Lucky 7’s, it counts, 20 by road 13 by swamp
I left work a little early Friday to attend to the myriad of pre-race items. Randall showed up around 6:30. Jeremy, whom originally said something about arriving around 5:30 showed up closer to 8 instead, as expected. We grabbed a couple pizza’s from the near by pizzeria and polished them off.
After I had all of the race prep done we had some time to crack the seal on Kinect Sports 2, a title I bought a couple weeks ago specifically for this weekend. This latest version of the game adds a number of different sports to the Kinect library with varying degrees of success.
Tennis was pretty fun and well executed. I think Randall and I just played singles matches against the computer, I don’t think we matched up head to head on that one. Randall played a couple games of darts and that seemed pretty realistic as well.
We then loaded up baseball, I took on Jeremy. I found the control in this game very awkward and dumb. Unlike Wii baseball where you at least have a controller to hold on to when swinging you are grabbing onto nothing in Kinect baseball, it’s not cool. The timing when hitting also makes little sense. If you swing when you actually would in real life you will be lucky to hit a ball just inside the opposite field foul line. Instead good hitting requires you to swing ridiculously early.
Pitching is equally dumb. Sure you can easily throw fastballs and curveballs but they all wind up at the same spot, right over the middle of the plate. (unless there is an additional control detail I don’t know about)
Fielding is the triple header of dumbness. Sometimes on a fly ball you have the opportunity to try to “catch” the ball. The mechanic for doing so is clunky at best. This opportunity seems totally random as there are times when a ball is hit right towards an outfielder yet you have no chance to catch the ball and the batter is awarded an automatic double. The game just has all sorts of suck in it.
Well despite it’s flaws, Jeremy adopted well to the dumb game play, handing me an embarrassing 22-5 shellacking. I redeemed myself somewhat with a come back victory over Randall in the next game. Even with the positive result it didn’t change my opinion on the game, it’s dumb.
We then fired up a 3 player, 3 hole golf game. I was not impressed with this either. There are some cool gee whiz features like being able to say which club you want to use. However when it came to actual game play the wheels kind of fell off. Again not having anything to hold while swinging your “club” really takes away from the realism. There also seemed to be a lack of control when it comes to directing your shot, other than the distance based on the club selected.
Despite only playing three holes the game seemed to take forever, thanks primarily to Randall. Before almost every shot Randall would do an aerial view of the the shot as well as take a few practice swings. In contrast Jeremy and I would just stand up in front of the tv and flail our arms, realizing quickly that what we do has very little effect on where the ball goes. I cared so little about the game that I couldn’t even tell you who won.
Finally Randall took me on in football. This game didn’t suck as much as baseball and golf but it certainly didn’t impress me overall. I won the game with a field goal as time expired. You can see my triumphant moment here.
By the end of the game it was after 11. Considering we planned to be out the door by 5AM we needed to get to sleep.
Jeremy got to be the beta tester for our new queen size inflatable bed. I was impressed with how easy the bed was to set up. It was up and ready to go in 5 minutes or less. Jeremy reported the comfort level of the bed wasn’t too bad at all, cool.
We took two vehicles Saturday morning. Ali left earlier than we did so she could get a head start on setting up the course. Randall, Jeremy and I piled into the party van a few minutes after 5 and headed out, stopping for a quick DD pitstop on the way.
When we got on site we got busy, there was already a bee hive of activity at 5:30 in the morning, a full two and a half hours before the race. Randall and Jeremy filled in where needed and I seemed to be bouncing between various things as required. Once daylight hit Jeremy put on his event photographer hat and got busy. Randall was stationed behind one of the laptops as the data entry guy. By the time the last day of race sign up was entered we had set a new race record with 777 participants, an awesome number.
I once again set up the start mats for this race. The layout of the event makes this a challenge because the start line is close to a half mile from the finish line. About 15 minutes prior to the start of the race I walked down to the start line to get everything ready. Once I was there I realized I forgot a very important thing, the laptop I use to capture the start times. I was glad I had given a walkie talkie to Randall who was back at the finish line, I asked him to bring the laptop to me. The race started a couple minutes after 8 AM as a result but it wasn’t a big deal.
The race timing went well. I didn’t have the issue with start times like I did at the half marathon. I put a cone on the left edge of the mats and stood there to provide an additional barrier, requiring runners to pass over the mats a bit further in.
It was great fun seeing the people finishing with their dogs, there were was an abundance of smiles everywhere.
Ali was in charge of running the awards ceremony and was on the mic. She does exceptionally well in this role consistently. Everybody seemed to be very happy with how the event turned out. Despite the largest crowd ever we didn’t see any major logistical snafus. This has been backed up with the post race survey results which have been overwhelmingly positive.
