Archives 2014

Friday night Cindy and I met up with friends of ours to catch Guardians of the Galaxy.  We caught a relatively late 7:45 showing.  Originally my lack of knowledge about the Guardians of the Galaxy comic books made me not all that interested in seeing the movie.  However Sean was able to fill in some of my gaps and spark more interest in the film for me.  I was glad he turned me around. The movie was funny and entertaining throughout.  I really enjoyed it, enough to hand it an A rating.  Go check it out.

It was weird enough for me to be going to a movie on a Friday night.  The odd behavior vaulted over the line when we went to dinner with Sean and Kim after the movie at 10PM.  I never, ever eat dinner that late.  We went to a nearby place called the South Fork Grille.  Cindy and I munched down on a couple appetizers since we had a light meal right after work.  The four of us had a good time hanging out, hopefully we get to do it on a more regular basis.

On Saturday we allowed the dogs and chickens to have their first coop free interaction.  I had the chickens out while I was weeding the property.  When Cindy got back from a DD coffee run with the dogs I had her bring them out back.  We put Sadie on her leash as she definitely could view a fleeing chicken as a big dog toy.  We left Nicki off leash, since she doesn’t have any chicken chasing speed left in her legs.  Surprisingly the interaction was rather boring.  Neither the chickens or the dogs got overly excited, it was more like a “hey, what’s up?” sort of thing.  Despite Sadie being very chill about the chickens I still can’t ever trust to let her out there with them free ranging.

A good portion of Saturday was spent finishing up the garage painting project, something Cindy already had put a lot of sweat equity into during the week.   She literally did ALL of the painting, my role was to take stuff down and then reassemble the space.  I also did a lot of organizing, sorting, relocating, and throwing out of items that live in the garage.

The Eagles Midnight Green accented by silver obviously makes the previously boring builder’s white garage look a lot different.  I actually cleared enough space that the SSR and Prius can comfortably both fit in the garage.  I used to have the SSR and Camry in the garage but it was very tight and required me to back the SSR into the garage in a very precise manner.  Since the Prius is much smaller I was able to pull both vehicles into the garage in a normal front first manner and still have room to get out of the door without requiring contortionist-like moves to get out.

I am happy with the garage outcome.  It’s the second space in the house that Cindy pretty much painted single handed.  She just loves to get things done.  This crosses a long term to do list item off the list that has existed for several years.  Finally, after 13 years in the house, every interior space has been painted.

On Saturday afternoon we piled the girls into the party van to head to Rural King.  On the way there we did something else nearly as rare as a 10 PM dinner, we stopped for ice cream.  In Bonita there is a cool little ice cream place in the shape of a cone, it reminds me of the same looking structure back in my Wernersville living days. I enjoyed a small cone of cookie dough ice cream while Cindy opted for one of her favorites, mint chocolate chip.

On Saturday night we enjoyed another great home cooked Cindy meal while watching Heat, a Netflix rental that has been laying around for a couple weeks.  It’s a comedy with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.  The “fat woman saying fck” humor wore off on me after hearing it the first 50 or 60 times.  I fell asleep for the majority of the second half of the movie so I will have to take Cindy’s word that it was ok.  I guess that means it gets a B rating.

On Sunday morning I had ideas of running 4 miles around the water park before swimming.  Cindy dissuaded me from the plan after I complained of some GI issues and the idea of only starting to run at 9:15 AM, well into the broiler part of the day this part of the year.  Instead I decided I would just do some extended swimming instead.

We arrived at the park a little early, early enough that we got a head start on our 1000 rep video series. Cindy is working towards completing 1000 push up reps and I am grinding towards 1000 pull ups.  I struggled to get 15 reps on the fat and slippery high bar on the playground equipment.

I had an odd incident while swimming my 1600 yards.  I was on my third 400 leg in the pool.  I was in one of the two lanes, the other lane was unoccupied as Cindy couldn’t get her hair wet after just coloring it.  As I am making a turn around I see at the opposite end some Hispanic looking guy sitting on the edge in my lane with his feet hanging in the water.  My initial thought was, “Why would this idiot decide of all places to hang his feet in, he would do it in the lane I am actively swimming in??”  Well I assumed by the time I got to the end he was at he would get out of the way.

Well when I closed in on the wall I still saw two feet hanging in the water in front of me, dead center.  As I veered to the side  to touch I popped my head up and barked out “Dude, move over!” and continued back the other way, assuming he would heed my warning.  So as I reach the other wall to turn around I see has the guy has moved, about 12 inches to one side, still sitting in my lane.  WTF!!

So this time when I get to the side he is sitting on I pick up the aggression in my stroke.  The increased speed and impact with the water was intended to throw a second wet warning to the guy to go find somewhere else to dangle his feet, there is literally 1000 other feet of pool border he could have utilized.  So the next time I come up his way he has finally moved over to the unoccupied lane however I could see he was watching me intently.  I wasn’t sure if he was pissed because I told him to move and was giving me stink eye.  Well I knew for sure I was pissed so if he wanted to get into it I was ready.

So I am on final lap of my third set of 400’s.   Just before I hit the turn around the hispanic guy hops in the lane he was dangling his toes in and breast strokes to the opposite end, completing a gruesome 25 yards in the pool.  He was standing in the water at my end point.  Again, my assumption was he wanted to get into it about me telling him to move.  I angrily stroked into the wall, stood up and ripped my goggles off, ready for the argument to begin.

The first thing he says in his heavy accent is “Swimming is hard.  You swim for long time”, with no hint of anger or malice in his voice or on his face.  I was completely thrown off as I was fully prepped for conflict.  Instead I said awkwardly “yea, it’s good exercise”  Well that was all it took, the guy went on a 10-15 minute, mostly one sided conversation where he told me all about how he used to swim a lot in the open water in his home land of Puerto Rico.  I also found out that the water he swam in occasionally had sharks, that he used to sometimes ride to the beach to swim on a unicycle, and some guy that used to teach him about swimming could climb a coconut tree like a monkey.  After scaling the tree and getting coconuts he would use them as part of a protein drink he made on the spot for energy for the long swimming sessions.

