Category SSR

For the past month or two I have been working behind the scenes with Rick from the Bar-barians on redoing their website. The old site was getting stale and had mostly static information in it. I made the suggestion of using WordPress to do the new site since it is flexible, powerful, yet relatively easy to work with.

Rick is a photographer and has background in working with pictures digitally. He worked on a lot of the images/graphics used in the site as well as migrating over information from the old site to the new one.  I worked more on the back end, adding features, a message forum, connections to external content like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and more.

On Sunday I redirected the domain name to it’s new location, virtually opening the doors of the new site for business.  So far the reaction from everyone has been very positive.  Visually, the site looks 100% better. The functionality, interactivity and information available have all been greatly enhanced as well.

I had a bit of a freak out moment yesterday when Rick told me the site was offline.  I confirmed it indeed was and I contacted my web host.  They told me that it was taken offline because it was spiking traffic.  Evidently so many people were hitting the site that it was using too many of the web server cpu cycles.

I found out a couple plug ins I was running on the site were the primary cause of the overload so I disabled them.  Hopefully the web traffic the new site creates will level out.  Otherwise I would have to look into getting the site out of a shared server environment.

Anyway, it’s exciting to be involved in the site relaunch.  If you want to see the fruits of our labor, go here.

Last night I quickly gave the SSR  a bath for my trip this weekend to the central east coast of Florida for a SSR Fanatics get together.  A bunch of SSR owners are getting together with tool boxes in hand to work on their trucks.

I am planning to install an upgraded radiator support that helps stiffen the front end and LED brake/tail lights.  I also would like to possibly work on fixing the ground on my radio that is causing engine whine noise in the speakers and maybe install an amplified antenna I have had hanging on my workbench for a few months.

I also want to get some opinions on a couple other nagging issues I have had with the truck.  The group has a combined encyclopedic knowledge of the SSR so I can’t imagine a better source of advice.

It’s going to be interesting meeting the group members.  From what I can tell, most of them are at least 20 years older than I am.  I am pretty sure I will be the “kid” of the bunch.

Last night after work I stopped at the running store to grab some more entries for this weekends half marathon.  I am REALLY looking forward to getting the race behind me.  There are a lot of moving parts to the race and this year it is even more so since we are using bib based timing devices, two timing boxes at the finish, a third one to collect names for the PA announcer and another set of timing boxes at the halfway point of the race. I am just a bit anxious about it all coming together.  I need to utilize my lists heavily to make sure I don’t forget anything.

My dad had an interesting day yesterday while I was at work.  He drove out to Ave Maria (Catholic Town) to hang out at the coffee shop there for awhile.  After doing that he decided to visit the casino in Immokalee.  He was there for over 5 hours playing blackjack.  He had some good luck and then some bad but emerged $14 ahead.  He said he enjoyed himself.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes back there today.

Last night for dinner dad and I headed down to Zookie’s, the nearest sports bar to me, in the same shopping area as Dunkin Donuts.  The parking lot looked absolutely jammed but I was surprised once we stepped in the door that because of the size of the place, there were still plenty of tables available.

We both had fish tacos and a couple of beers. It was a fine way to spend a Thursday evening.

During the long trip to PA with Sadie by my side I gave more thought to a loose plan I had for another road trip.  I have been considering hopping in the SSR and going for a long road trip, possibly all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  My plan was to do it myself, thinking it would be a great way to really see the country and realign myself.

As I was driving the 3000 miles last week I questioned if I would enjoy doing such a trip more alone or with someone else.  I realized that just having Sadie along made the drive much more bearable despite her inability to carry on a conversation or switch off driving responsibilities.  Just having her riding shotgun with her always on happy meter was reassuring and made me feel like I was sharing the experience.

It made me unsure if trekking across the country with just me, myself and I would be more parts fun/exciting or depressing.  I should make mom come along.  It’s just the medicine she needs.

Speaking of the SSR, the CEL light is on again.  I need to hook my code reader up to it.  Depending on what it reads I may take it to the dealer to get some use out of the extended warranty I paid for.

 

My four day holiday weekend started off with timing a race in Marco Island.  It was supposed to be very cold (it was) and it was also Ali’s birthday so I told her she could stay home in bed if she wanted to.  She opted to come out anyway.

I had on 4 layers of clothing on my upper body, my Eagles knit beanie and the thin gloves I use for outside work.  Even with all of this I still found myself pretty damn cold during various parts of the morning.  I had a few glitches during the race but for the most part the timing went ok.

Ali got a treat when at the awards ceremony the club president lead the crowd in singing her happy birthday.  Of course she was embarrassed but also appreciated the efforts.

As I was doing the race prep I shot footage for a video I posted on the GCR Facebook page outlining what is involved in race timing.

After getting home I tried to take care of as much stuff as I could around the house although I was feeling quite tired from the 3:45am wake up.  I went out Saturday night, first to a bar that is housed inside of the local Whole Foods store.

A running club buddy told me about this bar, I thought he was kidding at first.  It turned out to be very cool.  In the back corner of the busy organic grocery store is a very nice little bar.  You have the option to buy wine/beer off their shelves and enjoy it at the bar very affordably or order stuff by the bottle/glass in a conventional manner if you like.

The young guy that was behind the bar was incredibly nice and friendly, he was very interested in making sure that we enjoyed ourselves.  I gave him a huge tip, hell it is the holiday season and he deserved it.  What a great guy.

That was followed up with dinner at Seasons 52 where I had another really nice dining experience.  That place has quickly rocketed up my favorite restaurants list.

On Sunday we had a “party” planned at another running club board member’s place.  This party was actually a ruse for what was really some mind numbing labor that I needed help with.  I had 2500 race bibs that needed to have 2500 timing devices affixed to them.

I loaded up the truck with several boxes of the raw materials needed for this project and then picked up Ali on the way.  I didn’t have a clear game plan of exactly how we were going to do this and still keep things accurate and organized.

When I received the timing devices I was also sent a file that mapped each bib to a unique sequential number.  The first device had a unique number ending in 7500, the next was 7501, then 7502, etc…  My plan at first was to make sure the bibs they were affixed to made sense, so 7501 would be bib 1, 7502, bib 2…

Well at it’s peak we probably had at least a dozen people there helping to affix the chip to the bib, which was a very tedious process.  The timing device just barely fit on the back of the bib and had to be carefully placed between the holes that are used for pins.  With two tables of people working away it almost felt like we were in a Chinese Iphone factory.

So early on in the process I decided that trying to keep the bibs associated with the timing device numbers was more trouble than it’s worth.  Instead I was having people just hand me their stacks of completed bibs and then I would run them one at a time over the USB scanner attached to a laptop.  This way people could work faster since they didn’t have to worry about matching specific tags to bibs and I got to double check that each timing device was functional.

This did definitely help speed things up for everyone else.  Unfortunately it made my job pretty immense.  Before long I had stacks upon stacks of bibs on the floor beside me, waiting to be scanned.  The army of bib assemblers far outpaced my ability to scan the bibs in.  I was probably scanning bibs close to an hour after the last one had been assembled.  My arm and back was aching by the end of it.  Out of the 2500 bibs I only had one that appeared to be dead.

Attending the bib party meant I didn’t catch any of the Eagles game which was no big deal as they once again lost, pretty much welding shut the door on Andy Reid’s tenure as the Eagles coach.

One thing I was interested in was how my fantasy football team was doing since I was in the championship game.  I wound up losing despite scoring a big 134 points.  It was a bit frustrating when I saw that if I would have started the San Diego defense instead of the Texans I could have pulled out a win.

So for the second time in my fantasy football career I came up one game short of winning it all.  Despite falling short, financially I made out well, more than doubling my $200 team entry fee in prize money.

Sunday night I had an unexpected and unpleasant visit from what felt like stomach flu/food poisoning.  All of a sudden I found myself feeling very cold, nauseous, and tired.  That was followed by a couple bathroom trips that were pretty horrific.  Thank goodness it came and went.

On Monday, Christmas Eve, I found myself with quite a long list of to do’s.  I had a number of last minute things to pick up as well as a bunch of things to get organized and wrapped at the house.

I was on the go for a good portion of the day but did find a few minutes to sneak in an attempt at the push up mode of this month’s BB challenge.

Obviously this holiday season has been very different from any other of my adult life with the relationship changes that have gone down in 2012.  One such difference was for the first time ever and I mean ever, I didn’t watch a single Christmas special, something in the past I always enjoyed and looked forward to.

This 2012 Christmas Eve followed the same unconventional feel.  It didn’t feel like Christmas Eve in the least unless I happened to turn the corner and saw the tree with presents surrounding it.

For years I have bitched and moaned how Christmas just never feels like I hoped it would anymore.  For some reason the fact that it doesn’t feel like it did when I was young still disappoints me, even though it is irrational to think it ever would feel the same.  It is what it is.

Another deviation from typical Christmas Eve protocol was the lack of my mom sleeping in the guest room.  Since moving to Florida mom has always come over the night before so she is around for the bright and early present opening ceremonies.  Mom had developed a pretty awful cold so we agreed I would just run out and pick her up Christmas morning.

I awoke Christmas morning later than expected.  When I talked to mom the day before I told her I would pick her up something like 7:00 to 7:30am.  When I said it I meant 7:30, mom took it as meaning as she needed to be ready to go at 7:00.  My eyes focused on the clock from my bed at 7:04am.

I got out of bed and called mom right away.  She was annoyed since she got herself up at 6 am since I told her I would be there by 7.  I reminded her I told her 7-7:30 but it didn’t make her feel any better.  I hopped in the SSR and hauled ass to her place, picking her up 15 minutes after my original 7:30 time window, oh well.

Ali was going to bring the dogs out around 9 so we decided that we would eat breakfast BEFORE opening any presents.  This was another “never before” thing.  Hell there were times the wrapping paper would start getting torn at 6AM.  Even with the blah adult Christmas experiences of recent years still, everything is already torn apart by 8AM.  This year a present wasn’t even touched till damn close to 10AM, wow.

The present stash understandably was different this year as Ali and I agreed to not buy anything for each other.  Despite this, I had quite a pile of gifts under the tree with a “S” on them.  Some of them were presents sent to me by my brother and dad which I wrapped.  However about half of them were the various self gifts I purchased myself.

Yea I guess it is weird but I still kind of enjoyed opening up my packages I wrapped myself with care.  Some of my self gift highlights were my Daisy air rifle and micro helicopter.

Despite our edict to not buy each other anything I did sneak in a gift for Ali.  It was something very practical that she needed, a Neato.  She felt bad that I did an end around of our agreement but I told her it was not a big deal.

Mom had a ton of little things to open up, most of them were somehow money related, the gift that keeps on giving. The dogs were excited as always to open their presents which included various toys and treats.

I got to talk to Todd and Torrin before taking mom back home.  While mom was on the phone with Todd I got to play with some of my toys.  I popped a few holes in a Diet Coke can from about 40-50 feet away with my air rifle.  It seems that the gun shoots left and low of the sight.  I will need to see what sort of adjustments I can make.  I quickly discovered that pumping an air rifle can be extremely tough on the forearms.

On my way back I stopped at Ali’s to set up the Neato.  We did a quick test run.  It looks like the Neato will be a big help with staying on top of the non-stop flow of dog fur that tries to take over Ali’s place.

When I got home I did still have one thing that is a long standing Christmas tradition, depression.  When the gift giving festivities are over, even on a year like this where I basically just bought crap for myself, I feel bummed out.  It always happens and I always dislike the feeling.

For whatever reason I find the process of cleaning up and putting away things very sullen.  It’s hard to verbalize why it still would bother me since Christmas isn’t really Christmas to much of a degree anymore.  Maybe it is just all the build up to the day from the outside world.  Even if I am not excited about the day, a lot of people are, and to have the big moment come and go must still deflate me.  Of course when I noticed later in the night that it also happens to be a full moon right now it helped to explain the bad feelings further.

