Last night after work Gladys’s sister Monique asked if I could help her pick up some outdoor furniture she was getting a good deal on. The place we picked up from was off Immokalee Road, my old stomping grounds. It was a lot of stuff that had the bed and back seat of the Tacoma stuffed. The ratchet straps I normally use for holding down loads were not ratcheting. The mechanism was rusty and jammed from being in the bed of the truck. Instead I just wound up crossing and tying the straps in place. It wasn’t as good of a solution but it worked, keeping the items in place for the 20 mile drive back.
Luckily the furniture was very light so it was easy to lift onto and out of the truck. Monique thanked me repeatedly for the help which I was happy to offer. When you own a truck helping your friends move stuff goes with the territory. By the time I got home I was starving. I devoured some food and then got caught up with Daredevil episodes, the end.
With how the world feels like a three ring circus nowadays it’s good to be able to distract yourself by having AI make cartoon versions of your pets. I had ChatGPT convert a picture of Elsa into a cartoon yesterday. I think the end result is cute and impressive. AI can do very cool things side by side with pretty awful things, take your pick.
Last night I tended to a bunch of post trip tasks like doing massive laundry, going through my bills and picking up the scattered remains of my travel that were not yet put away. I watered the garden which is currently doing well with very healthy lettuce, cherry tomato, onions and cilantro growing in it. Yea things have swung back to normal pretty quickly.
I got up a little after 4AM on Thursday for my trip north to PA. My flight left bright and early at 7AM. The flight up went smoothly. I rented my car through a company named Payless. I stood outside in the very chilly air for a very long time as I saw vans from other companies roll through consistently. There was another woman standing there most of the time and she eventually asked me if I was waiting for Payless too. I said I was.
She said that she called them and was told that you have to call and let them know when you need a pick up. WTF, I have never had that scenario before. When the van finally did arrive I was chilled to the bone. Usually rental car lots are relatively close to the airport but this one seemed very far away, taking over 15 minutes to get to. I was given a a nice Jeep Cherokee which was more than I expected.
I drove from Philly right to the place I was renting a tux from, Mens Wearhouse. I actually got measured for the tux in Florida but could pick it up in Lancaster which was cool. I am pretty sure the last time I wore a tux was for my wedding back in the 90’s.
I had a few hours to kill before I was supposed to meet up with Troy and other family members and friends of Troy and Jess for a dinner. I checked out the Doubletree Hilton gym which was surprisingly nice having everything I needed to get a decent workout in.
I had a very difficult time finding the place for the dinner. Troy just gave me an address but that address also happened to be the one for some college building. It took me about 10 minutes of walking around until I found where I was supposed to go. The place the dinner was held was very nice. I got to see Troy’s brother, mother and sister for the first time in over 25 years which was a bit nuts. I also got to meet Jess’s mother and brother which was nice as well.
The wedding was Friday at 5PM. I had asked Troy if there was anything he needed help with during the day but he really didn’t. I hit the gym once again and took a nap. My main responsibility was to make sure that other people that were staying at the hotel got on the full size tour bus which was driving us to the venue about 20 minutes away.
In the hotel lobby I met a number of owners in the fantasy football league that Troy has organized for over 30 years. Most of them I have only known via electronic communication. Meeting them in person was a bit surreal. Some were as I expected, some were not.
The wedding venue was a beautiful old place that was in the middle of Lancaster farm land. Originally the wedding was going to be outside but the threat of rain forced them to move indoors. The ceremony did not take very long but it was touching to see the genuine love between Troy and Jess. There were a number of people there so to grease my social interaction skills I immediately started the flow of alcohol. Other than one mixed drink I stuck to Miller Lite.
The reception was held in another building. I was at a table with three other owners from the fantasy football league. Two of them I had met before during a prior trip to PA. One of their wives turned out to also be an avid pickleball player so we talked about our love of the game quite a bit.
