Archives 2010

Bonnie was supposed to be a real drenching storm.  The day before she arrived there were predictions of anywhere from 2″ to 6″ of rain in our area along with some decent wind.  Well they totally muffed that forecast.  I don’t think we got even a quarter inch of rain.  Our normal summertime thunderstorms pack much more punch.  It almost felt like a letdown although in the big picture I was happy to not have a small lake around the house.

Since between the new neighbor and my efforts on Thursday the grass didn’t need to be mowed this weekend.  My plan for the weekend was to bust ass on Saturday and more or less “relax” (chore-wise) on Sunday.

I had to work on the tractor some more.  Like I said, by the end of my Thursday mow session the Cub Cadet was crawling up hills, a sure sign that the drive belt I installed was too big and loose.  I took the deck off Saturday and crawled underneath to take a look.  There was no real tension on the belt, great.

Like I mentioned last week, there were two options.  Buy ANOTHER belt and go through the hassle of gaining access to change it or utilize some of my McGyver rigging skills.  I opted for the latter.

The drive belt goes around a tension pulley that is attached to an arm with a spring.  The spring creates the tension.  Since the belt is too big, even fully retracted the spring wasn’t really doing anything.  At first I thought I might be able to bend the spring in a way to shorten it to create more tension.  After fiddling around with it a bit I realized that wasn’t going to make enough of a difference.

I devised a new plan, come up with something farther away to attach the other end of the spring to.  After surveying the bottom of the mower I came up with a good spot.  There were two open holes on the outside of the frame that were maybe three or four inches away.  I found a nut and bolt that fit through the hole (with a little drilling) and mounted them.  After that I stretched the spring with a needle nose pliers to the new bolt and clipped it on.

The stretched spring now was putting some decent tension on the belt.  I crawled out from under the tractor and gave it a quick test drive.  The response felt normal once again. Cool, hopefully it holds up.

Next I had to level the mowing deck after reattaching it.  I noticed when I mowed on Thursday that the cut had a definite lean to it.  Half of the grass was visibly higher.  Leveling the deck was basically a trial and error process.  I moved the tractor down to a flat spot on the driveway, loosened a bolt, moved the deck up or down a bit and then laid down behind the tractor to eyeball it.  It took a few attempts but eventually I got the deck looking pretty straight.

At this point I think I have the tractor about as ready as it can be to mow again.  I can only hope the nearly $600 we spent in parts buys us at least another year or two of use.

After I was done I lugged the old, beat up, patched half a dozen times mower deck down to the end of the driveway for the trash guys to hopefully take this week.  I was amazed when I saw later in the day that the deck was gone, someone actually stopped and grabbed it.  I am not quite sure what they are going to use it for.  At least it isn’t my problem.

Ali went running with her girlfriends Saturday morning and was wiped out.  She was walking around like a zombie.  I encouraged her to lay down and take a nap while I continued on.  I had plans to shampoo the carpet.  My army of floor cleaning robots made me even more efficient.  As I ran the carpet cleaner I had the newly refurbished Scooba cleaning the kitchen floor and my Dirt Dog out sweeping up the pool deck.

Everytime I shampoo the rug I wish I had the motivation/time to do it more often.  The dogs track in so much dirt that a regular shampooing is really a good idea.   The gallons of nasty dirty water that I pour down the sink reinforce that notion.

Saturday night we watched a documentary I snagged via Netflix streaming. It was about marathon running and specifically a bunch of people preparing to run the Chicago marathon in 2005. it’s called The Spirit of the Marathon.  It was quite interesting watching a diverse group of people prepare ranging from the old, the novice, to the professional prepare for the race.  Ali especially was into it because of her experience training for the half marathons.  Good stuff.

Sunday morning I had pegged as a bike riding morning.  I have done very little biking in recent months.  I can’t recall the last time I did the full Publix ride.  Ali was in a similar boat.  Even with her triathlon aspirations she has ignored her biking and hadn’t ridden since the Naples Tri in early June.

The ride got off to a bad start.  Ali is still a bit baffled by basic bike operations like shifting.  Specifically, changing the front sprocket to go between the various gear sets. She inadvertently had done the entire Naples Tri ride in 7th gear instead of 14th.

Well as we started down the road I told her she needed to change onto the large sprocket, she was still in 7th.  She turned onto a side street to make the change.  She moved the front shifter too far and in the process steered the chain completely off the gears.

She became instantly frustrated and barked at me after I said ‘What happened?” , telling me to just go without her.  I instantly became frustrated with her frustration and told her to bring the bike to me and I would fix it.  I admittedly was frustrated that Ali struggled so much with something that seems so simple as shifting a bike.  I had to remind myself that she didn’t know how to even ride a bike until I taught her in her early 20’s.

After I got the chain back on I told her I would get it in the right gear.  I hopped on her flashy pink bike and went down the other side street.  No matter which gear I tried it didn’t feel quite right.  You felt the chain to varying degrees no matter what gear I used.  Considering we spent some bucks having the local bike shop adjust it “correctly” this annoyed me.  It was better before we let them touch it.

Eventually I got it into 13th gear and it felt more or less normal.  I gave the bike back to Ali who had calmed down a bit at this point.  We headed back out on the road.

