All posts by Duf

Last night my primary focus was to do most of the packing for the trip. Although I am pretty good at a number of things, packing is not one of them. I typically pack more than I need because of the part of my brain that likes to have options and backup plans. What I discovered last night was those options are going to be significantly lessened because of the inclusion of my gear in my luggage. Normally if your bag is full you can lean on it to compress the clothes and get it closed without much struggle. Helmets don’t compress hence my first couple attempts to close the bag were unsuccessful.

Of course I will come up with a solution which may even come down to checking a second bag if necessary. I will try reducing my backup options first with some more creative packing. In addition I need to come up with how I want to transport the batteries, electronics, recording gear and laptop as well. I know I will come up with a viable solution as I always do. Oh and I need to cram in one of my pickleball paddles as well, just in case, lol.

Yesterday I had a new drivers license made. I have had an issue where it will not scan at airport security or anywhere else. The numbers have to always be manually punched in which is a pain in the ass. Since I now have TSA pre-check status I wanted to get my DL up to snuff before I leave.

I have noticed this week that my knees have been feeling a little better than they have in awhile. I then went for my afternoon mile walk for the first time this week and noticed my right knee felt noticeably less great afterward. I have not been walking as consistently in the afternoon because of extreme heat and other things to do. Once I realized this correlation it made me decide to see how my knees feel if I go a week without the extra mileage. Less movement goes against conventional wisdom but I am curious how it changes things, if any.

This will likely be the last blog entry prior to the trip and I won’t be posting anything in the middle of it either. When I used to travel I would put in significant effort to document my days pretty accurately. I no longer feel the need to do so. To be honest there are more and more days where I question if I want to continue to post a public blog. Those days normally align with when I am feeling in emotional valleys however there are other reasons to consider a change, nothing lasts forever after all.

I anticipate the next six days to be eventful, fun and impactful in one way or another. If you never hear from me again, live well and prosper.

Last night I pulled out my pickleball bag and got busy installing over grips. An over grip is installed on top of the existing wrap on a paddle/racquet. They are used in tennis as well. The point of them is to give you better contact with the handle as with use they will become worn out and slippery which is the opposite of what you want.

I went with Wilson perforated over grip which seems to do a good job dealing with the amount of sweat that occurs in SW Florida summer play. Installation takes maybe 5 minutes and when the over grip wears out you just remove it and install a new one. I re-gripped three of my paddles that I had basically stopped using because they were too slippery to be comfortable. I look forward to reintroducing them into my active paddle rotation.

I also worked on more gathering of items for the trip on Thursday. I have a large array of recording equipment, batteries, electronics as well as a laptop to bring. I had not used my laptop in quite awhile so I spent an hour or so getting it updated and ready to go as I laid on the couch. One of the things we plan to do out there is a group live stream with myself, Marty, Larry, Roger, and Dawn so I need to be prepared.

The preparation will continue tonight in earnest. With all of the gear I am bringing my normal strategy of over packing to cover most foreseeable circumstances is not going to work out very well.

On Friday I hit Bruninas to quickly grab a beer and dinner. It was a quick hitter because I needed to meet Ali and Shugs to pick up Elsa from her 4th of July safe haven. They agreed to meet me somewhat in the middle which was nice, saving me at least an hour overall of driving. Elsa was happy to see me but sad to leave them at the same time.

I played pickleball Saturday morning, getting in some decent play in some very hot and humid conditions. I recently put an over wrap on one of my paddles to help with grip when my hands are so sweaty. It has been the only paddle I have used since then since the others feel slippery in comparison. I clearly need to put the same over wrap on all of them.

The rest of my Saturday was pretty low key. I did do some preliminary planning regarding how to pack for California. One important thing was verifying my helmet will fit in my luggage. As you can see it does, barely. If I want to get everything in one bag I am going to need to do some careful and creative packing.

Saturday night I watched the new Godzilla and King Kong movie that is on HBO Max. It was just silly, nonsensical yet fun. Who doesn’t like watching monsters battle it out? It allowed me to disengage my brain for a couple hours and just enjoy the action. I’d give it a B.

