Archives August 2010

Last night the phone was ringing off the hook.  Thank goodness for caller id.  Every single one of the calls was one of those automated political solicitations.  I have no idea what the hell these candidates are thinking.  How does annoying voters with recorded messages on their home phone at night do anything positive for their campaign? Personally when I saw the voice mails show up and listened to them any candidates name I heard immediately went down a few pegs in my book.

It’s lemming mentality.  One candidate is stupid enough to send out these robo-calls and then the others think they are somehow losing ground if they don’t do the same. Monkey see, monkey does.

News flash, if you DON’T call me at home I will think better of your campaign.

We have a bunch of standing water again after a few sessions of intense rain.  Every time these miniature lakes appear I get motivated to bring in some more fill to raise those low spots.  Then in a few days the water goes away and I lose the motivation.  It’s a better winter project anyway.

I received my replacement track pants from Zappos, trading in the way too big XL’s for mediums.  I was relieved to see that the mediums fit fine, I was worried they would be too short in length.  I will be wearing these hard.  I got a pair of Adidas and a pair of Nike pants. I will offer a comparison after a few uses.

I pick up Ali after work today from her nearly week long trip to PA.  It sounded like she was looking forward getting back on her home turf.  I know two black furry beats that will be ecstatic to see her.

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.

There has been a lot of talk about Republicans having a chance to reclaim some of their political clout in the 2010 elections due to thier unrelenting spin machine and Obama’s inability to cure all of the country’s problems in the span of less than two years.  We are a quick fix society after all. Well one place I don’t think they will make any head way is in the Florida governor race.

The republican candidates in the primary are named Rick Scott and Bill McCollum.

The two of these guys have been in a bitter campaign battle where the amount of mud slinged back and forth has reached mountain-like proportions.

Rick Scott is the guy on the left.  The first thing I feel when looking at the guy is dishonesty.  He looks like he has many dark secrets hiding behind those little beady eyes.

One thing he wished was secret was the fact that he is basically a crook.  He was in charge of a hospital association that was fined 1.7 billion, yes BILLION dollars for Medicare fraud. That’s a lot of fraud and he was the guy in charge when it all went down.

You may ask how would someone like this even consider running for governor?  The answer is simple, money and lots of it.  Scott has thrown incredible amounts of cash into this campaign in an effort to get his name and disturbing face in front of as many eyes as possible.  His plan is simple, establish name recognition over anything else to grab all the dummies that go into a voting booth and decide their vote based on whose name they have heard and little else.

I think his plan is flawed because, well he has a disturbing face.  It may not be so good for so many people to see it.  He is very simply trying to buy the office, to hell with 1.7 BILLION in fines.

McCollum suffers from an image problem as well.  He looks as interesting as curdled milk.  He would make Mr Rogers look bad ass.  He also is a career politician, something that is not looked upon very highly this day and age.

Anyway these two have done such a good job at discrediting the other I don’t think either has a chance to beat Alex Sink (a woman) in the real election.

Last night I thought my mowing grass plans would be a wash out.  On the way home I drove through heavy rain, some as close as 5 miles from our house.  However when I pulled into the driveway things looked damp but not soaked.

After making the girls supper I surveyed the skies.  There were all sorts of menacing clouds around but the rain above our property had not materialized so I went out and hopped on the tractor.  I stayed dry.

I had a bit of a scare during the session.  When I started on the second mowing quadrant the blades all of a sudden stopped turning.  WTF?  Instantly the worst case scenario came to mind, now something else broke, something expensive for sure…..

After disengaging and engaging the PTO clutch several times I could tell that was still functioning.  I turned off the tractor and hopped onto the ground to take a look.  I immediately saw I had no tension on the belt that goes around the spindles.  The belt was still on the pulleys so initially I was like WTF?  After some more inspection I saw the culprit.  The spring that applies tension to the idler pulley broke at the one end.

Ok so this wasn’t a disaster but if I didn’t address it immediately I would be unable to complete the task.  I drove the tractor up to the garage and manipulated the spring with various tools.  Eventually I managed to bend it in such a way that I could once again attach it.  Of course I knew if the metal was fatigued to the point where it snapped I knew my rig job could snap as well.  I just hoped it held until I was done mowing. Luckily it did. I ordered a replacement spring later as well as a couple other small parts that could use replacement.