The guys accent made it tough for me to follow along very well and I really had no interest in what he was saying anyway.  I tried to display my eagerness to get started on my final 400 repeatedly by reinserting my ear plugs and strapping my goggles onto my head.  None of it mattered, he just wanted to keep on talking.  Finally some woman came over and asked if she could share one of the lanes for swimming.  Thankfully I used that as a wall to stop the mudslide of words coming out of the guys mouth.  I told him I was going to finish my last set and swam off.  Thankfully by the time I finished up he had moved out of the area.

When I emerged from the pool I described the incident to Cindy.  She hadn’t seen him hanging his legs in the pool but she did hear the extended conversation pool side.  She was 100% sure the guy was hitting on me, something that never entered my mind until she said it.  I didn’t get that vibe in the moment but from a Monday morning QB viewpoint, I suppose that was a possibility.  Whatever the root cause, it was a very weird and unexpected interaction.

On Sunday we collected our 5th egg of the week.  It seems like Betty likes to crank one out mid-late afternoon.  We hard boiled two of them to test them out.  They both looked and tasted good which should give us the green light to use the eggs for other cooking and baking needs.

Cindy and I both did a bunch more sets of push ups/pull ups respectively during the afternoon.  I am up to 200 pull ups so far, Cindy has 225 on film.

I tried the dog whistle I bought for Nicki and the Iphone dog whistle app.  Neither one seemed to illicit any reaction from her.  The only thing that seems to get her attention is very loud noise like aggressive clapping or thunder.  Her vision is impaired as well since her nearly incessant rubbing of her eyes has pulled her eyelids down.  To see stuff she needs to cock her head upwards.  It’s depressing watching the little puppy you knew 12 years ago transform into an old girl with all of these ailments.  I still feel guilt that Nicki’s health problems came on very quickly and drastically once I got separated.  Up until that point she was pretty much fine except for her lifelong itchy ears.

So I picked up the dogs as planned last night.  When I got home Cindy was hard at work in the garage. She decided to take on painting the interior of it, an item that has been on my to-do list for years..  Not only is she painting it, she is painting it in genuine Eagles colors per my request.  The side walls are mostly Midnight Green with the trim done in silver.  At a later time we will paint the rear wall black.  The project has turned the garage into a mess as all of the stuff the was on the shelves or propped against the walls has now been pushed to the the center of the floor, requiring the SSR to be out into the elements, something I am not a fan of.  So far I like the change, a non-Eagles fan might not feel the same. 🙂

So I was trying out the dog whistle I bought on Amazon on Nicki.  The instructions say you back out the adjustment screw until you hear a noise while you blow.  You then are supposed to turn it back in until the noise disappears.  Well I blew on it and it made noise.  I turned the adjustment all the way back in and it still was making an audible sound.  I got behind Nicki and blew on the whistle repeatedly and didn’t get a reaction although she was sound asleep at the time.  I’ll have to play with it some more.  I also found a free app for my phone that is supposed to produce dog whistle type sound waves that I will try out.

Yesterday the chickens produced the third egg of the week.  The first egg was left in the nesting box up top as we would expect.  However the last two eggs have both been laid on the ground, one under the main coop and another out in the extended run, weird.  Perhaps we will try hard boiling an egg this weekend to see how it looks inside.

So last night was not exactly a restful one.  Around 1AM I was awakened by the sound of Nicki whining.  As soon as Nicki makes noise it immediately sets Sadie into hyper mode.  I opened my eyes and see Nicki by the side of the bed staring at me.  Ok, I assumed for some reason she had to go outside to do something.  Instead when I opened the bedroom door she went right to the kitchen and started drinking a lot of water.

When she was done gulping I walked towards the slider, to see if she also had to go to the bathroom.  Nope, she made no move towards the door, instead we went straight back to the bedroom where I rolled around for awhile until I could finally fall back asleep.  Well imagine my joy when I again hear Nicki carrying on again, somewhere around 4AM this time.  Cindy was nice enough to get up with her this time.  Evidently the big drink of water at 1 translated into a big need to go pee at 4AM.  Cindy said as soon as she got off the steps into the back yard she let loose.

I’m glad Nicki let us know she had to go to the bathroom but the middle of the night thirst session that preceded it was odd and a first for me.  Having the dogs over normally means a lot of smiles and good things.  Unfortunately it typically does not mean there will be many nights of solid sleep.

If you read the blog you might know that most of my Friday nights involve grocery shopping, kale pizza and catching up on a backlog of dvr’d TV content.  Tonight will not be one of those nights.  My buddy Sean asked if Cindy and I wanted to go see the new Marvel movie, Guardians of the Universe with him and his girlfriend.  When I originally saw the first previews of the movie months ago I was not all that thrilled, it just seemed weird.  However Sean talked the movie up enough to raise my interest level.  Plus, he is a very knowledgeable comic book guy.  If he says a a comic book based movie should be good, I believe him.

After the movie we are going to grab a bite to eat somewhere and throw down a beer or two.   Due to my poor sleep last night I may be grabbing a 5 hour energy to help me stay alert throughout the evening.

The rest of the weekend will be busy.  After the garage is painted I will be reassembling, reorganizing and throwing out things in large quantities.  Of course the grass will need attention and various things will need cleaning and fixing.  I also would like to get some sort of endurance training in but lately every time I complete a hard cardio session I am being rewarded with discomfort in areas that you don’t  want to normally deal with.

After work last night I  met Cindy at her daughters apartment.  They had a large Ikea wall mounted dvd cabinet to hang on the wall and asked if I could help do it.   They had the cabinet put together, my task was to get it securely mounted on the wall in a level manner.  Before I got started I identified one bracket that was not in the right spot.  It was a rather important bracket that is used to help reenforce the cabinets connection point to the wall.

At first I thought I might have to partially disassemble the cabinet to flip the bracket.  Luckily I came up with another solution that only required drilling a couple small pilot holes and some careful work with a screwdriver. Katie’s boyfriend helped me hoist the cabinet on the wall.  After securing the center mount point we leveled it and then sunk the anchors for either end.  The cabinet felt nice and secure at the end of the installation and looked nice complimenting the matching TV stand underneath.

The second task they had for me at first seemed to be far easier, hanging up one of those large outdoor roll up blinds on their lanai to help block some of the sun that beats in.  Somebody had already drilled holes in the aluminum screen frame, all that needed to be done was thread in hooks and hang the small triangle shaped loops from the blinds onto them.  Well this turned out to be an extremely frustrating task.