During the afternoon I tried to put some of that negative energy to use out on the pull up bar.  I hoped to beat my one set max of 30 reps I pulled off a couple weeks ago.  I had to stop my momentum early on in the set because of some back and forth swinging that probably sabotaged my number as I only could manage 28 reps, still more than respectable.

Saturday night I was invited to a Christmas party held at the huge, beautiful house of the running club president.  I was seriously considering just bagging it and not going because of my mood and sort of feeling ill.  However when I talked to my dad later in the afternoon, mentioning both my bad mood and the party invite he said I should just go.  I took his advice since pushing myself into things that I am either uncomfortable with or not wanting to do has been a motto since the split. I hopped in the SSR and headed out.

I was one of the first guests to arrive.  I got to meet Mitch and Erica’s new dog, Diesel, he was such a loveable dog.  I lost count of how many times I petted him throughout the night.  I volunteered to help with the ton of things that were getting prepared.  At first I was the vegetarian chili stirrer.  Later I got to bake a pan of potato skins.  When given the choice, I would much rather have the option to do something while socializing.  Just sitting there and doing nothing but mingling is not my forte, at all.

I brought my own fun juice, a six pack of Bud Light Platinums.  I drank them all, so you can imagine I was quite affected for awhile, I was.  The alcohol helped loosen up my mouth and inhibitions, when the party was in full swing I was bouncing around pretty well.

I stuck around almost to the very end, Ali and a few others helped with clean up.  My primary role in the process was taking full recyclable bags out to the garage.  I headed out somewhere around 11.  I put on a sweatshirt and dropped the top on the SSR.  I had a nice drive home that included a full power acceleration onto the highway that touched triple digits very briefly. I love driving that truck.

I woke up this morning feeling like hell.  Calling in sick of work sounded like a very good idea.  Instead I did the honorable thing and drug my ass out of bed, sucked down some coffee at work and will plod ahead, clear of yet another Christmas day.

 

Our appointment to skydive was at 10 am.  We got there a little early, neither Charlie or I are fans of being late.  We were surprised there was a good collection of people jumping with us.  We thought a Monday morning would be pretty empty.

The check in process was orchestrated by a woman that looked to be a 2 pack a day smoker.  Her youthful energy didn’t seem to fit the leathery, extremely wrinkled face that came with it.

She presented us with a TWELVE PAGE waiver.  No less than four times did we have to sign, initial and date that we basically had no rights whatsoever.  It made the Tough Mudder death waiver look tame.  Hell I may have agreed to donate my liver in all that legalese. It was just over the top.  Well regardless, all of us worked diligently on signing our lives away.

After paying for the jump we all moved out to the main hangar.  Charlie and I were talking to a couple people there.  The one group had a guy that jumped three times before as well as his 55 year old father in law whom never jumped before. They found our Tough Mudder stories entertaining.

We also discovered one of the guys that worked at the facility did the Tough Mudder on Sunday afternoon.  It sounded like he got a watered down version of the course as I expected.  He said the Arctic Enema was just water when he did it and the shock delivered at the end wasn’t too bad.  Obviously the batteries start to weaken after delivering a 100,000 shocks or so.

So we then get to “orientation” .  Charlie and I thought this was going to be a long drawn out thing where you sit in a classroom and they give you a skydiving 101 course.  Nope it was nothing like that.  Instead your instructor/guy you will be strapped to gives you no more than a 5 minute outline of how the jump goes.  In a nutshell he said that even if we forget everything he tells us he will be making corrections and reminding us as the jump is in progress.  Ok, I think.

My instructors name was Nick.  He was significantly smaller than me, I wondered if that would present any possible problems when jumping.

I also got to meet Burtis, a tall South African guy who was going to be my personal film crew.  Burtis seemed like a cool guy.  He shot some brief pre-jump interview footage.

So we were the second set of jumpers.  Charlie and I got to watch the first set go ahead of us and slowly reappear above us several minutes later all with various looks on their face ranging from thrilling to fatigued.

Charlie and I were freaking out when we saw how fast some of the solo photographers descended towards the ground.  They looked on the verge of crashing before managing to quickly flatten out less than 50 feet above the ground.

So now it was our turn to climb above the plane.  I was towards the back of the plane which equated to being the first person out, lucky me.  My seat also happened to be right in front of the opening we jumped out of so I had a pretty freaky vantage point the entire way up to 18,000 feet.  Despite this, I think I did a pretty good job of remaining calm, not thinking about the idea I was going to be hurdling out of a plane in a few minutes.

In case you were wondering, 18,000 feet is really, really high.  We were something like 10,000 feet ABOVE the clouds.  You saw nothing but white out the window, the same vantage point you have when sitting comfortably in a 747.

If there wasn’t enough to be freaked out about, the plane itself almost felt like it was prop hanging.  The angle at the back as we ascended felt really severe.  It didn’t do much to make me feel warm and fuzzy about what was to come.

So the engines throttle back and the jump light turns from red to green.  Burtis was the first out so he can film my exit.  He gets out and hangs on the back of the door.

I am pushed forward and am forced to kneel in a position that my right knee was not willing to go into.  Luckily I had other things on my mind that blocked the pain, like looking down.

So I lean forward as Nick instructs me without hesitation, I knew an Arctic Enema approach was the only way to go when it comes to the jump moment.  In a split second I am out in the open falling rapidly away from the plane.

When you first leave the plane you are instructed to keep your hands grasped on your harness.  Then when Nick tapped me that meant I could bring them out to more of a spread eagle position.  When we first exited the plane we were rotating a bit which was disorienting, that settled down pretty quickly.

Now what set in was a sensation I never experienced before.  The air at 18,000 feet is cold and thin.  It felt like I was having a hard time breathing.  We were instructed to try to smile  as we dove, they said if you don’t the wind pressure will make you look like a freak on the video.  Well the wind pressure might have made me look like a freak but it also freaked me out a bit.

The force of a 120 mph wind on your body is something I have never experienced before.  Maintaining a smile was not easy.  Having my mouth open felt like you had a leaf blower jammed down your throat.  It was really an uncomfortable sensation.  In some of the shots from the jump I look like Fireman Bill from In Living Color as the wind blew my lips wide open.

As we were descending both Burtis and Nick were flashing me a thumbs up.  I wasn’t sure if they were checking to see if I was ok or if I was enjoying myself.  Eventually the cloud cover approached.  As we dropped through it I could feel the coolness and moisture from the cloud for a couple moments.  It was surreal that I just happened to be falling through one.

It was funny when I see the pictures and video of the dive, I look like I am being melted by the wind while Nick is just calmly hanging out above with his hair hardly getting messed up.  I guess that is because I was basically a big windshield for him.  Our size difference almost make it look like he was riding a pterodacytl.

So finally the parachute was deployed around 5000 feet, a moment I was looking forward to.  The free fall portion of the jump was honestly pretty freaky.  The pull when the chute was deployed was strong but not as bad as the G’s you get on some high thrill amusement rides.

So now I had a birds eye view of the ground way below me with nothing between us.  That view, while scary, was something I could deal with.  Nick gave me the opportunity to pull the steering lines on the parachute which sent us into a corkscrew pattern.

I felt the stress on my harness increase greatly as we spun around, it made me feel a little out of control.  The spin had the unwanted side effect of starting up a nauseous feeling that didn’t leave me until an hour or two after the jump.

As we approached the ground my job was to keep my legs up until Nick said so.  When I dropped them on command he was hoping we would stay upright but instead I wound up on my ass.  The ground felt good to sit on.

Charlie touched down shortly after me with big smiles on his face where as I had a look of a guy that just slammed a six pack.  From watching back Charlie’s video and seeing his pictures he obviously had less problems than I did up there.

Charlie and I both opted for the less expensive of the two video packages which included all the footage shot by your videographer.  However even though we didn’t pay for it, our instructor was shooting footage the entire time with their wrist based camera as well.

After you land they try to pitch the additional footage to you since it is basically jump to ground coverage of your experience.  I was fine with the 3rd person footage, it did a fine job of capturing my struggles, I didn’t need more of it.

When I talked to the 55 year old after his jump, which was from a little lower 15,000 feet, he said he had an experience similar to mine, he was very anxious to get out of the free fall portion of the jump.  He was not having fun.

After getting our dvd’s that included the finished videos and a number of still pics we were on our way.  Charlie and I fist bumped to celebrate knocking off a big checklist item.  For me, skydiving  wasn’t about picking  up a new hobby or scoring a huge adrenalin rush.  It was about facing a potentially deadly and fearful situation and stepping forward anyway.  It’s symbolism is what I will carry with me moving forward.

Would I do it again? Yes. Do I need to? No, not at all.

So after eating lunch and reminiscing about our experiences with the skydive, we headed over to Kennedy Space Center.  Our plan was to start Monday afternoon and finish up Tuesday since the pass is good for two days, or it used to be when we went 5 or 6 years ago.

So we park and walk up to the ticket counter.  I tell the lady I wanted a ticket but just wanted to verify I could still use the ticket Tuesday as well.  She says nope. She confirmed they used to do that but it changed a couple years back.  If I bought a ticket now it would only be good for that day.

Well it was already one o’clock and KSC closes at 5, it would be ridiculous to spend 50 today and another 50 tomorrow so after conferring with Charlie we agreed to just show up first thing when it opened at 9 AM on Tuesday. I was annoyed walking back to the SSR thinking about the policy change.

I then got more annoyed when I realized I just spent 10 dollars to park! As we headed out I pulled off to the side of the road and walked over to the parking lot attendant that I had just driven past 10 minutes earlier.  I explained to her that we didn’t know they no longer honored the pass for two days and we were going to have to come back tomorrow.  I asked if it would be possible if I could get my parking fee back.

She said she couldn’t do that but she did say all I had to do was flash my receipt at them the next morning and they would let me in.  She said my truck would be easy to remember.  🙂  Cool.

On the way back we swung into the Astronaut Hall of Fame, curious how much it cost.  When I saw $27 per person I winced but then as I looked closer I saw if you bought the $50 KSC pass it included free access to the hall of fame.

I asked the woman at the counter if I bought the KSC pass now, could I go to the Hall of Fame today and then KSC on Tuesday? Yep, no problem.  So that was what we did.

We spent a good hour or so going through the various exhibits.  It was interesting stuff.  The most interesting was the interactive learning area where Charlie and I played some of the games before heading out.

Monday night we had another dinner at the attached restaurant.  This time Charlie dialed up the fun ordering first a Long Island Iced Tea followed by a drink named Red Death.  I stuck to the more predictable Miller Lite.

So we headed back to KSC Tuesday morning early, a little too early.  We actually had time to kill.  At first I proposed we kill the time by heading past the entrance  of KSC and seeing what was further down the road.  Well we quickly found out what was there was a guard shack that required some sort of security badge to enter the heart of the complex.  I did a less than graceful U-turn across the grassy median and headed the other way.

We wound up just parking in an old lot a few miles up the road where I drank my DD coffee and took a few scenic SSR pictures.

We got to the front gate almost exactly at 9 AM and started exploring.  The park was decorated for the holidays so that added a cool twist to things.

The first thing we noticed was the place was pretty empty.  Evidently early December is a great time to visit the Space Center.

We walked into the rocket garden first.  It’s an impressive array of rockets all mounted in a relatively small area.  We got to walk on the actual walkway that Apollo astronauts utilized to cross the support tower to their Saturn rocket.  That was kind of cool.

Charlie and I had a loose plan of what order we needed to do things.  We wanted to catch the first tour bus at 10 am to get to the Saturn building.  I remembered this building from my prior visit, it has a lot of cool presentations/simulations as well as an actual massive Saturn V rocket hanging in the main corridor of the building, it is simply AWESOME. To imagine human beings can build something this massive and powerful is mind blowing.

