Category Anything and Everything

It looks like the last entry I made was Friday morning.  Elsa and I went to the park again.  I walked her around but then loaded her up in the truck with the AC running while I pulled out my pickle ball gear.  I wanted to hit some balls around, specifically practice serving.

One of my problems while playing is a hesitancy to strike the ball aggressively because I don’t trust my accuracy.  Most of the time I can hit a ball much harder than I choose to.  I also tried to see if there was any way I could serve left handed since it is actually my throwing hand.  I had very poor results.  This all ties back to when I took tennis lessons as a child.  My coach did not want me to play left handed so I was taught as a righty.  I only recall having a few lessons but it was enough to make me play racquet sports right handed my entire life, it’s bizarre.

Friday afternoon I got on my bike to ride.  As I was pumping the tires I noticed the rear was unusually low.  As I focused on the tire I was amazed at just how worn it was, dangerously worn.  I am not quite sure how I did not notice this previously.  Of course it didn’t stop me from riding.  It was a BRUTAL ride containing some of the worst head wind I have dealt with.  My heart rate topped out close to 170 beats a minute.   When I got back I did make sure to buy a new tire.

Saturday was not horribly busy.  The most ambitious thing I did was redo the solar string lights on the wooden structure in the rock garden followed by installing the new solar shade.  I bought a bigger solar shade than I used to have out there.  Trying to get it in place with one person was a unique challenge.  I am not thrilled with the end result but it will shade the area I want which was the goal.

Saturday night I again went to a bar myself however this time it was a movie theater bar.  I went to the Prado theater in Bonita.  I got there well in advance of the movie I was seeing, Secrets of Dumbledore, so I could eat and drink.  The bar again was lightly populated but I enjoyed myself.

The movie was long at two hours and twenty minutes but I liked it.  There was a couple that brought their little boy to the movie.  He was talking loudly through about half of the film.  At one point people near them asked if they could try to keep it down.  The entitled couple instantly got angry and barked back that this was a children’s movie.  (it’s actually rated PG13)  I was far enough away that it didn’t bother me much but I still found it amazing that the parents made absolutely no effort to encourage the kid to be quiet.  I’d give the movie a B+, nothing will ever match the magic of the original Harry Potter cast.

Today I have a few disorganized things I’d like to do.  I have a massively busy roughly two week period coming up.  In addition to several work related projects I have four cardiologist related appointments, three skin cancer surgeries, a dentist appointment, Elsa’s annual vet visit, and a few other things I am forgetting.  I very much look forward to coming out the other end of this very busy tunnel that is filled with things I’d rather not have to deal with.

My day yesterday was pretty chill since my to do list was essentially done.  Elsa and I did our coffee run and 20 minute park walk which she is getting more accustomed to.  It sucks that once I go back to work it becomes much more difficult to do it.  Maybe I’ll have  to adapt and try to walk her around the backyard at night.  The park is typically busy at night which makes her more nervous.

I talked to Clay about meeting up to ride at the Greenway Thursday night.  I have never ridden there in the evening so I thought it would be fun.  Clay had gotten his new GT since I saw him last.  I also brought my XR with it’s new tire I just installed.  I got there a little early and took the XR out to get more of a feel for the new rubber which I actually really like at this point. Once Clay got there I switched over to my GT.

We had a great ride where we took the Greenway through Baker Park and then into downtown Naples.  Clay rides the area all the time so he knows back ways to get places that I had no clue about.  We snaked through traffic and pedestrians getting the double takes from people that you are used to when riding one wheeled PEVs.  Clay talked a lot about his other huge hobby, kite boarding.  He has repeatedly encouraged me to try it, which he did again last night and I have repeatedly declined.  It just doesn’t sound appealing to me, especially with how ocean water kicks off ear infections for me almost always.

We wound up at the beach, sitting on the benches and watching a complete sunset over the water, a rarity in my life. Clay let me have one of his Miller Lites he had in his backpack while we chilled out.  We then headed back.  On the way we went through the Bayfront area.  Clay suggested we could grab another beer at some outdoor bar called The Cabana.  It was packed with people, even on a Thursday night.  We again got a few questions about our boards.  There was some drunken woman that was trying to make conversation with me.  She was so drunk I could hardly make out what she was saying.  I just did a lot of smiling and head nodding.

