Blue a gasket, Frigid fair, Key hole, AL:VH

Friday night after work Ali dropped the dogs off at the house so we could go check out this years version of the Collier County Fair.  Although we aren’t living under the same roof we still share our bizarre interest in the fair.  When we left the house the sun was up, I felt plenty warm in my jeans and Big Dogs long sleeve shirt.  Grabbing a sweatshirt felt totally unnecessary.

I don’t think we ever attended the fair on a Friday night, wow was it busy.  We merged into a long line of cars waiting to get into the fairgrounds.   Once we parked and got inside the gate we immediately saw an act going on we were interested in, a dog frisbee show.  We came in on the tail end of the show but what we saw was pretty cool.  This couple rescues dogs, trains them, and then adopts them out to families to the tune to about 20 dogs a year.  That is awesome.

We walked through the tent that is “church row” .  It houses 5 or 6 church stands including the anti-abortion people.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t go to a fair looking to be “saved”.

As soon as the sun went down I knew I was going to regret not grabbing an auxiliary article of clothing for my upper body.  The temps were hurtling down quickly.  If I am cold that means Ali was frozen.

We walked through the animal area once again.  Last years fair actually was the moment in time when I decided to stop eating beef, pork, and poultry products.  This year simply reenforced that feeling.  If you take the time to observe cows and pigs, especially pigs, you can see that they are not dumb animals devoid of intelligence or feeling.

Ali and I were especially touched by these two pigs that were laying snout to snout in a reassuring manner, similar to the way Nicki and Sadie will do.

We saw two more animal acts while we were there, bears and bengal tigers.  I felt much better about the bear act.  The couple that ran it are local and described the open 2.5 acre habitat their bears roam on.   The tigers got stuffed back into these tiny compartments in a trailer.  I have a feeling they spend the majority of their time confined in a similar manner.

We walked into the heart of the carnies where the majority of the rides and games of (little) chance reside.  Ali and I were impressed in the rides this year in both quantity and quality, although we didn’t get to ride any.  Luckily since there were a lot of people at the fair, we didn’t have as many solicitations from bored carnies as in years past.

Part of the fair experience is downing fair food.  We warmed up with some pizza that was low quality, even for fair food.  We finished up with arepa’s, which is two corn patties with cheese in between.  Those were better than the pizza but by the time I finished up what was left over from Ali’s, I had enough fair food.

Last year I greatly enhanced my fair experience by hitting the beer tent pretty hard.  I tried to revisit that strategy but I only downed a single beer.  I was just too damn cold.  Unfortunately the cold weather sort of steered us towards the exit a little quicker than we may have if the thermometer was 10 degrees higher.  There was a wrestling show at 9:30 that we didn’t stick around for due to the cold. Although I was plenty cold, I saw plenty of unfortunate people walking around in shorts and t-shirts, ouch.

In years past I would usually try to find the scariest ride on the grounds and try it.  I sort of felt bad that I didn’t do any rides, it makes me feel like an old fart.  One of the unwelcome side effects of being 45 is something changes in your head that makes getting nauseous a very accessible side effect of amusement rides.   Skipping the rides actually bothered me enough that I might  go back to the fair during arm band night where you pay 10 bucks and can do unlimited rides.

I can hear the PA system of the fair very clearly from my house at night.  Hearing all the commotion makes me feel like I am missing out on something.

After the fair Ali actually headed home sans dogs, they slept over since I was going to have them for a good portion of Saturday as well.  Whenever they sleep over it is bittersweet.  I enjoy having Sadie snoring next to me but then when they go home, the next night feels very lonely.

Sadie also seems to enjoy minimizing my sleep when she is sharing the bed.  Early Saturday morning, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-5:30 am she jammed her nose into my shoulder and then sat upright next to me, staring,  requesting attention.  Well of course my first concern is that there is some sort of urgent bathroom need so I drug myself out of bed and let her out.  She took a leak but it was far from urgent.  It’s funny how she still likes to get me up early when she is at the house, since with Ali, she won’t ever try to wake her up.  She has adopted a dual internal alarm clock depending on which bed she is in.

