High ground, Back to church, Green screen
Friday after work I again hit the track to put in my 13 laps of unfun. The first two to three laps are especially miserable and the time that the urge to just get back in the car is the strongest. My knees, lower back and hip all feel pretty lousy until I get warmed up. According to the Apple Watch I once again failed to break the 10 minute mile pace although I think the watch may be a little conservative based on the total time it took. Regardless, I completed the run and I will continue to try to do so, regardless of how much it sucks.
When we went to Home Depot on Saturday I loaded up the truck with 10 bags of top soil, four cinder blocks, and twenty pieces of sod. My goal was to raise the ground in the chicken area underneath the freshly covered playground. I have raised the ground level between the coop and the playground but the ground under the shelter is still low and would turn into a pond during wet season. My original plan was to sit the support posts on the cinder blocks to raise the frame and then fill inside with the dirt and sod.
When I went to lift up the frame I forgot just how haphazard my construction of the frame was. At the time I literally just threw a bunch of scrap lumber and fence posts together to make the structure. The end result was the support posts were different lengths meaning putting them on blocks wouldn’t work. What I wound up doing instead was lifting each corner out of the ground and then backfilling the hole to raise the height. It accomplished the same goal although it was pretty strenuous work. With the addition of the roof to the frame, it has become quite heavy.
To fill in the inside of the frame I lifted up the roof on it’s hinge and propped it that way with an old fence post. I then carefully lugged in the bags of top soil and spread them around. I had to be very careful to not bump the roof otherwise it would have become a very dangerous oversized mouse trap that would have crashed on top of me. I then carefully placed the sod on top of the fresh dirt to lock it all together. When I was done I had achieved elevation on par with the rest of the high ground. I’m hoping the end result is the hens will still be able to hang under there during rainy season staying dry on their own little island.
On Sunday I decided to take the 18L on the same route that I ran out of power on the Ultron the prior weekend. I wanted to do a max range test on the wheel, something I never tried before on the KingSong. The 18L only has a 1000wh battery so I knew asking it to go 30 miles was iffy. On the way out I was in a constant, battery depleting headwind. Since the road is straight as an arrow there is absolutely no relief. When I arrived in town the battery level on the wheel was showing around 47%. So despite this I still thought I would be able to make it home because that nasty headwind would become a range extending tailwind on the way back.
I turned out to be a little too optimistic. I had to call Cindy to come pick me up less than a mile from home when the battery was showing 3% and the wheel was constantly warning me to slow down and charge it. Still, getting almost 30 miles out of the 18L was a decent showing and it was a great day to ride. For the trip I wore my latest piece of safety equipment, a highly visible and reflective safety vest. Wearing the vest eliminates somone from saying they didn’t see me, it’s impossible to miss a 6 foot 3 human reflector.
Sunday night I had my first live stream in three weeks. I tried something different this time, utilizing a green screen to project myself in front of videos that were playing in the background. It’s a similar set up that most Twitch streamers use. We tested it during the day and it looked pretty good. Unfortunately we discovered that to use it at night requires strong lighting which we hastily tried to throw together. We also didn’t have the screen as tight as it needs to be to produce optimal results but it was acceptable. We will keep tweaking it as people seemed to like the combo.
Speaking of green, check out this Hulk print that Cindy painted, pretty cool.