After leaving the bar we went through this underpass.  Clay pointed out how there are footprints all over the walls and ceiling.  Evidently this is a thing.  He encouraged me to leave my own mark, which I did, removing my right shoe and leaving a mark on the wall.  Clay made his mark on the ceiling.  Clay said they have repainted this corridor three times, I guess someone thinks having it covered in shoe prints is un-Naples like.  Every time they do it, the public just foot prints it right back up, very funny.

Riding back through the Greenway later at night was a weird but cool experience.  We more or less had the entire place to ourselves.  The only noise was the sound of our boards with stillness all around.  Clay and I talked about meeting up over the weekend to go ride the abandoned golf course which he never got to do yet.  It was one of the most unique Thursday evenings I have had in a long time.  I hope to continue the trend of new experiences with new people as my future rolls out ahead of me.

Yesterday and today have been stuffed with things.  Yesterday morning I spent an  hour or two wire brushing the various wood structures in the yard to prep them for a new coat of waterproofing/stain.  In the afternoon I finally tackled replacing the tire on my original OneWheel.  I have been talking about doing this for at least two years, possibly closer to three.  I kept putting it off because of the potential hurdles of taking the board apart plus I sort of liked the stock Vega tire it comes with.  Well late last year the board started to develop a slow leak in the Vega.  Even though I had a new One Wheel GT on order I still wanted to change the tire on the XR so whomever gets the board after me has a solid tire under them.

I bought the tire and again it has sat, probably for at least two months as I tried to summon the motivation to dig into the project.  Yesterday was that day.  I followed a recommended YouTube video for the procedure as I filmed a video of my own.  There were several friction points that had me flustered a few times but I worked through it.  In about two hours I had successfully completed the swap.  The brief test ride I took afterward confirmed the new tire has a much different feel, more responsive similar to my old OneWheel Pint.  I hope to get out for a more extended ride on the board soon.

I talked to my friend/co-worker and arranged to meet him to play some pickle ball at Veterans Park Tuesday night. He had been going there for awhile at night.  It was a lot of fun although all of the games are doubles.  I really prefer playing singles but doubles is the de-facto standard.  I bet I played at least 10 games and lost every single one although a lot of them were very close.  My pickle ball reality is very odd.  When I was very young I took tennis lessons.  They taught me to play right handed because playing left handed was bad, for some reason.  I throw, bat and play most sports left handed.  So the end result is I play pickle ball right handed which is very weird.  I have much more whipping ability in my left arm.  I do occasionally switch hands when playing.

I think my biggest issue is a lack of confidence when playing.  The end result is making conservative plays instead of attacking the ball aggressively.  Playing against all of these different people was a good experience, despite losing to everyone. I need to keep playing/practicing.  I was pretty wiped out by the end of the night, both of my knees were sore.  I woke up this morning feeling even more sore, but I didn’t have time to be sore.

I designated today as waterproof/stain day.  After getting my coffee and walking Elsa around the park I started the work on all of the outdoor wood, there is a lot of it.  I redid both ramps for the sheds, the chicken coop/run, the bar park, and the stone garden area.  In total I bet I spent over 5 hours doing this.  It was physically grueling.  The ramps required me to be bent over for prolonged periods of time, the structure in the rock garden required me to working over my head for prolonged periods of time.  I was hurting but driven to get it done.  Everything looks much better after the work, I am hoping to not have to revisit it for a couple years, if I am lucky.

At 6PM I had the guy from the window company show up to give me an estimate on windows.  I immediately liked the guy and we talked about a ton of non-windows related things for a half hour before he started to measure.  I liked that his company offers a lifetime warranty on both accidental and hurricane related damage.  The price was a little steeper than what I expected but I was able to negotiate it down a couple grand more to get me to about 2k per window.  These windows are impact rated, insulated and tinted. The windows that came with the house are pretty much junk.   It’s a major improvement that should add to the already escalating value of my home.

At this point I only have one item left on my staycation to do list, wash the Tesla.  It will be a piece of cake compared to the tasks I have already crossed off.  I look forward to coasting through my remaining time off.

Yesterday I finally had the cardiologist appointment I had been waiting for for over a month and a half.  I had some anxiety about it most of the morning some of which almost felt like it was triggering phantom chest pain.  I think it is quite easy to fall into a psychosomatic response once you are told something like your heart may be f’d up.  So anyway I get in there and the assistant looks at my chart from my physical and suggests we do another EKG.  He said it is not abnormal to get a reading like mine due to the leads being placed incorrectly.  I did not mention to him that they ran the EKG twice, just to make sure, but hoped his hunch was indeed correct.