We had the race site pretty much all cleaned up a little after 10. We headed up to the Humane Society to look at the animals and for Jeremy to take some more pictures, something we have done for the last few years. For some odd reason, the Humane Society does not open up early on the day of this race so runners could tour the facility, instead they stick to their 11 am open time. I really don’t get that.
Well anyway, we had like 20 minutes until we were actually allowed inside so I told Ali we would do a “quick” DD run to the location on Pine Ridge. Well quick turned into 45 minutes thanks to traffic.
We had a good time looking at all the animals in the beautiful Humane Society facility. Ali spent the majority of the time interacting with an adorable black little puppy named Pistachio. Luckily for me Pistachio had an adoption pending. If I gave the ok I am pretty sure we would be adopting cute puppies annually if it was up to Ali.
We wound up not getting home until after noon, almost a full 8 hours after we left the house. Jeremy didn’t have much time before he had to head back to the east coast. I said something about doing burgers for lunch however I also had to get the race results processed and online. Jeremy was nice enough to offer to prepare the burgers since he has some pretty solid grilling skills.
He wound up preparing some really good burgers, better prepared than anything I ever grilled. Topping the burgers with fresh tomato and avocado made them even better.
Well Jeremy was just about at his departure time after lunch but we quickly went outside to my bar park. I had told Jeremy that I was going to show him how to do a muscle up. I hopped on the bar and did a few as an example. A few of them were really solid with next to no intermediate pause during the transition.
Jeremy then grabbed a hold of the bar, swung a few times and then kipped up, awkwardly managing to get the bar under both of his arm pits. He struggled to try to get to a position where he could press over the bar but couldn’t quite do it.
After I gave one more real world example of a muscle up Jeremy tried again. Once again he got his body suspended via his armpits. Again he struggled mightily to get all the way up. Somehow through a combination of leg flailing and repositioning his arms he eventually got all the way up and over the bar.
Despite the blatant ugliness of the attempt it fulfilled the most basic premise of a muscle up, getting from fully extended under the bar to on top of it without your feet touching anything. Going in I thought he had no shot to ever get on top of the bar in any manner. Kudos to him for pulling it off.
Before he left I dumped the content of his camera memory cards onto my system. He took something like 1300-1400 pictures of the event. I thanked him for coming over. It was too bad he couldn’t have stayed longer to join in the fun.
So once he left Ali and Randall hit the sack for a well deserved nap. I still had some gas in the tank so I completed the remaining post race clean up before I laid down myself briefly for maybe an hour or so.
Saturday night Ali suggested we take Randall to her new favorite restaurant, Sweet Tomatoes. Randall had never been to one. By the time we got there it was close to 7:30, after the time that the Q-tips will typically flock to eat. As a result the place wasn’t as full as I thought it may be on a Saturday night. We all enjoyed our meals and Randall gave it his stamp of approval, saying he will have to visit the location which is very close to his condo.
Randall and I, despite starting our day 2 hours before the crack of dawn decided to watch Cowboys and Aliens when we got home. Ali wasn’t interested in the movie and retired to the bedroom, she was exhausted even with her afternoon nap.
The movie was a disappointment, despite having Jon Faverau as director and Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford on the cast. When I saw the previews I thought it looked quite entertaining. I just never found myself very interested in what was going on. I’d have to give the film a B to B- unfortunately.
So we started off our Sunday with something I haven’t done in quite awhile, the DD 20 mile ride. We didn’t try to break any speed records but still averaged around 17 mph, which included a return trip that had a pretty decent headwind.
When we got back we made a recovery juice from items Randall brought with which included grapefruit, orange, pineapple, lemon and lime. The grapefruit taste was a bit strong for me but it wasn’t a bad mixture overall.
Ali had made arrangements to go use my mistaken Groupon purchase to see One for the Money with Christy. Randall and I had plans to do our second long bike ride of the day, this time using our mountain bikes to ride the 12-13 mile loop inside Bird Rookery Swamp. Randall had brought both his road bike and mountain bike for his visit.
My “mountain bike” is a bit of a joke. It is a roughly 25 year old Huffy that I bought prior to my first marriage. I have had this thing FOREVER. The bike is in pretty poor shape as you can imagine. The original tires are still on the bike. The sidewalls are filled with cracks due to their age. The shifter for the front gears is seized and no longer works. The brakes are also horrible, I don’t think I would be able to stop if I was rolling down a hill. I was skeptical if the bike would even survive the ride. Well I put air in both of the totally flat tires and didn’t notice any immediate leak so that was a good start I guess.
We packed water and a couple sandwiches for the ride and threw them in the backpack I strapped on. I brought a long my newly received Camileo full HD video recorder I just received on Saturday. It also supposedly had the ability to take 5 megapixel stills.
The ride to the swamp was close to 3 miles from our house. Biking on the mountain bike feels eons different from a road bike. The upright position, fat tires, heavy frame and slower speeds make for quite a different experience. You are working much harder to maintain much less speed.