I got done mowing around 7:15. Normally getting the mowing done on a weeknight would be enough but since Ali isn’t home I wanted to get ahead of the curve as much as possible.  I quickly formulated a grocery list and headed out to Publix.  I was back home with the groceries unpacked by 8:45. I was pleased with what I accomplished.

I was watching part 2 of V the Final Battle last night.  This episode featured a lot of Faye Grant getting tortured by Jane Badler. Grant is probably tied as the most attractive female in the series with the woman that plays the Star Child. Unlike most of the female leads she doesn’t have huge hair or a huge ass.

In last night’s episode Faye is getting tortured by the Visitors as they try to “convert” her. For the session Faye is wearing a body color, spandex like, full body tights thing.  It was pretty steamy.  Her acting during the torture session was downright funny.

My bachelor weekend has nothing very concrete on the calendar.  I have various small projects to do around the house, I need to shave my head, do the August Bar-barian push up challenge and do a training brick.  What fills in the blanks around that is unknown at this time.

I dropped Ali off at the airport yesterday for her nearly week long visit up to PA.  My first night alone was uneventful.  I tried to get a bit of a head start on my weekend work by knocking out some laundry last night.  Tonight I am hoping to mow the grass as long as the weather cooperates.

I think I may do the grocery shopping at the Catholic Town (Ave Maria) Publix this week.  The store is always empty and the food should have a high blessing content.

I just realized last night that I was watching the 1983 V series in the wrong order.  I watched the two part mini-series first.  Then I recently completed the 19 episode season and I was keeping V: the Final Battle for last.  It seemed like that was the logical sequence.  Well it isn’t.

When I started watching the 19 episode season I noticed there seemed to be a break in the time line from what I saw in the first two episodes.  Well last night I realized that break is filled in by V the Final Battle.

It’s a bit anti-climatic to be watching this out of chronological order but I will watch it all the same, I’m this close to seeing it all I might as well finish the book. Thank goodness it only ran for one season.

So the well in the gulf is supposedly plugged after an excruciatingly long cluster f of misstep after misstep.  I also saw a headline yesterday that said that 75% of the oil that leaked into the water is gone from the combination of dispersants, burns, skimming and the natural processes in the water that break down oil.  How exactly do they determine that?

I always am skeptical when big shiny numbers are thrown out there based on what has to be fuzzy math at best.  How can they tell what is under the surface of the water?  I don’t think they can.  I think that number is more spin control than anything, an effort to lessen the perceived damage this mess has caused.

When we were over at the neighbor’s house she told me about how she has been selling all sorts of stuff on Amazon.  I hadn’t realized that individuals could EASILY sell on Amazon.  When she described the sales model to me I liked it.

Instead of the Ebay format, Amazon uses something similar to what Half.com does.  They don’t hammer you with as many fees as Ebay does.  In fact you don’t pay anything to list items, Amazon takes a cut only if it sells.  Their percentage seems reasonable.

With Ebay if I was to list something I would pay a listing fee, then if it sells I pay another percentage fee based on the selling price and then I get banged again when Paypal takes a cut on the back end.  With Amazon two levels of those fees are eliminated.

I am definitely going to give it a try.  Amazon at this point reaches millions of potential buyers.  I know it is always one of the places I look for stuff.

As I was looking up info about selling on Amazon I also saw they have a trade in program.  Basically if you don’t feel like waiting for someone to buy your stuff you can send it to Amazon and they will give you Amazon credit in return.  Now of course you won’t get top dollar this way but the convenience factor may equal that out in some situations.

If you have a bunch of stuff to sell you may want to give Ebay the hand and throw them up on Amazon instead.  My neighbor has had GREAT success selling stuff there.

I have been forgetting to mention something else that will be available for the Camaro that is just another reason I can’t wait to get one.  They are releasing an Iphone app that lets you control the OnStar functionality right from your Iphone!

Utilizing OnStar I can talk to and in some cases control my car from my phone.  Let’s say I flew out of town.  I realized when I was in Pennsylvania that I may have forgot to lock the car.  I could open up the app on my phone, connect to my car and lock it (or unlock it) form anywhere that I have phone service.  It allows you access to all of the car stats that OnStar does like maintenance records, car vitals and more.  Give me the geek factor, I love it!

So yesterday I see the headlines that an insider leaked that Brett Farve is NOT coming back to the Vikings this year.  This announcement comes after yet another off season of indecision where Brett refused to commit one way or the other regarding his return to QB the Vikings after a very successful campaign last year.

