All posts by Duf

Despite very ominous rain clouds that were around the sand volleyball courts last night we were able to get a full two hours of play in. My play was decent although our team had several games we should have won that we gave away at the end which always frustrates me. I found I was having a hard time masking my negative body language and/or facial expressions when some unforced errors were made. To be honest however I made my own fair share of them.

One thing that was positive was for the first time since resuming playing volleyball over a year and a half ago I finally was doing some more aggressive serving. I am normally very consistent with getting my serve in but it isn’t all that tough for the receiving team to handle. During my volleyball peak I was hitting serves that would move like a slider in baseball, across and down. The key to that sort of serve is a more whip like motion in my arm instead of straight. When I got some of those type serves going last night the other team was consistently struggling to pass them, and I liked it.

Tonight is the fantasy football draft party at my house, the only real social event I have held there since I moved. As soon as I get home the scramble to rearrange the house will begin. Luckily I no longer prepare food for the event. I put out chips and pretzels while ordering a few pizzas. The other owners bring a lot of food themselves. As always I will draft my players by the seat of my pants with next to no research. If there was an award for the least prepared owner in the league I would win it hands down, every year. It’s because I really don’t care all that much about it.

With all that has been going on lately Labor Day weekend has sort of snuck up on me. Sure I will be glad to have an extended weekend. I am just not quite sure what I will fill it with yet at this point but rest assured it won’t be that hard to do so.

If I could get deeper for a moment, I’d like to talk about things that bring me fulfillment and positive feelings. One of those things you are reading right now. The blog has always been a creative outlet for me where I share thoughts and feelings that may be sheltered in many situations. Is it odd I would choose to put these sort of thoughts on the internet instead? Yes. My YouTube channel and all that it contains is another outlet where my creativity and expression is out there naked for all to see.

My athletic endeavors as well as exercise routines keep both my body and mind in sync. Pushing myself to compete against others makes me better, period. I feel the drive to still push myself at my age helps me stay as young at heart as possible. This refusal to go quietly into the night is something I will always strive for and hang my hat upon.

Finally, my relationships with other people is an opportunity to both give and receive energy, knowledge and emotion which can be some of the most fulfilling avenues available. My inner circle of people is small so these connections to me are important and valuable. I still am learning more about how I interact with others and how to improve those interactions for everyone involved, most importantly, myself.

What was the point of including this at the tail end of the blog? Not everything requires an explanation.

For the last three and a half days I was at a work conference in Orlando. I actually left early Sunday morning. The reason I left was so I could drop off my Mten Mini to a guy that lives in Port Charlotte that was going to buy it. He had plans to go on a group ride later in the day so I really went out of my way to accommodate him. Not only did I drop it off at his door, I did it before I dropped off Elsa at Babcock Ranch, meaning I had to backtrack 25 miles to do so. In retrospect it wasn’t great decision making but at least the Mini is sold. If I could sell my Sherman S things would be even better.

This was my second work conference in roughly a month. I’m never a huge fan of these type of events. Rivers of people, sitting in meetings and eating a lot of food that I normally stay away from just leaves me feeling subpar. I did try to counteract it a bit by getting to the surprisingly well equipped gym a couple times during my stay. I also brought my One Wheel but did not get a chance to ride it as I was involved during evenings with the work crew doing social events that included yes, more eating and drinking.

I left after lunch on Wednesday, fueling up for the long drive home with a large coffee. The drive back went through various periods of torrential rain and felt very long. After picking up Elsa I did not pull back into my driveway until after 5:30 PM.

After throwing laundry in I wasted little time before running out to the grocery store. I had to buy items for the fantasy football draft party that I am again hosting for something like the 15th or 16th year in a row. I put far less effort into it than I once did but it still requires a lot of work, especially when it’s just me, myself and I handling it. The good news is it’s a Friday night. Most times the party winds up being on a weeknight which makes the next day at work rather miserable. I am debating if I want to skip volleyball and get the house rearranged tonight or do it all tomorrow.

For some reason last night I got motivated to try to do a back lever, something that was a goal of mine 10+ years ago. It’s highly strenuous move that requires a lot of practice and strength to do. Even when I was at my peak calisthenics shape I couldn’t do it fully so just trying it out of the blue was a guaranteed failure and potentially injury inducing action. I tried anyway.

The sensible thing would be to try the movement with either a half or even full tuck of the legs to ease into it. I abandoned good sense and left my giraffe length legs out there, fully extended. It didn’t take long until my supporting muscles in my back/shoulders gave out. I dropped to the floor but as I did my momentum combined with my socks on the slippery laminate flooring resulted in my rolling onto my ass. It was funny, if I do say so myself. Is this the sort of movement I should be trying at 56 years of age? Nope.