I remembered from my last visit  there was another building we went to (LC 39) that included the area where space station modules were built as well as an up close view of some of the launch pads.

I asked one of the workers how do we get there.  She said the building is basically not used anymore since the space station is complete.  She said they only open the building on the weekends and all you can do is just see the launch pads from it, bummer.

After eating lunch Charlie and I hopped back on the bus and rode back to the main facility.  We got dumped off right by the Space Shuttle simulator ride, something we both were looking forward to.    When I was last at KSC they were still constructing the ride.

The ride was cool but fell a bit short of my expectations.  The AV experience leading up to the ride was actually more impressive than the 5 or 6 minutes you spent strapped in.  Basically you get in, you get tipped to a position where you are flat on your back, shook around a bit and then the cargo bay doors open and you see Earth above you, ride over.   Charlie and I both agreed it could have been a little better.

As we walked around I saw they had a building that was housing Santa Claus for the kids.  Well evidently business was slow for Santa.  He was standing by the door waving at me.  I walked inside and saw Santa had no business.  The whole set was there, his chair, decorations and “elves” taking pictures but there wasn’t a child to be seen anywhere.  It was dead as a doornail.

I talked to one of the female elves about how slow it was.  She also gave me some insight about the future construction plans at the space center which include knocking down the big gift shop, relocating it and replacing it with a “misting station” whatever that is.  I told her I would try to send kids her way.  They looked so bored.

So the majority of the rest of our stay at KSC was spent watching two Imax movies, one about the space station and another about the Hubble telescope.  I found both of the films very entertaining.  The huge 3D Imax screens really added to the experience.  The images of space were breath taking and inspiring.  Both Charlie and I enjoyed the films a bunch.

By the time we got out of the last film it was around 4.  We did one thorough run through the massive gift shop where I picked up a few items and then were on our way.  It was a fun day that reopened my eyes to just how awesome space is and how minute we all are in the scope of the universe.  We are specks on specks of specks.

For the long drive home we went the conventional highway route since it would be too dark to see anything anyway.  We managed to cover the 277 miles in less than four and a half hours which included a DD Coffee/bathroom stop along the way.  We pulled into the driveway shortly before 9PM.

So despite the late hour, my need to attend work the next day and Charlie’s 8AM flight we decided to fire up Call of Duty one last time, playing until quarter till midnight.  It was a fun way to close out what was a very memorable trip.

This morning I drug myself out of bed and delivered Charlie to the airport before 7.  I encouraged him to visit again soon, hopefully he takes me up on it.  Charlie may literally be the nicest person I know.

I now get dumped right into the midst of a super busy 3 days…..

 

 

 

This will be a two cup of coffee entry I imagine.

I picked up Charlie at the airport early Thursday afternoon.  It was the first time I had seen him since we played in the Rumble in the summer of 2011.  He had never been to Naples since I relocated here in August of 2000.

Charlie had of course seen my house electronically many times but when he saw it in person he got a better appreciation of just how much I have to maintain.  I have lots to do, all the time.

We decided to do a run to the grocery store to pick up a few supplies.  We decided the rest of the night we would just hang at the house, drink beer and play video games.

Charlie and I have a long video game history.  We used to play FPS (first person shooter) games together all the time, dating back to Quake/Painkeep days.  Well I went back to the bedroom and pulled out a still in the plastic wrap copy of Call of Duty Black Ops.

No, this isn’t the game that was just released, this is the game that came out TWO YEARS ago.  I am pretty damn sure I got the game for Christmas in 2010, yes 2010.  It has sat in a drawer in my bedroom all that time.  I just hadn’t found the time/interest to crack it open in those two years.

Well having Charlie in the house couldn’t have been a more perfect reason to break the seal on the two year old game.

So both of our FPS background is almost exclusively on a PC where you utilize a mouse and keyboard to move, aim and shoot.  This combination allows a level of precision that I never have been able to imitate playing a shooter on a console with a joystick.  Charlie was exceptionally good in these games, much better than I ever was.

Well the lack of a mouse did indeed feel weird, it just felt awkward and sloppy.  What wasn’t sloppy were the intense realistic graphics of the game which was enhanced by skull thumping surround sound coming out of my Bose system. Despite fighting the controls, we both had a lot of fun playing late into the night on Thursday while drinking large amounts of beer.

On Friday I had asked Charlie if he had any interest in seeing Wreck it Ralph, the new Pixar movie that is about video games that I grew up with.  Sure the primary target audience for the movie is probably kids that are 35 years younger than I am but oh well.  Charlie said he was into seeing it.

The movie was mid afternoon.  We headed out early so I could give Charlie a sight seeing tour of the area in the SSR.  We drove down the ultra-rich neighborhoods of Gulf Shore Blvd and Gordon Drive passing one mansion after another.  Charlie was dumbfounded by the size of these palaces by the water.  We also drove by my office so Charlie could see where I have communicated to him from for the last decade plus.

The movie was at Silverspot.  I thought Charlie would like to see Naples high end theater, he thought it was sweet.

I really enjoyed the movie, not only because it brought me back to the games that I pumped endless quarters into as a kid but more because it was just well done.  After all it was a Pixar film, they always do a good job.  It was fun from beginning to end and gets a solid A.

On Friday evening we skipped the alcohol and just grabbed sandwiches from the near by restaurant.  We wanted to be sensible since we were getting up quite early to go to the Tough Mudder Saturday morning.  I set my alarm for 4AM so we could shove out by 5.

Charlie reported he had his second night in a row of minimal sleep.  He gets all worked up when he has big events like this coming up, the same thing happened before we did the Rumble.  Luckily I don’t start feeling nerves until closer to the actual event, I slept fine.

The drive up to the race went smoothly, it was actually the same exit I take to go to Siesta Key, the only difference being this time I headed east instead of west.  The entrance to the race was about 6 miles off the highway.  We pulled in a little before 6:40am and had no problem, unlike others later in the day, but more on that later.

Unlike last year where they had issues with their registration list, Charlie and I both were on the list this time and checked in with no trouble.  We spent the time leading up to the race kind of hanging out and checking out the immediate race area near registration..  The only hydration we did leading up to it was one 5 hour energy each, which was incredibly stupid, more on that later too.

So this year they changed a number of things besides the most obvious thing, the location.  Another change was how you got into the starting chute.  Last year when your wave was next up you walked into the corral area and went.  Well this year they put an 8 foot wall behind the start area.  The only way for you to enter was to go over the wall.

Ok that is kind of cool I guess.  However what wasn’t cool was the dumb idea that they could have teams pose for a picture one at a time before going over the wall.  There were just way too many bodies to do that.  The photographers were soon overrun.

Charlie and I had the same early 8:20 start time Randall and I enjoyed last year.  It really is the only way to go if you ask me for two reasons, parking and course degradation.  When you do the course early you can avoid the brunt of the parking nightmare.  Later in the day the parking situation became absolutely a disaster.  I heard that at one point the traffic was backed up for 18 MILES and some reported waiting 4 hours to park and another 2.5 to leave. Um no thanks.

The course is in much better shape when you do it early.  As thousands of bodies traverse the obstacles, many of which involved piles of dirt, it gets worn down.  Plus many obstacles can develop significant wait times the later in the day it becomes.

Finally, the temps are cooler in the morning, people that started around noon were dealing with temps around 80, not exactly great for traversing 11.5 miles with 22 obstacles along the way.

I was happy to see they had the same enthusiastic guy starting the Mudders this year.  Despite starting wave after wave of people every race he does a fantastic job of making you feel like you were THE special group.  He is just bursting with good energy.

Ok so we were off and running about 8:25.  One thing I noticed almost immediately was the ground was very treacherous to run on.  You could tell most of the path was just mowed for the race.  The ground was very rutty and uneven, exactly what a person with bad knees should NOT be running on.  I spent a lot of time looking down at my feet to try to find anything close to a stable running surface.  I wasn’t very successful.

Neither Charlie or I had really looked at what the obstacles were this year nor the order they were in.  I was hoping the dreaded ice bath would go down very early like last year so I could get it out of the way.  This year I had to wait a bit.

Before getting to the Arctic Enema we had to do a mud crawl under low barbed wire, wade through a lake and under 3 sets of barrels and do and over under log obstacle.  None of them were horribly difficult but it seemed like all three of them had very long runs between them.  This theme carried through out the course.

Last year there only seemed to be two or three long runs in between obstacles.  Most times when you did an obstacle you could see the next one off in the distance.  This year it seemed like there were 7 or 8 long runs with many of them having you running through fields where you saw nothing but others trudging along ahead of you.  I suppose part of this is because this course had 3 fewer obstacles than last year which would equal longer runs between them.  Whatever the cause, I really didn’t like having such long distances between obstacles, especially since the running surface was so hazardous.

Ok so we arrive at obstacle number four, the Arctic Enema (formally called the Chernobyl Jacuzzi)  Out of all of the obstacles last year, this was the most uncomfortable.  Also last year, although the water was VERY cold, there was hardly any visible ice in it.

This year the vats were stuffed with ice.  In fact when I took the plunge it felt like the top 18 inches or so was nothing but ice cubes.  Yes my skin instantly burned and my lungs contracted but I knew that speed was of the essence, I just got the fck out of it as quickly as I could.  Charlie emerged after me with a new appreciation of just how cold water can actually be.

Next up was something they called the Mud Mile which was series of smallish piles of dirt with water filled trenches behind them.  These were more annoying than challenging.  I think what made them more annoying was the long run between them, they didn’t feel like much of a payoff.  The only “challenge” to these was you didn’t know exactly how deep the water filled trenches were.  Some were quite shallow, a couple were knee deep.

Next up was the boa constrictor, an obstacle Randall and I had.  You get in a downward sloping drainage tube, dump out into muddy water and then have to climb another tube that goes up an incline.  This year they made it easier with a rope in the up pipe.  Last year we just had to inch our way up the pipe very slowly.  It did seem the angle was a bit steeper this year which is maybe why they added the rope. (or to address back ups for people that struggled)

Next was something called the Cliff Hanger which was basically a steep grassy hill with a pretty abrupt decline on the other end.  It was another ho hum type of obstacle.

Next up was the first set of Berlin Walls which is basically an 8 foot high wall you run up to, grab the top and pull yourself over.  I was able to pretty much just walk up to it, do a small hop and grab the edge.  My pull up prowness made getting over it pretty easy.  I wasn’t sure if Charlie would be able to get over without a hand since he is much shorter but he was able to run up and over it without a major issue.

Next up was something they didn’t have last year, the electric eel.  It was a low crawl obstacle on top of wet black plastic.  Overhead were straight, narrow rows of wires.  The goal was to stay low and straight.  If you failed you were nailed with a painful shock which we heard being delivered to several people.  Luckily Charlie and I managed to escape without being zapped.

Next up was the wood carry.  Unlike last year where you carried real logs on your shoulder through chest high water this year you carried sections of 12″ x 12″‘s along a 1/4 mile course through some woods.  The next obstacle was more wood based, climbing over and under some logs, followed by more small dirt piles and trenches, nothing too exciting.

Next up was the ball shrinker, I kind of like this one.  They have a metal wire wrapped in black pvc strung low across a body of water.  You hang upside down from the wire and pull yourself across to the other side.  As you get towards the middle of the wire it sags and your body gets more and more submerged into the water.  I was able to pull myself across without issue, Charlie had some problems with his head going under.

Right around this time Charlie started having issues with his calves cramping.  We stopped to allow him to stretch them out.  We realized how stupid it was to not plan for this ahead of time by making sure Charlie was well hydrated.  He has a history of cramping, including when we did the Rumble several times.

Not only did we do zero hydration the morning of the race, the night before I think all we had was one Diet Coke each.  It really was dumb of us to not plan better in this regard.