When we arrived at the parking lot there were a few cars parked there, maybe 4 or 5. There was a small group of people there with bikes whom we found out were on their way out. They said they took the bikes in a way but found the terrain a bit too challenging and headed back. Of course the woman telling us this looked like she had an easy 75 pounds she could lose.
The woman did clue us in to a group of baby gators maybe 50 yards from the parking lot on the left. There were at least 10-15 of them in a small area of water. This was the first of what turned out to be an incredible amount of gator sightings for the ride.
As we headed out the trail we were having very few issues with traversing the terrain, it wasn’t very tough at all. I was surprised how quickly landmarks came up via bike compared to the pace we set when walking with the dogs. We got to our picnic table lunch stop in no time at all.
Once we got out to the big 11 mile loop portion of the trail we started to see gators by the dozen, they were everywhere. Winter must be gator spawning season because we saw clumps of baby gators all over the place. You never saw just one. The cutest sighting was when we saw three or four baby gators laying on the back of what I assume was their mother.
As we got further back into the loop we saw something large on the right edge of the trail. We soon realized it was a gator, a very large one, that was just laying there hanging out. This thing looked quite impressive. Randall and I were not quite sure how it would react as we passed it so after taking a few pictures we hopped on our bikes and pedaled quickly by. It didn’t flinch one bit as we passed by no more than 10-15 feet away from it’s tail. Wow, that was pretty damn cool.
It turned out that gators on the trail is evidently a pretty common occurrence as we passed by a number of them, just none quite as big as the first guy. A few of them scampered into the water as we approached but for the most part they just laid there and watched us pass by, still as a statue.
At first I was stopping and taking pictures of every gator we saw. Eventually we saw so many it was old hat so I only took pictures in special circumstances. I was pissed when later reviewing the pics to see the only way the Camileo takes decent pictures is if you use it in it’s unzoomed state. The zoom is a purely digital so you lose all resolution if you try to zoom in to the full advertised 10x amount. I would have gotten much better pics with my Iphone.
So about half way into the loop Randall and I started to wonder why we decided to do the entire thing. Although the terrain was not brutal by mountain bike standards it was still off road riding which requires more effort than casual sidewalk cruising. In addition to that we were doing the ride in pretty much the lowest gear on the bikes meaning you are cranking revolutions like mad.
Randall’s mountain bike has a hard seat, not meant for long amounts of sitting. His ass was killing him during the second half of the ride, despite the full suspension his mountain bike employs. The one thing my old shitty bike had going for it was a bigger padded seat. Even so, I was quite uncomfortable during the latter stages of the ride as well.
As we hit the last portion of the loop Randall and I were much more focused in just getting done than looking around. Unfortunately the last part of the loop also had some of the more annoying terrain with soft, wet, rutty ground that required more pedaling effort. The loop is actually more of a square with four long, straight as an arrow sides. Seeing an endless straight line yet to traverse contributed to our mental fatigue at that point.
For the vast majority of the ride we did not encounter any other human beings, passing a few groups walking out very early and one family on bikes that were sucking major wind on the way out. Finally, finally, finally we exited the trail, some 3 hours after we entered it. On the walkway back to the parking lot we saw a couple walking in with a HUGE Great Dane on leash. I stopped and talked to them briefly and gave the dog, Elvis, a few pats on the head.
So all we had left was the roughly 3 mile ride back to our house on the road. The trip to the swamp didn’t seem too bad at all. The ride back simply sucked. By this point in addition to our rear ends, multiple other parts of our bodies were sore or uncomfortable. To make things more miserable we got to enjoy a headwind until we got back to Immokalee Road. Both Randall and I were extremely happy to pull into the driveway some four hours after we left.
Despite the physical discomfort later in the ride we both really appreciated what we got to see out there. Being that close to full size gators in the wild is something neither of us experienced before. The beauty and isolation as we rode through the swamp alone was just a unique and very cool experience. Maybe sometime Ali and I can go in there via bike although I would never encourage her to try to do that entire loop.
After we got back both Randall and I took showers. Between the two bike rides I just felt totally out of gas, walking around in a zombie-like trance. In total we put in something like 37 miles on two wheels, half of that on mountain bikes. After making the dogs supper I told Randall I was going to lay down for like an hour. That hour turned to two when I woke up in the pitch dark at about 6:45.
Randall was originally going to drive back Sunday afternoon but he decided to just stay over Sunday night as well instead of driving across the alley being tired as hell.
I prepared dinner for the three of us, 3 cheese tortellini with garlic bread. Ali was impressed that I handled all aspects of the meal without her assistance.
Sunday night everyone retired relatively early. It was quite the busy weekend.
Randall was up early this morning and shoved off for the east coast when I left for work. I thanked him for his help with the race and the other weekend activities. It was a good time as always.