He hooked me up and within seconds  was able to see that he was seeing results almost identical to what I had in early March, fantastic…  He was still upbeat and said I certainly don’t seem like I am a typical person with cardiac problems based on my overall fitness level and the questions on the survey I filled out.  There were three things however that were not talked about which in retrospect I should have asked.  On the survey symptom list I circled yes on nausea, and stress/depression. Both of these things came on within the last 6 months and I am one of those people that absolutely believe your state of mind has a direct impact on your health.  The other thing was never asking about covid.  I am pretty certain I had Covid at least once, if not twice in the last two years.  I also had the Moderna vax (initial two doses).  There are tons of reports of heart issues suddenly developing as a result. (look up covid myocarditis)

The cardiologist came in and looked at my EKG results, while asking me some additional health questions, again seemingly using my physical condition and lack of other symptoms to fall on the side of there isn’t a significant problem, however, we need to make sure.  I walked out of there with appointments for a stress test, an ECG, and a vein test.  The ECG seems to be the most helpful test as it would identify if there is actually any heart damage consistent with the possible mini-heart attack the EKG could indicate.  I walked out of there not happy but glad that we are taking the next steps to figure out if I really have something to be concerned about.  I was surprised that when I told him my mom had a heart attack at 67 he was not concerned either.  The fact that she was a lifetime smoker and her age at death means there is not a genetic disposition towards heart disease, in his opinion.

Around dinner time last night I took the V11 out for a DD ride.  I stopped at the park and talked about my S20 saga, the wheel that I ordered last August that is still not in my hands.

This morning I took Elsa for another park walk after I grabbed coffee.  She is getting less and less fearful it seems each time we go.  My goal is to get here there every day of my staycation.  I just got done going around with a wire brush on all of the outdoor wood that is treated with Thompsons stain/waterseal.  It was an unfun job but something that really makes a difference in the longevity of the product when applied.  Some of the wood was really in bad shape despite being last done somewhere around a year ago.  If my mental plan holds I will do the brush work tomorrow.

This afternoon the task in my sights is changing the tire on my OneWheel XR.  It promises to be a unique challenge.

The first weekend of my staycation was pretty full as you can imagine based on my long track record of wanting to crush my to do lists before getting around to the more fun stuff.  On Saturday morning after cleaning the coop and weeding the place Elsa and I headed out on a long errand run that had more than a half dozen stops and took damn close to four hours.  As I was unloading the truck I noticed I was missing the mower blades I bought from Lowes, damn it.  When I retraced my steps I knew I paid for them but I was pretty sure I just left the blades in the bottom of the shopping cart in the parking lot.  I figured I was screwed and I certainly wasn’t going to drive back there without knowing they were there.  I called up the store and was quite surprised that they did actually have the blades in their hand.  I picked them up later on my way to dinner.

I hopped on the tractor and mowed the back of the property which has now started to grow once again with the return of rain and warmer weather. I also knocked out another list item, rotating the tires on the Model Y.  I recently crossed 10,000 miles on the car which seems hard to believe that I am at that milestone already.  The process went smoothly although I was a sweaty, dirty mess by the end of it.

I wanted to continue my new tradition of heading to a restaurant bar for dinner Saturday night.  I decided to mix it up this time and figured I would go to what was my long time favorite restaurant, Carrabbas. I have not been there in at least two years thanks to Covid and the various direction changes in my life.  I thought despite it being Saturday night I could find a single seat at the bar to squeeze into. Wow, was I in for a shock.

I pulled into the lot around 7:15 which normally would be prime time.  I was astonished how empty the parking lot was.  I was accustomed to having to circle the lot looking for that one elusive open space.  I could have parked an RV in the lot and no one would have cared.  When I went inside the shock continued. MAYBE a third of the table were used, maybe 25%.  It felt like I was in an alternate universe.  The reality I used to be in had Carrabbas always full.  Going on a Saturday night meant you should expect a 60-90 minute wait.  I sat down at the bar which was empty except for one other couple having dinner.

I spent most of my time there in disbelief that this was what Carrabbas now was.  I asked the bartender if this is the new normal.  He said it slows down a lot after season.  Well I have been there plenty of times outside of season and it was never like this, not even close.  I tried to come up with why this may be.  Perhaps it’s still covid related although as far as I have seen most restaurants have been not impacted by pandemic related fear for quite awhile.  Maybe it’s because there are so many dining options in our area now.  The amount of construction in the greater Naples area is staggering and the restaurant industry has been expanding with it.  Or maybe people are just tired of Carrabbas, who knows?  Regardless I enjoyed my two beers and bowl of spaghetti although I’m not sure when I will be back.