Ali had never done a full Publix ride with me.  Well yesterday she did.  On the way back we hit the typical increased headwind.  I took the lead on the return trip, trying to act like a windbreaker for Ali.  Having the shoe clips enabled me to power through the wind.  If Ali stayed right on my tail I was able to break the wind for her.  Unfortunately it was a delicate balance.  I was trying to maintain a certain speed but then I would look back and see Ali dropped back out of drafting range.  Ali was getting frustrated by my looking back periodically to see her position, she said it made her feel like she was holding me back.  I told her I didn’t mind it, I was just trying to go at a speed she could maintain.

Eventually I realized her angst wasn’t worth my effort so with about 2 or 3 miles to go I just pedaled normally.  I finished up a couple minutes ahead of her.  I encouraged Ali as she pulled in the driveway.  She completed the 17.25 mile Publix ride for the first time, good for her.

Ali is taking her bike and my Trek freebie to the bike shop today.  She is going to tell them about her poorly adjusted bike and get the Trek all cleaned and tuned.  I am looking forward to getting the Trek bike back and putting it through it’s paces.

I had it in my head I wanted to do a brick.  A brick is a triathlon term meaning you are putting various training together like an actual triathlon.  So shortly after getting back I hopped on our treadmill and did 2 miles at a 9:13 pace.  I had never run after a bike ride before, surprisingly it didn’t feel all that bad.

After my run I hopped in the pool and did some swimming.  The swim is hard for me.  Swimming a full 400 meters is going to be a challenge.  My biggest struggle is breathing.  When I bring my head to the side to take my breath it always feels inadequate.  I also seem to get too much water splashing in my mouth which is annoying.  As a result before long I feel like I need to totally pull my head out of the water to make up for my oxygen deficit.  Obviously it isn’t supposed to be that way.  I need to work a lot harder on the swim.

So I did my brick, a scaled down brick but I did the three things in succession.  It’s a starting point.  Now the key is to not hurt myself along the way as my training continues.

Our neighbors asked for a ride to the airport later in the day.  We decided to coordinate that with a trip to the movies to finally see Toy Story 3.  After dropping them off we had some time to kill so we went into Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shop.  We didn’t buy anything but just looked around.  One of my favorite items was the big stuffed marlin.

We had an early dinner/late lunch at Carraba’s. I hadn’t been there for awhile so it was nice to check in at one of my favorite restaurant chains.

Ali had checked the movie schedule ahead of time and saw that Toy Story 3 was showing in Imax at 5pm.  I was surprised that it would still be playing in Imax going on 4 weeks after it’s release.  Well, it wasn’t.  I’m not sure why there was a discrepancy.  Luckily we arrived early enough to catch the regular 3D showing at 4:40.

I have been a big fan of the Toy Story series.  It set the gold standard as far as just how good computer animated movies can be. As always there is a risk when a movie starts spinning off into sequels that it won’t hold up to the original.  In fact, sequels rarely match up.  Well I am glad to report Toy Story 3 maintains that high standard.  It’s a great flick that both Ali and I enjoyed from start to finish.  There is absolutely nothing to not like about it except maybe the fact that is appears to be the definitive end to the series.

I had heard there were some tear jerking moments in the flick.  I didn’t have rivers running down my face but I certainly had some moisture accumulating towards the end.  Great flick, I’d give it an A.

For the past several days I have been feeling generally annoyed, inpatient, dissatisfied and just angry at most things.  Last night I looked up and saw the bright full moon shining down on me ominously.  No further explanation needed.

So after work the first thing I did was go out in the back yard to see if I could find the dead baby bird to bury it.  I tossed it right outside the fence line so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Well my neighbor apparently did some more mowing yesterday, including the strip of ground outside the fence line.  I saw pieces of paper towel and a few feathers scattered around.  I felt badly that I didn’t even get to bury the poor thing.  Instead it was more or less cremated by a John Deere.

Last night I tackled putting the rest of the mower deck together.  I was happy to see the replacement spindle I was sent had both dust caps installed and turned freely.

After getting all the parts back in place I reinstalled the deck onto the mower, started it up and cautiously pulled the PTO knob, ready to turn it off immediately if I heard something weird.

There was no smoke, no horrible noises, the blades started turning as they should have.  I figured I might as well start mowing, that is the real test.  Since Bonnie is going to drench the property it was a good thing to get the grass mowed anyway.

I was able to get the back yard mowed although the longer I went I saw a couple things that still aren’t right.  I need to level the mower deck, it wasn’t cutting evenly which meant I was going over some spots more than once.

More annoying and potentially more troublesome is the new drive belt I installed appears to be too loose.  By the end of the mowing session I was crawling up any incline.  When I ordered the belt there were two sizes available based on serial number.  I ordered the model that was BEFORE the cutoff, figuring the mower was 7 years old, certainly it was before that cut off. Now I’m not sure.

My short term plan is to see if I can somehow increase the tension applied by idler pulley.  If that is not workable then I would have to see if I actually need to get a different, shorter belt.  I am hoping to avoid that option as it would mean another aggravating, engine unbolting affair.

Tropical storm Bonnie is supposed to be passing over South Florida today.  The wind shouldn’t be any worse than what we see in thunderstorms but I am sure we will get dumped on with a bunch of rain.  I expect to come home to a house surrounded by a moat tonight.

This weekend hopefully won’t be quite so work filled.  I would like to get out to see Toy Story 3 in 3d before it leaves the theaters.

