Lost count

I got so many things done this weekend I literally can’t remember it all, so I will touch on what I DO remember.

Saturday morning I had my first race to time in a couple months.  The race had a huge swell in registration in the last three days, over half of the people signed up in that compressed time period.  We wound up with right around 550 people signed up.

Before the race we had some lighting problems.  The club has several high power halogen light sets.  They throw a nice amount of light.  The problem is they also pull huge amounts of power.  Over the years we have had issues with the lights popping circuit breakers.

Well Saturday the lights kept popping my power strip that we were also using for the laptops so it was a major pain in the ass. One of the things I have wanted to look into is getting some fluorescent lights to replace them to eliminate this problem.

It was so humid Saturday morning.  Even before the sun popped it’s head out my shirt was thoroughly soaked from the massive moisture in the air.  Race timing went ok, any issues I had were human error related and easily corrected.  I was out of there around 9:15 or so.

Ali was scheduled to do a long run for her marathon training so she asked if I could pick up the dogs on the way home so she didn’t have to worry about bathroom breaks.  The girls were quite surprised to see me pull up in the party van to take them out to the house.

After getting all of my post race processing completed I started on my long list of to do’s.  Later in the afternoon I turned my attention to the two ripped pool screen sections.  It seemed like almost on queue, as soon as I started working on hanging the first replacement section, the wind started kicking up.

The wind was blowing towards the house.  A section of loose screen catches wind like a sail.  I went inside and got some of my paint masking tape.  My hope was I could use it to temporarily hold the screen in place until I could get some spline in.  I used a bunch of tape and it worked, briefly, until a strong gust would break the screen loose again.  After repeating this process 5 or 6 times I was getting pissed, yelling at the wind like it had a set of ears.

Finally I had enough, I texted Ali and asked her if she wanted to be a screen holder.  She said she didn’t mind coming out.  While she was in transit I wasted no time, super setting in cleaning the master bathroom.  Like I said, I had a monumental list of things to get done.

Once Ali arrived we got to work on the screens, her role being keeping the screen taut I as I sunk in the spline.  Her job was not exactly fun as these sections were right in front of rose bushes with sharp and abundant thorns.  I got both screens replaced in about an hour with Ali’s assistance.  I was quite glad she was able to help.

We had talked about taking a few items to Ali’s place so I suggested we get that taken care of as well.  Among those items were one of the two desks in the hobby room, some rolling storage things and a spare shelf from the shed.  We loaded all the stuff in both the Camry and the Tacoma and headed back to Ali’s place along with the girls.

The shelf will be put to good use in the storage area in Ali’s garage and we lugged the desk upstairs to her spare bedroom/office to be used to hold her sewing machine and various other items.  I had brought my cordless drill and drill bits to hang some stuff for Ali.  Unfortunately the thing she wanted me to hang didn’t come with drywall anchors and I didn’t bring any along.  I told her I would hang it in the next day or two.

Ali heated up some of the leftover fantasy football pizza I gave her for us to eat for dinner.  By the time I left I was a zombie.  I had been literally on the go all day long since 4:15 AM.  I was done.

Sunday morning I was up and busy by 7:30 am, continuing on various things I wanted to get done.  My goal was to have my Labor Day completely free of labor, so I could do whatever I wanted to do.

Mid-morning I shot back over to Ali’s to hang up the stuff I couldn’t the night before.  I also picked up the girls again to hang with me since Ali was going to work.

I actually got the time to finally give the SSR a bath.  I had not gotten a chance to do so since I took the truck across the state to visit Randall and Tracy.  Before I started washing the truck I threw it up on my ramps.

I wanted to crawl underneath to see if I could spot any obvious cause of the P0420 error (catalytic converter issue) I was reading.  All the wires looked intact but I did see something else.

Since I had all that work done on the truck (Vette clutch installed, both cats replaced), I noticed I heard a new vibrating type of noise under hard acceleration.  Well as I was under the truck I noticed the heat shield right above the rear weld on the new passenger side cat had been burnt and split, an obvious by product of the rushed replacement of the cats, the installer was in a severe time crunch.

Anyway the slice created a flap of heat shield that could very obviously rattle against the pipe, so I simply bent it upward.  In my subsequent test drive I no longer heard the noise.  I also used my code reader to clear the CEL code, curious to see if it would immediately reappear.  It didn’t, so I guess I am on a wait and see pattern with that issue.