Well not only were Charlie’s cramps getting progressively worse, my right knee was a total mess at this point. I could hear noise in the joint with every stride and it was just one big ball of soreness. So although it was too bad we had to stop and/or walk a lot once Charlie’s cramping set in, with the way my knee felt I really didn’t care.

The next obstacle was the 15 foot high jump into muddy cold water, after the Arctic Enema this was not a big deal.

Next was a bigger set of Berlin Walls, 9 footers instead of 8.  These had a small, thin board you could use to push upward if you got the timing right.  Charlie mistimed it his first attempt, plowing into the wall.  On his second attempt though he cleared it, cramps and all, without any assist from me.  It was really impressive.

The next obstacle was another mud crawl under barbed wire, the repetition of obstacles was definitely a negative.  Crawling on my sore right knee was an even bigger negative at this point.

The next obstacle was the wounder warrior carry.  You are supposed to take turns carrying each other somewhere around 100 yards.  I carried Charlie but convinced him it would be stupid for him to try to carry me with the way he was cramping.  He still wanted to try but thankfully he listened to reason.

The next obstacle was a dark trench crawl where portions are pitch black, requiring you to navigate by touch alone.  I tried the best I could to do this on two hands and one knee as it was very uncomfortable at this point to be crawling at all.

We were now getting towards the homestretch.  We approached the Funky Monkey, one of the Mudder signature obstacles.  It is a set monkey bars that first go up before going down.  To make things more interesting they grease the bars.

I used the same strategy as last year utilizing the slower, but safer method of one rung at a time instead of going hand over hand.  Charlie used the same method for the ascending part of the bars but tried to switch to hand over hand coming down and wound up falling in the water.  He wasn’t happy about that.

The next obstacle was called balls to the wall.  It was a much higher wall than we faced earlier,  If I were to guess I would place it at 15-20 feet high.  It had small footing strips nailed across it and a large knotted rope to pull yourself up with.

For me the obstacle was easy, for many women, the upper body strength required made it very tough.  I helped a woman get up before I went by letting her use my hand as a modified seat until she could pull herself all the way up.

The only obstacles left were Everest and Electroshock therapy, two more signature obstacles.

Last year Everest gave both Randall and I trouble.  Not only is the 1/4 pipe high and steep, it’s slippery.  Last year I required the helping hand of fellow mudders to grasp onto me and pull me to the top.  This year I got a better run at it and found a section that was pretty dry, I was able to get to the top rather easily.

Charlie made it as well however as soon as he got to the top he laid down in pain.  Both of his calves were balled up in knots.  I just tried to move him slightly out of the way so he didn’t get run over by oncoming mudders.

We stayed up there for a bit while he tried to get the cramps to subside.  He used the two by four steps on the other side to help stretch out his legs as we slowly descended.  I felt bad for Charlie, I knew he felt bad about the cramps.

So finally we were at the end, facing the final obstacle, the famous electroshock therapy chute.  To be honest, last year I didn’t think the obstacle was bad at all.  I ran straight through with my arms as a shield and only received one shock on my arm.  The shock wasn’t severe, it kind of felt like a strong static shock, it burned but that was about it.

Well this year they made it much more miserable.  Instead of flat terrain in the chute they added small hills with water in between them.  There was no way to sprint through the chute without falling on your face with this layout, meaning you were more vulnerable to the shocks.

On top of this they apparently turned up the juice SIGNIFICANTLY this year. (or we just got a fresh set of batteries)  I got shocked three or four times on my back and they were major shocks.  Not only did they burn, my entire upper body convulsed as the current was delivered. It felt like someone plugged an AC cord into my body.  I managed to stagger out of the chute without falling.

Many people were not so lucky, going down after getting shocked only to be rewarded with another shock a few feet ahead. Charlie actually blacked out momentarily after one of his shocks and fell.  Yes, they were that strong.

We crossed the finish line, had some schwag shoved at us at grabbed our one free beer which we drank while sitting on a spot of open grass.  We were both beat up. Even though we just finished I could feel my knee blowing up like a balloon.

We had someone take a post race pic for us. I look to be in way better condition than last years race where I had dried blood on my face and dirt everywhere.  The black shirt I wore this year did a good job of hiding the dirt.

We did not have the luxury of being able to pay for a hot shower this year.  Instead Charlie and I had to try to get “clean” by spraying off with a garden hose.  It at least got the surface dirt off but we were both still pretty cruddy.

We then took a spin through the greatly expanded gift shop area.  Evidently picking up Under Armour as the new lead sponsor meant a lot more souvenirs.  I stayed conservative buying a glass, a window sticker and a luggage tag.  How that added up to $35 is beyond me.  Thievery.

Well by this time I was feeling very dehydrated.  Being offered a 12 ounce beer and nothing else to hydrate after a nearly 12 mile mud race sounds crazy doesn’t it?  Well that was the case.  There was NO free water to be had ANYWHERE.  The only way to get water was to wait in one of the two 30 person deep lines at a food stand and pay something like $5 for it.  That was fcking ridiculous, and hazardous.  I could hardly believe it.

The only free liquid I could find anywhere was at the EAS tent where I inhaled a bottle of chocolate muscle milk.  I was really pissed they had no free water.

Seeing those long food lines discouraged Charlie and I from eating there, it would have cost a small fortune to do so anyway.  So the only thing I wanted to do yet was get another set of post Mudder pull ups in, hopefully building on the 18 reps I got last year.

They actually had two pull up bars set up.  One was being run by some sponsor where they were keeping score of the most reps.  However the bar was a shitty design and they were allowing absolutely awful form reps to count including half reps and full fledged X-fit style kipping.

I instead opted to use the same wobbly Air Force pull up bar I utilized last year.  Although they weren’t keeping official track of the most reps they were handing out prizes based on the amount of reps you could do.  I saw that the top tier of 20 reps scored a set of sunglasses so that was what I was gunning for.

I did the first 19 reps consecutively and then paused briefly before pulling rep 20.  If I hung I could have probably squeaked out 25 reps but I didn’t feel the need.  I beat last years effort and scored the glasses, good nuf.

I convinced Charlie to give it a try as well.  He knocked out a very solid full 13 reps, earning himself a towel.

We both decided we were ready to head out, we would grab some food on the way home.  We began the very slow and limp filled walk back to the truck.

As we left we saw first hand the horrific traffic situation that had developed.  The traffic was backed up all the way up to the interstate.  Some people had gotten out of vehicles and were running to the event.  I read later that many people simply were unable to get to the race site because of the delays and packed it in.  Imagine paying that kind of money to do a Mudder and then not being able to even get on site because of poor planning?

So as I was talking to Charlie about this year’s event compared to last years event I told him I thought this event was harder.  However as time passed I think my evaluation morphed a bit.  Physically, the toll the race took on me was greater but that was almost entirely because of the terrible running surface.  It literally destroyed a right knee that was shaky going in.

The two biggest obstacles from last year, the ice bath and electroshock were considerably more intense, however as a whole, the obstacles were not as good as last year and there were fewer of them, contributing to the many long and boring runs.

So although the race was “harder” for me than last year it wasn’t better.  When you add in the horrible delays with parking/traffic and the lack of any water for finishers and you have some pretty big warts on this years event.  I did like the upgraded Mudder headband and shirt though.

When we got home the first order of business was to take long hot showers.  As I I was thoroughly scrubbing, I was working my man parts when I felt a burning sensation.  I look downstairs and see what almost looks like a brush burn on the business end of things.

Like it wasn’t bad enough that I had a blown up knee and a couple dozen bumps and cuts elsewhere, now I had something wrong with my penis.

It looked bad, at first I had this horrible fear that I picked up some sort of crazy disease from the dirty mudder water and it infected my junk.  However when I told Charlie about it he suggested it probably came from the liner of my swimsuit which upon further inspection made sense as it was a crosshatch pattern that matched the liner.

There were a couple points in the race where I was perched on top of either a wall or logs that could have pulled the liner hard against my southern regions.  I wore the same shorts last year without incident.  I guess from here on out all Mudder attire will include compression shorts underneath the top layer.  Luckily it appears to be healing fast.

Saturday night Charlie and I crashed, both really beat from the race.  I took a nap with an ice bag on my knee.  When I woke up I ordered pizza from Hungry Howies.  This theme of bad eating continued throughout the weekend.

I introduced Charlie to Walking Dead, starting with episode 1 of season 1.  In total we watched something like 5 or 6 episodes while he was here.  It’s such a good show I totally enjoyed seeing it again.  Charlie thought it was very good as well.

Sunday morning we had some time to relax since we weren’t going to leave until around 2 for Titusville.  I went and picked up the dogs so they could hang with us until we left.  When we did head out we just left the dogs at the house, Ali came out after work and picked them up.

We decided to take a scenic route to Titusville, cutting up the middle of the state instead of taking the conventional I-75 to I-4 highway option.  Going the way we did actually shaves 60 miles off the distance although it takes about the same time due to the slower speed and going through various towns.  However we both figured what the hell, we are not on a timetable and we are cruising in the SSR, why not slow down and enjoy some scenery?

Speaking of the SSR, Charlie got some appreciation of why I find the truck so endearing.  I treated him to the occasional 5000-6000 rpm power shifts where the engine is just screaming a perfect beastly note as it presses you firmly into your seat.

Driving itself was quite the challenge with my bad right knee.  I literally could hardly bend it at all by the time Sunday  rolled around.  If I wasn’t popping Advil like candy I don’t think I could have driven at all.

The drive took us about four and a half hours with a couple stops, not too bad.  The Holiday Inn where Charlie reserved a room was quite nice as well, clean and modern.

Sunday night we enjoyed a dinner in the attached restaurant. We had one of our many “who is going to pay” disputes.  Charlie is such a nice guy he wanted to pay for almost everything.  At times I had to resort to sneak paying for stuff when he wasn’t looking.

This is a good point to break so you can digest the rest of the story at your leisure. Life at 18,000 feet is not so great….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was one of those weird times where the 4 days off actually felt longer for some odd reason.

On Wednesday night I went to bed very early, I was probably out cold by 9:30.  The reason for this was my alarm clock was set at a ridiculously early 3 AM for the Thanksgiving Race I was timing.  I had more responsibilities than normal for this event so I wanted to make sure I was there as early as possible.  I’d much rather have it done with time to spare than scrambling.

Well imagine my surprise when I woke up on my own at 1:36am.  I knew there was no way I would fall back to sleep as I instantly had race related details running through my head. So after checking my email, eating breakfast and announcing my awakening on FB, I finished loading up the truck and headed down towards the race site.

As I approached I actually came upon Matt the race director setting up some signs at about 3:15 am.  He had a bunch of stuff to set up on the course and I was tasked with setting up the registration area.  He followed me to the race location and directed me to the tents and tables he had stashed the night before.  I threw them in the back of the Tacoma, slammed a 5 hour energy and got busy.

I had given a decent amount of thought regarding how to set up the registration area to alleviate the congestion problem we have had in the past.  I set up two tents, facing the lot with 8 foot signs attached to each, one designated for the untimed runners/walkers and one for the chip timed participants.

It was sort of peaceful setting everything up by myself since I knew in a short time the area would be overflowing with humanity. By the time Ali showed up I had the registration area pretty much ready to go. I also set up the PA system at the start line as well as staging the finish line equipment.

The combination of the layout and Ali and others work on creating race packets ahead of time for chipped runners helped expedite the registration area greatly.  Despite almost 2500 total participants, the lines never got out of hand.

So race start time was approaching.  Around 7:15 Ali stepped away from the computer table saying she wanted to take a few pictures.  That left me to man the table to make any last minute changes.  After helping a couple people I knew I needed to get to the start line but Ali was nowhere in sight.  I grabbed the bullhorn and made an announcement for her to come to the desk but still, no Ali.