So last night I let the dogs out for their last bathroom run of the night.  After 10 minutes or so I let them back in.  I noticed Sadie over by the chaise lounge had dropped something.  It sort of looked like a big piece of mulch.

I went over to pick it up and throw it outside and was shocked to see it was a baby bird.  At first I wondered if it was already dead and Sadie just happened to stumble across it.  My surface autopsy indicated the baby still felt warm, I’m pretty sure Sadie killed it.  I scolded Sadie as she went inside.

I observed the little bird carefully, looking for any signs of life.  There was none to be found.  I felt terrible as I held the dead bird in a paper towel in my hand.  Sadie was just doing what dogs do, chase things smaller than them that run away.  Unfortunately for the baby bird it wasn’t fast enough to escape.

Outside of mosquitoes and fire ants there is very little that you will ever see me kill.  I felt partially responsible for the baby biting the dust.  If I was out there with a flash light observing the dogs perhaps I could have spotted the danger and stopped it before Sadie got a hold of the bird.

I said “I’m sorry” as I unceremoniously tossed the bird over the fence line.  If it was still light out I would have buried it.  Who knows, maybe after work I will go retrieve it and do a proper burial.  It’s the least I can do.

Wednesday morning I got up early and was Tire Choice at 7am with the Camry.  The Camry has roughly 65,000 miles on it and we on our second set of factory Bridgestone tires. These tires have in a word SUCKED.  Within the first 10,000 miles both sets developed very bad road noise.  When we got the second set I made sure to rotate them more often but they developed the exact same problem.  You would drive down smooth road and it would sound like you were rolling on monster truck tires.

I came to the conclusion the tires are just junk.  My conclusion was backed up by a quick Google search that showed other Camry hybrid owners getting very poor life out of these tires.

Originally I had planned to buy the tires off Tirerack.com.  Their site is great for researching tires and picking out a model that is high quality but fairly priced. I had decided upon a set of Kumho tires that supposedly were very quiet and held up for a long time with a 60,000 mile tread wear warranty.

Well before I triggered the purchase I just happened to jump on www.thetirechoice.com.  I bought the tires for my Tacoma there and was generally pleased.  Well with a little searching I found another type of tire that actually seemed a little better, Yokohama AVID-S.  They had a 65,000 mile tread wear warranty and had equally good reviews.  The best part of all was they were less expensive.  I could get all 4 installed for less than $400 (before state tax), a sweet deal.  Basically all I had to do was print out the quote and take it to the store and they honor the price which is lower than what you would get quoted walking in the door.  Oh, and the Yokohoma tires are actually made in the USA believe it or not, another nice perk.

Anyway I took the Camry in and a little over an hour later I was ready to go.  The new tires quiet and hopefully will last us well after the odometer flips over to 6 digits.  The best part of all was it only cost us $68 out of pocket thanks to our appliance rebate.  I handed over the American Express gift card to pay for most of it, sweet!

Yesterday at the gym I officially started my triathlon training by hitting the treadmill.  Two weeks ago I tried running on the treadmill and failed pretty miserably, having to stop at mile 2 of a planned 3 mile session.  Well unfortunately yesterday didn’t go any better.

The plan was 3 miles at an 8:34 pace.  This had been my standard base run for awhile.  Well once again I struggled.  About a mile in I slowed down the treadmill to a 9:13 pace and still stopped at the two mile mark.  The only difference was I walked a 1/4 mile and then ran the third mile at the slower 9:13 pace.

Generally, I am pretty mentally tough when it comes to accomplishing my pre-workout goals.  To not be able to do that during my last two running sessions is very odd for me.  At least I did run 3 miles total and at least I don’t feel like I am physically drained the next day like last time.  I am hoping it is just the end result of minimal running over the last few months.  Over the weekend I want to get a biking session in with Ali as well as some swimming.

Last night I stood in for Ali at the running club board meeting.  I actually had something to say at this meeting.

We have been chip timing races for the club for over two years.  We also have had an issue with the registration process not morphing along with the electronic timing change.  There has been resistance in the club to making significant changes to the way we register runners.

As a timer, I want as many people as possible to sign up early and to do so electronically.  Unfortunately the club hasn’t done much to encourage that.  Many of our races allow/encourage late registration by charging a runner the same entry fee if they sign up the day before a race versus a month before.  Also the only way these last minute people are allowed to sign up is on paper.

This creates a big hassle for Ali and I.  Race after race we have to make a 45 mile round trip the night before a race to pick up all of the last minute paper registrations.  Then we spend a good chunk of that evening punching them in by hand, trying to do our best with what is often illegible and/or incomplete forms.

Ali and I have complained about this forever.  Well last night I handed out a paper that broke down our fee structure for various races as well as what I thought was wrong and what we could do to address it.  For the most part my suggestions were supported except by a couple board members.  The discussion on both sides got a little heated as I expected.

In the end my point was made, now it’s just matter of seeing if the talk translates into action. The bottom line is Ali and are the ones that have been dealing with all of the hassle that these antiquated policies have presented.  I have no plans on dealing with it indefinitely.

I received my replacement spindle for the mower deck yesterday.  Tonight I hope to install it and have the tractor back up and running in 100% mow ready condition.  We had a nice surprise when we got home last night.  The new neighbor’s boyfriend was out mowing the front of our yard on his new John Deere.  It was totally dark and he was mowing via tractor headlights.  I thanked him for his generosity.  Ali had mowed their yard which was a jungle when they first moved in so he was repaying the favor.