Last year I was talking about how my tv watching habits had shifted drastically since the move. I used to watch much, much more, fed by my recording of shows on the DVR. For various reasons that habit faded away and has remained that way. There have been a number of things that were once mainstays in my day to day that have become blurred, lost importance or disappeared entirely from my life. I wish I could say the path ahead of me is crisp, clear and vividly defined but I would be lying.

Last night I had my weekly volleyball meetup. Our team did relatively well finishing 4-2 on the night. I had some communication issues with the one woman on our team however. Multiple times I would call I had the ball and she would ignore the call and step in front late, often causing an unforced error. During one game I inadvertently gave her a hard body check after the she set the ball straight above her but then didn’t move out of the way. However the funniest mishap of the night was during a ball out call.

The opposing team hit a ball that was clearly going to be wide of the court. As soon as I saw it’s trajectory I yelled out so this woman would know to not play it. I saw her ignore the call and was still moving towards the ball so I yelled out a second time, louder. At this point she was standing on the court line but still was acting like she was going to play it so I yelled OUT a third time, extremely loud this time. It didn’t matter, she still tried to play the ball, shanked it, and lost us the point. Me and another guy on our team just shook our heads in disbelief afterwards. Listening is definitely not a one of her strong points. Despite these sort of funny events we played pretty well overall.

This weekend I will get some Saturday pickleball in before buckling down on getting things done before leaving for the work conference on Sunday. There is a possibility I may be dropping off my Mten Mini along the way to a potential buyer in Port Charlotte which would be convenient. Things have felt a little out of whack around the household lately. I am hoping to bring things more into alignment before I leave.

Last night I brought one of my Prusa MK3S out into my kitchen work area. It has been out of commission for a number of months. My printing demands nowadays are small so it hasn’t been a big deal having one of the four printers in the room not working but, I want it fixed. I ordered and received the part I need, staged my camera to record the process but then left it as is. My intent is to get the repair completed before I shove off to Orlando this weekend.

I got a Costco run in last night as well utilizing my favorite strategy, go during the last hour the store is open. Going during this time greatly alleviates the human congestion that typically accompanies most trips to the store. Even though I only got a handful items I still managed to spend over $150, ugh.

Tonight I am back to the volleyball courts for the first time in a couple weeks. Priority one is to emerge without injury, playing at a decent level is goal number two, as always.

Last night was a busy one for a Tuesday evening. I found myself running around doing domestic tasks for the majority of the night. One task was to list another one of my EUCs for sale, the Mten Mini. I already have my Sherman S for sale which I have gotten no serious interest in. The Mini was an impulse buy from months ago. I am trying to be a little more reasonable about my wheel collection and my spending choices in general.

I have my second work related conference in a month coming up next week so my mind is already identifying logistical objectives that need to happen before I leave. One of the things this upcoming conference also reminded me of was my split from Cindy which occurred right around this time three years ago. It seems hard to believe that three years has already flown by but the calendar does not lie. During that time period there has been an incredible amount of twists and turns in my direction. What was up turned down, what was right suddenly become left. It’s been a challenge, to say the least. The amount of change that has been placed in my path has been uncomfortable, but necessary.

I found this old live stream I did from the work conference three years ago. Although I didn’t directly reveal the split at this time you could tell there was something going on under the surface.

Yes I have been in a social media void for the last week or so. It was long enough that a few people have checked with me to see if I still had a pulse. I am happy to report that all is well and good. I decided to give myself a break as I had an extremely busy week that left me little time to do/care about much else. Our regularly scheduled programming can now continue, I think.

Last night was volleyball night. My team of three was myself and two women. Luckily for me they were two of the best women players in our group. We won every game but the last one, which we only lost by two points. I played well overall. During the second half of play I had several hits that were among the best I have had since resuming play last year. One in particular that was a hard angle and short was exceptionally satisfying. With the way my body works nowadays I just can not get moving in a way to allow me to hit effectively until I am thoroughly warmed up which takes a couple games.

It was again brutally humid, after the first two games I was already feeling gassed. Luckily I rebounded. Towards the end of play a beautiful sunset went down that myself and several other people were fortunate enough to capture. I also felt fortunate that despite two hours of pretty intense play my body held up more or less perfectly.

I have spent an overwhelming amount of my adult life in stable, structured, long term relationships. It’s a place where I felt I thrived. As I have progressed through life I became more self aware of things I have done wrong in those relationships and tried to learn and grow as a result. I’m not foolish enough to think I’ll ever have it all figured out. Even after the recent almost three years of trying and failing I still am willing to keep my mind and heart open to the idea of getting it right, this time.

Last night I was buzzing around getting all sorts of mundane but necessary things done around the house. I did get a chance to roll around on my Mten3 a bit just to verify how everything felt a full charge and a day later. The tire still feels fully inflated and the wheel is just as agile and fun as it always has been, a good thing.