One of the odd things that I noticed very early was the man pictured above. The entire evening he was standing in roughly the same spot doing just what you see here, looking down at a tablet. If he spoke a word to anyone I did not see it. I finally had to ask Troy and Jess who this guy was and what was he doing? Evidently he was the live bands sound man. His job was to control the sound levels via the tablet I guess. I did not hear any radical shifts in the sound volume during the entire night so I can’t imagine he had to do much. For all I know he was watching movies on Netflix. I left the wedding a little after 10 with two of the guys at my table instead of hopping back on the bus. On the ride back to the hotel some interesting stories were told. It did not take me long to fall asleep.
Saturday was my day to visit my family. I set an alarm to drag my ass out of bed to get on the road to get to Lenhartsville to visit my dad and step mom. It had been at least two years since I have been to their house, possibly closer to three. Things looked similar except there are significantly less sheep.
When they moved back east from western PA they had 16 sheep. Now due to old age and some health problems they are down to six. I said hi to them but they were not very interested in socializing.
Dad suggested we go out to breakfast. I offered to drive in the Jeep since it had space and was nice. Dad directed me on a route that included driving on a crushed stone road. It made the drive feel more exciting to him I guess. We had a nice breakfast at small family place in Lenhartsville, the type of place my dad enjoys. Everything in there seemed to go at a slow pace which is what he seems to enjoy most of the time.
On the way back we stopped at Dietrich Meats, a place I have visited and talked about before. The purpose of the visit was for me to grab some shoo fly pies to take back to Florida. This place is in a time capsule, looking like nothing has changed since the 70’s, giving it some of it’s charm. If you are heavily into meats, this place is for you.
On the way back I suddenly had a tire PSI warning come up on the screen. It showed one of the tires was in the low 20’s while all the others were pushing 40PSI, great. By the time we got back to their house it had dropped all the way to 15PSI meaning this was not a slow leak. My dad brought out his compressor and I started adding air but I could actually hear the leak hissing. I eventually found it. Whatever cut the tire was not stuck in it making air escape fast. My assumption is it happened on the rock road but who knows.
It became clear to me that trying to drive with this sort of leak was a recipe for disaster. I called the rental car company to seek their guidance. I didn’t know if they would want me to fix it and/or put the spare on. The answer I got was I was responsible for road hazard so I had to get it fixed. Ok, great. So I checked to see if the Jeep came with a spare, thankfully it did. I put it on and threw the leaking tire in the back. I said my goodbyes to my dad and Teresa and headed to the nearest tire shop, Mavis.
I was pleasantly surprised when they said they could roll me in to look at it. I found myself getting a bit annoyed at the pace of the repair. The guy that was doing it seemed to be taking his sweet old time doing it. I sat there for more than an hour however it was hard for me to stay annoyed when the guy said there was no charge, he just plugged the hole. I gave him a $20 tip for helping me get back on the road. Every trip has it’s hiccups and I thought this was mine. I was wrong.
So after a couple hour delay to address the tire I drove to Todd’s house. It had been over a year since I saw him and he recently had a health scare so it was good to see him. I also got to see Bailey which was bittersweet. Her big brother Oakley died several months ago. Bailey was still a big lovable teddy bear like she normally is.
I got to see my niece Caroline for a bit and saw the place that she is renting. We went to dinner at Ganly’s, a nice place I have eaten at before. It was myself, Todd, Mindy, her daughter Mackenna and Mindy’s mother. We had a nice meal and then went back to their place. I didn’t stay long as I had to still return the tux and get prepped for leaving the hotel early Sunday morning.
I set a 5:45 alarm on Sunday. I wanted to give myself plenty of cushion to make sure I got to the airport for my flight on time which was scheduled to depart at 10:55, getting me home mid-afternoon. On the drive down to Philly I stopped at a something you never see, a Dunkin Donuts without a drive thru.
This was an old building that obviously started out as something else. Stranger yet that this was in the middle of PA Dutch country but the place was staffed by two Indian dudes. Despite the oddities the coffee was ok and I hopped back in my car and kept rolling. My plan worked and I was in the airport by 8AM with time to spare. I had no idea just how much time to spare I would have ultimately.