Ali and I are both glad that we have decent folk next door again.

Last night I watched King Corn which was in my Netflix queue.  My uncle recommended I watch it after I saw Food Inc.

King Corn is about two young guys that rent an acre of farm land in Iowa to grow corn.  They wanted to explore what was involved in growing corn and what happened to that corn once it was harvested.

The film does a good job of documenting the advent of the corn explosion in the US which started somewhere around 1973.  That was when the US government reversed their position on farming.  Instead of paying farmers to NOT grow certain crops to maintain prices they turned 180 degrees and decided to encourage farmers to grow as much as possible, specifically corn.

The combination of the government paying farmers to produce corn and the insatiable appetite of an always growing population has pushed corn production to insane levels.  A good harvest out of an acre of corn used to be 40 bushels.  Now farmers can squeeze as much as 200 bushels of corn out of that same acre.

Increasing the yield in corn has a whole lot to do with science, pesticides, heavy machinery and chemicals.  They spray the fields with an ammonia based fertilizer.  They kill weeds with herbicides.  The corn that is sown has been engineered to be able to resist this particular herbicide.

The huge farm equipment makes tending massive corn fields relatively easy.  In the film they were able to sow 31,000 seed in their 1 acre plot in 18 minutes.

The government subsidies to farmers for corn keeps the price of corn extremely cheap.  Often corn is sold for less than it costs to produce.  Even with selling their product at a loss farmers make money soley because of the government kickback.

The advent of dirt cheap corn set off a chain event of “progress” that is the origin of most of the food evils of modern day.  Corn syrup became a sugar replacement and a much less expensive one at that.  As a result corn based sweeteners are in almost all processed foods on a grocery shelf.

Corn also is the primary source of food for our meat supply.  Cattle in feed lots are fed a diet that is is mostly corn despite them being natural grass eaters.  The corn actually damages their digestive system.  In order to combat this damage cattle are regularly given anti-biotics that wind up in the meat we all eat.

Again, it’s all about money.  Feeding animals corn based products fattens them up quicker, meaning a faster turnover to the meat plants, which means more money.

The corn based sweeteners have all sorts of negative effects on a human beings metabolism.  It is no coincidence that the percentage of obese people in the United States has sky rocketed since the advent of cheap corn.  There is a direct correlation.

I enjoyed the movie, despite it’s eye opening, discouraging viewpoint on the American food system.  There was no light at the end of the tunnel.  We have been set down the tracks of a runaway cheap food train with no brakes.  The push for cheaper and more available food has created this monster.  Do you think big business will ever go back to the old ways because they were healthier for the American public? Fat chance.

Throw it in your Netflix queue, get educated.

Well I have been a triathlete in name only.  I am a registered member of Naples Area Triathletes.  I have run, biked and swam but never any combination of the three.  I guess that all is about to change.

Ali signed me up to do the Escape to Miami triathlon in late September. We will be doing the sprint tri which is a 1/4 mile swim in open water, 13 mile bike ride and finishes up with a 5k run. I am not very worried about the run and bike portion of the event although I have never done these back to back so I may be underestimating their difficulty when paired together.  The swim worries me.

I am admittedly a poor swimmer. I can swim pretty quickly over a short distance.  I never have swam anything long.  I haven’t even perfected the breathing technique.  When I swim I feel the need to totally lift my head out of the water to breathe.  If I try to simply turn it to the side I don’t feel like a get a good breath. Obviously I am going to need to work that out in the next couple months.

I am going to officially start my training with 3 miles on the treadmill today.  Hopefully it goes better than 2 weeks ago when my ass was kicked after two.

The tri will be a nice little challenge for me.  The biggest factor is my body and specifically my knees holding up to the training.

I have been working through the 1984 version of V.  It’s getting sort of hard to continue.  The cheesy acting, ridiculous fight scenes and Fisher Price special effects are silly at first but get rather annoying after awhile.  There are a few characters that really stand out on the show.

The head V bad guy is Diana. They dress her up in these white and red body suits.  From the waist up Diana is pretty hot for 1984.  However her ass, hips and legs are HUGE.  When you look at her profile pics she is always angled in such a way to hide it but in the show it is all on display to see.  It’s humongous.

She does a pretty decent job playing a bad guy.  Compared to some of the acting performances on the show hers is probably one of the best.

Michael Ironside is on the show as  a “good” guy.  He actually is a bad guy that winds up on the good side due to a common enemy, the visitors.  You might not know the name but you would know his face for sure.  He has been on tv for years and pretty much exclusively as a villain.  He just has the face for it.

Donovan is the worst actor in the series hands down.  He is so overly dramatic you can’t help but laugh at him.  He also happens to be ripped to shreds, in incredible shape for 1984.  Maybe he was making up for a lack of acting ability.  I know he has been in various roles over the years but I couldn’t name a single one.

He has this weird thing going on.  In almost every fight scene he magically has a pair of beat up leather construction gloves on.  I don’t know if the gloves had magical V beat down powers but they seem to show up on every episode.

His acting is so bad, it has to be witnessed to be fully appreciated.

