Hilly, Ho hum Harry, Miracle 2.0

Saturday we had our 2nd race in as many weeks to time.  This one was in Marco Island.  It is a small race, about 250 people signed up for it.   We managed to have some trouble even with the small size.  One of the people that was handing out numbers was evidently transposing some numbers.

The task is not too tough.  Someone walks up, tells you their name, you find their name on a list and then give them the number next to their name.  Well this process was messed up multiple times which resulted in a lot of fires for me to put out both before and after the race.

Speaking of fire, it would have been rather tough to start an actual fire at the race site.  The weather turned miserable about halfway into the race when a cold, steady rain started coming down.  Doing the results and cleaning up the race in those soggy conditions was not very pleasant.

I did manage to get in the local paper due to the race.  There was a reporter from the Naples News there shooting pictures and covering the event.  I didn’t even know he took the picture.  He of course managed to misspell both my first and last names in the caption.  🙂

When we got home I worked on post race clean up while Ali retired to the bedroom.  Not only was she tired from getting up with me to work the race, she ran the 5 mile hilly course as well.

During the afternoon we worked on knocking out stuff around the house.  Saturday night we had pegged as date night/Ali birthday dinner.  We planned to go see the latest Harry Potter movie.

Before we ate we stopped at the local Super Target to try to knock out the majority of our remaining Xmas shopping chores.  We decided to have dinner at the Chili’s that was an out parcel in the same shopping area.  Ali and I both had vegetarian black bean burgers.  They were HUGE.

We decided to watch the movie at one of our favorite spots, Coconut Point.  As I have mentioned many times, the theater there is NEVER full.  Saturday night was no different.  We walked into the theater 10 minutes before show time and were greeted by exactly ONE other person in the venue, awesome.

We went to the 6:45 movie, we actually entertained going to the 8:50 showing at Silverspot.  Considering the movie is close to two and a half hours long, I am glad we didn’t go there.  You see, I was f’ing exhausted.

I had no nap and was up since 4:45 am.  I had tried to be proactive in my battle against sleep deprivation by getting a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee on the way there. Oh by the way, did you know DD has a happy hour?  If you order a beverage during happy hour you get a free donut! Anyway, despite trying to inject myself with caffeine, I knew drowsiness would be a problem.

The movie didn’t help the situation that much.  It was rather slow at parts.  I actually remember feeling much the same during the last Harry Potter film where I dozed off more than once.  I wouldn’t say I dozed off this time but I did catch myself with my eyes closed a couple of times.

It seems the more Harry Potter I see the less interested I am.  I only read the first two books so I don’t have a strong understanding of the background of the story at this point.  Plus this movie was filled with lots of mostly boring dialogue between Harry, Hermoine and Ron, most of which I didn’t give a damn about.  There were few shots of adrenalin when they showed the scenes that would pop out at you if you saw the 3D version of the movie, which we didn’t.

When the Harry Potter films started they were FILLED with tons of diverse characters, locations and plot lines.  It was fascinating to see the magical world described in the books brought to life on the screen.  Now, most of that has been all stripped away and the story is ultra-focused on just Harry and to be honest it isn’t holding up, at least for me.  To make things worse, it is just weird watching the actors portray characters that are 10 years younger than their actual age.  I’d give the film a B. Oh, how about the creepy scene where CGI created naked Harry and Hermoine get it on?  Weird.

On Sunday we initially had talked about visiting the water park since it is open during the school Christmas break.  Temps in the 60’s and a long list of things to do scuttled those plans.  I had also talked about doing a bike to the park/run thing but my hamstrings felt like they were 6 inches too short from dead lifting on Friday.  It would have been a joke to try to push through that.

In addition to getting presents wrapped I had some other stuff to attend to.  One of those was getting my new tri bars mounted on my bike.  Tri bars are designed to help you get down in an aerodynamic position while allowing you to distribute some of your weight on to your elbows so it isn’t quite so uncomfortable.

Installing the bars took some trial and error but it wasn’t tough.  I had to remove the mount I had on the bike for my gps to install the bars.  I was bummed about losing my GPS mount but I later figured out that I can simply strap it around the handle bars in a manner that is secure enough to work.

I took the bike out on the road a little bit once the bars were on.  It felt a bit odd to be down that low but I definitely could see how it will help dramatically when battling wind drag.  I look forward to taking a real test ride.