So Saturday morning I picked up Ali once again.  I wanted to go pick up my season tickets for the Tarpons.  While we were up there we each had a 40% off coupon for the Gap outlet that is right next door in the big Miromar Outlets.  I actually only bought one cheap shirt at Gap.  I wound up spending the majority of my money at the Adidas outlet getting another pair of training pants and shorts.  Ali scored deals from several places.

After dropping Ali back off at her place I headed home to tackle my major project of the weekend, replacing the valve cover gaskets on the Tacoma.

My prep for this job was watching a YouTube video of some guy doing the same job on a 98 Forerunner.  I left the video up on my computer as a reference although I only referred back to it a couple times.

The disassembly process wasn’t horrible although I found a couple additional steps I had to do that were not on the video, perhaps a difference between the Tacoma versus a Forerunner.  One tip that I am glad was in the video was to cover the intake opening once the plenums are removed.  The point of this is to prevent foreign objects from falling in which would be a disaster.

This tip saved my ass when I started to pull the wire loom for the fuel injectors out of the way. The loom was made out of plastic.  After 14 years the plastic had become extremely brittle.  As I lifted on it pieces flew off.  I am pretty sure if I didn’t have the intake covered plastic shrapnel would have fallen in.

When I tried to actually pull the driver side valve cover off it was sticking.  When it did finally jerk free it crashed into the loom, breaking it further, way beyond the point of no return.  I broke the remaining fragments off, knowing I would have to come up with some other way to shield the wires.  I ran into a similar problem on the other side.

When I was unbolting the valve covers it became quite obvious why they were leaking, besides old gaskets.  The bolts that hold the valve cover on were all loose, very loose.  I guess years of vibration backed them out.  It’s no wonder they were leaking oil.

My gasket set included new fittings for the spark plug tubes.  After f’ing around with replacing just one for almost 15 minutes I decided the remaining 5 old gaskets were adequate.  The new, blue Fel-pro gaskets fit the valve covers perfectly.  It was a good thing that they are seated in a ridge on the cover, keeping them snugly in place during reassembly.  Getting the covers back on is a pain in the ass.

The wires/wire loom is never removed, it is just loosened.  To remove/install the valve covers you have to work it under the wires awkwardly.  There are also a bunch of vacuum lines nearby that provide further obstacles to get around.  I did my best to maintain calm as I tried various angles of attack until I eventually found a winner.

So I got the driver side valve cover done and was almost down to putting the last bolt in the passenger side cover.  As I pushed the socket on the bolt it came loose and the bolt tumbled down below, coming to rest somewhere on the skid plates under the truck.  I crawled down there with a flash light and felt around for awhile, reaching my hand into incredibly dirty, oily, greasy places, trying to feel for the bolt.  I was unsuccessful.

At this point I was already 3 hours into the job, an hour longer than the instructional video said it should take a “novice”. The last thing I felt like doing was pulling off the skid plates.  I already knew I was going to AutoZone to get some generic wire loom so I figured I will just get another bolt while I am there, screw it.

So I had about a 90 minute round trip to and from the store where I bought some 3/4″ wire loom and two different kind of bolts, one had the right style panhead but was about 5MM shorter than the factory bolt, the second bolt had a conventional nut head but was the same length as the factory hardware.  I wanted to have my bases covered.

So by the time I got back to the house it was getting close to 5.  I had mentally resigned myself to not getting the truck back together on Saturday as I was already beat, tired and didn’t want to stay out there into the darkness.  I figured I would work until maybe 6 or so and call it a day.

Well surprisingly the reassembly process went pretty smoothly. There were a lot of vacuum hoses and electrical connectors that had to be reattached along the way.  When I was taking it apart I was concerned I might not be able to remember where it all went but most of it fell right into place.

I did use some visual aids when it came to reinstalling the spark plug wires.  I drew myself a small diagram illustrating how the two sides connected together as well as laying the wires out on my folding table in the same layout as they were removed.

I had everything back together in around an hour.  I was very nervous when I turned the key, hoping I didn’t forget to attach something along the way.  A smile crept across my tired face as the truck started up and sounded normal, whew.