Like I said, the show is sort of dragging for me.  I think I have something like a dozen episodes to go.  I’m not sure I can make it. Unlike Lost, where 5 seasons went down like a case of Zima, 1984 V is being forced down my throat while I am holding my nose.

I left work a little early on Friday for my trek across state to Jeremy and Mandy’s place in Boca Raton.  The truck was loaded down with my pressure washer, my extension ladder and a bunch of other stuff.  I had my tri-fold bed cover in the open position.  Well once I got up to highway speeds I noticed it was catching wind like a sail, despite the two clips that are used to keep it closed.  I had scenarios in my head where the straps break and my cover goes flying off along I-75.

I had a couple 25 pound weight plates in the back of my truck which I was using to add weight to the front of the ladder.  I grabbed one of them and plopped it on top of the cover to keep it down.  The weight was enough to keep it down even at 75 mph.

Having the bed exposed with the pressure washer in the back definitely affected gas mileage, the gas gauge was dropping faster than normal.

Once again Jeremy ordered pizza for dinner per my request.  This time he got a large which was better suited for our hungry man appetites.  Plus we had a bunch of work ahead of us.

The reason I had the pressure washer and ladder along was to clean out the gutter area around Jeremy’s pool.  He had described the scope of work to me.  I believe he said at one point “I don’t think it will be too bad”  Haha, it wasn’t too good either.

It looked to me like whomever built the pool did some miscalculations with the gutter installation.  The gutter along the roof line is too low and too narrow to catch the water if there was a real heavy rain.  Their solution was a rig job.  They cut a gutter section apart and made a crude splash guard that attached to the outer edge of the gutter and laid on top of the pool cage.

Over the years this splash guard caused tons of organic material to get trapped underneath it, pinned between the guard and the pool cage.  It was this material that Jeremy initially wanted to get out.  Well once I got up onto the roof and looked around  the job scope got bigger.

The house has a terracotta roof.  There were a number of tiles that had some hairline cracks in them.  Navigating the roof required careful placement of your body weight.  I didn’t want to break a roof tile in the process.  Once I got up there I saw that the gutter itself was PACKED with sludge.  It had to get cleaned out.

There were some other issues that came to light once we got up high.  The gutters did not drain well.  They were not installed in a manner that routed water to the downspouts on either side.  To compound the issue the holes that were cut for the downspout were ridiculously small, making it very easy to clog them.

I warned Jeremy that blasting out the gutters was going to be a very messy job, there was going to be a LOT of junk flying everywhere, including into the pool.  He knew there was no away around that so he gave me the all clear.

The pressure washer did a nice job of blowing the junk out but with the splash guard contraption in place it was blowing a lot of the junk on top of the screening where it would eventually just find it’s way trapped under the guard.  I suggested to Jeremy that we just remove the guards, they were only held in place by a few screws.  I told him removing the guards would mean that during a hard rain some rain will drop in the pool off the roof but I thought it was the lesser of two evils compared to having a clogged gutter with junk lodged under the splash guard. Jeremy took my advice, I removed the guards.

Once the guards were off I resumed cleaning the gutters.  The power washer had pushed the solids all towards the one end.  I decided I would just scoop the gunk out with my hand to minimize how much gunk would get blown onto the cage.  After getting most of the organic material out I resumed using the pressure washer to get out the residue.

In addition to the gunk in the gutters issue there were a few spots around the pool cage where the spline had pulled out.  I did my best to get it all back in place.  There were a few spots that were along the roof line, these were very challenging.

Jeremy’s house has a VERY high roof.  As a result it also has a very steep pitch.  In order to re-spline the screen I had to lay spread eagle with my head pointing downward.  I wanted to maximize the surface contact my body had with the roof to minimize my chance to slide off and drop through the pool cage.  It was a very delicate and awkward procedure but I was able to manage.

Jeremy and I worked into total darkness on the area.  By the time we were done the pool cage looked much better.  The same couldn’t be said of the pool that had a layer of crud in it, something the pool vacuum took care of.

Jeremy and I returned inside both wet and dirty but proud of the end result of our labor.  Before we got too comfortable Jeremy reminded me there was another furniture moving project yet, woops I forgot.

I brought over my furniture sliders for this project and they helped a ton.  We moved an old two piece china cabinet that was very heavy.  The sliders made the job much more manageable, especially once we got onto the tile in the main living area.

Finally the work was done and we could relax a bit.  Mandy made a really tasty blueberry sorbet that we all enjoyed.  Before I hopped in the shower Jeremy took a few minutes to introduce me to the world of hardcore online poker.

Jeremy is a VERY good poker player.  I have screwed around with Texas Hold Em enough to know the basic rules but I am a complete novice.  In a few seconds Jeremy was playing online at 5 tables simultaneously.  As he deftly jumped from table to table making instant decisions about the various games he explained some of the minutia about what he was doing.  It was enough to make my head spin.

The scariest thing of all is he said that at times he can be playing as many as 20 tables at once.  It just seemed beyond comprehension to me, not to mention mentally exhausting.  During the quick session Jeremy made an easy $40 preying on some “fish”.  He explained to me that a FISH is a player that has a big wad of chips and poor playing skills.  Taking his money is like going fishing.  A “donkey” is another player with equally poor skills and a small chip stack.

I was pretty beat.  I took a shower to wash the grime off and hit the sack.

