Might as well
Even though I am off tomorrow I figured I may as well get the blog knocked out after a nice Eagles win over the hated Cowboys to end the season. New Year’s eve was once again a busy day. Despite Saturday sort of being a holiday, I wanted to front load my three day weekend with the stuff I wanted to get done, as is always my preference.
Once again Cindy helped me in accomplishing that goal. The swelling in my right knee has not relented at all, if anything it may have gotten slightly worse, making house chores a slow and limp filled process. During a break in the action we went to Rural King. The last time Elsa was there she spent the entire visit being freaked out. This time we had just picked up Sadie before heading there. Having Sadie along helped Elsa do better but she still gets freaked out unexplainably in public at random times. Once she starts it is very difficult to settle her down.
During the afternoon we worked on putting away all of the indoor decorations. I normally will leave stuff up a week or even two weeks after New Year’s sometimes and I may leave the exterior stuff up that long again. Unlike a lot of years, I didn’t feel a lot of remorse or sadness taking stuff down this time. I’m not sure why that is because we sure put a lot of effort into making this holiday as good if not better than most.
Cindy made plans for us to meet up with Katie and Daniel in Naples that night. Originally the plan was we would meet prior to the fireworks and ride there together. That didn’t work out timewise so Cindy and I parked at the Publix at the corner of Golden Gate Parkway and 41 and rode our wheels down to the Naples Beach Hotel. We did not want our electronic transportation sitting in sand so we sat on a rail leading to the beach and parked our bots right under us.
Our plan seemed pretty solid until the rush of last minute people came charging in. One of them was a clueless mother with her young son. The kid had on those sneakers with embedded LEDS in them that flash constantly. They were maybe 10 feet from us. Mom was too busy taking selfies and filming the fireworks on her phone (more on that later) to give any consideration to just how annoying her son’s flashing sneakers were.
Imagine you were in a movie theater trying to watch a film and the guy in the next row held up a color pulsating flashlight. That was pretty much how it was. Cindy has a sensitivity to bright lights like that so she moved positions so my body blocked most of the lights as they annoyed me less. I told Cindy I would ask the kid to turn them off but she didn’t want to dampen the kids New Years. In retrospect I still should have just asked the kid/mom as nicely as I could muster to please turn off your f’ing flashing shoes.
Even halfway into the fireworks people were still trying to cram themselves into the beach area. It just reminded me why I generally avoid these types of events. The other thing that drives me a bit nuts is how many people filmed the ENTIRE event on their smart phone. I mean wtf, you are there, watch the fireworks with your eyes instead of via the viewfinder of your phone. If the rest of your social media circle wanted to see fireworks they would make the effort to go see them themselves, not watch your recording of it online. I just don’t get it.
As the last explosion went down I was very happy to get off the beach and felt no desire to repeat the experience any time soon. We met up with Katie and Daniel afterward. We didn’t get 5 feet until a nice group of people started asking Cindy questions about the wheels. Cindy loves telling people about them and even letting them try the MiniPro if so inclined. After the demonstration was done we started rolling around.
As you can imagine the area was very congested with people and vehicles. The nice thing is most people are so amazed by the wheels that they stop dead in their tracks and let you pass. I was riding the MCM4 which looks especially cool at night with it’s robust LED lighting. During one section of sidewalk we ran into some early sprinklers blocking the path. I tried to avoid them by hopping into the grass but immediately fell as the super deep and wet St Augustine grass swallowed the wheel up. Luckily I landed on the grass and I had my wrist guards on so no injury occurred.
We eventually rode back to Rita’s, a local ice cream hangout. On our way there both Katie and Daniel demonstrated some of the new skills they have learned since both having wheels full time. Daniel can now ride one legged for short distances and hopped down and up curbs multiple times. Katie is so smooth on her new wheel as well and did a super smooth curb jump that was awesome. After ice cream we all piled back in the Prius. We drove Katie and Daniel back to their car which was a number of blocks away. They thanked us for yet another unique and fun riding experience.
Since the fireworks were early, 7:30PM, we got home by around 9:30. We had no further crazy celebration planned, in fact I consumed not one drop of alcohol. Hell I didn’t even watch Dick Clarks Rocking Eve until 11:55 or so just to watch the ball drop. Instead I watched Deadpool which was showing on HBO. 🙂 I was a little bummed I missed Mariah Carey making an idiot out of herself on live tv when her lip sync voice track died, showing the world she really can’t sing those songs that way anymore.
Sadie had a very rough time of it while we were gone. She is scared of loud noises. During thunderstorms she will either be cowering under my desk or in a closet. Well some of the idiots around us evidently were shooting off fireworks a good portion of the night. As we pulled into the garage it looked like they were going off almost on top of the back yard. Sadie was FRANTIC when we got in the door, hyperventilating. We soon discovered she had peed in several spots around the house, something she never does. She must have been terrified. Both Cindy and I felt very bad that she was so freaked out.