There was next to no clearance between the hooks and the ceiling.  When paired with the very small attachment points, and my fingers trying to hold the blinds up with one hand and guide the clasp with the other, it quickly became very frustrating.  I wound up drilling a second set of holes as low as I could on the frame to give me another fraction of an inch of room.  Even with doing that I still struggled like crazy to get the blinds on the hooks.  To get the last hook attached I used a pen cap as a surrogate finger, it was crazy.  All that struggling in the outdoor air had turned me into a sweaty mess.  The back of my shirt was soaked by the end of it.

Katie and Daniel thanked me multiple times for the help, the two projects made their apartment look more “finished”.  Another perk of helping out was getting to play with their dog Tank, a very cute and friendly french bulldog.  By the time we got home it was later obviously so we just threw a Costco pizza in the oven for an easy dinner since Friday night we aren’t doing our normal dinner ritual.

Tonight I am picking up the girls for another few days of dog sitting while Ali is out of town.  I just received my dog whistle in the mail.  Hopefully it makes it easier to get Nicki’s attention.

Yesterday Cindy found our second egg on the ground under the coop, woohoo!

So yesterday Cindy told me that we now have our first homegrown egg, very exciting news indeed. The egg was on the smallish side but otherwise appeared perfectly normal. We are 99% sure the egg was produced by Betty, the hen that has had all the classic symptoms of being ready to start producing.  On Monday she was up in the nesting box making all sorts of odd noises we never heard before.  I imagine producing your first egg is a confusing/painful thing for a young chicken.  It seems like Wilma is starting to exhibit some similar behaviors so maybe she will be next in line.

We don’t have immediate plans to consume the egg but when we do we think we will hard boil it to allow us to cut the egg open to see how normal the interior of it looks.

Last night we had the chickens roaming about as I was doing my second session of pull ups in my 1000 pull up video series.  We had a hard time getting Pebbles back in the coop, the other two chickens responded easily to cracked corn bribery.  I had the camera rolling as we coaxed her back in.

So today was my first day doing my lunch workout at the Wellness Center.  As I expected there are some challenges that comes along with switching gyms.

Today the traffic on the way there was on the annoying side.  Since the gym is very close to downtown Naples there is no avoiding the swarms of old people behind the wheels of their luxury vehicles going 10 mph under the speed limit in all three lanes. It took me close to 10 minutes to get there today as a result.  I will be leaving my office a couple minutes earlier to compensate for the travel time.

As I also expected, there will be an entirely different harvest of gym goers to analyze and observe.  Already today I spotted a young kid showing his girlfriend how to curl with horrible form in the squat rack and another guy who really loved admiring himself in the mirror, a lot.

Today I wanted to do squats and deadlifts.  I was surprised that with the size of the gym they only have one squat rack.  I am not nuts about it’s construction either.  It is non-adjustable so the top set of pegs requires me to almost get on my toes to get the bar off and the next set down requires a bent leg starting position I’m not crazy about.  I struggled doing squats like I hadn’t done it in months, although I think I only missed last week if memory serves me correctly.  I topped out with three reps at 205 and it felt HEAVY.

There is not an obvious area to do dead lifting in the place.  I wound up doing it behind the benches in the free weight area.  I got a feeling that the crowd in there is not used to seeing someone deadlift, especially someone doing it in their socks.  I only did two sets of deadlifting and once again the bar felt heavy.

I was then looking to do quick sets of leg extensions and leg curls.  They have two different types of machines , TechnoGym and Hammer Strength.  I first tried doing leg curls on the TechnoGym machine and it seemed physically impossible to get it at an adjustment level that worked for my stork legs.  I eventually gave up and got on the Hammer Strength stuff which I am pretty sure will be the only machines I use in the place.  They also have some bizarre stuff that works with air pressure cylinders.  I didn’t even bother wasting my time on it.

As far as pull up and dip options go, thus far I have not been super impressed with my options.  They have one power tower type of rig and one assisted pull up/dip machine.  Unfortunately unlike the one at my old gym, there is no option to flip the assist plate out of the way so you can do reps freely.  I still need to do some more exploring to get a full inventory of what my options are, it will take some time. There was one piece of equipment I was interested in trying out, one of those continuous rope machines.  Basically you set a resistance level and then just start pulling a fat rope hand over hand for as fast and as long as you can.  It should be a good supplement to conventional pull up training.

The gym environment seemed a bit on the sterile side, filled mostly with people minding their own business.  It’s no big deal though and if more of my old gym buddies show up it will make things better.

I was very happy to see a gym employee meticulously cleaning the entire time I was there, what a concept.

So as I outlined in Dufisthenics, my gym yesterday once again sounded more like a techno dance club than a fitness center.  The thumping, never ending dance mix shit was once again pouring from the over head speakers.  I had complained about this in the past, as recently as last week.  Well I was done complaining, I decided to take some action.

I have had various nagging issues with Royal Fitness (formerly Retro Fitness) over the years. I was a client from basically day one when they opened.  I remember early on being very annoyed that they refused to turn on closed captioning on the tv’s mounted along various walls, despite the volume on them being turned off.  The explanation of “it is against company policy” made no sense to me.

For at least the first two years the gym had no real hot water.  Evidently whatever hot water tank that was in the space when it was a Walgreens was never upgraded when it became a gym.  As a result if you were foolish enough to take a shower there the best you could hope for was slightly less cold water.

The gym had a pretty solid staff the first year or so but since then there has been an unending carousel of people behind the counter.  I have described in the past the odd pattern where gym members suddenly transformed into gym employees, only to fade away as quickly as they came.  The vast majority of these people possessed no common sense on how to treat gym patrons, typically keeping their heads buried in their smartphones when people came and went instead of at least greeting them.

The gym also always had a cleanliness problem.  Cobwebs are in nearly every corner, and dust bunnies roam the floor.  Anytime I get up from doing a set of push ups my hands come up black.  It’s pretty gross.

It was easy to tell that financially the gym was not doing well.  Auxiliary side ventures came into the gym to try to generate additional revenue.  The most noticeable of which was a supplement peddler that had all of his stuff locked inside a 6 foot tall square cage obnoxiously stuck in the front of the gym.  The guy and his cage lasted all of a few weeks of not having any customers before it was torn down.