I knew this Easter was going to be weird.  For my entire life Easter meant celebrating together with either family, my significant other or a combination of both.  I am not exaggerating when I say that was the case for every one of the last 53 years.  I no longer have any local family or a significant other and that was impactful on my mood.  I tried instead to treat it like any other day.  I tried to fill my day with tasks to keep my mind busy.

I was glad to see DD was open a half day.  I threw a $5 tip to the drive thru staff in appreciation of them working on the holiday. After grabbing my coffee I stopped at the park with Elsa to get a lap in around the path.  I really need to try to get her out and walking more.  She spends weekdays just sleeping all day I’m sure so it isn’t good for her.  She acts so scared when I try to get her out of the truck at the park and almost instantly poops once we get there.  However I know it’s good for her and I need to make more effort to keep her moving.

My bill paying session took forever as it was CC reconciliation week which is a PIA.  I found a fraudulent charge on there which is going to result in me getting a new card and number.  That will set off a chain reaction of aggravation as I will need to change all of the services I bill to the card monthly.

I knocked out the mowing around the house and then headed inside where I cleaned the carpets and steam cleaned the hard surfaces.  I finished up back outside where I did maintenance on the tractor including new blades, oil and oil filter.  I just crossed 100 hours on it so I made a video of the work as well.

So despite the day packed with work I still found myself in a poor mental state by the end of it.  I thought back to moments in my childhood and drew some parallels to what I was feeling now. The sense of sadness when reality washes away any past disillusions.

So recently, spurned on by the calisthenics reflection video I did a couple weeks ago I have been reminiscing on how seriously I was into body weight training a decade ago.  It was a time in my life where I was the most fit of my life.  Not only was I doing high level calisthenics, this was also the time period where I ran three half marathons, dead lifted almost 400 pounds and completed three Tough Mudders.  I have been wondering just what I can and can’t do at this point, a decade later.

The long distance running portion of the glory years clearly seems out of reach.  My lower body just won’t allow it.  When I tried to reboot my running a few months ago my left knee blew up after only three short 1 mile runs.  However I still do pull ups, push ups, and dips regularly but with a mindset of maintaining my current level.  I lost the PR mindset years ago where you are always trying to set a new best in reps, time or weight moved. However lately I am feeling the embers of motivation smoldering.

Last night I wanted to see if I good do a move I used to do semi-regularly, an elbow planche.  Surprisingly, I could.  It wasn’t easy but I still had the ability to do the movement which puts various stresses on your core, arms and lower body.  That small success has given me a little extra push to keep moving forward, back into the mindset where each week you make little micro-improvements in what you are doing.  All of a sudden you look back months later and realize how far you have moved.

So I am on the eve of my second week long staycation in a month.  Having vacation time to burn is a nice problem to have.  Sure it would be nice to use it doing something more exciting like a road trip but logistically that doesn’t work for me right now. Much like the last staycation I have a decent size list of things to do but none of them on their own should take much more than a few hours to complete.   Also like last staycation I want to take plenty of do whatever the F I want time, an increasingly important part of my life.  I do have fun things like my cardiologist and replacement window appointments during the week to keep things lively.  I’ll drop in here along the way to share the latest.

Yesterday on my lunch break I once again played pickleball with some friends/co-workers.  We were just warming up smacking my red pickleballs around.  The balls come in several colors but the “official” color you see in tournaments and organized play is sort of a neon green shade.

The first pack of balls I bought were this color.  I tried to identify them by putting my name on the balls in permanent sharpie but found it wore off very quickly during play.  So when I bought my next pack of balls I decided to try one of the non-mainstream colors, amber red or something like that. I figured it would make differentiating my balls significantly easier since most used the neon green.

So anyway, as we are warming up some old guy comes up to the fence.  He tells us we shouldn’t play with the red balls since nobody ever uses them.  He was so adamant in his belief that neon green was the only option he tossed us a neon green ball.  I was a bit dumbstruck that the color of our pickleballs was enough of an irritant for this guy that he felt the need to address it.  We were laughing at the oddity of this situation as we accepted the free ball and started smacking it around.