I really think he is acting like an asshole plain and simple.  Just like he did to the Packers, Brett basically has held the Vikings hostage this entire off season, not allowing them to plan accordingly for their QB position. Now that training season is opening he is planning to say “thanks, but no thanks?”.  It’s a shitty move.

Now of course there are many, myself included that expect any retirement announcement to be bullshit and that Brett will once again flip flop and decide he wants to play right before the season starts.  I can only hope if he does make a retirement announcement that he actually stays retired, otherwise don’t waste everyone’s time watching another tearful, embarrassing,  goodbye.

Yesterday my gymnast rings showed up.  Ironically the place I ordered them from on Ebay is in good old Lancaster, PA.  I immediately unpacked the rings and straps and hung them on the Iron Gym.  I did some deep dips and some rows.  The rings and straps felt secure and were easy to adjust.  Of course I can also use the rings outside on my pull up station.

Gymnast rings are a great tool for body weight exercise.  The instability they introduce into any exercise is fantastic for overall strength as you engage more muscle to stabilize yourself. I look forward to utilizing them regularly.

Last night we went over to the new neighbor’s place for a birthday party.  It was nice to spend some time to get to know them better.  I also discovered that the boyfriend has incredible mechanical skills.  He was a professional mechanic and has a tool collection that puts mine to shame.  You name it and he has done it.  The best part is he is more than happy to assist me in anything.  I asked him about the Moto Guzzi and it’s issues, no problem he said.  I am going to take the carbs off and let him look at them. He told me exactly how to troubleshoot my one weed whacker that only runs on full choke.  He rattled off tons of things he has done as he gave me a brief tour of his collection.

I plan to try to learn as much as I can from him, what a valuable resource to have and he’s right next door.

Ali heads up to PA today for nearly a week long visit.  I have no definite plans but I will enjoy my alone time.  It’s nice to mix things up once in awhile.

For awhile now I found myself somewhat annoyed with my Facebook friend list.  When Facebook took off it became very easy to find old classmates, work associates and other people that you may have not had any contact with for years.  Even Mr Anti-social me found myself with around 150 people on my friends list.

Well for some reason yesterday I decided it was time to clean house.  If you are like me, a whole bunch of your “friends” on Facebook are on your list for pure voyeurism.  You saw the name of somebody you hadn’t had contact with for years or they see you.  One of you makes a friend request, it gets accepted and then you spend a couple minutes looking at their pictures to assess their current physical condition, glance at their bio to see how life is treating them and then boom, you are done.

Many of these requests are like two strangers passing in the night.  There is no communication that takes place, only the accepting of the request so each of you can inspect the other and move on.  Well I decided I had enough.

I spent a good 30-45 minutes cleaning up my friends list.  I had a few parameters I used to guide me in the process, some of which I posted on FB as I was removing “friends” left and right.

Obviously if you never made any attempt to communicate with me you were in trouble.  I mean we both had our quick fix, why continue?

I also removed people that do nothing but whine in their status updates.  I do enough whining of my own with out having to read it from others.

People that have a cardboard cut out on FB were goners, meaning they have an account but do nothing with it.  What is the point?

People that don’t post any current photos of themselves got axed.  If the most recent photo you posted was from 1985 you obviously are trying to hide something that I don’t want to see anyway.

The nothing but “the kids did this and the kids did that” posters got hammered.  If I wanted to be FB friends with your kids I would have made the request with them.

In total I eliminated over a third of my friends list.  It wasn’t very hard to do and now my feed list is much more manageable.

Take a good hard look at your list, I am sure you will find a lot of fat that can be trimmed.

Yesterday I did some pull ups on the Iron Gym and dragon flags at home.  I used the cabinet the 73 inch tv sits on as my grip for the dragon flags.  Man they are a tough exercise but they build a strong core.

I am frustrated by my inability to completely heal these elbow/forearm problems.  I have had off and on problems with them for probably a year at least.  It makes progressing on my bar work tough.  When I do pull ups my first few reps sound like tight string breaking as the tendons and muscles in my forearms unwillingly contract and expand.  I have never seen a doctor about it but I assume it is some sort of arthritis/tendinitis combination.  I have been trying to freeze the area at night with an ice pack to assist in the healing.