There have been a number of management changes at the gym although the ownership has never changed hands.  Once they dropped the RetroFitness franchise name there was a ridiculous period of time where it seemed every other week there was somebody new in charge of the place.  During this transition the majority of the pre-existing staff quit which to me was the beginning of the end.  I have documented my thoughts on the new training staff there,  including their lack of attention to clients unless they are attractive women, as well as body odor issues that seem counter productive to their role in the gym.

Basically, since the gym name change I have found very few reasons to keep giving Royal Fitness my money, short of the few gym buddies I have there.

One of those buddies, Jim, recently jumped ship for the NCH wellness center, a gym run by the dominant hospital in Collier County.  It’s normal monthly rate was expensive, normally $50 a month, but you get a lot of things for your money including tons of fitness classes, modern equipment in a huge space, sauna, steam room, a lap pool, and more.  And yes, the place is immaculately clean.

County employees get a huge deal at NCH, paying only $25 a month, only a couple bucks more than what I am paying at Royal Fitness, making the switch an almost no brainer.  Really the only potential snag is the additional 1.25 miles NCH is located from the office although in my trip timing yesterday it actually took me less time to get there.

Yesterday after work I made it official, joining the new place after quickly walking the facility which was huge, modern, clean, and appeared to have everything I would need and then some.   After signing up I decided I may as well stop at Royal Fitness to make my termination official as well.  I was not surprised that the process was annoying and unprofessional.

I walked in and the only woman behind the desk told me she was busy and it would take a few minutes until she could help me. She was trying to figure out how to do something with the cash register she was not familiar with.  Ok fine, I patiently hung out, looking around the gym that I would more than likely never step foot in again.  Sure the sentimental part of me was there, I expended a lot of effort inside those walls over the 5-6 years I had been a member.

Whatever issue the woman was having evidently was more challenging than she expected.  She came over to me and quickly asked what I wanted.  I told her I was cancelling my membership and wanted to know what I needed to do to make that happen.  She tells me I have to write a letter that states this with my name and date it.  Um ok, that’s odd, I am standing right here, why do I need to write a letter, I thought to myself.  She pulls out a blank, unlined, blue piece of paper and a pen, puts it in front of me and goes back to her issue.

I scribble on the paper that I am terminating my membership to Royal Fitness as of 7/28/14 and then both print and sign my name.  I hand the note to the woman and confirm that is all they need?  She said she will “take me out of the system then” but I may want to “check back in a week or so” to make sure I was removed.  No, “why are you leaving?”, “we are sorry to hear you are leaving” or cancellation paperwork/reference number was offered, not that I was surprised.  To me it was an appropriately unprofessional parting of the ways with Retro/Royal Fitness.  I totally expect to have to take further action to make sure my membership is indeed terminated. I’m looking forward to my workouts morphing along with my new environment.

Last night at home I started my 1000 pull up series, an idea that came up while Randall, Lily, Cindy and I were talking this weekend.  The concept is simple, 1000 pull ups with every rep on video.  Originally I had thought I would record all 1000 reps and dump them into one MASSIVE video.  However the AdSense mogul inside me realized this was stupid.  To maximize ad revenue it makes much more sense to do a large number of shorter videos that are more likely to grab views.

I plan to try to keep things interesting by making every single set unique in some way.  I can see  a number of reps going down during our upcoming road trip. Take a look at my first 60 reps below.

Randall and Lily weren’t supposed to arrive until early afternoon on Saturday.  That meant that I felt the need to get everything done chore-wise during the morning.  From the first step into the early morning dripping wet humid air, I knew I did not have a fun few hours ahead of me.  The heavy summer rain has kicked weed growth into overdrive, it took me close to the double the time it normally does to just get the weeding done.    I was already dripping with sweat.

The next task was weed whacking.  After starting the whacker it ran for like 2-3 minutes before shutting off.  Despite countless, hot, sweaty yanks on the starter cord, with each pull being more aggravated than the last, the damn thing would not start.  The last thing I felt like doing was screwing with weed whacker in the heat.  I first popped off the air filter to see if unrestricted air flow would help, nope.  Next I got my can of starter fluid/carb cleaner and sprayed it inside the intake and the exterior of the carb.  The whacker spun to life for a few moments as it combusted the starter fluid but then once again was dead.  Damn it.

I was about ready to say f it, and let the weeds win until I had time to do a more thorough analysis in more pleasant weather conditions.  I tried one more thing before giving up.  I pulled both of the fuel lines that run into the carb and then shot a bunch of carb cleaner into the inlets.  I assumed there was some sort of fuel blockage from the behavior I was seeing.  I didn’t expect what I did to be sufficient to correct the problem, thankfully it was.  After putting it back together the whacker started and kept running.  My reward for the effort was to sweat through both my shirt and my shorts as well as coating my shins with a heavy layer of grass clippings.

While Cindy and I were outside we had the chickens outside free ranging.  Cindy was giving the coop a thorough cleaning.  The chickens as always loved the unrestricted access to the backyard.  It’s very funny how they now will often follow Cindy or I around the yard, hoping that at any instant one of us will drop some cracked corn.

When Randall and Lily showed up Cindy and I were half asleep on the couch after eating lunch, we were both pooped.  The two of them showed up with a bunch of Trader Joe’s grocery bags, where they stopped on the way to the house.  The groceries were both for Randall’s pantry at home and some to be utilized Saturday evening as Randall had offered to prepare a shrimp dish for dinner.  Randall had prepared meals a couple times in the past for me, he is actually a good cook.

It didn’t take long until we took Randall and Lily out back to meet the latest additions to the family, the three chickens.  We had some left over pasta to feed them which rivals cracked corn as their favorite treat.  Both Randall and Lily got a kick out of how “friendly” the chickens were, even if most of their affection is tied into whatever food you had in hand.  One of the chickens, Betty has actually started allowing us to pet her freely.  When you reach out to pet her she will sit and let you rub her back and neck without much fuss.  Wilma and Pebbles do not share this trait and will only allow you to touch them briefly if they are in the middle of actively eating.

