Category Anything and Everything

This is going to be a very abridged version of the last two days that contained something like 24 hours of time on the road. It’s late and I’m tired.  I also shot some video along the way that you can check out in the future.  I dropped off Elsa late Saturday morning at Ali’s after I buzzed around mowing the property earlier in the morning.  I thought it would be good to get her dropped off early so I could focus on what I needed to get done before leaving.  It was good in that regard.  What was not good was just how empty the house felt Saturday night without her there, it made me sad.

I left the house Sunday about 7:45, steeling myself for what I knew would be a very, very long day.  The long range battery did well.  I made it out of the state while only having to charge once, I think that is the first time that has happened.  I decided to spend the $200 to get full self driving turned back on for a month.  The automatic lane change feature it includes is very welcome during long road trips as it makes changing lanes easy and safer.

One thing I was not happy about was for the first time ever I had to pay to supercharge.  In the past I had free supercharging because of all of the Tesla referrals I had.  Tesla has now killed that program and also killed any miles that had not been used yet which I think really sucks.  I had over 20K free miles that got evaporated.  As a result I will likely be spending a couple hundred dollars on charging on the trip.

I did get to stop at some different supercharger spots which resulted in a bunch of different random encounters like having dinner at a bowling alley and shopping at a Food Lion late at night.  I really like the rolling of the dice that occurs when hitting the open road.

I knew I wanted to push to see how far I could get the first day so day 2 was easier.  I wound up going until after 11PM, winding up about 20 miles inside the North Carolina border.  I booked a room at Holiday Inn, showered and was out.  It was a grind you into the dirt sort of day.

I woke up today without an alarm a little after 6, eager to roll.  The cold weather stung my skin when I went outside with temps in the 20s.  The Tesla seat heater came in handy.  The drive today started out gloriously with clear blue skies.  A little of that luster was lost during the afternoon when I was ensnared in awful traffic in the DC/Baltimore area, resulting in my getting to Todd’s place an hour later than originally expected.

It was great to see Todd, Mindy and the girls.  I last saw them briefly in July when we met for dinner after the upstate NY trip.  I also got a very excited hello from their two huge dogs Bailey and Oakley.  Even though it had been a couple years since I saw them they seemed to remember who their favorite uncle was.

Caroline and I went to go pick up food they ordered for dinner.  It was a nice opportunity for us to catch up on what the latest and greatest is with her.  She is a big fan of the Tesla.  I had a sweet surprise waiting for me in the bathroom. Caroline laid out everything for me hotel style to make me feel at home.  It was thoughtful and I appreciated it, a lot.

Todd and Mindy have to work some tomorrow.  I am going to see two of my friends during the day, Charlie in the morning and Rich around dinner.  I have not seen Charlie in at least 3 years and the last time I saw Rich was for my 50th birthday party.  I look forward to catching up with both of my long term and dear friends.

This week will be all about appreciation and gratitude.

Sorry this isn’t longer but it’s all I got….

With only two full days remaining before I pull out for PA I have a lot of things on my mental to do list to address before I leave.  Tonight I hope to get the weeding done somehow before all daylight is gone.  Tomorrow I need to mow, wash the Tesla, drop Elsa off at Ali’s and then of course pack for the trip.  I was a bit surprised at just how cold the forecast temperatures are for Reading next week.  I will definitely need to be bringing full on winter wear. As I have been trying to do for most trips anymore, I’ll have my laptop(s) with so I can document the trip as it progresses instead of trying to do one large and historically incomplete brain dump at the end.

This week I have had several posts that included windows into some of the ongoing personal challenges and self analysis that I have been and will continue doing as I move forward.  My hope is putting in the work pays dividends in the long term happiness department.  The journey never ends.

Last night on my way home from work I decided I wanted to stop at SportClips and get a fresh “skin fade” hair cut for my trip to PA next week.  I was hoping to see the stylist I had the first time but she was busy so I got called back by a woman named Suzanne instead.  Suzanne was older than me, I think, she could have just had a rough road.  She sat me down and within the first couple minutes she asked me if I had heard if Trump declared to run for president or not, evidently she didn’t hear the news.  I told her he did officially declare which she seemed excited about.  I then mentioned how there is already controversy between him and Desantis.  She did not seem to know of the rumors of Ron potentially running for president.

So there were times when just the revelation of someone’s affinity for Trump would hit the immediate off switch for me.  I would close the door to any further significant communication.  However I did not choose to dwell on her political preferences.  I noticed she was limping so I asked her what was wrong.  She said her feet have been a mess for years from a lifetime of being on them, she said she has been a hairdresser her entire life.  In an attempt to get by she has been getting steroid injections but she evidently had some sort of reaction that now has caused extreme pain in one of her feet.  I immediately felt compassion for her.