Sunday morning I played some more pickleball with my buddy Rich. I only played 4 games in total but that was enough because of the heat and humidity. Later in the day I got motivated to take my V13 out for a ride to test the new knob style pads I 3D printed a week or so ago. I am going to need to do some more testing with the placement of them as the two spots I tried were not ideal. It seems like it’s hard to have a low mounted pad that is good for both standing and seated riding, at least for me.

The ride took me all over the place including the Cabana, an outdoor bar that I visited pretty regularly during season but have not frequented lately. I was originally planning to only drink a couple beers and roll but I wound up having more than twice that once I got rolling into a conversation with a guy named Joe who was sitting next to me.

Joe and I talked about a lot of things but the subject that consumed most of the time was our experience in relationships. He was 3 months out from breaking off a 3 year plus thing with a woman he loved but that was unwilling to do some simple things that he needed to feel happy in the relationship. I shared some of the cliff notes of my prior relationships as well. We both agreed that the most important thing a woman has to give man is respect. If that is absent everything else will fall apart. Joe appreciated our conversation so much that he bought my last Miller Lite for me. The experience at the cabana was more positive than I anticipated, so much so that it makes me want to add it back in to my regular hang outs, despite it being hot as hell. Unlike most of my trips in the past I sat directly at the bar instead of the peripheral area which I think made a difference.

In total I was out and about for somewhere around three hours, much longer than I anticipated. The video that I shot is very, very random. There is an awkward moment after I rode by Christine’s place, awkward because it seemed to me that perhaps she does not live there anymore. I evidently am far, far outside her loop nowadays. Oh well.

I spent most of the remaining hours in my Sunday getting the video edited, processed and posted. I need to really now focus on the trip the next few evenings. It’s weird, although I am looking forward to the adventure I am also looking forward to emerging from the other side of it.

My 4th of July started off with a visit to the hospital to check in on my good buddy Juan. He was in there for observation and got released later in the day. I hung there for close to three hours. It was weird seeing my friend who is normally so energetic, up beat and happy, the opposite of that. I am confident he will be ok.

So I had this big 4th of July party in the afternoon. I think the last 4th of July party I have attended was at Gary’s house up in PA in the late 90’s. Yes, it’s been that long. The host rented out the clubhouse in his community which meant we had access to all of it’s amenities including a pool, hot tub, pickleball courts and more. It was a great set up.

I arrived shortly after 2PM. It didn’t take long until we were setting up a Crosscourt net (I think that is what its called). It’s a weird volleyball variation where you have a net that is shaped like a cross, giving you four small quadrants. The goal is to not have the ball drop on your square. The size of each square is very small so it requires very precise control which is not my strong point. I didn’t do great in the game but it was still a lot of fun.

They had a huge inflatable water slide there as well that was used primarily by the kids of course but most of the adults took a run or two down the slide as well. I did it twice, once feet first and then head first. Head first wound up giving me a nose full of water but the little kids that were watching approved.

I also played my first session of pool volleyball in decades. I found it to be a very tiring activity as moving through water constantly will wear you out quickly. I was hydrating with Cayman Jack the entire time which was masked by my pouring them into my water container. Despite drinking a lot of them I never felt super drunk perhaps because I was being so active most of the party. The athletic activities wound up with playing a couple games of pickleball which was fun. It was the one sport where I had a distinct advantage because of just how much I play nowadays.

The fireworks display at the end was really impressive. It went on for 20 minutes plus and was at the level of some professional displays I have seen down here. I sat on my beach chair in the parking lot and just enjoyed the show.

Afterwards I hung for a bit to help clean up from the festivities, not leaving until almost 11PM, making the party 9 hours long. I have never participated in a nine hour party in my life. It’s an idea I would not have even entertained for a very long time. I wound up being very glad I did, despite paying a sleep penalty for it.

This weekend I need to mentally and physically start getting myself organized for the trip to California. I may even resort to my good old written list to make sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted.

After work yesterday I went to get a haircut in preparation for my trip next week. This was the first time ever that the Sport Clips I visit was dead. There were no other customers in there. Both of the stylists were just on their phones. I wound up having Lana cut my hair whom I have had before. She is upbeat, friendly, and bubbly. She has been single for a while as I am. We compared notes on our experiences trying to establish relationships as you get older. Neither of our outlooks were very positive. She did a nice job on my hair. I should be ready to roll for a month or so.