Well finally I could not wait any longer and I started over to the start line.  As I did I finally see Ali whom ironically appeared to be at the start line being asked where I was.  I was obviously annoyed as I ran past Ali to the start, she said I didn’t have to wait for her.  I was under the impression she was only going to be gone for a minute instead of nearly 10 so obviously there was a miscommunication.

So I run towards the start line and had some club members unroll the timing mats while I got the box up.  Evidently Matt was freaking out because he didn’t know how to work the PA system to make announcements and no one else in the area did either.  I turned up the volume dial on the mic and we had sound, magic!

So I immediately could tell Matt was in freak out mode which is never good.  He starts giving me a countdown to the start of the race, regardless of my readiness or not. He starts playing the Star Spangled Banner on his trumpet which was a like musical timer.  I am scrambling to make sure I had the timing box cleared and synched.  I manage to get it done a few seconds after the song finishes and Matt is now desperate to start the race, like there was a guillotine above his head.

I tell him the box is up and ready and he starts the race.  Well in the mad rush to start I neglect to check my atomic watch for the official start time and to hit the button on my stop watch to start the time.  Matt immediately starts in on me saying this can’t happen, he NEEDS me there on time….

I was REALLY angry.  I told he had to chill out and that rushing the start caused problems (for the second year in a row).  He should only start his pre-race deal once I gave him thumbs up.  I have never had a race out of the hundred or more that I have timed where the race director is interested in starting a race before I was ready.

This isn’t even taking into consideration all the other aspects of the race that I was handling beyond the actual timing.  He was ultra-focused just that the race didn’t start 3 seconds late instead of the much more important concept of the race starting accurately.  I didn’t have time to go Hulk Smash mode on him.

I was planning to use two of the timing mats I used at the start for the finish which in retrospect was problematic.  With a race this big there were a number of late stragglers so I wanted to leave the mats down a bit to catch them.  Then when it came time to pull them up we had to get the herd of fun runners to get out of the way.

I had two of our guys lug two mats to the finish area.  I fast walked by the registration area carrying the start line laptop.  I yelled to Ali that I needed the main laptop taken to the finish line.  I was still fuming from the start line fisaco and told Ali the reason I was held up was because I was waiting for her to return.  She didn’t agree and I knew it was of little consequence now anyway.  I just had to fix it.

So I get to the finish line and start a mad scramble.  I dig into the start line times file to try to get a decent estimate of what the race start time is.  As I am doing that Ali delivers the laptop to the table, and walks away, obviously pissed at me.  I look at the laptop and see it is the wrong one. FCK!  So now things are getting really desperate.  I leap up from my bucket that doubled as a chair and sprint back towards the registration area.  I see Ali along the way and tell her she brought me the wrong laptop.  I snag the correct one and run back to the finish line at an even faster pace.

I slap the computer on the table and quickly make the connections.  I set the time on the timing box, clear the history and get the finish line mats up with about 45 seconds to spare before the lead runner came across, around 21 minutes after the race start.  Man, that was way too close for comfort.

As runners started to stream across the mats I just sat there with my head in my hands in disbelief that for the second year in a row, timing this race was a Chinese fire drill, despite all my efforts to make sure it wasn’t.   I felt bad about getting short with Ali, which I later apologized for.  In the end the race got timed and we had actual chip start times so it was an improvement over last year although the actual race start time was fuzzy, which I am not happy about. The start line fiasco will not happen again, one way or another.

By the time the race was over my 5 hour energy was wearing off, I felt beat.  After breaking down everything I loaded up the truck and headed home, very glad the monster event was over.

When I got home I had to quickly get the results processed before getting ready to head right back out.  I  caught absolutely NONE of the Macy’s parade.  I think it may be the first time as an adult that I have not seen any of the parade, that was kind of a bummer.  Mom had agreed to host Thanksgiving Dinner, we invited Ali as well.

I met Ali at her place and the dogs and I piled in her Volt for some gas free transport.  Mom had prepared a nice meal including Tofurky, something I know mom isn’t thrilled about but I really have come to enjoy. As much as I like the tofurky, the star of the meal is this pineapple casserole type thing that mom makes, it is so good.

We didn’t stay that long at mom’s.  Both mom and Ali were attending secondary Thanksgiving celebrations, I was closing out my Turkey Day at home.

At first I was sure I would pass out when I got home.  The big meal combined with the 1:30 am wake up is a deadly combination.  However somehow once I got done putting the race equipment away I got a second wind.  I actually cleaned and weeded during the afternoon.  I did collapse in bed shortly after 9PM, what a day.

So Black Friday arrived.  I had loose plans to maybe dip my toe into the shopping madness although nowadays much of the hoopla starts Thanksgiving evening so I would already be late to the game.  I headed out in the truck around 7:15 or so with my primary goal being grocery shopping.

On the way to Trader Joes I stopped at the Super Wal-mart, I figured there was not better place to observe Black Friday madness.  Well it wasn’t so mad.  Yea there were more shoppers than normal but it was far from chaotic.  I bought some softener salt, a few houseplants, and my first self Xmas gift, an inexpensive Daisy BB Rifle along with 600 BB’s.

The prior week the idea got into my head that it would be kind of fun shooting empty Diet Coke cans off fence posts.  They had a sale going on these lower end 650 FPS guns so I jumped in.  I plan to wrap it up and put it under the tree (oh I DID set that up too) Merry Christmas to me.  I’ll try to act surprised when I open my self-gifts.

I then headed to Trader Joe’s, Sam’s and Publix, in that order.  At Sam’s I did some perusing of their Xmas deals but nothing thrilled me.  If I needed a TV, this would definitely be the time to get one.

Ali planned to work on Friday so I picked up the girls on the way home so they could hang with me.

Despite my prior edict that there would be no or very minimal Xmas decorating this year I got the urge to to do just the opposite.  I hung lights outside and even set up the Xmas tree.

Now I went far less subdued than years past, only lighting up the two front palm trees and running the rest of the LED lights along the fence line.  Inside, besides putting up the tree, all I did was hang my monster stocking as well as Tuki’s, get out the snowflake dish towels, the black lab holiday area rug and the pine tree smelling candle.

It’s hard for me to explain why exactly I decided to do some decoration, other than not doing anything felt sort of like giving up, and I don’t like the feel of giving up, ever.

Later Friday afternoon I loaded the girls up to head to Home Depot for garden replenishment supplies.  Ali had agreed to come out and help me with the project on Saturday.  I loaded up a flat bed with many bags of garden soil and compost.  Before doing so I had grabbed a reciprocating saw blade and laid it on the flat bed.

Well when I checked out it was hidden from view and I had forgotten about it.  As I unloaded the dirt at the van I saw the blade laying there and realized I had just shoplifted the item successfully, unknowingly.  I could have easily just say “F it.  I spend a small fortune at Home Depot annually, what harm does not paying for a $12 saw blade do?” However my conscience took over, I marched back into the store and paid for the blade at the self checkout register.

The weird thing was when I left the first time, the security system at the door did not trigger.  I assume the large metal flatbed absorbed the EMF field that typically triggers the RFID security tag.  When I walked back in with just the blade in hand it blared loudly.  However since I was walking in instead of out, no one cared.

Black Friday I also got around to installing my new LED back up lamps in the SSR.  What should have been a ridiculously easy procedure became problematic when the passenger side bulb did not want to release conventionally.  I wound up extracting it using brute force.

So Ali came out to the house late Saturday morning.  I had all the bags of dirt piled by the garden ready to go.   Her primary role was to pitch fork the empty beds and do most of the planting/seeding.  I followed her forking with the rototiller, turning the soil over.  Then I dumped the new soil into the beds and tilled them again.  Finally I grabbed the hand rake and tamped down the soil lightly.

This winter’s crops are more kale, red lettuce, carrots, beets, peppers, tomatoes, sweet onions and two broccoli varieties.

After the garden work we worked on the unpleasant job of going through the Xmas ornaments.  I had the Rubbermaid containers piled on the lanai for us to go through.  We carried them inside and started the miserable task.

I knew it was going to be hard for both of us to do this.  Ali got particularly emotional when it came to our shared destination memory ornaments.  It got to the point where I asked her if I should just do it myself.  I told her I would just keep all of those shared ornaments to make it simpler which she was fine with.

We also used it as an opportunity to donate some unwanted decorations and throw out some we just didn’t need/want.  I told Ali I was fine with keeping anything really tacky or ugly, I kind of like a sense of humor in my Xmas tree.

The way it wound up, we took 80% of the Xmas stuff to Ali’s place, which was fine with me.  I filled the back of her Volt with containers and loaded the girls up in the party van to take them back.

Ali invited me to stay Saturday night to eat dinner and watch Wanderlust, something she had wanted to see.  We watched the movie while eating a Trader Joe’s meal I donated.  Although this isn’t the kind of movie I would seek out on my own, it was quite funny.  It had many comical and awkward moments, some of which I covered my face just because I felt embarrassed for the character on screen.  You would like the movie as long as you aren’t too uptight about penises being front and center.  B+

Sunday I had a very open schedule.  Anything I wanted to get done had already been done.  Ali again was working so I picked up the dogs after a coffee pit stop.  We had a very laid back day except for maybe a half hour period where I decided to set a new personal pull up best.

30 pull up reps is a HUGE milestone, especially for an old guy like me, but I will talk about this more on Dufisthenics.

Ali didn’t come out to pick up the dogs until after 8.  The dogs and I had a very chill day which included a two hour mid-afternoon nap.  I had felt tired ever since Thursday,  not all that surprising.

There was no disappointing Eagles game to clog up my Sunday.  Instead I get to pollute my Monday evening watching what is likely to be another poor outing.

I am not very happy that I spent much of my weekend walking around with a slight limp since I am doing the Tough Mudder in a few days.  I believe I injured myself doing the all out laptop sprint with no warm up on Thanksgiving.  It hurt it some more yesterday when an excited Sadie stepped on my flip flop while my right foot was still in it.  I turned but my foot didn’t move, sending a jolt of pain through the joint.

Of course it matters very little if my knee is healed or not by race day.  I will grind it out and deal with consequences later.

 

 

 

I started off my weekend at 4:30 am, dragging my tired ass out of bed to go run with the club.  If I didn’t have the Tough Mudder coming up on the calendar I would remained firmly in bed.  In my mind I felt like at some point before the race I needed to get the “long” course under my belt which is about nine and a half miles.  I figure if I can run that distance continuously, running the roughly 12 mile Mudder course shouldn’t be a problem since there are tons of breaks for the obstacles thrown in there.

I wasn’t really planning to do the long course yet, especially since my knee was bothering me just running 6 miles the week before.  I told Matt I would see how I feel once we hit the water stop at 3.5 miles and make my decision then.

We headed out at a pretty quick pace, something like 8:15 miles, faster than I would prefer if I was going for the long haul.  Eventually we throttled it back a bit.

Saturday was the first morning where it actually felt somewhat “cool” .  The temperature was right around 70 which is still high for 6am, but the humidity level felt much more tolerable.  I definitely could feel the difference when running.

When we reached the water stop I did a quick knee assessment.  It actually felt pretty good so I told Matt I was down for doing the long run.  So instead of turning right and heading back towards our starting point, we went left and ran another mile and a half to the end of Gordon drive before heading back.

My legs were feeling it pretty severely for the last couple miles, they had not been pushed to do this distance at this pace since I ran the Hooters Half in March.    My overall pace actually was almost exactly what I did in that half, no wonder I was tired. It felt good to get the long run under my belt. I would say the run combined with the 200 pull up lunch break qualifies me as being officially ready for the Mudder.

I took the SSR to the run, something I don’t normally do.  With the top down and the wind whipping around I was actually on the cool side, I had the heat blowing on my legs.

So when I got home I had a long list of things I wanted to get done.  I had already tried to get a head start by weeding the property on Friday night.  The first thing I wanted to get done was spraying Weed B Gone on the entire yard, at least everything that is close to the house.