The first delay text came somewhere after 9. The delay was roughly an hour, annoying but not a huge deal. I shrugged it off and just watched YouTube on my phone. Then the second delay notice came in and then a third. There was no American Airline staff at the gate to explain, we were just getting these notifications on the app of them, which annoyed me.
Then the notice came that the departure gate was moved to a different terminal so I had to hoof it over there. In total there were at least six or seven delays announced. The later delays were due to weather but we were never informed what started the chain reaction in the morning. Even after we finally boarded the plane we had to wait another 90 minutes because of a ground stop. It was maddening. The only good news was the plane was maybe half full and I had an entire row to myself so I could sprawl out across all three seats.
Once we finally got in the air I tried to keep my mind numb by playing endless games of solitaire on my phone. By the time we landed it was something like 8:45, something like 7 hours later than expected. The cherry on top was waiting another 20 minutes for the luggage to come out. Thankfully Ali and Shuggs were willing to meet me near the airport to drop off Elsa otherwise I would have added at least another hour onto my drive home. My head hit the pillow after midnight. It was one of the most frustrating days of travel I can remember.
So the trip was front loaded with a lot of good memories with a tail end of frustration. I was happy to be able to attend Troy’s wedding. I hope Jess and he have a long and happy life together. They both deserve it. I am happy to be back in Florida and will continue working on carving out my own little ball of happiness.
In case you didn’t know bad guys on the internet are constantly trying to break into your accounts. That’s why things like two factor authentication and using different passwords for every account is important. I woke up this morning with an inbox full of password reset emails. These were attempts by various criminals to change my password.
Unfortunately thanks to the widespread proliferation of data breaches on the internet your data is out there for sale to whomever wants it. So the one piece of data they DO have is my email address. They enter that into the various sites and then try to do a password reset, hoping the victim would stupidly confirm the reset without thinking. I had at least a half a dozen different sites that they tried to reset last night, unsuccessfully. However this tactic points out that the account that you need the strongest security on is your email account. If a thief gets into that it can be game over. Make sure you use unique passwords for every site and utilize multifactor authentication wherever possible to make sure internet criminals have a bad day.
Tonight I need to finalize packing for my trip to PA. I fly out early Thursday morning for what promises to be very much a whirlwind trip. I have not attended a wedding in a very long time but I am sure it will be memorable. On Saturday I am spending time hanging with my family and then I am right back on a plane Sunday morning to head back to Florida. See you on the flip side.
I got out and played pickleball Saturday morning solo. I wound up playing 6 or 7 games, each one with a different partner which is always interesting to me. I played pretty well. In total the session was around two hours which was long enough as I am trying to avoid aggravating my IT band much. I definitely could feel it afterward but it felt less severe than before after playing.
I did a lot of riding on my Inmotion V9 this weekend. I did a Dunkin Donuts ride on Saturday as well as a range test on Sunday. It’s a great entry level wheel and I have been enjoying putting it through various testing.
The rest of my weekend was pretty chill although I knocked out necessary chores as well as starting the mental game plan for what needs to get done before I fly up to PA for a real fast visit to attend Troy’s wedding. Travel weeks always carry a decent amount of stress with them.
For the majority of 2024 and this year so far I have found myself in a pattern of excessive spending that I think I am finally turning the page on. As in most things, the fault for this is my own just as it will be my responsibility to rectify the trend. I think things are finally aligning which will allow me to do that. I once again will be getting a nice little refund on my taxes this year which will be saved instead of spent, what a concept.
I spent a lot of time last night doing editing on my review of the V9. I am sort of doing things in the reverse of how I normally do it, releasing a summary video before I release the series. This is because Inmotion, who sent me the wheel, wanted to see the summary video before I made it public. The cliff notes version of my thoughts on the V9 is I think it may be one of the best values in the EUC market today. I have a lot of videos I need to shoot / produce in the upcoming weeks. I have been dragging my feet quite a bit recently.