Last night I did a members only live stream. Something I have not done in quite awhile. I figured it could help me pass the time while I tried to finish off the bottle of wine I had opened two weekends ago. I rambled about various things. You could tell my mood was less than enthusiastic. I didn’t come close to my goal of finishing off the wine. I dumped at least half the bottle down the drain after streaming 25 minutes or so. It felt symbolic, for some reason.

I am off tomorrow for 4th of July. I am going to a 4th of July party, something I never do. It is being held at one of my volleyball buddy’s place and is evidently quite the show. There however is no way I could do this knowing Elsa would be home alone, terrified from the sound of fireworks going off. I will be driving her up to Babcock Ranch to stay with Ali and Shugs until Friday. It will be good for all parties involved.

I have been trying to get a little mini-workout in each night after work. It consists of a set of pull ups, push ups, and three different ab movements where you do each for a period of time instead of reps. It helps me maintain a base level of fitness and makes my brain feel better each time I complete it.

My Monday evening was surprisingly busy. It started off with the two packages that were delivered. One of them was my new pickleball paddle, the Shogun. The packaging and presentation on this paddle is top notch, by the far the most impressive of any company I have dealt with. This is my second paddle from Bread and Butter, I am hoping I like it as much as the Filth, which I bought late last year.

I also received my third package from Temu, four button down short sleeve shirts, three of which I can use for work and one of them for more casual situations. I tried all of them on, they fit well and looked decent to my untrained eye. Who knows how long the shirts will hold up but since I spent a grand total of less than $40 for all of them I have little to lose. Who knows, I could be pleasantly surprised. My short sleeve shirt collection is the one remaining clothing area that could use some refreshing. I have some shirts in my closet that are approaching the two decade mark.

I then found myself motivated to go out and get some more practice in riding seated on my V13. I was surprised I was able to do it in my brief test on Sunday and wanted to build upon it. It went really well, mostly.

I went on at least a 10 mile ride and the vast majority of it was done in the seated position. I got better with keeping my speed up by putting my hands on my knees. I rode over the speed bumps on the various back streets seated as well, utilizing the front grab handle to keep my ass from flying too far off the seat. I did however have a couple incidents.

One of them was when I was slowing to get off to film a ride by with my phone. I decided I would just come to a stop while seated. Sounds easy enough right, just put your feet down. Well I started putting my feet down when I was still rolling a few mph, thinking I could just create drag to help me completely stop, that was a bad idea. An EUC will continue to want to push forward if you have any degree of forward lean, regardless of if your feet are dragging on the ground. In my case my one foot hit the ground ahead of the other one which caused the 100 pound plus wheel to quickly veer to one side, throwing me off to the ground.

At the time I thought I just banged up my ankle/shin some. When I took a shower later I felt stinging on my side. I looked in the mirror and saw I also somehow got a brush burn back there. I am wondering if that spot ran into a spinning tire. Regardless, I felt like an idiot after it happened and quickly looked around to make sure nobody was around to see it. Luckily the coast was clear.

I had another near fall later while transitioning from seated to standing. I was turning and going slow. The wheel started to wobble a bit as I was sitting and when I stood up it amplified. Suddenly I found myself wobbling severely, even though I was still going slow. The heavy V13 is not easy to control once this happens. I barely was able to recover from it but thankfully did. It shook my confidence a bit but I realized part of the problem was I transitioned to standing too slowly. The faster you sit down or stand up, the better from what I have experienced.

The cherry on top was it starting to rain. I rode the last few miles in steady rain, thoroughly soaking me in the process. The V13 is pretty water resistant so I wasn’t worried about the wheel but I arrived home soaked from head to toe. I posted some of the pictures and video I took on my phone to social media and then went to bed relatively early. It felt like a very full day.

On Friday after work I headed over to Brunina’s and wound up spending more time there than expected. I hadn’t seen Meaghan in a couple weeks and I was chatting with some of the other bar patrons around me so I wound up drinking more than normal, a mixture of Miller Lite and margaritas, an interesting combo. I didn’t eat because I planned to just throw in a pizza when I got home. I was definitely feeling it when I left however that did not deter me from walking around the corner and getting my grocery shopping knocked out.

When I got home I unloaded the groceries and got started on the rest of my evening however the next morning I realized something, I forgot to eat dinner. I can’t say that I recall this scenario has ever happened before. I guess the alcohol made me feel full enough or forgetful enough that hunger did not enter into the equation Friday night.