I never knew that pickleball prejudice was a thing, until yesterday.  Condo cop mentality is alive and well, even on the court.

My morning routine is like a well oiled machine ever since I started cleaning the chicken coop before work.  When that alarm goes off at 5:35 AM I have very little time to waste.  The sequence of events is clean the coop, make Elsa and my breakfast, pack my lunch, take a shower, get dressed and then head back out to the coop one final time.  During that second coop visit I put the mats back in and give Kathy some additional treats.  I can tell how am I doing time-wise not by a clock but by a door.

The automatic chicken door I have on the chicken run opens automatically at 6:55 AM.  If it opens while I am out there I know I am pretty much on schedule.  If it is already open when I get out there I know I am running behind and if somehow I get finished while the door is still closed I am surprisingly ahead of schedule. (or the door is broken)  It’s funny to me how something like a door could become a time keeping tool in my world.

When I got home last night I got the urge to fire up the weed whacker.  I saw the area under the solar panels was getting taken over by weeds once again.  Weed whacking this area is not welcomed by my back.  Trying to get the whacker into the low section of the angled panels requires an awkward bent over position while simultaneously holding the machine in front of your body.  I took a few moments during the task to stand up straight, like that did anything.  Once I did that area I figured I may as well do a speed run around the house, not knocking down everything I normally would but anything around the immediate house region.  I figure it was one less thing less to put on the list for next week’s staycation that I am already building.

You may wonder why I don’t put more in here about the state of the world.  Overseas we have the Ukraine war which seems like it is destined to have a horrible outcome one way or the other.  Putin’s sanity really needs to be examined at this point.  Within our borders inflation is raging with a pile on mentality.  No matter what service or product you sell you can jack your prices and blame inflation, whether it is valid excuse or not.  That is a very dangerous mindset to fall into.  The reason I don’t rant and rave more is because over time I have drifted towards caring more about what I can directly impact or control.  I can make energy conscious decisions for myself,  I can choose to be a decent human being, I can hold myself personally responsible for my actions.  Trying to save the world from itself is far beyond my scope of possibility so I have retreated from trying to do so.  I don’t want to spend however many years I have left on this planet being angry.

I think I mentioned in the past the ridiculous increase of my homeowners insurance for the upcoming policy year, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%.  Well I got another letter in the mail from Tower Hill that ticked up my degree of anger a few more clicks.  The letter states that thanks to some organization called the FIGA (Florida Insurance Guaranty Association) my premium will be going up even more.

Basically FIGA is designed to be a safety net for an insurance company that goes insolvent.  Recently St John’s insurance went that way.  So based on this agreement FIGA assumes any outstanding claims of St Johns and assesses policy holder of every solvent insurance company a fee to cover this expense.  So if you run your insurance company poorly, no worries all the other homeowners in the state will prop you up, sigh….

Property insurance in the state is a huge problem for everyone.  It’s so bad I heard they are trying to schedule an emergency session of the state legislature to try to get things under control.  Insurance companies across the board are all reaching for a cash grab at the same time, leaving homeowners little choice but to bend over and take it. There are many contractors that basically advertise they are willing to commit insurance fraud on your behalf.  It’s this type of abuse of the system that hurts the rest of the population that isn’t looking to deceive for personal gain.

I reached out to have someone give me an estimate for window replacement next week.  The windows in the house are low quality and non-impact rated.  A couple of them have broken internals that don’t allow them to stay open or in some cases open at all.  The house does not have a ton of windows so I am hoping the quote I get is not too heart attack inducing.  I do plan to get several estimates to weigh against one another. I scheduled it for next week because I scheduled another week long staycation.

I am not sure why this popped into my head recently but it did.  I was thinking about how despite my being very analytical in some regards, much of my life is done by feel.  I have often talked about how many of my projects were fluid in nature with plans that were not on paper but in my head and subject to constant change based on feel.  When I meet certain people I quickly get a feel for them.  With my most recent hire for our department, even though she was only the second person I interviewed, I almost immediately knew she would be a great fit, because I felt it.  Hell even when I was an avid bowler growing up, I did it on feel. Instead of utilizing the arrows on the lane that were maybe 10 feet away to aim your ball I always looked right at the foul line when bowling.  I knew how the shot was supposed to feel coming off my hand.

Of course there have been times in my life where my tendency to act based on feel has not always served me well.  It can lead to impulsiveness or just poor end results as some situations deserve more examination than just acting on a feeling.  As I said I’m not sure why this thought tangent was even present but it was, so here it is.

