On Friday I left work early to head over to Jeremy’s place. Unlike when Jeremy visits me where I can assume he will arrive 2 hours later than he tells me, I like to more or less be on time. I was about 20 minutes later than my predicted 5 pm arrival time due to a coffee stop and having to pull over on the alley to tighten down the bed cover on the truck.
I was greeted by the Rodger’s clan, including Ainsley whom is much bigger than when I saw her last as a newborn. The plan was for Jeremy and I to go over to the beautiful park right down their street with Connor for a bit before we would score pizza for dinner.
I told Jeremy that I wasn’t interested in any physical challenges this time around since we had the volleyball tournament on Saturday. The last thing I needed was to hurt myself doing something dumb.
Well it didn’t take long for Jeremy to throw out a challenge anyway. He wanted to see who could touch the basketball rim. He has bragged that his power lifting routine has helped his vertical leap. Jeremy went first. He took a few steps and missed the rim but lied and said he touched it. He did manage to graze the rim on a subsequent attempt.
I really didn’t want to try it since I was still in my clothes from work and my muscles were stone cold and stiff from the two hour drive across the alley. Despite my better judgement I emptied my pockets, took a couple steps and easily grabbed the rim. However as I reached up with my right arm I heard a loud crack in my neck which followed with some substantial pain when I landed. Great, I cranked my neck.
It was ironic that the one thing I wanted to avoid happened within the first few minutes of my visit. I spent a good portion of the rest of the evening trying to loosen up my neck, it was very stiff.
We hung out at the park for awhile. They have some nice bar set ups there. I showed Jeremy my assisted muscle ups on several different bars. Jeremy tried to do them later and didn’t even get close to pulling one off.
After we got back from the park we went out to get get groceries for the tournament and pizza for dinner. Jeremy paid for the large pizza which was nice of him. After the pizza I had a couple of these chocolate cookies that Mandy made. They were fantastic.
We stayed up a little later than I would have preferred playing some games on my old Xbox which I donated to Jeremy since I couldn’t sell it on Craigslist. He dominated me in Marvel vs Capcom. I took him apart in NFL Blitz.
My sleeping arrangements were in Ainsley’s room. I got to sleep in the bed she will use in a few years. I have slept in this bed a few times now so I knew exactly how to make myself fit. I fell asleep pretty easily, I was tired.
I woke up early Saturday morning but I am not sure how early since my phone was on the other side of the room on the charger. I just laid there with my eyes closed, thinking I may get lucky and fall back asleep. I didn’t.
Although I had my traditional weekend breakfast of Pop-Tarts, Jeremy made extra scrambled eggs for me. His frying pan was overflowing with them. They weren’t half bad.
We left for the beach about 7:40, a little later than we hoped since check in was supposed to end at 8 am. Luckily Jeremy lives close to Deerfield Beach, we got there right about 8am. I laughed when I saw the registration tent was nearly deserted, hardly anybody was even there yet.
We got our junk and shelter set up on the beach. As we were waiting the gray clouds overhead started to sprinkle. Before long the sprinkle turned into a deluge. There was a big crowd on the beach participating in some event by the water. The rain sent most of them scrambling. Jeremy and I just camped under the tent and watched the humanity scurry from the rain.
Jeremy and I laughed at one group of people. If you look closely in the center of the picture you will see them. It was a group of 4 or 5 people that were huddled under a tiny umbrella that barely covered their heads. Instead of heading for cover they decided it made more sense to stand out in the rain while their bodies were soaked. They stood like that for around 10-15 minutes. It was funny.
The rain continued off and on for quite awhile, close to an hour I would estimate, delaying the start of the tournament.
When the rain let up Randall found his way over to our tent. I hadn’t seen Randall since late January. He has since reported to me his weight loss which is around 15 pounds. He looked good, clearly the lightest since I have known him.
Due to the light attendance, Jeremy and I found out they lumped the A and BB level players together, not a great thing for us considering the other three teams in our pool were A teams. Randall, who signed up to play A, seemed to luck out and have the net with more BB teams on it.