We continued to talk about her history, where she is from, what she drives, where she lives and a variety of other things.  She buzzed me down, probably a little more aggressively than the other woman but it still looked better than anything I could muster.  When I checked out I decided to leave her a 50% tip.  Cutting through to the human being inside of political facades felt good.  Her life sounded anything but easy and I hoped to help in a tiny way. I definitely do enjoy having someone else cut my hair.

I had a weird revelation last night while I was in bed listening to a guided meditation.  In these exercises you are just trying to unplug your brain, not think about the countless things that normally occupy the space.  I have been asked and have talked about the weird phenomenon where in normal human conversation I typically am very terse and to the point, rarely communicating more than the bare minimum with a few exceptions.  However stick me in front of camera shooting a video or live streaming, the gag comes off and I talk incessantly.  It has always been a bizarre contrast that I never really understood the reason behind, until now.

What I realized during meditation is my overly active brain is once again the culprit.  When I am talking to people I find myself instantly analyzing their facial expressions, body language and demeanor towards me.  I use this information to gauge their level of interest in what I am saying.  Because I have a loud inner critic more often than not my analysis will be they are tuned out, uninterested, or something else with a negative aspect. The normal end result of this is getting out of the conversation, at times awkwardly.  Some times I will also be scrambling to figure out what to say next when the conversation swings back my way.  Depending on what state my brain is and the person I am speaking to, this can be another difficult/awkward sticking point.

So what I realized last night is when I am talking to a recording device that roadblock and analysis is removed.  My brain is not required to analyze my interaction/words and their affect on somebody else.  I can just, talk.  It may seem like an odd revelation to most but it was a moment of clarity for myself, how my overactive brain is the root cause of a lot of dysfunction in multiple aspects of my life.  I think my efforts to quiet, slow, and calm it is time well spent.

The other day I talked about how I had received a mental lashing from my inner taskmaster, admonishing me for allowing my brain to go off on stupid tangents that do nothing but make me feel poorly.  It seems like such a stupidly simple concept, if you think negative thoughts, negative things are the result.  If you focus on happy, positive things your mind will reside there instead.  As simple as it sounds it’s consistent execution has not been easy for me, ever. This inability to keep my thoughts off the guard rails can affect multiple areas of my life, none of it with a good end result.  It can be borderline maddening at times.  I have been and continue to work on these issues.  Sometimes it feels like I run out of ideas of where to turn to for help.  Asking for help is something I am historically terrible at doing.  I think somehow I treat emotional or mental issues like most other hurdles in my life, something you just plow into, beating into submission with hard work, determination or brute force.  It’s not a good plan.

Today would have been my mom’s 75th birthday.  For all of my life it was always an interesting anomaly for me that my sisters birthday is October 16th, my mom’s was November 16th and mine is December 16th.  My grandmother just missed the pattern by a day as her birthday was September 17th.  Of course I think of Mom often but today will be more than the rest.  I miss her.

The Eagles took their first loss of the season last night to the Washington Commanders, a team they beat earlier in the year and was expected to beat again. Instead it was a sort of ugly game where the Eagles committed 3 turnovers which equals what they committed in the prior 8 games combined.  In addition the defense simply could not stop the Commanders, allowing them to run long drive after drive consuming tons of time.  I think Washington only punted once the entire game.  Even with all of those screw ups the Eagles still had a chance at the end of the game.  The Washington QB was hemmed in on a 3rd and long and instead of taking the hit decided to quickly take a knee.  Two Eagles defenders were already sliding towards him as he took the knee and knocked him over drawing a roughing the passer penalty.  It was an awful way to end the game.  It was a disappointing loss for sure but hopefully one the Birds can learn from and continue moving forward.

As I was watching the game I found myself flipping through my phone on various social media apps, mindlessly looking for stimulus I suppose.  Checking my various messaging apps serve a different need, the one where I am looking for a virtual connection to a human being.  This is not a recent change, since I became single my phone has become a much more integrated part of my existence and to be quite honest, I don’t particularly like it.

In the past when I was in a relationship my phone sat untouched on a counter somewhere, silenced and only checked periodically as needed.  Now I am wired in full time partly because of my Apple Watch, partly because of whatever it is that I feel is lacking in my existence right now.  I am hoping this holiday season has an opposite outcome of last year which was my first in this new state.  That time was filled with a lot of sorrow, anger and frustration.  I want this next month and a half with the two trips to be the exact opposite where I can focus on brighter futures and happier outcomes.  I need to be less connected to become more connected, if you know what I mean.