Last week I had my first ordering experience with Zappos.  I had heard many positives about Zappos from other people but never visited the site myself.  I was hunting for a pair of Adidas Originals Firebird track pants.  I was blown away when I saw they sell their clothing with FREE next day shipping, WTF??  Not only that but if you buy something and need to return it, that is free as well!  Their prices didn’t strike me as out of line which made the free shipping gig even sweeter.

I ordered two pair of track pants, the Firebird and a pair of Nike’s.  I deliberated at length on sizing.  Track pants aren’t like jeans where you can order a certain waist and length.  With jeans I would normally wear either a 32″ or 33″ waist and a 34″-36″ length.  Well with track pants it is small, medium, large, extra large, etc…

The longest inseam I saw was 34″ but that was on the XL size which supposedly was for someone with a 36″ to 38″ waist.  Well I hoped that the elastic waistband would contract to something even smaller.  I was wrong.  My package arrived the next day as promised.  I eagerly tore into the box to try on the pants.  First I tried on the Adidas.  They were ridiculously big, practically falling off me.  The Nike’s were not as loose but still way too big.  I was surprised to see that I had plenty of length with the 34 inseam, actually too much as they were dragging on the ground.

So I got to try out the Zappos return system as well which was pain free as well.  Now I have to consider getting mediums with the Adidas pants and maybe a large with the Nike’s.  This is one of the few times that being tall is not an advantage.

Friday night instead of our normal pizza and Tivo routine Ali and I instead went down to the beach to do an open water swim with the local triathlete group.  We got there a couple minutes late and just missed the main group who had already started swimming down towards the pier.  We met up with Ali’s training buddy Christy so we figured we would just do our own swimming together.  In retrospect I was glad we didn’t swim with the big group.

I have NEVER done any sort of distance swimming not to mention distance swimming in an open body of water.  The water was rather rough for the gulf with a pretty regular stream of waves coming in.  Undaunted I donned my swimming goggles, stripped down to my spandex tri trunks and headed into the warm water.

Well I officially suck at swimming.  I struggled right from the start.  Initially I tried to use form that was similar to what I would do in the pool where I would exhale under water and breathe when I brought my head up to the right.  Well I was drinking so much gulf water it felt like I was 91 octane.  It was nuts, every time I would come up for air I had water breaking across my face.

I also was tiring extremely quickly. I would do maybe 20 – 25 strokes and find myself stopping to rest.  Even with my stop and go style I was able to stay ahead of Christy and Ali due to my long appendages allowing me to cover decent distance in those few strokes.  By the time I was halfway into the swim I threw all semblance of proper form out the window.  I was swimming with my head out of the water at all times so I could see waves coming.  I also was doing some weird hybrid stroke that was half free style, half side stroke. It was REALLY a struggle.

In total I think we swam more than the 1/4 mile that is required for the Miami triathlon but there were so many stops and starts it was nuts.  On the good side, the water conditions were pretty extreme so maybe it is good to experience the bad first. On the bad side, my swimming endurance is horrible.  I really need to work at it.

After we got out of the water we talked with the other members of the group that probably swam close to a mile.   We made no bones about how much of a struggle it was just to do a fraction of what they swam.  It’s a starting point I guess.

After the swim Christy joined us for a post swim meal at Moe’s where we all enjoyed tremendously over sized burritos.  We made plans to get together the following night as well since Christy’s husband was out of town.  We thought it would be cool to go see Inception.

On Saturday I mowed grass while Ali cleaned inside.  It was the first full mowing test since my extensive work on the mower.  The Cub Cadet held up well throughout the entire session.  I didn’t have any problems with the drive belt slipping and the cut was more even.  I couldn’t help but yearn for the all out power I experienced on the Gravely as I slowed to less than walking pace to get through the thicker grass.

On Friday we picked up my refurbished Trek from the bike shop. Wow, it looked like an almost new bike.  They did a real nice job with it.  I was looking forward to putting it to the test.

So after a busy day of housework we got ready to go to the movies.  The plan was to pick up Christy, get the Imax tickets first and then eat dinner.  Many times the Imax showings can get sold out.

After grabbing the tickets we went back to the same Carrabas as last week.  It was funny that we hadn’t gone to the movies or Carrabbas for quite awhile and then wind up doing both in two consecutive weekends.

