Rack man, finally football, Hobbit, new room

Saturday morning I was up early and over at Ali’s place.  She had bought a roof rack for her Volt (for SUP)  and I told her I would install it for her, it certainly didn’t seem like anything complex.  I opened the box and looked at the instructions.  In there was a repeated reference to a vehicle specific guide that included measurements for various parts of the install.  There was no such guide in the box.  Luckily I was able to hop on Ali’s computer and print them out online.

Putting the parts together was not overly difficult.  The car specific instructions included stuff like what length you should cut plastic guides to that were slid into the rack to ensure proper spacing of the feet.  So I have the parts together and plop them on the roof of the car.  Something didn’t seem right, the feet were way too far away from the drip rail of the Volt, not even close.

I double checked the strip measurement in the guide which said I was supposed to cut right around 5 inches from the strip.  Now that I am playing Monday morning QB, I am wondering if the intention was to cut off the 5 inches and then insert the longer, 14 inch leftover piece into the rack.  However if that was the case, the instructions totally suck because it was not written or illustrated that way at all.

So anyway I knew it was now time to go into Shawn thinking on his feet mode.  I pulled out the now useless plastic guides and had Ali help me with a trial and error fitting.  I loosened both feet and then we slid them out so they were both sitting in the drip rail as they should be.  I then had Ali hold down one side while I awkwardly lifted the other and tightened down the bolt to lock the foot in place.  It took a few tries but eventually we got it where it should be.

Like most projects, it probably took longer than it should have, however if I had to do another one I am pretty sure I could cut the time invested in half.  The rack felt rock solid and ready to hold whatever stand up paddleboard Ali winds up purchasing.  The rack also can double as a bike carrier, negating the need for Ali to buy a small tow hitch for the car to transport her road bike.

Saturday I also finished up reloading the freshly painted hobby room.  Between the paint on the walls and the organization I did, the room feels transformed.  It no longer feels like a cluttered dumping ground for anything in the house I didn’t have a good spot for.  It’s warm and cozy with a real work area and plenty of open floor space.

I could actually throw the blow up mattress in there for a guest and not feel slightly embarrassed at this point. You can see all of the pictures from the project here.

Saturday night I attended my first Tarpons football game in over a month. This season has been pretty much a joke.  Going into it season ticket holders such as myself were supposed to be getting 7 home games.  Instead, because the league is falling apart, we got a total of 3 home games and two of those three games were awful blow outs. (one was 62-0)

Now to their credit, the Tarpon ownership realizes that season ticket holders were royally screwed.  As compensation season ticket holders were given free tickets to Saturday night’s championship game and also promised free season tickets for next year, although I am very skeptical that there will even be a next year.

So anyway, I contacted the team owner ahead of time as I was instructed to, to make sure tickets for Saturdays game were waiting for me at the Will Call window.  So I walk up to the window about a half hour before kick off and there were no tickets there in my name, well that’s annoying.  More annoying was my being told that the tickets they could give me were not my season ticket seats, instead they were a few rows higher, saying my normal seats were “not available”.

I told the woman behind the glass that was kind of dumb.  She gave me some explanation I didn’t really care to hear.  We wound up sitting in the regular seats anyway, nobody cared.

The game had the best attendance of 2013 at least, maybe 25% of the seats had a rear end in them.  The game also was the most competitive of the year with the Tarpons pulling out a one score victory to lock up the league championship.  I drank something like 4 or 5 Shocktops so by the time the game was over my ticket window problems were long forgotten.  I hope the Tarpons do actually come back for the 2014 season, I enjoy attending the games.  I can only hope they come back into a league situation that does not seem so rag tag.

Sunday morning I did another training brick which included a bike ride and swim.  I forgot my swimming goggles which made things sort of suck.  The first 50 meters my eyes were on fire from the chlorine.  After that they stopped burning but it still made swimming more of a pain in the ass than normal.  I wound up cutting my pool time down to just 800 yards.  I emerged from the water with two very red eyes.

Sunday I finally got to see the Hobbit.  I was a bit worried if I would like the film or not just because Lord of the Rings was such an epic trilogy and by all accounts the Hobbit story (I never read it personally) is more mundane.

Well I have no idea how closely the movie follows the book but I do know the movie was great.  It felt right in step with the LOTR films and I enjoyed it from start to end.  I am looking forward to the release of the other two scheduled Hobbit films. Solid A from me.

I didn’t get a chance to rotate the tires on the truck this weekend to see if my vibration is tire related or something else.  Hopefully I get to do it one night this week after work.

I did manage to replace the toilet arm and float in the master bathroom.  The old arm was encrusted in rust, surely contributing to some of staining I get in the bowl.  I am hoping it’s new brass replacement will keep things a bit tidier.