2500, a Lone, still slacking, Hang it up, Are you ready for some football
Saturday morning Cindy and I were involved with a packet stuffing party for the half marathon at one of our generous board members home. It was quite the production getting 2500 envelopes stuffed with pins, twist ties, hand outs, a race bib and timing chip. We broke the process apart into sections where different people had different roles. As in most things I tackle, I had a general mental framework of how I thought things would go but didn’t have anything written down.
I was primarily working on the processes where numbers mattered, as in applying numbered labels to the envelopes and then later making sure those numbered envelopes got a race bib and timing chip that matched. Cindy played a very important role, the human sorter. She was handed stacks and stacks of envelopes that were in order but in different numeric ranges. She had to make sure they were in order twice, once when they left our packet labeling operation and a second time after we put the bibs and chips in them at the end. She was on the move non-stop.
For some reason I thought the 3 hours we allocated to the project (9-12)was overly generous. Somehow I thought it would take less time. We used every bit of the 3 hours and then some. It was just a ton of stuff to do, thank goodness we had upwards of 15 people there lending a hand at one point. My dining room table now is completely covered in boxes of packets, ready to hand out.
The funny thing is I am actually going to have to make some more packets tonight. The numbers for this years race are already 150 participants higher than last year with nearly a week to go. I need to stay ahead of the curve.
We didn’t get home from the packet stuffing till almost 2PM. I wasted little time before I was outside attending to outside chores. When I was done with chores I set up the slackline again for more balance training. I set it up between trees that are much closer together than last week. The line was probably only 25 feet across.
The shorter line combined with utilizing some beginner tips I saw on a few videos helped me do better than the week before. I had a couple slow and controlled steps that looked much better than the flail-fest I put on the week before. Cindy did very well too. She discovered she is pretty adept at walking backwards on the line. She even pulled off a couple 180 degree turns while we were out there.
Slacklining works muscles and joints in a way that I am not accustomed to. Both of my hips are extremely sore. Like anything else, continued practice should reduce the physical side effects. If you want to see a brief clip from our session, here you go.
On Saturday night Cindy and I saw Lone Survivor. For the second consecutive visit, the normally quiet and lightly attended Cocounut Pointe theater was MOBBED, worse than last time. Luckily the theater has the capacity to support large amounts of people but I don’t know why all of a sudden the movie population there has swelled so much.
My theory is that Cindy and I see a TON of movies in the theaters, way more than I ever did in the past. I think I may have been just generally avoiding going to the movies during season in years past. It is only now that I am seeing the belly of the beast the snowbirds bring with them.
The movie was compelling, tense and tragic. It will give you a greater appreciation of what our troops go through in the name of service to our country, if you needed more more reason to appreciate them. It gets a solid A.
Sunday morning Cindy and I resumed our weekend endurance training, doing the 20 mile round trip DD ride. The ride there had some favorable wind resulting in a 20+ mph average pace. The ride back was much less favorable but we still managed an overall pace for the 20 miles of over 18 mph.
While we were enjoying our DD coffee at the halfway point of the ride I created a FB event for a Super Bowl party at my place. Cindy and I had been talking about it for a few days. Ali and I did several SB parties in the past and although they were never hugely attended, everyone involved had a good time. I would hope for similar fun levels this time around. I have a pretty big invitation list so hopefully a 73 inch tv with a nice spread of beer and food is enough to entice people to make the drive out to the house. People that live more centrally in Naples view the Estates as living on the other side of the state practically.
Sunday afternoon my buddy Sean, his girlfriend and her two kids stopped out at the house. They had been hiking at the nearby swamp where I sometimes take the dogs so I invited them over. We had a great time with them and the kids in the backyard practicing slacklining, running the RC car / quadracopter, and messing around in the bar park. It was a lot of fun.
Sunday evening we watched Hangover 3, something I even questioned using a Netflix rental on. I had already heard it was lackluster at best. The original Hangover had me laughing so hard, so many times it was hard to believe. Hangover 2 was ok but used almost an identical storyline from the original. With the 3rd film they at least changed up the story but it was for the worse. Sure I laughed out loud a few times but overall the movie just wasn’t great. Thankfully it appears this will be the last time we will be seeing the crew together. I’ll give it a B.
This week I will be mired mostly in half marathon related work. We already have the largest field EVER for the race with a week to go. There are so many things to do, so many T’s to cross and I’s to dot. I hope to not run out of ink.