I pulled out my portable ping pong set and transformed the dining room into a sports arena.  Despite the table being more narrow than regulation it still was good enough for a bunch of good quality, highly contest matches where all four of us played each other.  Both Cindy and Lily have real good hand/eye coordination and were tough players.  Lily was funny to listen to as she played.  She was as vocal as a pro tennis player when she lost a point.  Every match we played was tight, but of course the only person to emerge undefeated was me.  I used a boring but consistent play style to rack up the wins.

The plan was to eat at home and then head out to catch the 7:55 showing of Lucy at Coconut Point.  Randall’s shrimp pesto pasta dish seemed quite involved to prepare.  The end result was really, really good.  All three of us greatly appreciated Randall’s efforts.

So after cleaning up we had to hustle to get out the door to the movie.  We walked into the theater about one minute before the official start time, luckily, as is almost always the case, late arrival has no seating choice penalty.  The theater had less than 50 people in it.

Cindy and I had been looking forward to Lucy based on the previews we had seen.  The movie started out well, it was exciting and cool.  Unfortunately the last two thirds of it pretty much fell apart.  Randall, Cindy and myself all struggled to keep our eyelids open during parts of the film.  The story was just weak and predictable.  It’s nothing more than an average B to B- movie, suitable for a Netflix rental but certainly not the effort/expense to see in a theater.  My opinion of it was shared by everyone else. By the time we got home we were all pretty damn exhausted, we retired to bed without much further delay.

On Sunday morning originally Cindy and I were targeting to go on an Ave Maria bike ride with Randall and Lily.  Unfortunately Cindy has been diagnosed with a probable hair line fracture in her left foot, meaning torquing the foot on a road bike was on the not allowed list of activities.  So while Lily and Randall did the ride Cindy and I went to go pick up the dogs for a day trip at the house.

When they returned from the ride the dogs were quite excited to see Uncle Randall again.  Nicki fussed for a couple minutes because she never saw Liliy before but soon mellowed out.  Old age has made her not be so fussy about who is in the house anymore.

Cindy made a nice omelet breakfast for Randall and Lily to help them refuel from their very warm and calorie consuming bike ride.

I unwrapped the reusable hanging rubber bottle shooting target I bought at Rural King a few weeks before.  I figured BB gun target shooting would be a different type of activity for us.

I was out by myself at first.  I set up the target maybe 30 feet away.  I discovered that the rather hard rubber the “bottle” is made of has a bad trait of making bb’s bounce off of it instead of absorbing the impact.  When one of my shots hit the target and then bounced off the metal picnic table I was leaning on I knew it needed to be further away.

I moved the target all the way out next to the small shed, figuring that was well out of rebound range.  Unfortunately having it that far away made hitting the bottle much more difficult.  You see the sight on the $30 air rifle I bought for myself two Xmas’s ago is not accurate.  To hit what you want you need to aim right of your intended target and even when doing so, it’s still a crapshoot.  When the others came out to join me they were surprised to learn you had to pump up the air rifle after every single shot which is a physically demanding task.  The pump on the Daisy gun requires significant amounts of power to get it going.

Hitting the bottle at long range was too hard.  I had Cindy bring out some additional things to shoot that would not rebound bb’s and were bigger like an empty Bud Light box, a tissue box and an empty one gallon water container.  These items were placed closer.  I liked hitting the water bottle the most.  It gives no doubt about it feedback when you hit it.  The cardboard boxes did not flinch a millimeter when the bb’s sailed cleanly through them.  Cindy was actually the only one to hit all four targets, including the rubber bottle.  She was deservedly proud of her accomplishment.

All of us were pretty warm after hitting the backyard shooting range so we decided a little pool time would be appropriate.  Sadie was quite pleased with our decision as Randall and I took turns splashing her.  She was totally soaked and very tired by the time we got out.  Even Nicki participated in her normal, not too close, way.

Sunday afternoon was filled with various things.  One of them was me working through (with a little help from Randall) episode 4 of the Walking Dead game.  I finished the episode, leaving only one more left to complete the series.  It really is like being a first person participant in the show.

We also took in about 2/3 of Interns which was playing on HBO.  I wonder how much money Google laid out to have a movie that was like one big commercial about their business.  I just have a hard time enjoying anything with Owen Wilson in it.  Despite not seeing the entire movie I feel qualified to rate it, giving it a Lucy-like B- rating.  It has a few laughs and a story structure you have seen 1000 times before.

Randall and Lily stuck around for dinner.  Cindy made a combo meal of black bean burgers and crab cakes.  She did an experimental desert, something she never tried before, lemon meringue pie.  Unfortunately the healthy ingredient substitutions she made did not work out great.  It seems that baked goods are less forgiving than cooked meals when it comes to tweaking the recipes.

We left the house last night the same time Lily and Randall did as we had to drop the girls back off at Ali’s place.  They thanked us for the hospitality and pushed off for the other side of the state.  It was nice seeing Troy and Randall on consecutive weekends, something I don’t think has ever occurred before. The stretch of time leading up until the road trip looks to be more conventional, allowing me to keep plugging away at the endless must/should do’s at the homestead.

Over the weekend a good exercise themed video was suggested.  I plan to try to “pull” it off although it is going require large amounts of both physical and editing effort to complete.

Yesterday Cindy had the tires replaced on the Prius.  This was a necessary precursor to the trip since the old tires were rather worn and starting to dry rot on the sidewalls.  You don’t go crossing dozens of state lines on a set of iffy tires.  We wound up getting the low rolling resistance variety that are recommended for hybrids.  Other than an oil and filter change prior to leaving, the Prius should be ready to go.

When I got home last night Cindy had the chickens out in the yard free ranging again.  I discovered that chickens have some good vert.  Cindy was holding the cup with cracked corn above them.  A couple of the girls hopped a good 8-10 inches in the air trying to reach it.

For a few days Cindy has been complaining of spells of dizziness and nausea.  This morning she woke up and it was really bad, bad enough that I dropped her off at one of the local clinics on my way to work.  The dizziness was to the point that I didn’t feel good about her driving herself.  Late last week she had hit her head.  Some of the symptoms match up with post concussion syndrome.  She also had been told a long time ago that she had vertigo.  Whatever the source, it’s good that she is getting checked out.

