In the gutter, Duned, Slow rider, Still there

We got a ton of rain on Friday. Friday evening I was home looking out at the backyard and saw a small waterfall coming from the roof. Wait, I have new gutters, that shouldn’t be happening. Well it happens when they are stuffed with debris from the nearby huge oak tree.

Saturday morning I got up on my ladder to see just how bad the gutters were, they were bad indeed with certain segments stuffed to the top with leaves and other debris. It was a throwback to the long list of unfun tasks I had to deal with at my old house. I did not take an elegant approach, I scooped out handful after handful of debris with my hands and then followed up with a blasting of the hose to clear what was left. By the time I finished up about an hour later the house had a perimeter of wet leaves strewn around it. As I was doing the dirty job I regretted my decision to not have leaf guards installed when I had the gutters put on. I could probably attach some myself.

I ran around and did some errands. One of the stops was at Home Depot. I grabbed a couple caps to seal off the spots where old, rusty and shitty looking spot lights were. I don’t need them anymore since I installed bright LED fixtures to the front of the structure. This was one of those things I wanted to do since I moved in a year ago and just never pulled the trigger. Their subtraction was an addition.

I repainted the accent pieces for the new pedals I planned to install on my Veteran Patton Sunday. I already had the ladder out from the gutter cleaning so it made for a good painting station as well.

Saturday night I decided to go out and see Dune 2, solo. To prepare I rewatched the first Dune to refresh my memory. To me, as someone that has never read the books, the story is rather hard to follow.

Prior to going to the movies I grabbed food at Shea’s Landowne Street, a bar/restaurant very close to the theater. I knew it was a popular hangout spot but I had never been there. I liked the vibe and will likely add it to the rotation of places I like to frequent on a regular basis.

So I saw the movie at the Hollywood 20, a theater I don’t frequent often. The theater I was in did not have full reclining seats which would have been welcome since the movie was almost three f’ing hours long. Much like episode one I had a hard time understanding everything that was going on due to my lack of backstory. I mean the movie is cool but doesn’t resonate with me like other sci-fi franchises have. I’d give it a B. I was hoping this was the last film but clearly from the way this ended there has to be a 3rd installment coming, yay.

I woke up to a 6:30 alarm Sunday morning to go play pickleball. It was a great morning to play as the temps were cool and the sun was bright. After heading home I tried to get organized for the two videos I planned to do for the day. The first project was installing the new pedals on the Veteran Patton. This was the second set of aftermarket pedals I tried on this wheel. Thankfully this set worked better than the last. The new pedals finish off the orange accent look of the wheel as well as adding superior grip via the spikes.

Later in the afternoon I did a range test on the Mten Mini, a funny experiment. The Mini is tiny and actually intended for children. It was advertised of having a range of 5-7 miles with a top speed of 10MPH, both very miniscule numbers in terms of most modern day EUCs. Doing a range test would mean going very slow for a long time. I wanted to see what would happen.

I know I looked ridiculous perched on top of such a tiny wheel. I was worried about running out of battery far away from home so at first my idea was just to loop around a nearby neighborhood. However the battery appeared to be holding up better then expected so I shifted gears and decided to try to make it to Dunkin Donuts and back. Doing this would put me right at if not over the advertised top range for the wheel but I risked it. Not only did the wheel get me to DD and back home, I had to do additional riding to get the battery even lower. I wound up covering around 9 miles with 10-20% of battery left. It was a very surprising outcome for me.

Once I got home the majority of the rest of my night was spent editing video although I did take a brief break to grab a Jersey Mike’s portabello cheese “steak” sandwich. By the time everything was polished off it was after 10PM. It was a good weekend.

One thing that is less than good is the chest pain that sent me to the ER two Friday’s ago has not completely disappeared. If I cough, sneeze or take a deep breath quickly I still feel pain in the same spot. I triggered it last week trying to do pull ups as well. I’m waiting for the other shoe to hit the floor, whatever that may be.

Tomorrow I have the next step in my vein procedure where they inject something into the smaller veins in my lower leg to close them off. Supposedly it is much less annoying than the ablation procedure, we will see.