Saturday morning I met up with Sue to play some pickleball. Of course it was extremely hot and humid as is now the de facto standard for the next 4 months plus but we played well against some pretty good competition. A couple hours of play was plenty plus I did not want to push it because I was scheduled to play Sunday as well.

On Saturday afternoon I targeted getting the cheap Temu in helmet bluetooth headset working. You know the one with the ridiculous instructions that include magic, cocoa and demons. It took some trial and error but I eventually got everything more or less in place and secured. The sound quality of the headset itself is decent, now we will see how long it continues to work but for less than $20 I can’t complain about the result.

Saturday evening Sue invited me to dinner at her new place which I had never seen before. I had a very enjoyable evening with her and her husband. Their home is beautiful. I don’t do a lot of meals at other people’s homes so it was a nice change of routine.

Sunday morning I got myself out of bed to go play pickleball at Talis Park. It was another 2+ hours of playing but at least it was overcast so I melted slightly less. During the afternoon I took out my V13 for the first time. I wanted to see if I could ride it in the seated position.

Riding seated is something that is really good for longer rides. There are some riders who ride seated more often than standing, they prefer it that much. I learned to ride seated years and years ago. I used to do it on my old Gotway Monster which was a tall wheel with a high seat. I have not really ridden seated hardly at all since then. Because of my stiff and sore knees I have always found that riding seated was just too uncomfortable.

The V13 has a very tall profile. In addition the new fairing kit I installed creates a seat that is slightly higher than stock. I wanted to see how seated riding would feel on it. I was pleasantly surprised to find it comfortable and even enjoyable riding seated on the big wheel. I never rode seated much on suspension wheels either so that added to the smooth ride. I am genuinely excited to get out there and ride some more seated until I get as comfortable as I am standing on the wheel. I made a short video on the experience.

Shortly after I got home the skies opened up and I spent the rest of my night editing video and putzing around the house. I’m not sure if it was the rainy conclusion or something else but I didn’t find myself driving into the end of my weekend with a very upbeat mood.

Last night playing volleyball was a test of endurance. The extreme heat and humidity had me sweating buckets all night. When it was combined with a higher than the already high amount of times I normally hit the sand, I was coated head to toe. I wasn’t happy with how I played. I was not being as aggressive when hitting, trying to not hit into the net or out but the end result were balls that were not that hard to defend. We also seemed to have incredibly bad luck with the other teams hitting shots that just caught the line repeatedly. Anyway, it added up to a rather frustrating evening, it happens.

After play I grabbed dinner at Tacos n Tequila. They had the debate on some of the TVs but I chose to watch UFC fighting instead. I really had no interest in watching two old men, neither of which would be my choice to lead anything, participate in a debate that had the build up of a wrestling PPV. It’s nuts.

The couple recaps I saw of the debate were not glowing for either candidate. Biden evidently looked like a confused old man for much of it which was the opposite of what they were hoping to do. It sounded like Trump ran his normal game plan of misinformation/outright lying however I did see he was described as more calm than normal which was somewhat surprising. Regardless, my outlook for what is ahead is pretty dire, no matter the outcome of the election.

I do find it strange that evidently a lot of people seem to think if Trump wins things are going to magically drop in price and inflation will go away. It seems to me that a lot of people are misplacing blame here. During the height of Covid the world supply chain got f’d, causing scarcity everywhere you looked. The cost of shipping items skyrocketed as well. So the end result of all of this scarcity was the raising of prices, however the catch is even though that scarcity has relaxed for quite a long time the prices never dropped. Instead businesses made huge profits from continuing to keep prices elevated regardless of if we were no longer in crisis mode or not.

Remember when airlines claimed all of the bag fees and other nickel and dime charges were a result of high fuel costs years ago? Even when fuel later dropped to the cheapest prices in ages they never pulled back those fees. Once prices hit a certain level it’s damn near impossible to reverse them as businesses are always looking to maintain or increase profits, not reduce them, just to be nice. Anyway my point is I think people that are convinced reinstating Trump will be the magic wand to fix all that is wrong will be disappointed. I am just going to keep my head down and do my best to keep my small slice of existence stable and intact.