I also needed to do some work on the Tacoma.  Over the past couple months I started noticing a burning oil smell after parking the truck.  A peak under the hood revealed that the probable cause was some oil leaking from the valve covers on to the exhaust manifold.

My boss has a Tacoma like mine as well, only it’s a year older.  She had a problem with leaking oil from the valve cover gaskets as well.  She took it to the garage where they charged her a fortune to replace the gaskets since it is pretty labor intensive.

I had recently corrected a similar oil leakage problem on the tractor by simply re-torquing the bolts that had worked their way loose due to vibration.  I wondered if a a similar simple fix would be all I would need for the truck.

I got out my 10mm socket and slapped it on one of the bolts.  It was loose, really loose, wow.  I repeated the process on every bolt and every single one of them was loose.  I torqued them so they were snug but made sure not to go too nuts as to crush the gaskets.  Only time will tell if my fix works but I think it will.  Nice way to save myself $500.

So it was now time for the Eagles game.  This was a pretty big game since the Giants and Eagles had identical 9-4 records.  Whoever won the game would sit alone on top of the division.  The Eagles have had good success againt the Giants recently, winning the last 5 games in a row.

It clearly looked like the Eagles luck had run out.  For 3/4 of the game the Giants pretty much dominated the Eagles.  The defense was awful, once again allowing Dimitri Patterson to get exposed as a huge liability in the secondary.  He got burned repeatedly and made Mario Manningham look like Lynn Swann.

The offense was inept as well, unable to get out of it’s own way.  By the time the score got to 31-10 in the fourth quarter I was at my computer reading email while the game was on in the background as noise.  I wrote the game off as an ugly, ugly loss.

Then IT happened.  IT was the greatest comeback of my 30+ years as an Eagles fan.  EVERYTHING went the Eagles way and everything blew up on the Giants side of the ball.  When the Birds caught the Giants napping and easily completed an onside kick I actually thought there was a chance.

After scoring rather easily to tie the game I was rather concerned that the Eagles left way too much time on the clock, nearly two minutes, for the Giants to easily march down the field and kick a game winning field goal.  I had no faith in the defense to hold back a hurry up offense.

Well after sacking Manning to force a punt my faith in the defense was restored.  However since there were only 14 seconds left I figured we were heading for overtime where more suspense would surely follow.

I figured, along with everyone else watching the game that the Giants rookie punter would simply kick the ball out of bounds so DeSean Jackson would not have a chance for a run back.  Well the punter did the exact opposite.  Not only did he kick the ball right to Jackson, he kicked a low line drive which didn’t allow the Giants coverage team to get downfield.

I winced when Jackson initially fumbled the ball.  However he scooped it up quickly and headed up field.  All of a sudden the sea of Giant defenders parted, Jackson squeezed through and was off to the races.  Once the stupid punter whiffed I knew he was going to score.

I held my breath twice though, once until they announcers indicated there were no flags on the play and a second time when Jackson demonstrated the cocky, taunting part of his personality that I can’t stand, when he made a 90 degree left turn right at the goal line to rub it the Giant’s face, a totally low class move.

I also saw the Giant defender behind him to his blindside.  I had a quick nightmare scenario flash through my head where the defender sneaks up behind DeSean and knocks the ball out in the middle of his show boating.  Luckily the defender didn’t expect the left turn either and Jackson finally crossed the goal line.

Since Ali was at the movie with her girlfriend, she missed all of this.  I celebrated silently with both fists raised above my head in disbelief, realizing I think I just saw the greatest come back in Eagles history.  The scene afterward was as chaotic as you would imagine.  You could actually hear the Eagles fans at Giant stadium going nuts.  The video of Coughlin bitching out his clueless punter was classic.  I am SURE the kid will get his pink slip shortly, what a DOH! move.

I read that what we saw, a punt being returned on the final play of the game for a win has NEVER happened before in the history of the NFL.  Wow, what a game.  I still am pinching myself.

You may recall that last week I had a not nearly as impressive but all the same miraculous fantasy football win, taking out the number one ranked team from the number 8 slot.  This week I fully expected my luck to run out in the semi-finals.  I may be wrong.  As things sit I have a tight end to play yet and my opponent has the Bears defense.

I have a 31 point lead.  A defense has to have an insane day to score 31 points.  I am crossing my fingers that I hold on for the win.  Getting to the NFFL Superbowl would be a minor miracle considering I started the year 0-4.