I have had an uphill battle with weeds in the yard forever.  There are three weeds that like take over my lawn, two of the three I don’t know the name of, the third is dollar weed, or Creeping Charlie as I like to call it. I have been trying to keep the weeds under control by applying granular weed and feed in bag on a semi-regular basis.  That stuff is VERY expensive and overall I have not been pleased with the results.  It will normally hold back the dollar weed for a bit but it always returns.  The stuff doesn’t seem to touch the other two weeds that dominate the lawn.

Weed B Gone is a more direct approach.  You attach it to a hose end sprayer and blast away.  Unlike the bagged weed and feed, this stuff is designed to work fast, killing the weeds in a matter of days instead of weeks while leaving the grass intact.

Not only is this stuff more direct, it is also more dangerous.  When you read the directions there are a number of warnings, like don’t apply on a windy day, don’t apply within 25 feet of stuff you don’t want to die, don’t let pets on the grass until it is thoroughly dry, don’t let it run off into sewer systems, etc…

Well I didn’t pay much attention to one of the warnings which says to apply while wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt.  If some of it gets on your skin, you are advised to wash the skin for 15-20 MINUTES with water which sounds ridiculous.  I applied the solution with a steady breeze wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I definitely got some of it on my legs, arms and hands.  I rinsed myself at the end but only for a few seconds, hopefully I don’t drop over dead.

I am hoping the mass extermination of weeds combined with our going into dry season soon will allow real grass to fill these spots in a density enough to choke weeds out in the future. Time will tell.

I then grabbed by loppers and shears and got busy trimming and pruning a few things around the house.  This is a nice warm up for the hellish, November cabbage palm mass pruning that I will have to do.  You have no idea how little I am looking forward to that miserable job.

Next up was some tractor work.  The blades on the tractor, although only a couple months old had already dulled.  The cutting performance while mowing was pretty awful.  I decided to pull them off and try to sharpen them.

Luckily with the Craftsman mower, removing the blades with the deck on the tractor is much more doable than it was with the Cub Cadet which required me to yank the deck to pull the blades.

The blades were still more or less intact although the cutting edge was very, very dull.  I could saw away on my arm with one and not draw a drop of blood.  I decided to use my dremel for the job after locking each blade up in my table vice.

I have never tried sharpening with the dremel, the few times I did it in the past I used a grinding wheel attachment for my cordless drill.  I couldn’t find that attachment.

The dremel actually seemed to work pretty well.  The smaller grinding head gave me better control as I worked the cutting surfaces.  By the time I was done at least I could feel and edge on the blades.  It will be interesting to see how long my sharpening holds up.  I did a brief test cut and there was a definite improvement.

While I had the blades off I drug up the pressure washer and blasted the organic crud off the underside of the mower deck.  In the process I wound up splashing the wet, green/brown sludge all over me.

Finally I needed to give the SSR a bath.  The trip to and from SoBe last week had left the truck with a bug facial that needed to be cleaned up. After finishing up all the outdoor work, heading inside offered me no rest as there was cleaning and laundry to do.

By the time I was done it was after 3.  I was beat.  So beat that my original idea of going out to see Looper Saturday night got shelved, I was just too tired.  Instead I stayed home and threw in a Netflix dvd I had sitting around the house so long that it had dust on the cover, Underworld : Awakenings.

I have seen a number of Underworld movies.  They have a simple formula that works, vampires, werewolves, gruesome violence and Kate Beckinsale in tight leather body suits.  They stuck to the formula and once again it delivered a solid 75-80 minutes of brainless entertainment, B+.

So I woke up Sunday and was debating if I wanted to go for a bike ride or not.  Surprisingly, my right knee felt pretty solid despite running nearly 10 miles the day before.  Then once I decided I was going to get on the bike I was debating what ride I wanted to do.  I settled on doing the 17.25 mile Publix ride.

I pulled down the Dawes for the ride, thinking the aero bars would come in handy if I hit the sustained wind that normally is part of this route.  Despite it’s added weight, the riding geometry the Dawes offers is actually more comfortable than my lighter, higher end Trek 2.1.

For the first half of the ride I was hauling ass. I was over 21 mph for almost the entire time.  Of course I knew this meant I had a wind behind me, helping to push me along.  I knew this same wind would be my adversary on the ride home, I just didn’t realize how big of one.

Man once I turned back east it was miserable.  I knew there was wind, I didn’t think it would suck that bad.  I dropped a couple gears and got down on my aero bars, but only briefly.  I realized the elbow rest on the left side had shifted downward which made the position awkward and annoying.  Instead I grabbed onto the drops in my handlebars and stayed there for the majority of the ride home.

I struggled to keep my speed above 16 mph for most of the 8+ miles back.  My legs were totally gassed by the end of the ride where my overall average speed dropped to 17.7 mph.  I jumped into the pool with my bike pants and top still on to cool off.

After changing I hopped in the van to go pick up the dogs so they could hang out at the house with me.  I had cleared the slate of the majority of the chore list so I was looking forward to a day of relaxing, as much as I can relax.

Watching that Eagles game certainly did not relax me.

For the second week in a row the defense had the opportunity to win the game and for the second week in a row they failed to do so, in an even grander collapse.  However the blame for this performance certainly does not rest on the back of the defense alone.

Ok if you look at stats alone, you may think that Vick had a great game, well if you take away the blown coverage that allowed Maclin to run for a 70 yard td, Vick’s game was not good at all.  After making stupid predictions of next to no turnovers by himself the rest of the season, he was involved in 3 more turnovers.  Luckily for the Eagles, the Lions offense was awful for the majority of the game, was unable to turn any of those turnovers into points.

I addition to their stumbling offense, the Lions were playing horrible sloppy ball, committing an amazing 16 penalties.  If I told you a team had 16 penalties and failed three times to score any points off turnovers you would assume they lost the game.  You would be assuming correctly, unless that team happens to be playing the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Eagles scored a TD late in the 4th quarter to go up 23-13 with just over 5 minutes left in the game.  A good team does not lose a game when playing a team that has sputtered all day in that situation.  Well of course as well all should now realize, the Eagles are not that good of a team.  Instead they allowed themselves to be gashed up and down the field.  They actually tried to allow the Lions win in regulation after committing pass interference in the end zone.  Instead the Lions had to settle for a game tying field goal as time expired.

Overtime  was a total joke.  After Vick took back to back sacks the Eagles had to punt out of the back of their end zone, giving the Lions great field position.  The Lions easily gained the yardage needed to kick the game ending field goal.  What a fcking mess.

Let’s point out a few names since Andy refuses to do so, preferring to just take blanket blame for everything once again.

Let’s talk Mike Vick, whom at this point might be the most overpaid QB in the league.  Outside of his great 8 game run in 2010, his stats since have been mediocre at best.  His new found love of turning the ball over has made his presence behind the center a liability.  I have never seen someone that turns over the ball this much be allowed to keep his job.

Vick gets hit more than anyone else I can remember in recent history.  It literally seems that more plays than not, he is on his back.  The blame for this lies both with him taking too long to get rid of the ball and an offensive line that seems to generally suck.  They appear to be out classed each and every game.  Andy always seemed to understand the importance of a good o-line in the past.  Granted they have had injuries that have forced some not so qualified players to step into starting roles, but again, good teams are able to rise above injuries.

Ok let’s turn to the special teams.  They suck.  I can’t tell you how long it has been since there was a punt or kick off return that was anything significant.  Hell they even threw Desean Jackson back there for one punt and he promptly lost a couple yards.

Ok how about that defense that has collapsed when the game was on the line?  Well the most obvious flaw is the dramatic difference in sacks this year when compared to last.  It seemed like Stafford was basically untouched, it was like we had four Mike Mamulas on the D-line, always one step away from making an actual play. Jason Babin and Trent Cole are totally ineffective all of a sudden.

Who the F is number 27 and why the F is he allowed on the field?  He was involved in almost every big passing play during the Lions come back, blowing coverage repeatedly.

I mean maybe all of this bitching is because of the false sense of how good the team was after the Eagles built a 3-1 record to start.  If you looked at how they squeezed out those wins it was obvious this team was far from dominant.  Now they are following last years blueprint where they lose games that could have been wrapped up if the team was able to perform when it matters.

If this team stumbles it’s way to another .500 year I think it will be the rubber stamp that Andy’s methods of managing the team have finally run it’s course.

Oh during halftime I went out and hung on the bar with one hand.

I was feeling pretty funked Sunday night.  Maybe it was a hangover from the shitty Eagles loss, maybe it was a combo of other things on my mind.  I just know that the world did not feel very bright and shiny.

So as I explained on Friday, my game plan to attend the pull up event in South Beach, despite my dog sitting for the weekend, was to leave around noon and hopefully get back around 8, rolling the dice that there would be no excrement waiting for me when I got home.

I was surprised when Friday night I got a call from my mom.  She said she wouldn’t mind driving out to the house after she was done working on Saturday so the dogs would be ok.  I hadn’t even bothered pitching this idea to her since I assumed she would not want to do it.  Of course I was thrilled with the offer, it will eliminate the poop potential.  Mom said she would just stay the night and get up early Sunday to head to work.  Sounds good to me.

Saturday morning I was up and working early.  I had the girls ride with me in the van to Ali’s place to go pick up the Camry.  Ali mentioned it was due for an oil change so I told her I would do it while she was gone.  I left the van there and took the Camry back out to the house to do the work.  In addition to changing the oil and filter I added coolant and air to the tires.  The car really could use a bath but that is an extra cost service.

I spent the rest of the morning getting as much done as I could before I was to leave for South Beach.  When I have the dogs I don’t even bother worry about cleaning until after they are gone, especially now.  Very recently, seemingly to me since Nicki started on some thyroid medicine a month ago, her coat has rapidly transformed.  It has made her fur very long, much longer than ever before.  In addition, her shedding is non-stop.  In no time at all the carpet had various black spots where Nicki had been laying down, her hair just falls out.

I also noticed that Nicki’s level of thirst since being on the thyroid medicine is drastically increased.  She was constantly at the water bowl.  I really think this is all related to the meds.  I haven’t seen positive signs from the meds, Nicki still is moving slow and obviously has joint related pain.

So I got ready to pull out for South Beach.  I packed a small bag with various items, unsure exactly what I would be doing once I got there.  I included a towel, some water, a rubber resistance band, a change of clothes, my Flip camera and some deodorant.  That should cover most foreseeable circumstances.

I fired up the SSR, dropped the top and after filling the gas tank was off to South Beach.  I had the top down for the majority of the drive.  I actually drove through a period of significant rain with the top down.  I was on a section of highway with no real place to pull off to put the roof up.  Actually, as long as you are moving at a decent speed, the wind rushing on top of the truck shields the cabin from getting soaked too badly.

I had asked Luis, one of the Barstarzz members that invited me to the event about where the best place was to park.  He said the parking garage at the building which includes a Publix, Best Buy and Staples was a good choice if you don’t mind walking a bit.  The first two hours are free and the hourly rate after that is very cheap.  Cheap parking in South Beach is non-existent normally.  Since I only had the small bag to carry I didn’t mind the walk.

I did exercise some caution with my wallet.  I opted to leave it in the truck and just carry some cash and my credit card in a velcro pocket.  I had some concerns about some shady person snatching my bag when I wasn’t paying attention at the beach.  I figured if I kept my money, credit card and truck keys on me at all times that would be the safest bet.

The walk to the beach was pretty lengthy, maybe 6 or 7 blocks.  In my flip flops it took me about 15 minutes to get to the event, which was scheduled to start around 2PM.

By the time I got there it was probably close to 2:45.  There was a big crowd gathered around the bars watching people take turns on the 15 foot tall pole mounted in the sand.