Saturday I had my alarm set for 6AM.  I inadvertently woke up Jeremy when I was out on the lanai inspecting our handy work in the daylight.  The tournament was only 15-20 minutes from Jeremy’s place so even with leaving at 7:40 we still got on site on time.

We checked in and found our spot on the beach.  We saw Randall coming down the beach towards us after we got situated.  Randall decided to play in the tournament last minute.  Earlier in the week I told him I was playing with Jeremy.  He seemed disinterested at the time and said maybe he would swing by and take a few pics.

Well somehow that plan changed last minute.  Randall grabbed Tabby, a solid A player to play with him.  He followed up with a Facebook onslaught of trash talk that I mostly avoided intentionally as I knew that would annoy him more than anything I could say. I did however make some provisions the day before.

When I grabbed groceries for the tournament I also picked up a sympathy card.  Jeremy and I signed the card Friday night and sealed it.  The plan was if we planned Randall and beat him we would give him the card, a great jab in the ribs. Anyway we greeted Randall in a warm and friendly manner with no hint of our desire to beat him, badly.

Jeremy and I had only played in a tournament once before several years ago with limited success.  He had not played a single beach tournament in 2010.  My recent track record at tournaments had been nothing short of pathetic so needless to say I did not have very high expectations.

I also agreed to do something I never do on the volleyball court, play the right side.  I have pretty much always played the left side in doubles, it just feels natural for me.  Well Jeremy really dislikes playing the right so I said I would play it.  I figured I couldn’t do any worse, why not try it?

Our first match was against two young guys, one graduated high school a couple years ago, the other graduated this year.  They both played on the same high school volleyball team.  One was the outside hitter and the other the setter.

They were good at controlling the ball.  Jeremy and I struggled a bit, making a number of unforced errors.  The kids beat us pretty easily 25-16.  Oh well, here we go again.

We only had a 4 team net.  If we wanted any chance of making the playoffs we HAD to win our next match.  We were playing two older guys, probably in my age range.  I reffed their first match, both guys seemed solid but not spectacular.

We played better against these guys and got up to pretty large lead midway through the game.  However then we started to struggle a bit.  You could feel the tension level start to ratchet up as our lead kept dwindling. At one point our 7-8 point lead was trimmed to 2 or 3.

Up until this point in the tournament my hitting was poor once again.  My timing was bad, I wasn’t hitting with any sort of authority and I was just struggling.  Well on the last point of the second game I hit a ball hard on a set that was in the middle.  It actually felt good. That hit was a turning point for me.

In my normal beach hit I would typically pass the ball (hopefully well) and then angle my approach to the net in a left to right manner.  I typically liked my sets on the inside so I would need to angle pretty significantly to get to the set. Well that causes problems.

First of all you are playing on the beach where there is wind, sometimes significant wind.  Often the set will get blown around.  If you start your approach thinking the ball is going to be in one spot and it suddenly winds up a couple feet in another direction you have to basically stop your approach and start it again.  Well I am too old/ too slow to do that effectively.  I also NEED an approach to get a good swing at the ball.  I can’t just stand in place, jump up and expect to get anything on a hit.

Well that last hit in the second match I started in the middle of the court and approached the hit more or less straight instead of at an angle.  Doing this helped me several ways.  It was much easier to drift a little right or a little left to hit as opposed to having to stop and change directions abruptly.  It also kept the ball in clear view, out in front of me making hitting much easier.  The rest of the day my hitting was much improved.

Our third match was against a team of two fish that had no business being on the court.  We stomped them 25-7 without really trying. So we had made the playoffs, a nice feather in our caps.

Once the other BB nets finished up (3 of them) the playoff seeds were set.  Our first match was against Randall and Tabby!  Randall had an up and down day with some spots of both good play and bad but they got off their net as the second team.  We were the second team on our net as well.

This match was our Super Bowl, Jeremy and I wanted to win badly. We had visions of just how perfect it would be to hand Randall the sympathy card afterwards, now all we had to do was win.

Early on the match was pretty back and forth with both teams siding out.  About midway in Jeremy and strung a bunch of points together and opened up a sizeable lead.  When we were sitting at 19-11 (game to 21) we pretty much knew we had the victory locked up.  The final score was 21-13.

Jeremy and I kept our celebration mild.  We were both proud to have won convincingly, especially with the added pressure of having the sympathy card waiting in the bag.  Once we made our way back to the tent we handed Randall the card.

He was like “WTF?”  he opens his sympathy card and had no choice but to laugh, it was damn funny.  It’s something he wished he thought of himself no doubt.   He was good natured enough about the loss although I know he wanted to win as badly as we did.  We tried to not rub it in too hard.

Even though the victory over Randall was all we really could ask for, we had more volleyball to play.  Our semi-finals match was against another pair of skilled indoor players.  Jeremy and I really played consistently that game and took care of them rather easily, paving our path to the finals.

If you would have told me that we would be playing in the finals on Saturday I would have asked if I could smoke some of what you were smoking, yet there we were.

Ironically we were playing in the finals against the only team that beat us, the young guys from our net.  They managed to carve through their playoff opponents to set up the rematch.

Randall was in good enough spirits to offer to tape our finals match which was nice.  The finals unfortunately didn’t go all that well.  Jeremy and I didn’t play bad but the kids played better.  They dinked the hell out of us placing balls deep if we were short and short if we were deep with great precision.  They were both very fast so it was not easy scoring points, they chased down a lot of balls. We wound up losing in the finals 21-14.