My three day weekend was pretty busy but not overwhelmingly so.  My Veterans Day was pretty nuts with my throwing caution to the wind.  In the morning Kerri and I played pickleball for a couple hours.  We played an older but clearly more experienced pair a number of games.  The first game they beat us like 11-2 or 11-3. The last game we played, we won.  You have to love a good comeback story.

Kerri also plays a ton of beach volleyball.  She had been encouraging me to come bump the ball around since she knows I used to play a ton of volleyball.  The issue is I have not touched a ball in over a decade, no that is not an exaggeration.  I was already a bit beat up from pickleball but I was committed to get back out there, even it killed me.  The good news is it didn’t.  Just doing simple bumping during warm ups was erratic/difficult at times for me.  Although I have basic volleyball skills muscle memory there is so much rust that can only be knocked off by repetition.

The best path would have probably been to just practice basic skills at first, not try to play a game but I am not known for choosing the best path consistently.  So I played a total of three games.  Most aspects of my game improved from game 1 to game 3.  The one exception was hitting, which was the thing I loved most about playing back in the day.  My timing and ability to jump out of the sand is just horrific at this point.  The only thing that trains you to jump out of the sand is jumping out of the sand.  I still had fun getting out on the court as the gang Kerri plays with are all very cool.

I came out of it with a couple injuries, albeit not serious ones.  My left elbow felt really sore, almost like tennis elbow.  I think I have tried to dig a ball with one arm and it bent it back somewhat awkwardly.  My left knee also had an awkward moment when I fell down and wound up compressing it further than it normally wants to go when stretching.  Again neither injury was bad enough to make me stop playing.  The other thing I noticed was I gassed really fast.  Granted playing a couple hours of pickleball prior is not ideal but I was sucking wind big time.  The good news is all of these things get better with time and reps. We will see if invest in them going down the road.

Friday night I made a spur of the moment decision to live stream.  A lot of the stream had to do with my trip to California to ride with the EUC crew out there.  Two of the key guys I will be hanging with on the trip, Marty and Larry, were on the stream talking logistics with me. The stream went for a couple hours and was fun, despite the limited notice.

My Saturday was not bad, I worked on various small tasks around the house. Saturday evening I made arrangements to go ride bikes with Monique at the Greenway.  Normally when I come to see them I bring coffee which has become a fun tradition.  I also got to see Leilani which is always a highlight for me.  What makes it awesome is she actually gets excited to see me too now. Monique and I had a diverse ride in the dark where we covered around 7 miles in over an hour.  I forgot to strap a light on my mountain bike that I just replaced two tubes on the day prior.  One thing I did not like was the hard narrow seat on my bike.  My ass was killing me, I need to get some supplemental padding involved.

Today again I tended to smaller chores.  For example I noticed how cruddy the rear sliders were so I cleaned them.  I noticed how the spider webs in the garage were piling up, so I vacuumed them.  I also cleaned the filters on my Shark stick vac, the exhaust had smelled badly of dog. Of course I recorded the process.

After my coffee run in the morning I stopped at the park with Elsa to get a mile walk in around the perimeter.  As always she was terrified to get out of the truck but then is fine 30 seconds later.

I went back to the park mid-afternoon this time with OneWheel GT.  I did a number of “extreme” stunts with my tongue in my cheek.  It was a funny video, at least I think so.

Over the weekend I had a serious conversation with myself.  I was chastising some of the things my brain was doing, going down mental paths that made no sense and did not serve me in any positive manner.  The internal taskmaster, the same guy that drives me to do, do, do, barked how I need to snap out of it and abandon thought patterns that make me feel poorly.  The self talk felt like it worked, I felt like cold water was thrown in my face, opening my eyes to what reality is and how I control it. I have a long and muddy history of caring too much about things or people when it/they might not merit it for a number of reasons.  Acknowledgement of the issue is the first step to recovery.

Yesterday I finally pulled the trigger on my trip to LA, something I originally was going to do in mid-October.  I’m not quite sure why yesterday was the day I decided to take action but I am now locked in to fly out to southern CA on December 17th, returning on the 22nd.  I managed to secure a direct flight but even so it will be a long one so I shelled out extra bucks for the seats with additional leg room.  In addition I reserved a guest house on AirBnB in Downey which is the area my EUC buddy Marty lives.