Randall and Lily are scheduled to visit this weekend starting tomorrow afternoon.  I plan to jam all of my to do’s into the AM to clear my slate for the rest of the weekend.  The docket for their visit looks to include a meal prepared by Chef Randall, going out to see Lucy, a cool looking new movie and doing some sort of bike ride on Sunday.  Other than that I expect the rest of the time to be occupied by drinking, chickens, and maybe the dogs can come hang as well.

Last night after work I headed out to tend to the chickens.  I gave them a nice surprise by letting them run around the yard while I was moving the coop and cleaning/refilling the food and water stations.  They were quite funny as usual.  After I refilled their food at the small shed they followed me like the pied piper as I carried it across the yard.  Later I sat down on the hill and all three of them were mulling about me only a couple feet away.  Betty even sat down when I reached towards her, letting me pet her back and neck.  A couple of the chickens took advantage of their freedom by jumping up and “flying” for a short distance.  It was cute.

When Cindy got home from work I told her I had the chickens out of the coop.  We have been hesitant to do this much because of potential difficulty getting them back in.  However we now have established their absolute love of cracked corn.  By carrying and shaking a small cup of it Cindy was able to lead the chickens back to their home.  Sprinkling some of it in the coop was all that was needed to get them in there.  Now that we feel confident we can get them back in reliably we can let them out to explore on a more regular basis, even for short periods of time.

So Cindy has been getting the itch to do a road trip again.  Much like last year we are throwing together plans to head west in September with the the western endpoint destination being Durango, Colorado.  You may recall we stopped in Durango during our epic Grand Canyon trip last year.  During that stop both Cindy and I commented how Durango had so many things to see and do that it would be a great place to spend several days, hence our current plan.

There will be a major difference in the trip this year, the party van will be left at home.  As comfortable as the van is for long distance travel, the 15-16 mpg it delivers adds up to massive gas bills on a trip of this length.  Since money is an issue, we are going to try crossing the country in Cindy’s Prius instead.  Getting 3x the gas mileage of the van is going to add up to a huge reduction in expense.

Now of course there are trade offs to be made.  The Prius has seemed comfortable enough on the various places we have taken it but being in the vehicle 8-12 hours a day is a totally different scenario.  To address that issue we may have to do more frequent driver swaps.  To allow for at least some degree of party van type comfort we hope to lay the back seats down flat and cover the area with a mattress pad and comforter.  The thought is one human being should be able to lay down on one side of the area while the luggage would take up the other side. To make this plan work we will also need to pack more frugally than we have in the past with the van which has no tangible limit on space for stuff.

Who knows, trying to go cross country in the Prius may turn out to be a mess but it’s worth a shot to find out.  50 mpg is just too alluring.

The route I am envisioning would take us through St. Louis so Cindy can see the arch, something I have toured before but would have no problem seeing again.  We will have to see what other things we may be able to hit on the way out there.  The good thing is that potentially, we could take a full 2 weeks if we wanted to but I think we can do everything we want in less time with a few days left over to relax at the homestead.

After finishing up my blog on Sunday morning I packed up quickly to head up to Troy’s place in Lancaster.  As expected, my two day parking bill under Liberty Place was quite steep, $82.  As I was making my way out of the city I got to see a cool feature of the Tom Tom in action, building view.  In major metropolitan areas not only do you get a clear view of the streets, you get an accurate view of the buildings along the street.  I thought that was neat.

The drive up to Lancaster was a bit on the lengthy side, taking me nearly two hours.  I knocked on Troy and Melissa’s door right around noon. I last saw Troy when he came down to visit me last year.  I last saw his girlfriend when I was up there to go to a Raven’s game 3-4 years ago.

There has been a new addition to their family since I was last there, Lydia, a high energy, friendly Boston Terrier.  Within 5 minutes the shorts I was wearing were covered in dirty paw prints as we hung in the back yard.  I didn’t care, she was happy to have someone else to play with her.

Troy suggested that we take Lydia down to the awesome new dog park they built recently, of course I liked that idea.  He told me that some local girl won the dog park by entering some contest held by Beneful, the dog food company.  For winning this contest Beneful built a half million dollar dog park for the city, wow.

The park is in a word AWESOME.  Instead of grass which requires lots of upkeep and water, the dog park is lined with RealTurf, the high tech artificial turf that is used throughout the sports industry.  For human beings there is a huge deck made out of composite lumber that never wears out.  On top of that are a number of Adirondack chairs that are under huge shade sails.

For the dogs there are wide open spaces to run, water features that can be activated with the press of a button, a tree that doubles as a tennis ball launcher, and even water fountains that have one level for people and another for their furry friends.  It was easily the best dog park I ever saw in my life. Lydia was a social butterfly, going around to tons of dogs and people introducing herself although she was a bit submissive when it came to dealing with a dog that wanted to aggressively play.  It was great hanging out there for awhile watching the dogs play.

When we got back Melissa had made us a nice lunch that we enjoyed in their back yard.  Troy did some solid work out there since I was last at the place, making a small eating area with landscape blocks that is covered with a small shade sail.  Troy suggested that we head out to a nearby bar with outdoor seating.  They had some sort of blues band playing, starting at 3PM.  Sure, I was up for anything. Like most things when you live in a small city, the bar was only a few minutes away.

I was surprised that there was a $10 cover to walk in considering I saw exactly 4 people in the outdoor seating area with maybe another 10 under the roof.  Troy generously picked up my cover. Now of course I am not a big fan of blues but as I said, I didn’t really care.  The band was a bunch of older guys fronted by a big black guy with what looked to be an ACL injury style knee brace.  He remained seated during the entire performance.  He mostly just sang but could play a mean harmonica occasionally.

The three of us kept a very steady flow of Miller Lite drafts flowing during the couple hours we were there.  The beer helped me enjoy both the music and my observational ability of the audience around us which happened to include two dancers from the original Soul Train show.  There was something interesting to see at every one of the few tables that were populated.  Melissa was enjoying the show.  The lead singer picked up on her enthusiasm during the performance and called her out more than once.  When it was all over he was more than happy to pose for a quick picture.

On Sunday night we just stayed at Troys place where Melissa made another nice meal, a pasta dish this time.  We decided to just hang there and work on the 30 pack of Miller Lites Troy had in the fridge.  Boy did we work on them.  By the time the evening was over the box was empty between the three of us.  I do not have an exact total of how many beers I drank between the blues fest and out of the 30 pack but I am absolutely sure I set a personal beer record, consuming well into the teens without a doubt.