This weekend I have a number of small to do’s to mix among pickleball and going out to dinner on Saturday night. My July is going to have some pretty busy sections so I guess I should enjoy the calm while I can.

Wednesday is our normal pickleball day. It rained yesterday morning, torrentially at times so I was ready to call off our games. I checked the cameras at the courts. Nobody was playing and the courts were soaked. However a little after 11 the rain stopped and some of the guys in my group suggested we give it a go. One of the guys said he would bring his leaf blower to help dry a court. I said sure, why not, it was worth a try.

When we showed up it looked bad. There was standing water everywhere however a few of the courts only had a little water on them. I used the court squeegee to push that off and then luckily the sun came out to finish the job. We were literally the only people playing in the huge 65 court facility. It felt weird in a cool way. We got our games in with out issue, well except for my falling flat on my back trying to get out of the way of a ball.

So yesterday I came home and immediately took Elsa for a walk as we always do. I was glad to see she did a number 2 on the walk since she did not make one yesterday. She was put on antibiotics for a UTI and a side effect has been her poop has been like soft serve ice cream. She just had her last dose on Tuesday so I was looking forward to more normalcy in that area. We got back home and for the first time my gaze turned to my bedroom and I saw it, an absolute apocalypse of brown.

As I walked into the bedroom the sheer scale of the disaster was revealed. Evidently during the day Elsa had a huge soft serve crap accident in my bedroom. My Shark robot vacuum which runs automatically at 1PM everyday then ran into and over it, continuing to “clean” the area. It evidently ran for quite awhile despite being filled with dog shit. I found it in my bathroom where it had trailed the mess in there, getting it on the floor, baseboards and two of the rugs. When I picked it up it the bottom was just nothing but brown with it being up in the motors, the brush area and god knows where else. I mentally wrote the vacuum off as a casualty to the shit bomb.

I was in shock as I took in the full scenario. Elsa came walking over like nothing happened, wondering what was taking me so long to make her dinner. I pointed to the mess and said “what did you do!” in my stern voice which sent her out of my line of sight. All of sudden any other plans I had for my Wednesday night were now replaced with disaster recovery.

I took the shit encased robot out and just hosed it off. Even if I was going to dispose of it I did not want to do so with it covered in excrement. I then filled the tank on my carpet cleaner and headed to the bedroom. There were areas of the carpet where the robot really ground the brown gold into the carpet and my carpet cleaner was not doing a good job of getting it up. I had to go grab my second carpet cleaning device, the SpotBot which does a more concentrated cleaning job. It’s designed for small spots. It did a much better job of cleaning the area but it could only do so one 10 inch circle at a time.

I wound up alternating between both cleaning methods to try to recover. Multiple times during the recovery I thought to myself “man it sure would be nice if I had someone to assist me in this” sharing both the physical and mental load. Reality soon returned and the me, myself, and I cleaning crew worked until almost 8PM cleaning the space. It’s much better but there still may be some spots that might need a round two of cleaning.

Years and years ago I had a similar incident where a Roomba ran over excrement but it was nothing close to the size of the bomb that went off yesterday. I hope to never experience that again, it was simply awful. When I get the new robot I might need to rethink it’s cleaning schedule.

Last year I had bought Christine a used XR so we could OneWheel together. I also referred to people that complain about the consequences of their decisions. The personal truth these sort of statements were based on still stings me. If I think about some of the decisions/actions that I made last year I clearly should have been the front runner for Idiot of the Year.

Yesterday for whatever reason I did not feel like creating a blog entry. I don’t believe it was for any particular reason other than just a lack of inspiration, I guess. I did however arrive at work yesterday with this massive and beautiful rainbow to help frame the day, which I appreciated. Rainbows always make me think of my mom since she loved them so much.

Last night I shot a video where I went through the hilarious instructions for a helmet intercom that I bought off Temu. The random and bizarre words that were used to describe the install process were so ridiculous I just felt the need to share my amusement. The manual repeatedly refers to both magic and even demons at one point.

As I mentioned I lacked the motivation to say much yesterday and that feeling of less has carried over somewhat to today. It’s not an unusual thing to have cyclical ebbs and flows in many aspects of my life, creative, emotional and physical. I just try to ride the waves while I keep my feet on the board, most of the time. Falls are never fun.