The first thing I did was look for Luis.  Luis is an older guy like me that got into bar work outs late in life.  He is the one that invited me to attend the event.  I spotted him and introduced myself.  It was cool to finally meet someone I only knew virtually up until that point.  He kind of gave me the lay of the land as far as the event goes. Mixed in with the casual exhibitions there was going to be a pull up, muscle up, dip and free style competition, cool.  I figured I should at least give the pull ups a shot.

I wore my Bar-barians shirt to the event after verifying with Luis ahead of time that it wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t know if it would be weird to be wearing Bar-barians clothing at a Barstarzz event.  Luis assured me it was fine.  I actually didn’t leave the shirt on for very long.  95% of the guys there were shirtless so I decided to join them.  If there is ever a place to show of the fruits of your calisthenics labor, it is South Beach.

As I was walking around I saw someone I recognized.  I knew I saw a video about him on YouTube a little while ago.  He goes by the name Raven (real name Ray)

I went up to him and introduced myself. Raven is a very unique individual and not a very young man, he recently turned 62 years old.  To say Raven believes in regimens would be an understatement.  For the last 42 YEARS, he has run 8 miles, everyday, on the beach.

He started doing this in January of 1975.  From what I saw on his website, he originally made a New Years resolution to run 8 miles a day for an entire year.  Well, he never stopped from that point on.  About 5 years into his running regimen he added pull ups and other body weight exercises into his daily routine as well.

To date he has run a total of over 100,000 miles in total, just an incredible feat. However what is really amazing is when you think in detail about the reality of what this man has done.  He LITERALLY has run that 8 miles every single day since 1975.  He has run through injuries, illness, horrible weather and just about any other adversity you can imagine.

As I talked to him I asked what was his biggest injury issue.  He said it was his back, at certain points he could barely get out of bed but he still put his 8 miles in.

Raven actually invited me to join him, a lot of people now run with him, at 5:30 at the 5th street lifeguard station.  If I knew about it ahead of time I may have packed some running gear and done it.  Instead I took a rain check and filed it away under the “to do’s” the next time I am in South Beach.

Raven was there because he wanted to take part of the pull up competition.

So the pull up contest eventually started.  As others made their attempt I tried my best to get loose.  Raven went before I did and knocked out 21 pull ups although his elbows were at 90 degrees at the bottom of his reps, a less than ideal range of motion.  There were varying degrees of correctness in the form many people used.  Some even used chin up grip for some reps. No one made a big stink though since they weren’t doing enough reps to win anyway.

Finally it was my turn to go, I might have been the 8th or 9th person to get on the bar.  At that point the most amount of reps was 22, which I knew on a good day was within my wheel house since my PR is 25.  I grabbed on to the highest of the three bars and started pulling.

I tried to keep my form very clean with my legs straight, feet together and using good extension at the bottom while making sure I was getting chin high at the top.  My pace was pretty quick and explosive early on, I got to rep 18 before I had to pause.  I managed to squeeze out 5 more reps to become the temporary leader with 23 reps.  It was kind of cool to have a big crowd cheering me on as I squeezed out the last few reps. I wish I gave someone my Flip to shoot video of the reps.  There was someone filming the entire event so I know my set is on film somewhere.  Hopefully I can find it.

As I was there a tall young guy came up to me and said hi.  His name is Max.  Max reminded me that a couple years ago he and I were communicating back and forth about exercise stuff.  Once he described the communication I remembered him but I still would have blanked on his name.

Max is almost the exact same height as I am, he is also 22 or 23 years younger than me.  Despite his long build he has been able to really do some high level stuff as far as body weight movements go, much more advanced than I have gotten.

Unfortunately Max also has had a ton of injuries along the way, despite his young age.  He actually was currently suffering from what sounds like a pretty serious shoulder injury.  In addition, during our talks he described a myriad of other injuries he has gone through.  Max is real focused and intense when it comes to achieving a goal once he sets it in his mind.

I talked to Max quite a bit, he seems like a real cool kid.  He lives in the Miami area, we exchanged email and phone numbers.  We agreed we should get together and work out once he heals up.

One of the other people I was looking for at the event was a woman I know primarily as “Low Bar”.  She is one of the few women that are actively involved in bar exercise.  She is from NYC and is familiar with the various bar groups there, including the Bar-barians.  She had flown down for the event.

I was periodically scanning the crowd for her but she was nowhere to be seen.  She showed up a little later.  I gave her a hug and welcomed her to Florida.  From the picture you can see why she is nick named Low Bar as she is less than 5 feet tall.

I sat next to her while the freestyle competition was going on.  I shot most of the video I took during the freestyle part of the competition.  You can see it below.

So the event started winding down around 6:30.  I was planning to simply walk back to the SSR and start the 2 plus hour drive home.  Low Bar asked me if I wanted to grab food with her cousin and her.  Since I had mom in place to tend to the dogs I said sure.

Before I left I found Luis and thanked him again for inviting me to the event.  It was a lot of fun to be around that kind of positive energy.  I should invite the Barstarzz guys to hit my backyard bar park, that would be quite the scene.

I got in on the group picture before I left.

So we walked towards Ocean Drive and picked a spot to eat, thinking we would just eat out in the sidewalk seating area.  Instead the hostess directed us inside to eat, um ok.  Well this place, called Mangos, evidently is also a night/dance club.  We were seated directly underneath a speaker that was blaring loud dance music.  It didn’t take long until I got up and asked the hostess if we could eat outside instead because of the noise.  She accommodated us but let me know there was a certain line in the sidewalk that I had to keep my chair behind.  No problem.

We had a good dinner.  Even with being outside it was still kind of loud, I had a hard time making out what Low Bar’s cousin was saying at times because of the noise and her strong Fillipino accent.

One thing that is nice eating outside is you get a nonstop stream of “interesting” people to look at.  Some of the fashion decisions that were on display were pretty mind blowing. After our meal we walked back towards the hotel they were staying at.  Once we hit 5th street I peeled off and started the long walk to the parking garage after giving them both hugs goodbye.

The drive back across the alley was a bit treacherous at times with some torrential downpours, including one I walked through to get to the front door of the rest stop.  You can see my level of drenching in the picture.

I  pulled into the driveway about 10:30.  After letting the dogs out (mom was already in bed), I took a shower and crashed into bed.  I was quite tired.

You can imagine the joy I felt when at 2:20 am I hear Nicki crying by the door.  I assumed that meant she had to go to the bathroom.  Well at least she is letting me know.  Well the funny thing was the first thing she did when I opened the bedroom door was go lay in front of my mom’s door.  I called her over and went out back.  She did a number two and a one so I despite my being delirious with exhaustion, I preferred that to waking up at 7am to the smell of shit on the floor. Unfortunately afterward I had a very difficult time falling back asleep.

Mom was up early, crazy early to get ready for work.  She wanted her alarm set at 5AM.  Well it didn’t take long for the dogs to realize there was something going on in the main living area.  They decided to wake me up a little after 6am, oh well.

So I told mom about my time on the east coast.  As we were talking I realized this was the first time mom has set foot in the house since Ali and I separated.  In fact, mom said it was the first time she has been at the house since last CHRISTMAS.  When she first said that I was sure she was wrong but as I thought about it I couldn’t remember any other visits.  It seemed impossible that so much time had passed so quickly.  My life does feel like a bit of a blur the last 6 months or so.

Mom was the first person to sleep in the bed Jeremy donated to me.  She said the bed was comfortable although she said she slept terribly.  I wouldn’t credit that to the bed though, almost every time mom stays at the house she reports poor sleeping results.  The deviation from her routine must through her for a loop.

So mom got ready and headed out around seven for work.  I thanked her again for her dog sitting, it was nice to not have to be constantly checking my watch when I was over in South Beach.

So despite a severe lack of sleep I decided I needed to get some running in for Mudder training.  I drove to the now closed for the season water park to run around.  My initial hope was to do four laps around the outside of the park which would add up to 8 miles.

The skies were overcast which made running early on pretty bearable.  As I got to the halfway point my right knee was feeling pretty shitty.  Each stride had an accompanying ping of soreness associated with it.  I decided to only do 3 laps instead of 4, finishing the 6 miles in 55 minutes and change, not a great pace but ok.  I figured running the last 2 miles wasn’t worth it if I was really hurting.  When I got home I iced the knee and it actually doesn’t feel too bad today.

Well that Eagles game was a bummer.  I actually was so tired I was half asleep for nearly 3 quarters of the game.  I was awake when Vick fumbled another two times.  His turnover problems are a real big deal.  Obviously opposing teams realize that the best way to beat the Eagles is to pressure Vick.  When this happens he makes a lot of poor decisions and he’s not good at protecting the ball.

Despite the turnovers the Eagles actually grabbed their first lead late in the game.  The drive that got them the lead had the opportunity to be a HUGE fail for Andy.  For some reason he decided to go completely against the book and go for it on 4th down with over 10 minutes left in the game on his OWN 30 yard line, a huge risk.  Luckily the Eagles converted by a few inches but man, he would have been crucified if they didn’t.

So anyway, the drive was very long, covering 17 plays resulting in a 14-13 lead.  All that was left was for the defense to hold the Steelers with a couple minutes left on the clock and the game could be secured.  Well obviously it didn’t happen.  The biggest fail was when the Eagles had the Steelers pinned back on their side of the field facing a 3rd and 12.  Instead of dealing the knockout blow, they played a soft zone that allowed a 20 yard completion.  Once that happened I knew they were done.

The Steelers proceeded to march down the field easily and kicked a game winning field goal with three seconds left.

It was a disappointing ending for sure but I think the bigger news is Mike Vick’s torrid turnover pace. The amount of times he has turned the ball over thus far this season is staggering.  He will obliterate the league record at this pace. Hopefully Andy is smart enough to eventually realize that either Vick has to take care of the ball better or someone else has to start taking the snaps.

Ali ran the Chicago Marathon yesterday, the reason I was watching the dogs for the weekend.  She had much cooler temps to run in this year, hovering around 50 which for me, would be ideal.  Ali prefers warmer air.  She managed to finish a couple minutes ahead of last year’s time but had a lot of struggles, especially the last 10 miles of the race.  She said her entire lower body was just in severe pain.

The good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is she gets to take another whack at the marathon distance in a month as she is signed up for the NYC marathon.

After the Eagle game I had enough daylight left to go out and hop on the tractor.  Once again it was not running smoothly, acting like there is still some ethanol slime in the fuel system.  I will need to find some additive that will dissolve the shit.  I never like doing chores at the tail end of the weekend but it felt good to get the grass done.

You know when I run, at least when I run by myself, lots of random thoughts go through my head.  As I was running Sunday my mind drifted to to the topic of people that spend a lot of energy screaming about “entitlements” and how they are ruining the country.  I then thought about the hypocrisy that many of these exact same people are responsible for parenting the most “entitled” generation in US history.

These people that are so eager to cut seniors medical or social security benefits are the same people that think it necessary to equip their child with a one digit age with the latest and greatest iDevice.  They feel it is important that they have some sort of video screen stimulation in front of their child’s face  most waking moments of the day.  Their child should not be made to suffer the cruel punishment of having to actually look out a window during a road trip and look at scenery.

These are the people that see nothing wrong with their child receiving a medal when their soccer team gets last place.  After all, children should be taught early on that no matter how hard they do or don’t work, they will be rewarded.  I mean wtf, how can parents complain about an entitled society when they parent in such a manner that does nothing but encourage that mentality?

I literally laugh out loud when I see bumper stickers were parents proclaim their child had a perfect dental check up.  Good job Sally, way to go Petey!

Their children are being raised in a bubble.  No one is allowed to yell at them, nobody should ever treat them unfairly, they are not allowed to endure hardship or struggle to attain a goal.  It is just handed to them.

You see, as much as failure hurts, it is an absolutely essential part of life.  If you are never allowed to fail you don’t ever appreciate or even know what true success is.

Maybe more people in the country need to go on solo runs so they can come to these type of revelations on their own.  Don’t talk it if you don’t walk it.