Our net had some of my least favorite combinations on it. There were the young guys that not only had on matching shorts and hats, they were coordinated colors. Then we also had a co-ed team playing in the men’s division, something else that normally bugs the shit out of me.
We ref’d the first match and immediately had a feeling we were in trouble. Both of the teams looked very solid, making very few unforced errors.
Our first match was against the co-ed team. I felt very rusty early on and Jeremy obviously was as well. We made a ton of early mistakes, mostly the serving and passing variety which allowed the co-ed team to get a decent lead early. Later in the game we made a run that got us close. I finally decided to actually try to serve at the girl which is “How to play a co-ed team in a men’s division” strategy 101.
I also realized before the match that I recognized the male part of the co-ed team, it was Bee Sting. Bee Sting is a guy Rich and I played during our first ever tournament in Florida back in 2000/2001. We nick named him that because of a face thing he has going on that sort of looks like he had an allergic reaction to bee sting. I had not seen the guy since that day. I thought it was funny I would run into him a decade later, on a co-ed team no less.
Well anyway we wound up losing a close game to the co-ed team, which both Jeremy and I thought was our best chance of winning on the net. It was a down way to start the day.
Our next match was against the coordinated outfit kids whom appeared to be the best team on our net. They were quick, took care of the ball and were smart with their shot placement. We had a very tight game with them up until the late teens where again we ran into a string of unforced errors where they served Jeremy again and again and we couldn’t side out. It was frustrating.
Despite losing our first two games, we still had a chance to make the playoffs if we won our last game. Again we were ahead/close for a portion of the game but then had an utter implosion of bad play at the end which resulted in our worst loss of the day. When the last slide occurred I just wanted to get off the court, it wasn’t fun in the least.
Surprisingly, Randall and Tabby were struggling on their net, despite having what appeared to be easier competition. They lost 3 of their 4 matches, which included losing to a team with a pot bellied 70 year old. I really wish I would have had a chance to see how that happened. Their only win came against a couple picnic ballers in their last match.
We had scheduled to play Randall in his grudge match. It was talked up endlessly during the week by Randall. It was the last thing I felt like doing after the poor performance we had just put in. Plus there was a shortage of nets to play on since some guys inserted themselves into the only spare net to play a pick up game.
So after Jeremy and I sat around for about an hour, we decided to quickly jam a game in between the end of pool play and playoffs. We ran onto the court with no warm up and started playing. It was another ugly performance that got uglier as time went on. I had checked out of the match mentally shortly after it began. I just saw the same things happening again and again. I was much more interested in the match being over than the end result which was a 21-12 loss.
I congratulated Randall on earning his revenge. I was very complimentary in defeat, not offering up any excuses for losing although I certainly had a number I could have picked from. Randall did not gloat much on the beach, he waited until he signed on to Facebook to do most of that.
Jeremy knew I had no interest in sticking around (see tip 266 ) after the day of frustration and we didn’t waste much time packing up and leaving. Ironically, Randall’s partner asked me if I wanted to play with him on an upcoming west coast event.
There were many issues throughout the day that gave us problems. On my side, my timing was all sorts of f’d up from not playing much at all. My passing and serving, especially early on were not good. I had a hilariously bad play when I misjudged a sky high, wind blown, ball badly. I jumped, landed, swung and missed, falling on my ass like a stooge afterward. At least it was good for some laughs for the spectators.
Plus when I play with Jeremy he wants to play my natural left side so I play the right, which I just don’t like at all. It eliminates my hard angle shot that used to be my bread and butter as well as making everything else feel like I am doing it in a mirror.
Jeremy seemed like his additional girth/muscle mass from power lifting has stolen a step or two from his game. I was yelling at him to MOVE often throughout the day. He hardly had any sand on him, I don’t know if he dove once defensively. I on the other hand was down on my belly routinely. He just seemed very slow to react. When I am the guy scrambling on a doubles team it normally isn’t going to go well.
