Break in the bog, Time Machine

So when I got home last night I looked around and noticed the standing water was gone except in the trenches by the road.  Evidently yesterday must have been a good evaporation day.  Well I figured I may as well take advantage of it and got out on the mower.

I knew the high grass was going to be chock full of mosquitoes.  I tried to prepare with a generous application of OFF as well as putting on sunglasses and my big, wide brimmed, funny looking hat.  Well it seems that unless I was going to jump into a bathtub full of mosquito repellent, there was no way to keep myself from being mosquito food.  I was constantly swatting.

As I was mowing Bill pulled up, the equipment manager for the running club.  He was dropping off something for me.  As he pulled up I smelled burning brakes.  Bill said that on his way there his brakes locked up.  He said both of his front brakes seemed to lock, he just tried to drive through it, stopping several times to let them cool off along the way.

He said he thought the problem might be electrical, specifically something with the ABS system that could be causing the brakes to apply.  He said he already had his wife on the way to meet him there.  He was actually on his way to go give a quote for some work near by.  I told him that he could borrow my van to do the quote but he said he would  either drive there or have his wife drive him there.

As we waited for her to show up Bill and I exchanged our fix it yourself stories.  Bill told me about his 20 year old lawn tractor that he has repaired countless times.  I knew how much I had to fix my 8 year old Cub Cadet, I can’t imagine trying to keep a 20 year old mower alive.

So Bill decided to try to drive to his appointment with his wife following behind just in case the wheels locked up tight.  I hope he made it.

I buzzed around the rest of the property and got my normal mowing zone knocked down.   The back of the property is badly in need of a haircut as well.  If  I get a few more days of light/no rain perhaps I will try to wedge that in one night after work this week.

What Bill dropped off was the club’s 20 year old Time Machine, a combination timing device and printer that was used to time races before we implemented chip timing 5 or 6 years ago.  I know little about how the box works but I want to get it up and running.  My intentions are to utilize this as a last resort safety net at races.

It is basically a manual system where as a runner comes across you hit a button to indicate a finisher and the time they crossed.  You can also type in the runners bib number to give you more meaningful info.  Right now, if my timing box or the main laptop would blow up on race day I would basically be f’d.

If I have someone manning the time machine during the race at least I would have a crude and less accurate way to scratch some results together.  It also will come in handy in those situations where someone does not get a finish time recorded either due to human or equipment error.