Despite the loss I was still in very good spirits.  How could I not be?  The day went much better than I had hoped.  After collecting our 2nd place prizes, a t-shirt and sand socks, we headed back to the tent where Randall conducted a post game interview.  As is the norm in our videos, the commentary was more entertaining than the action.

Eventually we packed up, said our goodbyes to Randall and headed back to Jeremy’s place.  I was anxious to get back on the road and back home.  I thanked Jeremy and  Mandy for their hospitality and said goodbye to heir adorable little boy Connor.  I was back in my driveway in about two hours.

I told Ali of our adventures, she was proud that we did so well.  She had been very busy herself all day, doing lots of stuff around the house to minimize what I would need to do on Sunday which I greatly appreciated.  As I did a physical inventory while washing the sandy grit off in the shower I realized I came out of the event basically unscarred.  Besides normal soreness my problem areas like the knees and shoulder felt fine, that’s awesome.  I was also very glad that the off and on lethargy I had been feeling did not creep into my body at all during the previous 24 hours.

Sunday morning the first thing I did was rip off the volleyball video and dump it to youtube. I knew Jeremy and others would be anxious to see it.  After that I decided to do some tractor work.  I was excited to see that all of the parts I ordered for it showed up on Saturday. I had grand ideas of getting everything installed and being able to actually mow grass later in the day.

So I first started with putting the new mower deck together.  I opened up one of the spindles.  I immediately noticed that the spindle did not have the dust caps installed over the bearings, instead they were just laying in the bag.  I opened the other spindle and that one had the dust caps installed correctly. Grrrr.

Well my fears were confirmed once I installed the spindles.  The one that was sans dust caps had a much higher friction level than the other one.  Presumably the lack of dust caps allowed the bearings to dry out while it sat in storage for who knows how long, great……  Well I could either hope this doesn’t present a problem or once again contact the place I got it and send it back.  I opted for the latter.  If I am going to spend all of this money and time on the tractor I want the parts to be in good working condition.

I installed whatever else I could on the deck until I moved to part two, replacing the transmission belt.  I was already frustrated enough by the spindle problem.  In retrospect my level of frustration was about to increase tenfold.

I have replaced many belts. Mower belts and most recently van serpentine belts are on the list.  Well the transmission belt on a Cub Cadet took things to a new level.  I looked up the procedure in the owners manual and immediately dismissed it.  First the manual said I needed an air/impact wrench.  I have a compressor and an impact wrench but I hardly use it.  The compressor I got off ebay seems pretty shitty.  I have had poor luck using it to do stuff like remove lug nuts.  I figured if it couldn’t do that it would be pretty useless in the tractor repair too.  I further dismissed the instructions when it talked about removing a battery tray that was supposedly under the seat.  My tractor has the battery in the engine compartment.

The transmission belt is in an extremely bad spot, tucked up tight to the body under a bunch of stuff.  I struggled mightily to gain access to the belt with no success.  I turned to the internet for assistance and found some advice that seemed extreme, unbolt the motor.  Not only did I unbolt the motor, I unbolted the muffler, a piece of the suspension and anything else I thought could possibly get me access to the damn belt.  I was so frustrated, I had wasted my entire morning f’ing around with the damn tractor.  Tools and various tractor parts were strewn about the floor  of the garage as a testament to my nightmare.

Then shortly before going inside to eat lunch I said f it, I might as well try my impact wrench.  I fired up the compressor, put my 5/8″  socket on and squeezed the trigger on the bolt holding the pulley on.  It popped right off!  Mother f I couldn’t believe it.  I had tried turning the bolt off with my socket but was unable to get it to break loose.  Evidently the quick and sudden force of an impact wrench was exactly what was needed. If I only tried that 3 hours ago.

After lunch I went back outside and was able to complete the belt install in short order although in retrospect I still would have needed to unbolt the motor.  I put everything back together and fired it up.  At first I panicked when I stepped on the pedal and nothing happened. I quickly realized I still had the tranny disengage lever pulled.  After I released it the tractor was once again moving under it’s own power.

I had Ali to come out to test the clutch that engages the PTO while I laid down and looked.  That worked correctly as well.  So at this point all I need is a spindle and I should be back in the mowing business.  I certainly have become well versed in advanced tractor maintenance in the process.

I was really burned out by the time all the tractor crap was over.  My weekend was quite full of energy expenditures already.  Despite this I found more to do.  Ali and I worked in the garden a bit.  We had to thin the corn which has come in fast and furious.  Instead of throwing out perfectly good plants we tried to transplant them to open spots in the garden to give them a chance to grow.  We also thinned out beets and onions.

We harvested our first ever watermelon from the garden. We may have harvested it a bit early but we were afraid that if we left it out much longer the bugs would destroy our prize. We have attempted to grow watermelons several times but never were successful.  Usually the bugs and/or excessive rain killed them.  We actually have three melons growing, hopefully we get to enjoy them all.

Another first is our blueberry harvest.  Again we have tried to grow them before unsuccessfully.  So far we have probably picked a couple dozen perfect blueberries.