As we were drinking we took turns reviewing some pictures Troy and Melissa had stored on some SD cards and then watching various Howard Stern content on YouTube which Troy and I found hilarious, Melissa, not so much.  I collapsed into bed somewhere close to midnight, it was a fun but exhausting session.

I awoke Sunday feeling dehydrated and a bit hazy but not nearly as bad as I would have predicted after drinking so much beer.  I had no nausea, headache or other debilitating issues.   Poor Melissa had to actually get up and go back to work, Troy had luckily taken Monday off.  Troy and I were throwing around ideas of what to do on Monday.  We started the day pulling Troy’s Mustang out of storage.

Troy has had this Mustang for nearly 20 years but I only had seen it in the flesh once, back when he still lived in Robesonia.  After turning it over for a little while the Mustang roared to life and he pulled it out of the garage.  Overall the car is in good shape considering it is 40+ years old.

Troy had me look at his brake lights before we took it out.  Some garage had done some work on the brakes awhile ago.  The end result was his brake pedal grabs VERY high.  Because of this his brake lights do not get activated unless he pushes very hard on the pedal, a dangerous problem for sure.  Since we were just taking the car on a relatively short trip to the diner we rolled the dice.

Hopping in the Mustang brought me back to the last old car I owned, my 71 Buick convertible that burned up in the early 2000’s.  Original muscle cars smell old, they creak and roll and make all sorts of noise as they rumble down the road.  At this point in my life though I am totally fine just riding in someone else’s old car.  I have no desire to  dip my toe back in that pool whatsoever.

The diner we had breakfast at was huge and pretty busy.  When we walked in the hostess told us if we didn’t mind sitting in a two person booth she could make sure we were in the section of a very pretty waitress.  I am not quite sure why she went there but we saw no harm in sitting in a two seater. It almost seemed like we would be rude to decline.  The waitress was attractive by diner standards I guess but not quite what I expected. We had a good but large breakfast, I couldn’t finish the egg white omelet I ordered, maybe because I dusted off the large side of tater tots and toast as well.

While we were eating we decided we go to Gettysburg, a place I recall visiting once as a child but with little to no recollection of the trip otherwise.  Troy is an American history buff with even more knowledge regarding the Civil War and Gettysburg.  He said on average he goes to Gettysburg a half dozen times a year.  He is so into it that he even took the test to be a part time Gettysburg tour guide.  I was surprised when he described just how difficult the test was and even more surprised that he did not pass the test, even with his near encyclopedic knowledge of the place. I thought it would be cool going there with Troy, it would be like having a personal tour guide to fill in the massive canyons in my Gettysburg knowledge.

After returning the Mustang and grabbing a few things at his place we headed out for the battlefield which was roughly an hour away.  The skies looked sort of menacing but a little rain wouldn’t have bothered me.  We wound up staying dry the entire time.

We began a combination by car and by foot tour of the entire battlefield region.  Everywhere you looked there were statues and monuments scattered about at key positions of the battle.  No matter which one I pointed at Troy knew who it was as well as an extensive back ground of this persons role in the war.  To me, it was really quite incredible.  I knew Troy knew Civil War history well, I didn’t know he knew it this well.

Having him by my side explaining things made the visit exponentially more interesting.  I imagine if I would have toured Gettysburg solo I would have tired of it much more quickly.

Some of the quick facts about the battle I didn’t know was that it lasted 3 days, not one and a total of over 51,000 troops died during the battle, the largest amount of casualties ever on American soil. I also found it interesting that up until closer to the mid 1900’s, the park was soley dedicated to the victorious northern soldiers.  They only added tributes to the southern forces much later.

A number of the grave markers had coins on them, one of the few things that Troy actually did not know the explanation for.  A Google search revealed that depending on the type of coin left it signified different things.  A penny means they knew the dead soldier, a nickel means they went to boot camp with the soldier, a dime means they served in the same company, and a quarter means they were in battle where the soldier died.  There were a lot of pennies out there.

Troy and I scaled several large sets of steps during our visit.  The Pennsylvania monument has a steep spiral staircase leading to the top observation deck.  We also climbed to free standing observation towers one with 120 steps and another with 100 that had pretty much everyone sucking wind by the time they reached the top.

In total we spent around 4 hours touring the place with Troy easily navigating the many roads that connect the various areas.  The trip made it very clear that ultimately he really should be doing something that taps into his passion for history.  He said he doesn’t think he would make a great tour guide, I told him based on what I saw first hand he would be a perfect fit.

On the way back we stopped at a Subway to grab some lunch.  Behind the counter was a an obviously younger freckled face girl whom we found out was 19.  I had made some comment when I was ordering my sandwich how I was trying to recover from a lot of drinking the night before.  All of a sudden she tells us how she prefers to drink whiskey, primarily Jack Daniels and Windsor.  I told her that she didn’t look old enough to drink.  She said she wouldn’t be for two more years.  She continued, telling us how she normally only drinks whiskey at home like somehow that makes it better.

Despite what surely were odd looks on my face regarding this revelation she continued.  She described her love of heavy metal groups and going to heavy metal concerts.  This mostly one way conversation continued even after Troy and I sat down to eat our food.  She came out from behind the counter cleaning tables while relating more stories about the 20 concerts she has attended, her most and least favorite concerts and how she has never been any further back from a stage than fourth row.  Both Troy and I exchanged looks of confusion during this exchange, I’m not sure how we got there.

On Monday evening Troy, Melissa and I headed to a nearby sports bar place that served brick oven pizza.  Neither Troy or I got what we expected in our pizzas.  Troy order the four cheese variety, little did he know that meant it was exclusively cheese with no sauce.  He described it as eating a big piece of garlic bread.  My “shrimp and roasted tomato” pizza was just the opposite, it had no cheese at all, odd. Prior to dinner we went on another Wixon shoo fly pie search which again turned up unsuccessful.  I did find a store made pie that seemed like a pretty close equivilent however.

Monday night we again just hung out since I had to get up early Tuesday to drive back to the airport.  No beer was on the menu however, all three of us had our fill the night before.  We did watch Gravity on HBO.  Yes I saw it before but watching it again was enjoyable enough.