My other SoCal friend Larry mentioned he had a holiday party the 18th that I was invited to, hence why I wanted to get out there the day prior. It sounds like it is quite the get together and something I would rarely get to experience.  Larry also offered to be my transport from and to the airport which is awesome.  I can either hitch rides locally to get around as needed, Uber or maybe ride a wheel to get where I need to be. No I’m not flying with a wheel, I again hope to benefit from the charity of others out there (Marty or Larry) to borrow one of their fleet.  Trying to pack my safety and camera gear for the trip which I plan to document heavily could push me into needing to check a second bag. I think it will be an awesome experience and a great Xmas present to myself.

So this will be the second time in the same calendar year where I have out of state travel twice in a short period of time.  The first time was in July when I was in upstate NY with my family and Roatan with Gladys in the span of less than two weeks.  This go round the travel will be a little less compressed with me returning from PA on November 27th so I have more like three weeks between the trips.  Mixing in that it is the holiday season should make it more fun for me.  I never saw LA at Christmas.

It will take me almost smack up to the conclusion of 2022 which thus far has proven to be one of the most challenging of my nearly 55 years on the planet.  That which does not kill you makes you stronger, right?

Oh I was up stupid late trying to finish the edit of part one of my S22 modification project.  You can experience the agony of defeat with me.

I am off tomorrow for Veterans Day.  I have small, yet flexible mental checklists in my brain of what I would like to do during this three day weekend.  We will see how they fall in place in reality.

I did not watch a single second of election coverage last night.  From perusing some headlines this morning the results were not as catastrophic for democrats as some predicted.  In Florida Ron Desantis crushed Charlie Crist as myself and everyone else knew hew would, cruising to a 20 point victory.  I heard he even won the Miami-Dade vote which is ALWAYS blue, pretty impressive.  Florida is definitely no longer a purple state, it’s red and will likely remain that way.  What I do like is the possibility of Desantis taking a big dump on Trump’s delusions about 2024.  It seems more and more republicans would prefer Ron to Don, by an increasingly large margin.

Ever since I became single in many ways I have felt like I was navigating through a dense fog.  I have continued to move forward with no clear visibility of anything on the other side or even an idea of what I hope to eventually find.  It’s a weird headspace to be in, especially for someone like me that has spent the overwhelming majority of his life having his ducks more or less in a row and realities pretty clearly defined.  I have been trying to embrace the “it is what it is” mentality, trying to navigate life without expectation the best that I can.  I do yearn for the day, if it comes, where the fog clears and my path is once again visible in front of me, a path which leads to contentment, fulfillment and joy.

So I got a ship notice on the new tubes I need to complete the upgrade to my Kingsong S22.  The bad news is since they are coming from Canada they won’t arrive until next week.  My hobby room looks like a bomb went off in there.  Having it stay that way until I can finish up the project is not a situation I am fond of.

I had my second chiropractor appointment this morning.  I have seen definite improvement since my initial visit.  I still will get some pain in my sciatic area, especially first thing in the morning.  I have also been trying to work in the stretches and exercises that he recommended to me. He again did the jerk the shit out of my leg routine.  He added a sudden down pressure move when I was lying on my side.  I walked out feeling better than when I walked in.  He said he thinks after another couple sessions I should be good to go as long as I keep up stretching on my own.

I woke up today in a good mood, despite sleep that was broken at 4AM for an unknown reason.  Life is weird.

Friday night instead of riding I got the weeding done because I had a busy day planned for myself Saturday.  This was the last time I would be able to weed or ride with any sort of daylight on a Friday evening since daylight savings kicked in this weekend. Saturday morning the kid I contacted to do the pressure washing showed up right on time at 9AM.  From my electronic communications with him prior he seemed very polite and courteous.  The in person interaction with him was the same, Alejandro was only 23 but trying to start his own business.  He showed up in his dad’s work truck who has his own AC business.

So I was having Alejandro (goes by Alex) clean my gutters and the pool area.  When I first mentioned to him about cleaning my gutters I though he was just going to pressure wash them to remove the dingy color that happens from the wet Florida climate.  Well he exceeded my expectations going around the perimeter of the house foot by foot with his ladder scooping the shit out of the gutters by hand and putting it into garbage bags.  THEN he hit the gutters with pressure after applying a bleach/Dawn/water solution.  The gutters looked basically brand new when he was done. He used similar care when cleaning the pool cage/deck.  He relied a lot of the cleaning solution to get the high areas of the cage where as I rely on pressure washer wand extensions to blast the crud off which is physically grueling.