In the big picture I realize that for me to have any expectations about either of our level of play is pretty ludicrous. I mean if you don’t ever play, how can you expect to keep any sort of edge on your skills? Of course that didn’t matter to Randall in the least, he got what he wanted, even if it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
On the drive back to Jeremy’s place we didn’t talk much about the tournament. There really wasn’t much I wanted to say about it except I was glad it was over.
When we got back I woofed down a left over piece of pizza before I piled in the truck to drive home. I thanked Jeremy and Mandy for their hospitality. Despite the poor volleyball performance, it was nice to see them and their kids.
The one good thing about not making the playoffs was I actually got home in time to have dinner with Ali. I told her that a meal of baked beans, mac n cheese and a fake chicken patty sounded good. We enjoyed our dinner while watching Tivo. While we watched Tvio I wheeled my Dawes into the great room. I wanted to work on swapping out the wheels since the replacements I bought on Ebay arrived Friday.
My plan was to move the tires, tubes and rear wheel gear cassette over to the new wheels, shouldn’t be a big deal.
I started with the rear wheel first since I knew that would take longer. It didn’t take long will I was on the internet looking for tips. Removing the gears wasn’t as simple as I hoped. It looked like normally a special socket is used to removed a Shimano cassette which I did not have. I eventually stumbled across a video that showed my a caveman way to do it.
Once I got the gears off I discovered another problem. They did not fit the free hub on the new wheel. Evidently the cheap wheels on the Dawes utilized a hub that is not widely used. I raised the white flag and stated I would have to resort to letting the bike shop help me out.
The best part of the volleyball tournament was that I emerged pretty unscathed physically other than a sore neck from rim touching. As a result Ali and I were able to still plan to hit the water park on Sunday. I didn’t want to push it with running but we agreed to do a bike/swim thing.
I had to get very creative with my truck loading skills as we had a total of 4 bikes along. My Trek, Ali’s new bike, Ali’s old bike to drop off with Christy and my disassembled Dawes jammed into the cab of the truck. Not only did I have to make it all fit but also position and secure the bikes in a way that they would not damage each other.
At first Ali wasn’t real keen on taking her tri bike out on a main road but I assured her that all she had to do was stay on her regular bars at first, it shouldn’t be any more difficult than riding her old bike this way.
Ali took a few laps around the water park parking lot to make sure she could clip in and out of her new pedals cleanly. After Ali felt ok with that we headed out. It was overcast and windy on the northern portion of our ride. I was working hard to maintain 17 mph. I assumed Ali would have been way back as I didn’t bother looking back very often. To my surprise, every time I sneaked a peek she was still close. Evidently she was utilizing the tri bars and found the position made a big difference.
Once we turned around and had the wind to our backs Ali said she was fine with me pushing the pace as much as I wanted to. I kept my speed up over 20 and again Ali was able to keep pace.
We were maybe a mile or so from the intersection at Immokalee Road when it happened. I was still ahead keeping a solid pace when I heard “Oh NO!” behind me. The words kind of go through me as I listen back to them in my mind. Those words were immediately followed by the sound of Ali hitting the road, hard. I stop on a dime and look back, Ali is in the middle of the right car lane, sobbing, trying to drag herself and her bike off to the side. I go running back towards her and tell her to wait so I can help her.
As I approached I can see Ali is a mess, she had bad road rash on her hand, her elbow and both knees, she also had a rip in her bike shirt. She got to the bike lane and just laid down as I got her bike out of the way. Quickly surveying her I didn’t think there was anything majorly wrong with her like broken bones.
A number of people stopped as Ali was sitting/laying there, I am sure it looked quite bad. Ali was upset and crying not only from the physical pain of her abrasions and bruising, but also from the idea of crashing her several day old bike. She also was freaking out because if a car with an asleep at the wheel driver would have happened to be beside her when it happened she could have literally been roadkill.
When she calmed down a bit I asked her what happened. Evidently she was down on the tri bars and she tried to wipe her nose, which was running, without first coming up onto the regular bars. That tiny little motion threw her off balance enough to start a swerve that quickly grew uncontrollable, resulting in the crash. She literally was all over the right vehicular lane.