I saw this quote floating around Facebook and it struck me as so true.

 

I watched episode one of this season of Dexter last night.  Damn, I have no idea where the story can go from here, the way it ended you would think it was a season finale, not a premiere.  It’s awesome to be able to watch shows like this in real time courtesy of  Xfinity online.  Shows like this (Showtime) can’t stream through the Xbox though, I need to watch them on my laptop or pc.

My property has once again transformed into swamplands after a day of rain that included several periods of intense downpours.  Yeah it’s annoying but dry season is right around the corner where we can flip pages on the calendar without seeing hardly a drop.

Last night I also got on the Homeland bandwagon, another show that people rave about.  I only watched the first episode but I can already see I will be into the show big time.

Yesterday I migrated my fitness blog, Dufisthenics off of WordPress.com onto my private hosting space.  Hosting the site on WordPress.com is convenient but it also is somewhat limiting.  You aren’t able to do much customization as plug ins aren’t allowed.  They also want to charge you to allow certain things to be done which can be done for free if you host it yourself.  They also do not allow you to run Google ads on their site.

In addition to the move, I installed a new theme.  I find the new lay out more visually appealing.

Unfortunately my exercise routines have been a bit sidetracked lately due to injury.  In addition to my right knee being always problematic to some degree, my left wrist is becoming a long term problem.

A wrist is a hard thing to let heal since it is used in so many ways and so often.  For now I am trying to avoid things that blatantly cause pain but at least thus far I am not seeing/feeling any significant healing taking place.

Speaking of blog facelifts, I think I will be bolting a new skin onto this blog as well.  The skin that is in place is admittedly boring and was hurriedly put in place when my site was hacked awhile back.  There are bunch of good looking free alternatives out there.

Tonight is the first presidential debate.  I really have no need to watch the debates as I don’t need to be convinced either way.  Even if I did need convincing, if I thought that anything either candidate SAYS in a debate really means that much in the end I would be sadly mistaken. If a candidates debate performance is the deal breaker for you I would suggest you do more research.

So after a ridiculous amount of waiting, unanswered phone calls, and emails, I finally got the paperwork for the extended warranty on the SSR sent to me.   After receiving them I was reading through the plan outline.  One thing that caught my eye was the “Maintenance Requirements” .   It said in there that you had to have receipts for certain maintenance items (like an oil change) and the receipts had to include the date and VIN number of the vehicle.

Well I have changed my own oil for years, not only to save money but also so I know it is done right after I had a Quick Lube place try to get away with not replacing the filter.  Plus who knows what type of oil they dump in your vehicle in a place like that, they dispense it from giant vats, it can’t be very good.

Anyway, I wanted to clarify that if I changed my own oil, I could be setting myself up for a fight if I submit a claim, so I called the customer service number for the warranty company.  I explained to the guy that I typically change my own oil.  I asked if I kept the receipts for the oil/filter if that would be sufficient to indicate proper maintenance was performed.

The answer I got back was annoying.  He basically said it may or may not be.  He said that it would only become an issue if they asked for proof of oil changes if an engine related problem was submitted.  It sounded like he was saying if I change my own oil I am rolling the dice as far as coverage goes, great.

So now for my next oil change I hope to find a place that will do the work for me and provide the proper documentation if I provide them with the oil and filter.  It’s an annoying hoop to have to jump through.

I got so many things done this weekend I literally can’t remember it all, so I will touch on what I DO remember.

Saturday morning I had my first race to time in a couple months.  The race had a huge swell in registration in the last three days, over half of the people signed up in that compressed time period.  We wound up with right around 550 people signed up.

Before the race we had some lighting problems.  The club has several high power halogen light sets.  They throw a nice amount of light.  The problem is they also pull huge amounts of power.  Over the years we have had issues with the lights popping circuit breakers.

Well Saturday the lights kept popping my power strip that we were also using for the laptops so it was a major pain in the ass. One of the things I have wanted to look into is getting some fluorescent lights to replace them to eliminate this problem.

It was so humid Saturday morning.  Even before the sun popped it’s head out my shirt was thoroughly soaked from the massive moisture in the air.  Race timing went ok, any issues I had were human error related and easily corrected.  I was out of there around 9:15 or so.

Ali was scheduled to do a long run for her marathon training so she asked if I could pick up the dogs on the way home so she didn’t have to worry about bathroom breaks.  The girls were quite surprised to see me pull up in the party van to take them out to the house.

After getting all of my post race processing completed I started on my long list of to do’s.  Later in the afternoon I turned my attention to the two ripped pool screen sections.  It seemed like almost on queue, as soon as I started working on hanging the first replacement section, the wind started kicking up.

The wind was blowing towards the house.  A section of loose screen catches wind like a sail.  I went inside and got some of my paint masking tape.  My hope was I could use it to temporarily hold the screen in place until I could get some spline in.  I used a bunch of tape and it worked, briefly, until a strong gust would break the screen loose again.  After repeating this process 5 or 6 times I was getting pissed, yelling at the wind like it had a set of ears.

Finally I had enough, I texted Ali and asked her if she wanted to be a screen holder.  She said she didn’t mind coming out.  While she was in transit I wasted no time, super setting in cleaning the master bathroom.  Like I said, I had a monumental list of things to get done.

Once Ali arrived we got to work on the screens, her role being keeping the screen taut I as I sunk in the spline.  Her job was not exactly fun as these sections were right in front of rose bushes with sharp and abundant thorns.  I got both screens replaced in about an hour with Ali’s assistance.  I was quite glad she was able to help.

We had talked about taking a few items to Ali’s place so I suggested we get that taken care of as well.  Among those items were one of the two desks in the hobby room, some rolling storage things and a spare shelf from the shed.  We loaded all the stuff in both the Camry and the Tacoma and headed back to Ali’s place along with the girls.

The shelf will be put to good use in the storage area in Ali’s garage and we lugged the desk upstairs to her spare bedroom/office to be used to hold her sewing machine and various other items.  I had brought my cordless drill and drill bits to hang some stuff for Ali.  Unfortunately the thing she wanted me to hang didn’t come with drywall anchors and I didn’t bring any along.  I told her I would hang it in the next day or two.

Ali heated up some of the leftover fantasy football pizza I gave her for us to eat for dinner.  By the time I left I was a zombie.  I had been literally on the go all day long since 4:15 AM.  I was done.

Sunday morning I was up and busy by 7:30 am, continuing on various things I wanted to get done.  My goal was to have my Labor Day completely free of labor, so I could do whatever I wanted to do.

Mid-morning I shot back over to Ali’s to hang up the stuff I couldn’t the night before.  I also picked up the girls again to hang with me since Ali was going to work.

I actually got the time to finally give the SSR a bath.  I had not gotten a chance to do so since I took the truck across the state to visit Randall and Tracy.  Before I started washing the truck I threw it up on my ramps.

I wanted to crawl underneath to see if I could spot any obvious cause of the P0420 error (catalytic converter issue) I was reading.  All the wires looked intact but I did see something else.

Since I had all that work done on the truck (Vette clutch installed, both cats replaced), I noticed I heard a new vibrating type of noise under hard acceleration.  Well as I was under the truck I noticed the heat shield right above the rear weld on the new passenger side cat had been burnt and split, an obvious by product of the rushed replacement of the cats, the installer was in a severe time crunch.

Anyway the slice created a flap of heat shield that could very obviously rattle against the pipe, so I simply bent it upward.  In my subsequent test drive I no longer heard the noise.  I also used my code reader to clear the CEL code, curious to see if it would immediately reappear.  It didn’t, so I guess I am on a wait and see pattern with that issue.

The truck looked great after it’s bath.  I even took the time to clean the tail pipe extensions.  When all the work was done I also had bigger, stainless steel exhaust tips put on the SSR.  However they were already covered in black soot/carbon, totally negating the coolness factor.

I read on SSRFantatics that the best way to clean them up is using plain old oven cleaner.  I sprayed some on, let it set for a few minutes and then scrubbed it out with a brush.  It worked like a charm.  My tips were back to being an eye catcher instead of an eye sore.

Mid-afternoon Sunday I headed over to my mom’s place with the girl’s in tow.  She had asked if I could run the steam cleaner in her two bedrooms as well as help her flip over her mattress.  She hadn’t had the carpets cleaned since she moved in.  I told her it was no problem.  She was worried about my having time to get it done before she had to leave to meet some friends for dinner.

Well compared to the time I spend when I clean the carpet at the house, mom’s condo was a piece of cake.  I don’t think it even took me a half hour to finish both rooms.  She was surprised.  I told her whenever she wants it done to let me know since it is so easy to do.

When I got back home I finished up whatever chore related items needed to be done.  Finally, I was done.  So what did I do next? Relax?  Of course not.  Instead I headed outside to shoot some work out videos.

I actually produced a total of 5 videos out of the footage.  3 of them were BB forum related, depicting what is and isn’t considered good form for the monthly challenges.  It seems every month there is a question on what is good form.  I am hoping instead of typing it out time and again I can simply link these videos.  The two other videos were my attempting to do muscle ups with my legs tied together with yoga bands and another funny one where the dogs get involved as I do dragon flags.

Ali came and picked up the dogs Sunday night after she was done working.  It was odd having both her and the dogs out at the house two consecutive days.

So Labor Day arrives, the day I was busting my ass for so I could have a a day free of must do’s.  I woke up on my own around 6:30 and was out the door before 8 am to go do a bike/swim training brick.  I have done very little endurance training over the last month or so because of blowback knee issues after playing in the KOB volleyball tourney.  My knee is still not 100% well but I deemed it good enough to at least do some non-impact work.

My trusty Forerunner 201 seems to have finally bitten the dust.  It stopped working a couple weeks ago so I was without a GPS.  I improvised by firing up MapMyRide on my Iphone a storing it in my seat bag.  I did a long ride, for me, approximately 24 miles.  My average pace was about 17 mph but that was with a number of lengthy stops at traffic lights.  My actual riding pace felt much stronger than that.  I was pooped when I pulled back into the parking lot.

It was then into the water park for the swim portion of my brick.  I was not pleased when I jumped into the lap pool and it felt like a hot tub.  I bet the temperature was just under 90 degrees, a terrible temperature to swim distance in.  I scaled back by original goal of 1600 yards to 1200 solely because of the high temps.

I want pleased to see that the water park was only going to be open for weekends until the end of September.  I thought last year it stayed open until sometime in October although I could be mistaken.  The swimming weather easily could extend into November but I guess this is purely a monetary decision.  Bums me out none the less, swimming definitely helps my aching shoulders.

When I got home I was starving so I slammed down lunch.  Early in the afternoon for some reason, despite already getting in a significant amount of exercise in the AM, I decided I wanted to go out and do a Ray’s Way circuit.  In layman’s terms this is doing 5 sets of dips, pull ups and push ups within certain time constraints.  It’s tough.

I actually failed to complete the sets successfully.  The combination of my morning exertion, outdoor hot and humid conditions and a less than positive mental disposition all contributed to my failure.  It was still a good workout.

I didn’t really get off the treadmill until late Monday afternoon when I sat down to play some WoW.  There is a new expansion coming out in 3 weeks which may finally get me back into the game that I basically had stepped away from for 4 or 5 months.

I have yet another busy week laid out in front of me.  Some night this week I need to get the grass mowed.  Next Saturday I will be timing a large invitational cross country meet and then Sunday I may be heading back to the east coast to pick up a desk and queen size mattress that Jeremy and Mandy are graciously donating to me.  I plan to trade them my old pressure washer in exchange.

Did I mention how badly I feel for Clint Eastwood?  He made himself out to be basically a stumbling loon in his RNC speech.  I actually heard some people say that the thought he “killed it”.  Yes I agree he did kill it, but in the literal sense.  I like the guy too much to see him turned into a laughing stock, it’s a shame.