Despite being up late, I awoke early. Since my knee blew up my sleep has been very poor. I am unable to sleep in the position I normally do because of the knee and it makes me wake up often as I shift to relieve pressure. I was up and outside pretty early, taking on chicken coop cleaning duty, giving Cindy a one day break from the chore she winds up having to do other days. I also got out the carpet shampooer to give the areas Sadie lost control in a thorough cleaning.
I decided I wanted to go for a long EUC ride in the morning. I came up with the idea of taking Cindy’s new wheel, the MCM4 on the trip. I have not done any long distance cruising on the wheel and was curious how it would be. Well the short answer was, not great. The smaller pedals on the wheel hurt my feet very quickly. I had to stop a couple times to relieve the pain.
The wheel is pretty fast, I got up to 18mph at one point but it does not feel stable at speed. The wheel almost feels like you are repeatedly tapping the gas and then coasting non-stop as you are rolling along. It gets annoying and does not inspire confidence. The other thing I noticed was the wheel temperature reading seemed high, somewhere close to 130 degrees but I later found out this is within the normal operating range for this wheel.
So I made it to DD in one piece but was glad I arranged to have Cindy meet me there to drive me back. The MCM4 is a fun wheel to roll around on at night for relatively shorter rides but long distance cruising is definitely not what it is good at. I told Cindy after the ride I understood why she preferred the way Katie’s Inmotion wheel felt in comparison. It’s thinner, smoother, and more polished of a riding experience.
During the late morning I did my bills which included paying and reconciling my monster CC bill from the holidays. Reconciling the December statement is always the biggest pain in the ass of any month as you can imagine. I bet I spent 45 minutes going line by line, matching it up to my Quicken entries.
Cindy was going to a beach birthday party. I opted to dog sit and take in the last Eagles game of the year against the Cowboys. I knew Dallas was not going to be trying very hard since a win did not change their playoff picture. Zak Prescott played a couple series and Ezekial Elliot didnt play at all, making the Eagles job a whole lot easier.
It sure helped once the Cowboys inserted Mark Sanchez to finish out the game after Tony Romo was in for one series and threw for a TD. Sanchez was his normal stumbling, bumbling self, throwing two interceptions and taking a horrible sack, all of which set up Eagle scores. So yea, the Eagles won and I am happy about it but I am under no delusion that we beat the best Dallas has to offer.
The 2016 Eagles were a very frustrating team to watch. During the first three games they played uncharacteristically solid football, excelling at pretty much all facets of the game. The wheel then came off rather abruptly. I am sure part of it was opposing coaches game planning better but the Eagles did a lot wrong to help them. They had something insane like five games this year where they committed ten penalties or more.
On defense there were multiple problems. The defensive line stopped being able to get to the QB for a stretch of 7 or 8 games. The cornerbacks were awful in my opinion, getting burned consistently, when they weren’t committing PI penalties. The offense was a mess at times as well with the wide receivers being the biggest underperformers of all. They could cut every single wide receiver on this roster and I would not care. There isn’t a playmaker in the bunch and nobody has the speed to make defenses care.
Of course Carson Wentz was the biggest unknown going into the season and I would say he did well, sort of. He was definitely handcuffed by the shitty wide receivers with bad hands, no speed, and no ability to make the tough catch if a pass was slightly off target. However Wentz was off target a lot this year. His bad habit of throwing off the back foot resulted in a lot of interceptions and even more interceptions he was lucky defenders dropped. He made a lot of dumb throws and even dumber decisions, taking sacks for huge losses when it would have been simple to throw the ball away instead.
I also question his ability to be accurate on any thrown ball over 20 yards. I don’t have the numbers but it sure seemed like he had precious few completions where the ball was in the air that long. His touch passing seems pretty awful as well, he just never seemed to be able to get dialed in to the point where he could drop the ball into where it needed to be.
But still, even with these negatives, I like the kid. I like his attitude and the things he is doing wrong can be corrected for sure with some practice and changing of his thought process in certain situations. I still think he has a bright future as the Eagles QB of the future. Of course, I said the same thing about Nick Foles at one point in time too, just saying…..
Like Wentz, Doug Pederson had some rather bad moments during his NFL coaching debut but overall I like the way he handles a team. I like his honesty, thoughtfulness, and willingness to address pretty much any question or issue that is presented to him. Hopefully this will be looked back as the first year of a long term Eagles turn around.
I have one more day off tomorrow to enjoy myself. Hopefully I get to do exactly that.