I played pickleball at lunch on Monday and then cleaned up to head towards Orlando for a work conference. The drive up to Orlando is always long and I-4 is always the wildcard in terms of just how congested it is. There is always stopped traffic, it’s just a matter of how much. I made decent time getting up there without charging and arrived around 5PM, an hour before the registration shut down.

This was at a new venue for me, the Hyatt Regency. It’s a huge and very luxurious hotel very close to the Disney parks. I immediately noticed the large parrot named Merlot they had sitting unrestrained in the middle of the atrium, it was very cool. My room was on the 5th floor and was very clean, modern and well appointed. I was pleased with my accommodations.

They had a reception dinner where I sat with 5 of my co-workers who were also attending. The event had an open bar which I took advantage of, making 4 or 5 refill trips during the night. Alcohol always aids me in social interactions after all.

The schedule for the two days was very casual. Breakfast was from 8-9, you had a couple of sessions in the morning with a generous 30 minute break thrown in. When lunch rolled around at noon I wasn’t even hungry because of the big breakfast. During Tuesday afternoon there was one time slot that had nothing that really interested me so I decided to use that time to run down to the hotel gym.

The gym was very well equipped which didn’t surprise me. I got a good hour workout in before I headed back up to the room to change back into my work clothes for my last session of the day.

To get to the gym you walked past a beautiful and massive pool area. The hotel had a TON of amenities available to their guests. Part of me wished I was in a situation where I could have enjoyed them conventionally, with someone. I instead returned to the conference, name badge in place.

It just so happened that my brother Todd was down in Orlando this week with his fiance and her daughter. I made arrangements to meet up with them for dinner. Todd suggested Carrabas since he knew that was a place I used to really like years ago (it’s only so so nowadays) It was the first time I saw Todd since Thanksgiving.

I got the lowdown on how their week had gone so far. I heard expected horror stories of long waits in lines in oppressive heat which is a given this time of year. Todd had his hip replaced a few months back so I got an update on that as well. I filled them in on the latest and greatest in my life as well which has been anything but boring. After dinner I told them they were welcome to drive down to see my new place and hang out for a day while they are here. I’m not sure if they will take me up on the invite. I once again drank a number of beers during the meet up, a theme for the trip evidently.

After dinner I was determined to ride my One Wheel even though it was after 9PM. After parking the car I slapped on wrist guards and my helmet and took off for maybe a 20 minute ride around the beautiful grounds surrounding the hotel. I was glad to at least get to ride a little during the rather hectic couple days.

On Wednesday I was at the conference until almost 4PM. Technically it runs through this morning but nothing else on the schedule pertained to me so I preferred to get back home. The drive back hit more traffic and was on the tedious side. I also was walking the battery high wire as I did not have the car at as full of a charge state before leaving Orlando. I got back with 9% in the tank.

On the way home I grabbed Elsa from Ali’s place. It’s always conflicting for Elsa as of course she is excited to see me but she also loves hanging with Ali and Shugs so much. On the drive home a storm broke out which sent Elsa into a panic. As I was driving I quickly threw the blanket over her in the back to make her feel safer. She hates rain.

I rolled into my driveway a little after 8PM. I buzzed around the home taking care of the number of tasks to be completed, crashing into bed closer to 10. It was a good trip where I used some of the downtime to think and reflect about what comes next.

I have really come to enjoy subs from Wawa since I have moved. There is a location less than a mile from my house. I always get the same thing, tuna sub on wheat. I love that the entire process is automated. You order from a kiosk, you pay from a self service cashier with your phone and the sandwich is ready in a couple minutes.

I also enjoy riding one of my PEVs to get a sandwich, just for fun. Last night I took the Patton to grab a 6 incher. The tuna hoagie and Cayman Jack was my meal for the night. I see this pattern repeating more often in my future.