As he was working I didn’t sit on my ass with my feet propped up.  No instead I was out in the yard for at least four hours myself taking down Halloween decorations, cleaning the shed, and then weed whacking/mowing the property.  I was out there long enough to run my air pods dead.  It was a funny feeling being out there doing yard work while my pool cage was getting cleaned, it almost felt like I had a staff. I think obtaining help for some of the more grueling tasks is money well spent at this point.

So Alex was very thorough as mentioned.  A side effect was the job took longer than I was anticipating.  He was there ALL DAY, not finishing up until a little after 6PM.  I really appreciated him taking his time to do things well and told him as much.  I also paid him $100 more than his quote as a token of my appreciation.  I won’t hesitate to use him in the future.

I had originally planned to ride bike with Monique Saturday evening.  I pulled my lightly used mountain bike out of the shed and inflated the tires to 35 PSI in preparation.  I was back inside on the computer when I heard a loud pop that got me out of my chair in a hurry.  I went out to the garage and saw the mess you see in the picture.  I guess due to age the tube had developed a weak spot and somehow resulted in this. What was really crazy was about 30 seconds after this picture the tube exploded, scaring the shit out of me.  I ordered replacement tubes for the front and back, I’m not looking for blowouts while riding.

So instead I met Monique to walk which we did on the Greenway.  Since I got there late because of the day long pressure washing it was already dark when we started.  The lights were not working on certain sections of the path so we relied on the nearly full moon.  In total we walked about three and a half miles.  Afterward we wanted to grab some dinner.  At this point it was getting close to 9PM.  The first idea we had was Panera but when we pulled up I saw they closed at 9.  Monique then suggested a Japanese place that was nearby which was indeed open.

I rarely eat Japanese so it was a nice change.  I had a shrimp bowl along with miso soup.  We both liked the meal.  When I took Monique back home, despite it getting late I stopped inside to say hi to Leilani.  She was the normal happy bundle of energy which I find endearing.  I didn’t head out for home until after 10:30.  I got home just in time to see the Phillies get eliminated from the World Series.  Despite the losing effort, overall the Phillies had an amazing season considering they fired their manager after the first month.

Sunday morning I needed to get the grocery shopping done since it was pushed out of it’s normal Saturday time slot. When I got home I mentally committed to working on the KingSong S22. I had two significant projects on it I wanted to accomplish at the same time.  I was replacing the knobby tire with a road tire which is supposedly a better fit for those that do primarily hard surface riding as I do.  The other project was replacing the slider mechanism that allows the suspension to function.  The stock design basically is shitty, requiring tons of upkeep.  I had a roller bearing set sent to me from a dealer in Bulgaria to install which supposedly provides much better performance.

I have done a number of tire replacements on PEVs over the roughly six years of owning them.  For whatever reason the tire swap on this wheel was far more difficult than most.  I struggled mightily to get the old tire off and even more to get the new Michelin street tire on. It was ridiculous. I was bleeding from no less than three spots on my hands from all of the prying, pushing and bending on the tire/rim.  So finally after close to an hour I had the new tire on.  I hooked up my electric pump to pressurize the tube and felt my frustration level spike through the ceiling when it would not inflate beyond 5PSI. I immediately knew I had torn the tube while installing the tire, fantastic…

I took a 20 minute break. I was really pissed I damaged the tube.  Unfortunately there was no quick providers of replacement tubes.  Amazon did not have the size/style needed so I wound up ordering it from an EUC dealer in Canada, meaning I won’t get it for at least a week, great.  I decided I wanted to at least get the slider modification part of the project completed.

Luckily this project hit less roadblocks than the tire change.  Unfortunately however I now have a hobby room that is in chaos and will remain that way until the replacement tubes arrive. I ordered two, just in case. It was a very frustrating afternoon but should make for an interesting video when it’s all said and done.

For the second day in a row I met up with Monique, this time to go to Home Depot.  I needed something from there and she had mentioned she wanted some mulch and a couple other things.  Her family doesn’t have a truck so I was happy to use the Taco as the delivery vehicle.  I brought Elsa with as well.

After grabbing the items we again stopped at Panera, this time well before their closing time. We sat outside so Elsa could be out there with us.  Monique really likes Elsa and Elsa has become more comfortable around Monique which is nice to see.  After dinner we went back to Monique’s house and unloaded the truck.  I went inside a bit to talk to her mom who then came out to say hi to Elsa.  I brought Elsa out of the truck and we just sat in their front yard talking a bit, it was nice.  When I got home last night I felt like the weekend had flown by in the blink of an eye but when I tallied my register of completed tasks it made it feel worthwhile.