I checked out her bike and other than some ripped up handle bar wrap and corner of an elbow pad I didn’t see any other issues. Ali originally asked if I just wanted to go get the truck and pick her up. I told her if she rode back it would be quicker than if I rode back and drove back.
She hopped on her bike and rode ahead of me slowly for a little bit before she pulled over in a turning lane and stopped, sobbing. She said she was just freaked out and asked if I could just go get the truck. I understood and pedaled back to the water park as fast as I could. When I got back to her she was walking her bike along the sidewalk. It was odd that two weeks in a row our rides concluded with someone getting picked up in the truck.
Of course the crash scuddled any further exercise plans. I told Ali we would get her home asap and get her cleaned up. She was upset the entire way home, freaked that she could have been killed and angry that something so simple as wiping your nose could result in such an outcome.
Ali hopped in the shower and endured the very painful process of cleaning brush burns. After the shower I had to administer additional pain by pouring hydrogen peroxide over the raw skin. I felt bad as Ali winced in pain. I helped apply the many bandages required to cover up all of the abrasions.
After we were done I told Ali to just chill out. She took a nap, the trauma from the crash had wiped her out .
I decided to work on installing the hitch I bought for the Camry. I bought it on Ebay earlier in the week. The hitch was supposed to require no drilling to install. The time estimate to complete the install was 45 minutes on the instructions. It didn’t take me 45 minutes.
Although the install did not require drilling, it did require more prep work than I anticipated like dropping the exhaust system and removing a fascia from the driver side of the car. It was hot and dirty work as I laid under the car in the warm and humid air. Working on the side with the muffler/exhaust was particularly annoying.
The hitch itself was well made and bolted to pre-existing mount points on the unibody. In total 8 bolts are supplied to hold it in place. I however only used 7. There was one hole around the exhaust that seemed damaged/stripped. I tried for 20 minutes to get the bolt to bite on the threads unsuccessfully before I called it as good enough.
I also had to trim a hunk of the fascia in order to get it reinstalled with the new hitch in place. Yes, the directions said I would have to do that.
The hitch felt rock solid when I was done. It was a sweaty two and half hours of work but I was pleased with the end result. I am looking forward to the hitch mount bike rack showing up later this week.
Later in the afternoon Ali said she was feeling ok enough for us to head to the bike shop. We decided to bring her bike along as well so they could make sure it was ok after hitting the road hard. We also arranged for Christy to meet us there so she could pick up Ali’s old road bike so I only had 3 bikes in the truck instead of 4 this time.
I carried the Dawes frame into the repair area while Ali carried the spare parts. We talked to a very nice guy named Eric. I explained to him how the spokes on my old wheels broke so I bought a new set but the old cassette was not compatible with the new wheels. I told him I was hoping they could put a compatible cassette on the new wheels and put everything back together.
The reason I avoided just going to the bike shop originally for this was cost. After all the Dawes is my back up bike, I certainly didn’t want/need to spend a lot of money on it. I was pleasantly surprised when the cost of the work which included a new cassette, two new tubes (needed longer stems because wheel is deeper) with labor was only $81 and he did it all on the spot. I left there quite pleased.
They also took a look at Ali’s bike. They said that something sounded/felt loose so they wanted to take a better look at it. We left her bike there. I will wind up picking it up today or tomorrow.
When we got home Ali said she didn’t feel like cooking, understandably. I called in a pick up order from the near by italian restaurant for a couple of subs. We enjoyed them while watching Knight and Day, the action flick with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. The film was mostly entertaining as long as you took the mindset that nothing that takes place is remotely believable, decent rental for sure. I’d give it a solid B.
I also jumped in our pool for the first time in 2011 to do some swimming. I wanted to see how many back and forth laps in the pool would roughly equal 400 meters. I did this based on time, figuring somewhere around 9 minutes would be about right with all of the turning. It worked out to be 24 up and back laps. Sure it is less than ideal to work on your swimming endurance in a smaller pool but it’s better than nothing. I think we will be buying one of those pool tethers that allow you to swim in place.
I have a sprint tri next weekend after all.