This is my last weekend before my brief trip to PA next weekend for my buddy Troy’s wedding. That being the case I need to make sure I am starting to cross my T’s and dot my I’s to make sure everything is in place for a smooth trip.
I had a productive night. I recently had curbed the passenger side front wheel on my Tesla. Luckily I had installed curb guard protectors shortly after I got the car for this very reason. The wheels that come with the Model Y performance series are expensive, cool and unfortunately very vulnerable to any curb damage. The protectors I have are modular so I was able to just replace the three sections that were missing and be back in business.
I did my second short ride on the V9 last night. During my initial ride last week after pumping up the suspension to the recommended pressure for my weight I was not thrilled with how bouncy the suspension felt. Instead of absorbing impacts it was more like it was bouncing off of them which did not feel good. Last night before riding I reduced the pressure in the shocks significantly below the recommended range and the ride felt significantly better to me. I did a short video describing the change.
When I got home last night I noticed that the Echo device in the garage was playing music which was odd as I don’t recall it playing anything when I left in the morning. I gave the device the verbal command to stop, which it did. Later when I was inside the house I heard noise out in the garage again. Yes once again the device was playing music without my command to do so. This time I took the more drastic step of unplugging it to hopefully clear out whatever issue was going on. I plugged it back in and went inside confident that should be the end of it.
Nope, later I once again heard music going on in the garage. I was now legit aggravated so I unplugged the device and just left it that way. Hopefully some extended time with no power will cure what ails it. This is the oldest Amazon device I own. Some of you may recall this exact same scenario happening years ago with this same device, although in that situation the garage was right next to my bedroom so it actually woke me up in the middle of the night. Have the Chinese infiltrated my Amazon device? Maybe.
I returned to yoga for the first time in three weeks yesterday. I did not apparently re-injure my back doing so but I do feel little tweaks and twinges in my body from being moved and stretched in ways that are not routine.
I now have an Inmotion V9 in my possession. It is a new wheel that is on the low side of the typical EUC price point yet it delivers a lot of features for the money like suspension, light weight, quality components and much more. I need to focus up and get some content made on it. This wheel was sent to me by Inmotion and they have certain features they would like highlighted in whatever content I create. The end result is going to be my releasing a summary video first, instead of last which will check the boxes on these features. Then I will release a series of videos that focus more on just certain aspects of the wheel. I also have my F22 Pro on order which I hope shows up by the end of the month.
I hate to jinx it but my IT band related problems definitely seem to be improving. Ironically the improvement coincided when I hurt my back doing yoga two and a half weeks ago. I am still limiting the amount of pickleball I am playing as the last thing I need is to have the needle start moving in the wrong direction again. Make no mistake, anything below my waist is never going to feel “good” at this point in my life but I would be thrilled with just normal amounts of aches and pain, thank you very much.
I have fallen into a weird niche in content that I watch. Lately I have been binging these relatively short format videos where they use some sort of simulator to run various vehicles through all sorts of jumps, crashes, obstacle smashing and a number of other ridiculous scenarios. The physics seem spot on and something in my brain latches onto this. I don’t have an explanation.
Throughout my life I have had a lot of situations where I have known people that at first seem like really happy, got their shit together, funny, entertaining to be around individuals. I also have had numerous scenarios where these same people, when the top layers are pulled back, reveal themselves to be dark, damaged, toxic, and broken at their core. It’s like their overly positive facade is a thin veil for the ugly truth beneath. In my experience these types of people ultimately live lives that are riddled with negativity, lies, and drama because they create it. These type of people are best kept at a distance. You can’t change them, you can’t save them. They are best turned onto other paths away from you where the damage they can inflict is minimized.
Hi all. After a roughly two week and change hiatus from pretty much any public facing social media or content I decided to start putting stuff out there again. Dawn is out of the woods in regards to life and death but her eventual condition is going to take a considerable amount of time to resolve. Myself and many, many others are hoping for the best of possible outcomes.