I slammed 4 beers during the meal and was feeling a bit silly.  Silly means I talk more for the better or worse.  I was still feeling it as we were waiting for the movie to start.  At one point while the previews were playing a woman stood up in front of us and I said in a voice loud enough that she probably heard “you make a better door than window”. Yea I was a little buzzed.

For some reason I assumed that since we were watching Inception on IMAX that it was also in 3D. It wasn’t.  Initially I was a bit disappointed we weren’t handed a set of glasses but the sheer size of IMAX does a good job of immersing you in the movie regardless of the amount of dimensions.

The movie was good, all three of us liked it.  The special effects were incredible.  I’m not talking about the normal, awesome computer generated stuff.  There are fight scenes that just make you scratch your head and wonder how they could do that, even with the assistance of computers.  The plot would be very hard to follow if you were not paying close attention at all times as it gets several layers deep. I’d give the movie an A-.  It is definitely best viewed in a theater. (or a 73 inch tv with the lights out) 🙂

On Sunday Ali went to spinning with Christy and then planned to run afterward.  I planned my own brick.

I was excited to give my newly cleaned Trek a try.  I mounted my under seat bag and water bottle holder onto the Trek and shoved off.  I immediately noticed that I couldn’t get my bike shoes snapped into the pedals.  My buddy told me they were SPD pedals but I am thinking they may be one of the SPD variations, no matter how I tried I could not get locked in securely.

So I had to do an about face and swap the pedals off my other road bike.  I was already sweating profusely just swapping the pedals due to the high humidity.  I hadn’t even hit the open road yet.  Once I completed the swap I hopped and, clipped in and was on my way.

The first upgrade that I enjoyed was the shifting which is all controlled from the brake levers that also act as shifters.  It is click index shifting.  I move the right lever to the left and I go down a gear, I moved the second black lever on the same side and I go up a gear, it shifted very cleanly.

The Trek 2200 is an 18 speed bike where as my Dawes is a 14 speed.  Having the additional gears means additional speed although I never got all the way to 18th.  I think I went as high as 16th gear.   The normal Immokalee Road headwind was present but not as brutal as it can be for the ride.

I was able to maintain a solid pace for the first half of the ride and surprisingly keep almost the same pace for the second half.  At the halfway point I had a bit of a scare.  I was stopping to get a drink as I was sweating buckets.  Just before I was at a dead stop I was like “Oh shit, I forgot I am clipped in”  I quickly snapped my right foot out of the pedal but the movement shifted my weight to the left beyond recovery.  I fell to the left INTO the lane of traffic.  I only fell maybe a foot or two into the lane and luckily there were no cars coming by at that instant.  It had the potential to be ugly. My fall knocked the chain off and gave me a nice little brush burn across the thigh but other than that I escaped unscathed.

As I got closer to my house I realized that I had a chance to do the ride in under an hour.  If my memory is correct, I think my best time on the Publix ride was 1:03 something.  I pulled into our driveway at 59:29, beating the 1 hour mark.

Needless to say I really like the Trek.  I just ordered a cheap GPS mount so I can have my numbers right in front of me at all times.

I wanted to do a brick so even though I was tired and a sweaty beyond belief I wanted to get on the treadmill.  I immediately threw on my running shoes, grabbed some water and a towel and started running at a 9:13 pace.  Originally I hoped to pull 3 miles, instead I once again stopped at two.  I was just beat.  I hopped in the pool afterward but just to cool off, I didn’t do any laps.

After Ali got home we both ate lunch and then crashed.  We were both extremely tired from our respective bricks.  My normal, no nap edict was out the window.  I HAD to sleep. We slept for two and a half hours and I still didn’t feel like getting up, my body was toast.  The rest of the day I felt wiped out.

Over the weekend I got to dig into my two new video game additions, the Cataclysm beta and Starcaft II.  I didn’t play Cataclysm too much but enough to make a level 7 Worgen.  I got to a point where there is a bugged quest that slows your progress and stopped there.

I have played a lot more Starcraft 2.  It is so well done.  The cinematics that are built into the single player missions are very cool and really keep you wrapped up in the storyline.  In SC 2 you have the ability to control much larger groups of units.  It is such simple fun to grab a huge group and just send them into an area in auto attack mode.  Watching all the chaos unfurl on your screen is just total eye candy.

I have found the single player missions challenging but not too difficult up to this point. I really like the game and highly recommend it.