Past print, parkour, picnic, duf double feature, loving Lost
A couple weeks ago when I was on my way to Jeremy’s place I got a call from my dad. He told me how he was looking up his name in some old archives of the Reading Eagle, my old hometown paper. He was stunned to see an engagement announcement to the girl I was seeing in high school. Missie. The same one that I foolishly dropped out of college for.
Dad said he never knew I was engaged to Missie. Believe it or not I was equally surprised, I had no recollection that we actually got engaged. This must have occurred during the 6 month hiatus my dad and I had in speaking after I dropped out of school. Needless to say he was not happy with me, and looking back I can’t say I blame him all that much, I was really stupid.
Anyway, he said he would send me a copy of the announcement in the mail which I got last week. There it was in black and white. Damn, so I have actually been engaged three times in my life. News to me.
So I looked at the URL at the bottom of the print out. I saw that the page was generated by Google. Evidently this is yet another amazing thing that Google can do. They have imaged and OCR’d millions of old newspapers which you can search by any keyword you want. Check it out for yourself here!
Anyway I had to punch in my name to see what came back. I was pretty amazed at what I found. I found my three engagement notices, my two wedding announcements, my name mentioned in a baseball game recap, my name in a story about a spelling bee I was in during 8th grade, and mention (and picture) of me receiving a baseball scholarship from the Hot Stovers.
It was pretty incredible being able to bring back these memories from years ago and to see them in print just like you were opening the paper today. Punch your name in and see what comes back. You may be surprised.
So we had a three day weekend lined up. We had a race to time on Memorial Day so it didn’t quite feel like what a 3 day weekend should feel like knowing I had to get up at 4:15 am on Memorial Day.
On Friday Ali made efforts to cut down on the amount of weekend labor I would have to do by mowing the grass Friday afternoon which I greatly appreciated. She wasn’t very happy when Saturday I just found a new set of things to keep me busy. I spent a good portion of the morning trimming, trimming the palmetto bush, pygmy palms, oak trees, hibiscus bush and more. Hey, it needed to be done.
Saturday afternoon I did more van prep. I started with some more maintenance items, topping off the coolant, replacing the air filter and finally the fuel filter. I never replaced a fuel filter before. It was a bit of a pain because you have to make sure to depressurize the fuel system before changing the filter, else risk being dowsed with gasoline under pressure. After removing the gas cap I also had to pull the fuel pump relay which was tucked away under the hood in a not so easily accessible location. After removing the relay you crank the motor a few times to depressurize the system.
Ali helped me in this procedure by being my tool girl. As I was laying under the van she handed me tools. It worked out well. After completing the maintenance I turned to interior cleaning of the party van. I wanted to really clean the van well so I brought out the heavy hitters, our Dyson vacuum and the steam cleaner. The interior of the van was riddled with stains from years of sloppy drinkers. The rug, the upholstered side panels and the seats all had numerous stains on them, most of which looked to be of the soda/coffee variety.
I first used the Dyson and it’s super suction to vacuum the van thoroughly. By the looks of the dust bin afterward, I don’t think the van was cleaned inside much at all. However the real eye opener came once I started with the steam cleaner. I dumped 5 loads of pitch black waste water. Man that thing was dirty. The steam cleaner did a nice job of getting up most of the staining. Ali, who at first thought that my idea to run the steam cleaner in the van as a little over the top changed her mind once she saw what I was dumping in the sink. If she would have seen the brown water that was getting sucked out of the seat upholstery….
I had the van running during the entire cleaning process with the AC cranked. It was the only way to not die with the temp near 90 and the humidity close to the same number. I spent at least two hours cleaning the inside of the vehicle. During the process I also removed one of the rear captains chairs to make additional room for luggage/supplies for the trip. I was pleasantly surprised I was able to remove the seat without a single tool. I just had to push a lever down. To remove the same seat in the old party van required a knuckle busting exercise with a box wrench wedged under the frame.
On Saturday I also decided to do my first Parkour training session. WTF is Parkour you ask? Parkour is a French word. It is also called “free running”. In a way it is sort of what I recall doing as a kid, running, climbing and jumping over things. Parkour takes these activities to a new level. Watching a skilled “traceur” run through an environment is pretty incredible. Well of course I am neither skilled or young enough to do anything impressive but I still wanted to at least try some of the basics.
One of the primary goals in Parkour is to clear various obstacles without hurting yourself. Search “parkour bails” on YouTube to see what happens when things go badly. In order to minimize the chances to hurt yourself you need to learn how to perform the moves properly. Now of course my only training has been watching parkour videos so that isn’t much to go on. Regardless I started my impromptu session in the backyard.
Sadie immediately was a big fan of parkour training. As I took off she sprinted after me, zig zagging in front causing me to almost trip several times. I went around the property looking for obstacles to clear. The fence became my primary obstacle. I ran and jumped over both the H posts and the various gates around the fence line. I ran from area to area. I was looking for something I could try to climb parkour style but really had nothing of note. The closest thing I had was a running jump onto the pull up bar after which I flipped myself up on top of the bar.
I had ideas about possibly jumping from the top of the pull up station to the roof of the shed. However after eyeballing the distance and measuring the high probability of damaging both the shed and my body I dismissed the idea. I practiced some landings and landings with rolls off my sky high 2 foot jumping platform. I have no doubt that it all looked quite ridiculous.