The truck looked great after it’s bath.  I even took the time to clean the tail pipe extensions.  When all the work was done I also had bigger, stainless steel exhaust tips put on the SSR.  However they were already covered in black soot/carbon, totally negating the coolness factor.

I read on SSRFantatics that the best way to clean them up is using plain old oven cleaner.  I sprayed some on, let it set for a few minutes and then scrubbed it out with a brush.  It worked like a charm.  My tips were back to being an eye catcher instead of an eye sore.

Mid-afternoon Sunday I headed over to my mom’s place with the girl’s in tow.  She had asked if I could run the steam cleaner in her two bedrooms as well as help her flip over her mattress.  She hadn’t had the carpets cleaned since she moved in.  I told her it was no problem.  She was worried about my having time to get it done before she had to leave to meet some friends for dinner.

Well compared to the time I spend when I clean the carpet at the house, mom’s condo was a piece of cake.  I don’t think it even took me a half hour to finish both rooms.  She was surprised.  I told her whenever she wants it done to let me know since it is so easy to do.

When I got back home I finished up whatever chore related items needed to be done.  Finally, I was done.  So what did I do next? Relax?  Of course not.  Instead I headed outside to shoot some work out videos.

I actually produced a total of 5 videos out of the footage.  3 of them were BB forum related, depicting what is and isn’t considered good form for the monthly challenges.  It seems every month there is a question on what is good form.  I am hoping instead of typing it out time and again I can simply link these videos.  The two other videos were my attempting to do muscle ups with my legs tied together with yoga bands and another funny one where the dogs get involved as I do dragon flags.

Ali came and picked up the dogs Sunday night after she was done working.  It was odd having both her and the dogs out at the house two consecutive days.

So Labor Day arrives, the day I was busting my ass for so I could have a a day free of must do’s.  I woke up on my own around 6:30 and was out the door before 8 am to go do a bike/swim training brick.  I have done very little endurance training over the last month or so because of blowback knee issues after playing in the KOB volleyball tourney.  My knee is still not 100% well but I deemed it good enough to at least do some non-impact work.

My trusty Forerunner 201 seems to have finally bitten the dust.  It stopped working a couple weeks ago so I was without a GPS.  I improvised by firing up MapMyRide on my Iphone a storing it in my seat bag.  I did a long ride, for me, approximately 24 miles.  My average pace was about 17 mph but that was with a number of lengthy stops at traffic lights.  My actual riding pace felt much stronger than that.  I was pooped when I pulled back into the parking lot.

It was then into the water park for the swim portion of my brick.  I was not pleased when I jumped into the lap pool and it felt like a hot tub.  I bet the temperature was just under 90 degrees, a terrible temperature to swim distance in.  I scaled back by original goal of 1600 yards to 1200 solely because of the high temps.

I want pleased to see that the water park was only going to be open for weekends until the end of September.  I thought last year it stayed open until sometime in October although I could be mistaken.  The swimming weather easily could extend into November but I guess this is purely a monetary decision.  Bums me out none the less, swimming definitely helps my aching shoulders.

When I got home I was starving so I slammed down lunch.  Early in the afternoon for some reason, despite already getting in a significant amount of exercise in the AM, I decided I wanted to go out and do a Ray’s Way circuit.  In layman’s terms this is doing 5 sets of dips, pull ups and push ups within certain time constraints.  It’s tough.

I actually failed to complete the sets successfully.  The combination of my morning exertion, outdoor hot and humid conditions and a less than positive mental disposition all contributed to my failure.  It was still a good workout.

I didn’t really get off the treadmill until late Monday afternoon when I sat down to play some WoW.  There is a new expansion coming out in 3 weeks which may finally get me back into the game that I basically had stepped away from for 4 or 5 months.

I have yet another busy week laid out in front of me.  Some night this week I need to get the grass mowed.  Next Saturday I will be timing a large invitational cross country meet and then Sunday I may be heading back to the east coast to pick up a desk and queen size mattress that Jeremy and Mandy are graciously donating to me.  I plan to trade them my old pressure washer in exchange.

Did I mention how badly I feel for Clint Eastwood?  He made himself out to be basically a stumbling loon in his RNC speech.  I actually heard some people say that the thought he “killed it”.  Yes I agree he did kill it, but in the literal sense.  I like the guy too much to see him turned into a laughing stock, it’s a shame.