Last night I took Sadie back to Ali’s place.  They weren’t back yet from their flight so I dropped her off.  Elsa was disappointed that Ali and Shugs were not home.  I didn’t get up there to drop her off until almost 9PM because of running around the house tending to tasks.  By the time Elsa and I returned we were ready to hit the sack.

I may be imparting my feelings onto my interpretation of how Kathy has been since Fiona died, leaving her solo, but to me, her little noises she makes when I am out there sound sadder.  When I was at the bar Saturday night I was going to turn off the coop light remotely, I figured Kathy would already be on the perch but I checked the inside Ring cam.  She wasn’t there.  I checked other cams and saw her standing by the front fence, staring in at the house, despite it being dusk.  I immediately felt sad, thinking she was waiting for me to come out to put her to bed.

Wow, this weekend was just stuffed with things.  I got out on the bike Friday after work.  The cold front had dropped the temps and humidity to fantastic levels which is great.  The cold front also brought very windy conditions, which was not so great.  The long leg after the turn around spot was especially brutal.  I just tried to keep my body as low as possible to reduce my wind impact area.  Even with doing so I was hard pressed to keep my speed over 15-16MPH on that segment.  By the time I got home I was pretty beat.  Combining some pickle ball and road biking on the same day hits me pretty hard nowadays.

In the last 10 days I have been slammed with 3D store orders.  I spent a good portion of the weekend trying to keep things flowing.  Some of the orders I could fulfill out of stock but some I had to do on the fly.  I am very conscious of trying to turn around orders as fast as possible since I know that is how I like transactions to go.  I have sold the most in a short period of time in probably a year, it’s a nice problem to have.

It was beautifully cool on Saturday morning.  After doing my morning chores I loaded Sadie and Elsa in the truck.  One of my stops was Trader Joe’s.  There is no better place for me to find good tasting and decently healthy single serving frozen meals.  I loaded up enough to last me a long time.  We also made a stop at the local feed store for chicken supplies.  With only one chicken left I need to try to scale back the food appropriately.  It’s hard to accurately do so because so many wild birds come and snack on Kathy’s food throughout the day.

During the afternoon I got started on a BUNCH of small to do’s.  When the new vent fan receptacle showed up mid-afternoon that jumped to the top of the priority list as I had an empty hole in the bathroom ceiling since the previous week when my install failed.

I first had to splice in the new receptacle.  I did my best to make sure the connection was secure and locked together with a wire nut and electrical tape.  After snapping the new part in place I carefully attached the new fan and plugged it into the new receptacle.  I hit the switch to verify juice was flowing, it was.  After some awkward finger work I finally got the two spring clips in place and pushed the new fan flush against the ceiling.  It looks good and throws a ton more light into the space which I like.  I again mentally kicked myself in the ass for not taking on this task many, many years before.

By the time I finished up all of my to do’s it was getting later in the afternoon.  I came up with a Saturday night game plan of parking at DD, riding, and then going back to Brooks Burgers for another meal while sitting at the bar.  I again took the OneWheel GT and I again really enjoyed my ride.  During the 20 minute plus video I got sidetracked into conversations about non-PEV topics like my overall sense of well being, my recent chicken loss, and why I am more comfortable talking to a camera than most human beings.

The trip to Brooks was uneventful.  There were actually less people there than the week prior.  The same two guys that were singing last week were there again which I appreciated.  For a good portion of the time it was just me and some other old dude at the bar.  Later a few older, presumably married couples joined us but I just sat there and chilled.  I only drank a couple Bud Lights during the meal.

Sunday morning was again a glorious crisp and cool morning.  Sadie loved just sitting in the yard and chilling out.  Her mobility is getting more and more limited, especially after she has been laying down for a prolonged period of time.  Her desire to be close to me at all times has her getting up and down constantly in the house to be in whatever room am in.  It’s very endearing but also very sad for me to see her struggle so much to just do the simplest things.  I can tell her mind still wants to run around and play like she did for so much of her life but now she is trapped inside of a failing body.  It sucks.

I spent a ton of time at the computer Sunday morning between paying my bills and processing orders.  We didn’t get out on the road for our coffee run until after 11.  I had cleared my afternoon schedule because my buddy Matt was coming out to the house for the first time ever so we could install a towing hitch onto his 2019 Tesla Model 3.