It was a challenging job, made more challenging by the brittle plastic.  Luckily the generic wire loom I used seems like it will be adequate to protect the injector wires going forward.  In total I was out there for close to 5 hours.  I was stiff and sore.  However those pains were dulled by the knowledge that I succeeded in a repair task that I probably would have stayed away from a few years ago.  Unfortunately I wont really know how effective my new gaskets are until some time passes.

So I Saturday night it felt like my brain was punching a ticket that my body was not willing to cash in.  I got it in my head I wanted to do a personal triathlon Sunday morning incorporating running, riding and swimming.  Saturday I was walking around stiff legged and slow, hardly the way I want to feel before asking my body to endure a triple brick a few hours later.

Well Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed.  I wasn’t feeling great but better than 7 hours prior.  I still had the mental need to complete this fitness goal so I gathered my stuff to do so.  I decided since it was St Patricks Day it would be appropriate to wear the bike jersey I bought in Ireland.  It is too small for me, it’s only a medium but I figured for one day I could jam myself into it.

I pulled into the water park a little after 8:30.  First up was a two lap run around the outside of the park grounds which adds up to 4 miles.  It was my first running since the half marathon.  Early on I did not feel great, my legs were feeling the side effects of the Tacoma work.  It felt like the first mile or so I had a slight limp in my stride.

As I was on the back stretch of the last lap I pulled down on the bike jersey that I had on under a t-shirt, it was sliding up my belly.  A few seconds later I heard what sounded like a piece of wood hit the path behind me.  I wondered if a small branch dropped but did not bother to turn around to look.

So I got back to the truck after my 4 miles and reached around to the back of my bike jersey, I had put the key to the truck in one of the bottle pockets that are on the back, figuring that would be the safest, least obtrusive spot.  Hmm weird, I didn’t feel the key.  Again I patted down my back and felt nothing but skin, what the fck??!!!

I then awkwardly get my hand inside one of the pockets and feel my finger poke out a large hole!  Obviously this must be the pocket where the key formally resided.  Great.

Well my mind immediately recalled the noise on the pathway.  I hoped that noise was actually the key falling out.  I hopped on the bike and sped over in that direction, hoping nobody picked the key up.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted the key.  I was very lucky.  If it dropped out in the grassy portion of the run I would have never heard/found it.

So the bike leg of my tri got a late start.  I had a good ride, slightly slower than the previous week but with a 4 mile run to pre-fatigue my body it is to be expected.  With the wind to my back I was over 20 mph, with it in my face I was in the 17’s.

The swim portion of the tri went fine, I did 1000 yards of swimming broken into 400,400, 200 segments.  My right shoulder hurts quite a bit during the early portion of the swim but feels pretty good by the end of it.  I decided to opt out of a post workout pool pizza lunch, instead heading directly home.

During Sunday afternoon I attended to various left over duties around the house.  I also had a brief visit from Randall’s girlfriend and her friend Ceci.  They had run a half marathon up in Sarasota that morning and stopped by to pick up stuff I was giving to Randall (old 360, Bose system).   They couldn’t stay long since they still had a long drive across the alley and St Patrick Day drinking plans.

Speaking of which, I maintained my odd tradition of a dry St Patricks Day.  I didn’t go out. I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol.  It really isn’t a conscious effort.  Nobody invited me out to celebrate and it wasn’t important enough for me to actively seek out St Patty’s madness.

Instead I spent my Sunday night watching Abraham Lincoln : Vampire Hunter.  I remember when I saw the preview for this in theaters last year I thought it was an incredibly silly premise.  I later heard the film had a huge budget but as expected, did not do well at the box office.

Well I wanted to see just how they managed to portray one of the most famous presidents in history as a vampire hunter so I threw it in my Netflix queue.  Well it turns out they did a pretty decent job of making it work.

Of course nothing can make you forget the strangeness of the plot but if you allow yourself to just go with the flow of the movie and not do much reality checking you will find a mostly enjoyable experience.  I thought the movie was fun and surely worth a Netflix rental.  I never thought I would see Lincoln kicking ass and taking names with a silver tipped axe but now that I have, I like it. B+