and Shower to Shower I keep in my office.
After work I decided to work on putting the Moto Guzzi back together. I reattached the carbs and dumped some 93 octane gas in the tank. I hit the starter and was pleased to hear the bike start right up. I let it run for a little while since it has been dead as a doornail for 5-6 months.
I actually had been in contact with a Moto Guzzi dealer in Missouri that I found on the internet. I was asking him about what I could get for the bike based on it’s current condition/mileage. I am looking to simply sell it and use the proceeds to pay back my dad for the money he spent getting it running and maybe cover the few hundred I spent titling/registering it in Florida.
I came up with the idea of not only taking pictures to send to the dealer but also shooting some video of it running and throwing it up on YouTube. I figured that would be a good way for him to assess the bike beyond pictures. He had mentioned that he could be interested in the bike himself to fix up and resell.
I sent the guy the video and pictures and to my surprise he was interested. He offered me $1500 for it plus paying to ship the bike to him in Missouri which will probably run around $500. To be honest I was surprised he offered that much. Sure if he fixes it up back to top notch condition maybe he could get $4k for it but that doesn’t bother me at all. I would have the cash to pay back my dad, cover my costs and free up the room in the shed, a triple win.
We haven’t discussed any details and I haven’t even formally accepted his offer but it looks promising. I think dad would kind of like the idea of his old bike heading off to the midwest to get restored and cherished by someone else.
Last week my mom forwarded me an email that recapped some points Bill Gates made at a graduation ceremony about the world today. It illustrates something that is described accurately by Bubba the Love Sponge as the “pussification of America” . We are raising children to be unable to deal with the real world and instead coddling them in a make believe place where there are no winners, no losers and any and all problems you have can be blamed on something else. Personal responsibility is almost looked upon as unfashionable. Read on, I agree with Bill 100%.
Love him or hate him , he sure hits the nail on the head with this!
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.
Rule 1 : Life is not fair – get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world doesn’t care about your
self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6 : If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault , so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now.. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
Yesterday at the gym I tried a new move I saw called Skin the Cat or also a German Hang. You grab a bar with a normal pull up grip and then pull your feet up and through your arms and continue rotating backward until you are turned inside out, hanging.
This move put all sorts of tension on my shoulders in a way I never experienced before. It really torques both your shoulders and chest as you use them to lower yourself down in a controlled manner.
The first few times I just got myself into the hang position and held it for awhile. As I continued I extended into the hang and then was able to reverse the movement back into pull up position. I would imagine doing a set of that movement back and forth would be a good way to work the muscles used for front and back levers. I can really feel that stretch in my upper body today.
Ali returned from PA yesterday bearing gifts, shoo fly pies to be exact, lots of them. She brought back enough pies to open a store. She plans to hand them out to various friends, co-workers, neighbors that have heard us speak of magical PA dutch pie but never experienced it themselves.
Ali was very glad to get home. The dogs gave her a very enthusiastic greeting and were all over her most of the night. We celebrated her return with a non-microwave prepared dinner and a couple episodes of Big Brother on the Tivo.
My dad called me to just shoot the shit yesterday. I mentioned to him how I am training for a triathlon and how swimming is the most difficult aspect for me. My dad did a lot of running for awhile when he was younger and he has always liked to swim and is actually pretty decent at it. It’s probably the one athletic endeavor he could still best me at.
Dad described some of the swim training he did and offered me some tips. As recently as a year or so ago he was swimming a distance of about a mile in the pool in less than 45 minutes. It felt funny to be getting swimming advice from dad. It almost made me feel like I was 11 again.