Am I going to go back and give you a cliff notes version of everything my life has included since I last posted here? Nah. I will just see where it goes. I have an Inmotion V9 sitting in my house that I have gotten out to ride once. I am supposed to be doing a review on the wheel and producing content but I have been slow to do so.
This past weekend I attended my first pro pickleball tournament with my buddy Rich. It was a cool experience seeing the best players in the world compete. You could be watching them on the center court one minute and rubbing elbows with them in a food line the next. I would definitely go again.
I added a very painful lower back to my injury list for a week or two. I ironically hurt it in yoga class, something that is generally viewed as a rehabilitative activity. That has improved now. The hip/knee pain I have had because of the IT band for the last 3 months plus is actually at it’s lowest point in a very long time. I am cautiously optimistic that I may be finally turning the corner on that as well. I played pickleball yesterday and came out of it feeling decent.
I have had my A1 printer running nearly non-stop creating cool multi-color prints. Almost every single print I have made I have given away to friends or co-workers. I enjoy sharing what I make I guess. This is the same premise that likely drives my YouTube channel and even what I write here.
Two weeks at this time I will be on a plane to Pennsylvania to attend my friend Troy’s wedding. It is going to be a very fast trip with me returning on Sunday morning. I hope to see some of my family on Saturday but that will be about all the time I have outside of the wedding itself.
The incident with Dawn has put a spotlight on how quickly life can be flipped upside down. It also triggered another personal risk tolerance assessment within myself. The lesson learned is to value what you have, embrace happiness, and don’t waste energy on negative things that serve no practical purpose whatsoever in your life.
Do I plan to resume writing more or less daily? We will see how I feel.
I woke up Saturday morning and saw a message from one of my Florida riding buddies that was a quote from another one of my buddies that I have ridden with in California. The message was that Dawn was involved in a very serious crash. Dawn crashes once in awhile so I didn’t think it was horrible until I found out it was.
She was doing another 100 mile+ ride but it was still going into the night. She was on a bike trail along a river. There was a pretty sudden turn to the left that she did not see/react to in time and the result was catastrophic. She went off the trail and fell onto a steep concrete embankment that had stones embedded in it. She was likely going 30MPH plus when it happened. Her injuries are massive and she was literally touch and go for quite awhile with multiple internal injuries, a brain bleed, a collapsed lung and more. There was a very real chance she could die.
She has been in an induced coma for a number of days. She is more stable now but the total extent of her injuries is yet unknown. When the reality of the situation hit I sort of went numb. It was the sort of news that you wish was a dream that you can wake up from. Unfortunately there was no escape from this.
There was a gofundme created which has been generously contributed to by hundreds of people. The reality is that the financial distress that is potentially awaiting on the other side of this will be massive, far exceeding any donations that could be made. Assuming she is out of the woods there is still no clear idea of the extent of her injuries and what a road to recovery would even look like.
I had people ask if I was going to fly out to California because of the close relationship Dawn and I established over the last year. To me it makes no sense to do so as until she improves nobody can even see her except immediate family. I don’t really know exactly what I can/could do.
I have not had much contact with Dawn over the last month and a half so to get this news out of the blue was like a punch you didn’t see coming. At this point all I can hope is that whatever injuries she has suffered are not of the long term debilitating variety. If my near death accident in October didn’t teach me a hard enough lesson regarding the potential frailty of life, especially when riding on a one wheeled self balancing device, this incident engraved it in stone.
Yes every day you are rolling the dice, you never know if something could take you out. But when we willingly place ourselves in situations where only a moment of unawareness can lead to such catastrophic results you have to really do a thorough evaluation of your risk/reward equations. If you have a family that equation gets even more complicated.
I’m not a religious person but if you are, please say your prayers for Dawn. I have been trying to send her positive energy in my own way. There may be a hiatus to my posting anything in the blog for awhile. It just doesn’t feel very important.