I set my alarm on Tuesday for 5:15 AM.  Troy got up before I left at 6 but I was able to get out without waking Melissa or Lydia.  I thanked Troy for the good time and encouraged him to come back down to Florida whenever he could.  I always enjoy hanging with him regardless of the environment.

The drive down to the airport went smoothly as did the rental car return.  I was back inside the terminal by 7:45, plenty of time considering my flight to PA was not until 10AM.  The security lines in Philly can be tortuously slow so I didn’t wan to take any chances.  It didn’t take long until I had my first annoying experience of the day, which turned out to be filled with them.  As I checked into the kiosk I got the prompt to insert my credit card to pay my $25 bag fee.  I find bag fees along with the other once complimentary items/services that many airlines now charge for to be infuriating.  To me it’s just a pure money grab even though initially the change was blamed on fuel prices.

I had a lot of time to kill so I spent it doing some souvenir shopping and grabbing a large DD coffee to enjoy.  I also was on the search for an open electrical outlet to charge my phone which was drained quite a bit from the Bluetooth connection with the Tom Tom on the drive down.   It was harder than you would think to do so.  The charger I had along did not have real long prongs on the plug meaning it did not make a good connection if an outlet was already loose from years of use.   In total I tried 5 different spots until I found one that worked.

I had an interesting sighting as I was entering the men’s room.  Charlie Crist, the former Florida governor and current candidate to become governor once again, was headed into the store across the hall.  I thought it was quite odd to see him in Philadelphia but I assume he was taking a flight back to Tampa which was in the same general area.  When I exited the mens room I walked around the gate, trying to find him.  I would have liked to shake his hand and wish him luck in defeating Rick Scott, the biggest asshole governor in Florida history.  A selfie to share with Jeremy would have been even better.  Unfortunately I think by the time I was looking for him he had already boarded with the other first class passengers on the Tampa flight.

So I boarded my plane on time around 9:40 or so.  Although I wasn’t flying first class this time, I was lucky enough to be seated in an exit row which offers nearly first class amounts of leg room.  We were told our 10:05 departure was going to be delayed around 10 minutes to address a “minor maintenance issue” .  I heard a stewardess say the issue was simply a tray table lock that was broken.  The 10 minute delay was in fact a 33 minute delay as we got in the air at 10:38. This started a very long and annoying trend of overpromising and underdelivering, something that bugs the living shit out of me.

As I said earlier, US Airways is VERY big on nickel and diming it’s customers in coach.  The ONLY thing you get is drink service, even though this was scheduled to be nearly a 3 hour flight.  And if you do get a drink you do not get an entire drink, instead you get a cup filled half with ice, there is no way they would let you have an ENTIRE 12 ounce can of soda or a complete bottle of water.  Nope, you get one small cup and nothing more.  It’s ridiculous.

I mostly passed the time playing more PvZ on my Galaxy tablet.  I find the game to be a great way to make long boring trips less long and less boring as I lose myself in endless waves of zombie attacks.    As we approached Fort Myers we were descending and then suddenly felt a big surge with the engines along with an obvious changing of directions.  After 5 minutes or so the pilot came on and said there was some storms near the airport so we were going to have to circle for around 3-4 minutes before being able to land.  Ok, no big deal.

Well that 3-4 minutes turned into 45 minutes of maddening looping, during which a couple times we again were told we should be landing “very shortly”.  Then the captain comes on and says that he really wanted to get us to Fort Myers but the weather wasn’t moving.  He said protocol dictated that the fuel level on the plane was low enough that it required us to now divert to Miami to refuel.

Instantly a huge groan flowed across the cabin area as the passengers that were already sick of waiting realized that not only was their wait going to get much longer, anyone that had travel arrangements made for Fort Myers (like me having Cindy waiting to pick me up) had to wait until landing in Miami to let the other party know.  The captain told us we should be landing in Miami in 15 minutes, instead it was more like 45 until we completed yet another maddening holding pattern.

By this time I was really fcking annoyed.  Of course the pilot could not control the weather and nobody would expect to land is conditions that were dangerous.  I was annoyed that we left a half hour late for a tray table.  Those 30 minutes probably would have been the difference between a normal landing and the Miami diversion.  I was also extremely annoyed at the pilot for being one of those guys that threw out overly optimistic numbers instead of realistic ones.  Don’t tell me something will take 3-4 minutes if it could take 45, don’t tell me you will be on the ground in Miami in 15 minutes if it will take triple that, don’t tell me the flight back to Naples is 20 minutes when it was more than double that. Time and time and time again the pilot threw out timeframes that were nowhere close to being accurate.  I mean come on, use some common sense.  Underpromising and overdelivering is the way to manage a situation like this, not vice versa, idiot.

Of course the refueling pit stop in Miami took much longer than the captain indicated as well.  We were not allowed to leave the plane so there was a line that stretched the full aisle of people waiting to relieve themselves in the tiny on board bathrooms.  By the time we landed back at Fort Myers it was almost 6PM, almost exactly double the amount of time the flight was scheduled for.

Yet another annoying item was that despite the delays and consistently poor reporting of expected times, none of the airplane staff saw it appropriate to offer passengers any additional food or drinks. (unless you were paying for it of course)  This seemed utterly ridiculous to me and lacked simple common sense and courtesy.  People are frustrated, aggravated and annoyed.  A bottle of water or, gasp, an ENTIRE can of soda is a small price to pay to express “sorry, we know this is a pain in the ass”.  Once again it cemented my opinion of US Airways as being penny squeezing idiots. The cherry on top was the bags taking nearly 30 minutes to arrive at baggage claim, it was truly a travel day from hell.

Cindy was able to find out about the delays and rerouting after the fact.  Evidently the information online was well behind the actual timeline.  She wound up eating lunch and reading to pass the time.  I felt bad she had to twiddle her thumbs for so long.  She picked me up in the SSR.  It felt good to be in control of my own destination for the first time in 6 hours.

It was quite nice to return home to the comfort of another home cooked Cindy meal and the familiarity of the 47th  avenue estate.  Cindy worked hard to maintain the house in my absence, a duty I will be once again resuming this weekend.

Last night I did take the time to pay my bills and fire off this blurb to the customer complaint section of US Airways.com.

If you would like to see all of my pics from the trip they can be found here.