Ali got home from her swimming/lunch session in time to catch the tail end of my free running. When she asked what the hell I was doing I told her it was Parkour training. She was like “WTF?” Well instead of trying to explain what it was, I thought it would be much simpler to have her look it up herself rather than I try to explain it in some confusing manner. In total my training session was maybe 10 minutes long. I was panting by the end of it. I need to head to one of the county parks and see what sort of trouble I can get into there.
I had been complaining about my various joint ailments from the last two weeks. All of a sudden over the weekend I realized that I was feeling better. On Sunday I felt good enough that I actually decided to do the May Bar-Barian challenge. Up until I hurt myself I was training for the challenge regularly. I was majorly annoyed that my injury derailed my official attempt. I had not done a pull up for two weeks.
After popping a couple Advil I hit the bar, not really knowing what to expect. The challenge was to do as many pull ups in 5 sets with a minute rest in between sets. I had seen people post totals of anywhere from 20 on the low side to 100 on the top end. I wound up posting an unspectacular but respectable 42 reps which I was pleased with, one rep for each year on the planet. I was even more pleased that my troublesome elbows felt better.
Sunday evening I let the dogs out. As I opened the lanai door I uttered my typical “Are there any BUN BUNS?!!” This phrase gets the dogs very excited and they typically charge out the door and run to the shed where they excitedly look underneath for any sign of a rabbit. Well this time was like all the others, Nicki and Sadie tore ass towards the corner of the shed. Sadie, as she often does, plowed into Nicki as the rounded the corner however this time I heard Nicki start crying out in pain, loudly. You would have seriously thought she was just stabbed.
Instantly I came running out. Nicki came over to me still crying, three legged. It seemed like she did something to her paw/leg. I knelt down and consoled her, she laid down next to me and let me touch her injured appendage. Ali came running out when she heard the crying as well. Ali moved her paw around to see if Nicki reacted which she didn’t. Nicki laid there between us like a hurt child, just whimpering while having the most pathetic look on her face.
We stayed out there with her for awhile. Once we were confident she didn’t break her leg we encouraged her to get up and come inside. She could walk but was doing it with a severe limp. Ali and I assumed she had the dog equivalent of a sprained ankle. Luckily by the time the weekend was over Nicki’s injury and accompanying limp seemed better.
Sunday afternoon Ali and I went on a bike ride. We originally talked of trying to do the entire 17.25 mile Publix ride. However about 5.5 miles in Ali was feeling really wiped out. After resting by the side of the road for awhile we turned around and rode home. She said she felt bad because she knew I wanted to do the entire distance. I assured her it was no big deal.
We got up at 4:15am Memorial Day morning to time the race. This was an old race with a new location and date. In the past this race was poorly attended. The thought was making it a holiday race and moving it to a new venue would give the race a shot in the arm, it worked.
They held the race at the North Collier Park, which is also home to the water park. It’s a beautiful park with great facilities, lots of parking and scenic views. We had almost double the amount of runners as the year before, a huge gain. Once again Ali was able to run in the race once I took over putting in the last minute entries. I wasn’t jealous of running in the ultra-humid conditions. Even at 7:30 in the morning I had sweat running down my back.
Timing the race went smoothly for the most part. There were a few human errors that we just can’t seem to get away from. I was a bit nervous when the person that finished second in the race came across the line with no name popping up meaning he wasn’t in the system. Luckily I was able to enter him after the fact without any complications. Once again we were very efficient getting out of there, we pulled out of the park at 8:50 am.
Once we got home I immediately dug into my post race work. After making brownies for our mini-Memorial Day picnic Ali headed back to catch a few zzz’s. After I was done with the race stuff I somehow had the desire to go out and shoot another challenge video. I came up with a 50-50-50 challenge out of nowhere. I would do 10 rounds of 5 reps of pull ups, push ups, and box jumps. The goal would be to complete the 10 sets as quickly as possible.
I set up the camera and got to work. It was late morning when I shot the video so the sun was high, hot and the air was humid. In less than 12 minutes of exercise I was a sweaty mess. The most challenging portion of the 50-50-50 is the pull ups for sure. I kept a pretty steady pace and managed to complete the 150 reps in 11:49. Now that I know I can complete the 50-50-50 I would like to try it several more times to try to shave time off. It’s a nice quick hitting challenge that works most of your body.
Sunday afternoon we had the neighbors across the street over for a quick Memorial Day thing. They are going to be taking care of Tuki while we are on our trip out west so we wanted to have them over to give the lay of the land. Ali and I over prepared. We had way more food than needed. Our neighbors only had a burger each and little else. They were over for less than two hours. We have a ton of left overs. It will be a huge help to have them take care of the bird in our absence.
In the late afternoon I felt myself crashing. The combination of the early start combined with my 50-50-50 left me feeling like a zombie. I actually broke my typical “no nap” edict and laid down for a couple hours back in the bedroom. Once I got up I spent the rest of the evening watching Lost episodes on Netflix.
I am officially hooked on Lost, big time. In the span of a week I have viewed 27 episodes, 42 minutes at a time. I have completed season 1 and now am two deep into season 2. I just find the show fascinating. I always said that I am sure I would like Lost if I sat down and watched it. I was right.
Having Netflix makes hardcore Lost marathons a piece of cake, I just stream one after another. Netflix is even smart enough to allow me to stop an episode on one Tivo and go back to the other one and pick up where I left off, love it. At this rate I may have three seasons under my belt before we shove off for the wild west.