Ali has been on a roll lately with cooking.  When I got back Saturday night she made a really good Boboli pizza.  It tasted great and was healthy as well with a wheat crust and a ton of vegetables.  On Sunday she made a real tasty dish with potatoes, egg and more vegetables.

I got to do my first full run with the recently repaired Scooba.  My repair held up just fine.  Replacing the cleaning module and squeegees made a dramatic difference in the amount of the water it siphoned up.  I dumped much more than normal out of the dirty water tank.

Bed felt good last night, it was a tough but satisfying weekend.

Last night on the way home my first stop was at UPS.  They had tried to deliver some .5 pound, signature required thing for a couple days.  I had no idea what it was.  When I looked it up I saw it was coming from California which didn’t ring a bell either.  When I got to the counter and handed the slip over the woman went back to grab it.  She came back with a UPS Express envelope.  She said “oh there are a lot of people getting these today”  Puzzled, I asked what it was.

“Your appliance rebate”, she says. Oh wow, I almost forgot that was still in the pipeline.   The woman then went into a bizarre story about how she received a rebate as well.  The bizarre part was she didn’t buy any appliances.  Evidently her sister fraudulently filed a claim for a rebate using bogus information and used her sisters name.  Wow, I wonder how many people pulled the same stunt.  Whenever there is a government handout you can bet your last dollar that people will be scamming it, sad.

I opened up my envelope and pulled out my preloaded American Express card for $344 and some odd cents.  Instead of giving you a check that you could put in the bank the refund came in the form of these cards that you HAVE to spend, an interesting way to put more money back into the economy.

When I got home I had a bunch of stuff to get ready since I was leaving right from work to head to Jeremy’s place on Friday.  I loaded up my pressure washer, extension ladder and a number of other things into the back of the truck.  Jeremy has another project he asked for some help with.  Last time I was there I helped him hang up some gymnast rings in his garage.  Most people would be put off to be asked to do home maintenance after driving across the state.  I happen to not mind at all.  In fact, I prefer having something to do.  Everyone knows that sitting around making small talk is very low on my list of things I enjoy doing.

Once I got all of my stuff together for the trip ( a lot of stuff)  I turned my attention to the Scooba.  The replacement solution valve I ordered showed up in the mail. I wanted to get it fixed asap since I was going to be gone half the weekend.  I would be hard pressed to find time to do it otherwise.

I have torn apart many Roombas but never my Scooba which has been more or less trouble free for the 3+ years I have owned it. I had a surprisingly hard time finding a tear down reference for it but eventually I did find a site that had some basic disassembly procedures.  The process is documented in my prior entry.  I made it a stand alone entry so it would be available as a reference for others that run into the same issue.

No need to rehash it but the repair was a success.  I need to grab some new wheels and a vacuum port for the Scooba.  After that it hopefully should be ready to give me another couple years of floor scrubbing goodness.

Tomorrow Jeremy and I will be playing in our second tournament as partners.  The last time we played was 3 or 4 years ago and it wasn’t all that successful.  Needless to say coming out of my previously announced retirement from volleyball may be ill advised considering my recent history on the court.  On top of that I still am suffering from an energy deficit and Jeremy somehow developed instant planar fascititis  after walking around the house in high heels.

If we make the playoffs it will be a HUGE accomplishment.  Regardless of the outcome I think we will manage to have a good time.

A week or so ago I was getting my Scooba ready for it’s weekly cleaning run.  I attached my primer bulb to the solution valve and heard a CRACK.  Damn it, it broke off.  Well I hoped it would still run but I was not so lucky.  The Scooba would not start.

I did a little looking on the internet and was surprised there wasn’t a whole bunch of info regarding a broken solution valve and/or how to replace it.

Well I found a place that sold a replacement valve for around 30 bucks. However they didn’t have any replacement instructions.

Eventually I found a basic disassembly guide for one of the older versions of the Scooba, luckily the procedure is pretty much the same for the 380.

I have ripped MANY Roombas apart and replaced various components on them successfully.  Doing so gave me confidence that I could handle a Scooba repair as well.

Getting the Scooba apart was a bit of a challenge since it was my first time but it wasn’t hard.  After maybe 20 minutes I had it separated into two halves, allowing me access to the valve.

The replacement solution valve is actually an assembly that includes the valve, a clear plastic tube that runs to a manifold and a wire and connector that plugs into the logic board.  Since the Scooba is an electronic device that deals with liquid the system board is tucked away under a rubbery plastic cover that has to be removed.

Removing the old valve involves pulling the clear plastic tubing from the manifold and then carefully moving wires around so you remove the connector to the logic board which snakes around the perimeter.

Once the old piece is out installing the new one is pretty straightforward.  If you have a hard time remembering things like I do, you may want to take some pictures of the Scooba as you are taking it apart to assist you when it comes to putting it back together.  There were a couple spots last night when I referred to the pictures I took, it helped.

When routing the new wire and pushing the existing wire back, make sure you are careful.  A pinched wire could result in a dead Scooba.

After putting everything back together I dumped some water in the unit, primed the new valve and held my breath as I hit the power button. The robot started right up and started scrubbing away.

While I was working on it I replaced the brush module and squeegees since they had never been touched in the 3 years + old model. I need to get replacement tires as well as the vacuum port.  Both are very worn.

I was pleased that I was able to get my Scooba back in business for $30 and a bit of elbow grease.  If you would like to see all of the pictures I took during the process you can view them here.