Matt showed up about 1:30.  After giving him a brief tour of the property we began the install.  He had found an installation video for the hitch that we both had watched prior.  I saw nothing in the process that looked out of my capabilities.  Matt wanted to add the hitch to utilize with a platform to increase his cargo capacity during his annual summer road trips.

I brought my laptop out to the garage so we could follow along with the video.  I also brought my Sony camera out on a tripod thinking I could film the process for content for my channel.  Well that idea did not last for very long.  The initial steps of the process went relatively well.  Tesla’s utilize snap together construction for a lot of the car.  To install the hitch you take a lot of stuff off the rear end including the tail lights, bumper cover and bumper crash bar.  There is also a rear belly pan which comes out.

At first we thought we didn’t need to put the car on ramps but we eventually did.  It’s a good thing because there were certain things we could not have done without the car being elevated.  So we were moving along steadily.  We got the car ripped down to the point where the bumper crash bar was removed.  This part needed to be installed onto the new hitch assembly.  In the video this looked stupidly easy.  You put some carriage bolts through the one side, which will line them up with the other side.  Snug them up and you are good to go.  Well this is where the install hit the wall.

I have taken on some pretty major, to me, projects in the past.  Many times these include those walls, the point in the project where you aren’t quite sure how you are going move forward and the idea of going backward seems impossible as well.  So for whatever reason the bumper crash bar was not aligning as it should to allow us to cleanly get a socket on the nuts to tighten them.  If we aligned one side perfectly the other would be off and vice versa.  Matt and I spent at least two hours fcking with this thing in every way imaginable to get it lined up. In the video the guy was using a 2020 Model 3 which had a different looking aluminum bumper crash bar.  Matt’s bar was painted and looked more like steel.  Tesla is infamous for making changes in the middle of a model year.  I developed a theory since Matt’s car was an early 2019 model, they changed something later in that model year, namely the bumper crash bar hole layout, which was the root cause of our frustration.

We could not get the crash bar aligned 100% and we had to make a decision.  It was now around dinner time and the availability of daylight became a concern for me.  We had two options, reverse everything and admit defeat or be good enough with getting less than 6 bolts snugged up.  We chose the latter.  I was able to get 5 of the 6 bolts very tight.  The crash bar had nothing to do with hitch strength or stability so Matt was ok with rolling ahead as is, thankfully.  I know if it was my car I would like everything to be exactly as they say it should be but we had to improvise if we wanted to make this work.

We weren’t in the clear yet.  With the older Model 3’s there is no convenient hatch built into the belly plan for a hitch.  We had to create our own with a metal snips.  Getting the belly pan reattached to rear bumper cover and then getting that big clumsy assembly over the trailer hitch was frustrating as hell as well.  I had to do some additional cutting to make it work.  Finally, finally we got the hitch popped through with the bumper cover in place.  We slowly worked our way backward.  My work area was a lot more chaotic than I normally like where I keep fasteners logically sorted and organized.  To attach three belly pan bolts you had to slide under the car which was extremely tight.  It made a MRI chamber or a coffin feel spacious.

Finally somewhere around 7:30 or so the car was back together.  The predicted 3 hour job took almost double that.  I was so freaking dirty.  It felt like I had greasy dirt mashed everywhere, including my hair.  I had Matt take the car for a quick test drive to make sure no mysterious noises or rattles were present.  He came back with an all clear, thankfully.  We were both beat to hell from a long session of climbing, crawling and sliding around on a concrete floor.  My “video” consisted of maybe 5 minutes of footage before we hit that wall.

We washed our hands thoroughly and Matt and I enjoyed the special beer he brought.  I forget the name but it was good, coming in a wine size bottle, complete with a cork.  I had not seen Matt in person since probably 2019, which is crazy but not an uncommon scenario in our new covid reality.  We just hung out and talked for a little while, which I enjoyed.  Matt and I align in a number of areas, including age, he is 54 as well.  A little before 9PM he headed home.  We both agreed we should hang out more in the future, without a major automotive project as part of the schedule.

I was really, really tired.  However even with as frustrating as the install was, there was a small part of me proud that I still have the ability to grind my way through a really tough situation and still find a path to the finish line.  There were multiple times during this Matt and I took turns just shoulder shrugging as to what to do next. I think having both of us working towards the goal kept either of us from throwing in the towel.

I had an email this morning saying that my PEV Live Stream/Podcast was ranked number 29 in the electric vehicle podcast list.  It was unexpected but cool. 🙂