Getting back in the groove, closing in on 1k, truckless, faces in the vinyl asbestos flooring

So my buddy John asked if I could time a small race of his this Saturday.  Although I have done a couple equipment rentals under the Green Machine Timing umbrella, I have not done a stand alone timed event to date.  I told John I would help him out so I needed to start doing some work last night to make sure all went well.

The first thing I did was pull out my big race clock and hook it up to my new stand alone power supply.  I wanted to get an idea of what sort of run time I could expect.  I hooked up the clock to the inverter side of the power supply, started the timer and let it run.  At the three hour mark it was still running fine.  I checked the power supply and I still had 75% of my battery run time so I should be in good shape.

I also hooked up my timing box in the garage with the two timing mats and just let it run, again to test battery life.  After 75 minutes it was still running strong with well over half battery left.  This race is only a 5K which normally requires the box to be on for roughly 45 minutes. I also spent some time preparing bibs, scanning them into the timing system to capture their unique identifier which gets matched with each participant. Cindy has a track meet on Saturday so our hope is she can go with me early to the race site and help me get the arch set up, after that I should be able to handle the rest of the work myself.

Yesterday I noticed my YouTube channel was continuing it’s slow climb toward 1000 subscribers.  As of this moment I am only 18 clicks away from the milestone.  In addition to 1000 subscribers I am making steady progress towards 1,000,000 total views.  I currently have been averaging about 30,000 views a month.  Considering my video production the last 18 months is way down from prior levels (living alone meant more videos), to still be approaching these numbers is cool.

I’m entering another day without my Tacoma.  Originally Tuffy said it would be done yesterday.  Then around lunch time they called and said they could not get a needed part until late in the day so the truck won’t be done until today.  If the eta slides one more time my patience will have come to it’s end.

Last night on Science channel we were watching a show that had a story about how faces appear in the landscape when viewed from satellite imagery.  For some reason this kicked off my memories of seeing faces as well, on the old vinyl flooring in the bathroom of the farmhouse I grew up in Pennsylvania.  The only bathroom in the house had ancient vinyl flooring in it, somewhat similar to this.  I recall spending most of my sitting time in there staring at the random patterns in the flooring and having them morph into recognizable faces or objects.  In the era where bathroom time was devoid of flat screens for entertainment, floor staring was a solid substitute.