Last year I posted the following blurb in the blog:

I have been taking some steps recently to try to clear my head and be able to course correct towards a direction where things make more sense and the fog of uncertainty can start to dissipate. I need to lock the rudder in place and keep moving forward towards things that serve my happiness and away from things that do not.

Repeatedly I have seen things I wrote last year that indicated I finally had seen the light, I was finally going to move away from situations that were in the big picture, bad for my long term happiness. Evidently that rudder I was speaking of broke off sometime during the last third of 2023. It has since been repaired and is welded in place, never able to turn toward a certain direction again.

Yesterday after work I made a plan to take my Mten3 to the nearby Tires Plus to see if they could help me seat the bead on my newly installed tire. My portable inflators just don’t have the CFM’s to do it. When I walked in carrying the wheel which had half of it’s shell missing the guy at the counter looked at me a little oddly. I explained to him that this had a tubeless tire that I need a high power inflator to seat the bead with. I was a bit surprised that without any fuss he said, ok, follow me.

He first tried a “normal” air line that probably had the power of the air machines at a gas station. It did not work despite he and I both trying to hold the tire against the rim to seal it. After messing around for a few minutes he said he was going to try something else. He took the wheel over to the spot where the machine is that is used to remove and install tires to rims. That is where the high volume inflator resides. Within a minute he returned with the bead seated and the tire fully inflated, awesome!

I asked him what I owed him for the service. He said they don’t have a service item that really correlates to what was done so he wasn’t going to charge me anything. I grabbed a $20 bill from my wallet and handed it to him, telling him he saved me from hours of frustration. He smiled and said thank you as he put the bill in his pocket.

When I got home I reassembled the wheel fully and then took it for a very brief test spin around the driveway to ensure it was still functional, it was. On the video I shot I talked about my stubborn nature and tenacity that makes me keep trying to fix things when many people would have already raised the white flag. It’s an asset in many areas of life, not so much in others but in this case I was happy I kept grinding away until I reached the finish line. I had been wanting to get around to fixing the Mten 3 for a long, long time.

I also took my Veteran Patton that I rode through the tropical rains on Sunday out for a quick test spin to make sure all is well. Sometimes exposure to extreme wetness can cause problems with wheels, especially bearing issues. I breathed a sigh of relief when everything looked, sounded and felt normal.

Yesterday during the day I got another reminder of the magic of karma and how people that knowingly and willingly f with others can and will get their rewards from the big K sooner or later.

Starting Friday our area has been receiving a litany of warnings about what is now hurricane Debbie however nothing significant was happening. I played pickleball both Friday and Saturday morning. As the day progressed Saturday we had a few minor periods of rain and it was mildly windy. Friday after work I hung out at a happy hour with Juan for awhile but just drank. I then went to Brunina’s and grabbed food while I chatted to Meaghan.

Saturday after pickleball I turned my attention to trying to get my Mten3 back together, using a tube instead of the tubeless configuration it was using before. It resulted in a couple frustrating hours where I was unable to get the tire back on the rim with the tube in there, no matter how much I struggled. I resigned myself to having to go back to the tubeless configuration but I needed to get a new tubeless valve to do so.

On Saturday night I did a casual and improptu live stream from my phone. It started out on the lanai but then moved inside once I tired of the humidity. Originally I thought it might go for an hour but wound up being two and a half instead.

Sunday was when the full tropical weather was in effect. It was windy with heavy rain off and on all day. Areas around Naples had some flooding as we received somewhere around 5-6 inches of rain. It was a mess. For some dumb reason during the afternoon I got the idea that it would be “interesting” to take one of my wheels out into the wet and windy weather. I chose my Veteran Patton which is supposed to be water resistant. Wow did I put it to the test.

When I left the rain was light but that did not last for long. Soon another band of heavy wind swept rain moved in and I found myself absolutely soaked. The coat I was wearing was thought to be waterproof. It absolutely is not. The wheel was subjected to deluge style rain. I only went out for 20-30 minutes or so, that was plenty. I was absolutely drenched. I blew out the wheel the best I could to try to minimize any residual water impact. The picture is how I protected my non-waterproof wireless mic receiver. The video demonstrates my level of decision making at time, which can be poor.

The air valve I ordered showed up later in the day Sunday so I took another shot at getting the Mten3 working. Without a tube in the tire and utilizing my zip tie method I was able to push the tire back onto the rim with absolutely no pry tool assistance which is amazing compared to how much I struggled the day before. However I ran into another issue, I could not fill the tire.

With a tubeless configuration you have to get the tire to seat it’s bead on the rim so it is airtight. There are various tricks to do it but I only had a portable air pump that does not push air fast enough to get the job done. I am going to either have to find a gas station that has a high flow inflator or just go to a tire shop and see if they can pop the bead on for me for a few bucks. This has been annoying, to say the least.

The weather made for an up and down weekend which sort of aligned with how my mental state has been recently. This has been a pretty consistent reality for me for at least two years. It’s not the type of consistency I am looking for however.