If I have learned anything about life is it never goes the direction you assume it will go. Best case scenario is you wobble back and forth trying to loosely hold on to your intended direction, sort of like a bowling ball on bumper equipped lanes. Ideally you stay out of the gutter and at least knock down a sizeable amount of your designated pins. I have been doing a lot of bumping back and forth this year. It’s been mentally and emotionally taxing without a doubt but I am hoping the second half of 2023 has less impacts with the walls.

This weekend’s activities are unsure other than needing to drop off Elsa at Ali’s Sunday. I will be leaving Monday for a brief 3 day conference so I need all my ducks in a row.

More WoW hardcore streaming last night, if you care.

Last night I met up with Christine to go ride. The skies looked menacing but the roads were mostly dry. Christine suggested we ride towards the beach since the weather looked better that way.

We went a different way this time. Thanks to the time I road downtown with Clay I knew about a pedestrian tunnel that goes underneath Tamiami Trail. By using this tunnel we were able to get to the beach without having to cross any major roadways which is awesome.

We rode to the beach via 8th Ave South. I don’t think I ever had been to the end of this street. The area by the beach seemed like it might have been redone after Hurricane Ian. There was some pristine looking grass and new benches to chill on, which we did for several minutes. The unsettled clouds out over the water made for a cool vista.

Realizing we can get down the water this way was a great addition to the possible routes we can now traverse on the One Wheels. There are many, many more out there.

Yesterday I met up with Dan again to finalize the contract to get the hurricane protection installed on my house. I had a pleasant surprise where the total was about $800 less than I anticipated because I interpreted the numbers he gave me incorrectly. Dan said in about 3 weeks they should be out to measure and the installation should occur in 12-14 weeks. I am crossing my fingers we can avoid any significant storm activity prior to my install. Dan leaves Friday for his three week road trip with his wife, he told me to wish him luck.

Last night I played volleyball for the first time in at least 3 weeks. I played ok but did not even try to hit a ball hard. I just did not feel like I had any ability to get out of the sand, a by product of the layoff I am sure. My energy level just felt on the low side, perhaps because I played pickleball at lunch in the choking humidity.

When I got home from playing I saw this beautiful looking sky. I took a minute to observe and capture it, reminding myself how lucky I am.

Yesterday I had an appointment for someone to give me an estimate on hurricane protection for my windows/doors. The salesman was named Dan. I could tell from the phone call he was an older gentleman. I didn’t realize how much older.

I met Dan at the house. He commented on my Tesla and how he heard it making noise. I tried to explain why that was but he said he didn’t understand how these things work (electric cars). Through our conversation I found out he was 76 years old and he had been married for 50 years. He told me how he was leaving for vacation on Friday with his wife. It will be 100 hours in a car overall and he wasn’t thrilled about it, but she wanted to do it this way.

The entire experience was conversational and casual. In the prior estimates I had told the companies that I just wanted to do the windows but Dan and I talked about protection for both the front door and the massive rear sliders. After taking measurements we sat down inside where he told me stories about his youth as he calculated the numbers by hand using only a calculator and paper. Despite my immersion in technology there is a part of me that likes old school, hence why I still have a budget book that I fill in by hand every week.

He broke the job down into three sections, the windows, the rear lanai and the front door. For the lanai he suggested that instead of trying to cover the two sliders that we instead install large accordion style protection on the inside of the screens. When needed you simply pull them shut and the entire lanai would be protected. It’s a slick but also expensive option. With the front door he gave me pricing on installing panels and also a roll down style which again is more expensive but more complete and easy to deploy.

The bottom line price to do everything was way more than I was planning to pay originally but I never seriously considered protecting the lanai area to this extent. I told Dan I needed to run through some numbers to see if I can make it work. During the day I mulled it over. I plan to stay at this house long term so it seemed like a solid investment and yet another thing that increases the value of the home as well as potentially decreasing my home owners insurance. But another factor was I just liked Dan. I appreciated someone his age out there still plugging away. I called him later and told him I wanted to move forward with the project. I will meet up with him later today to sign the paperwork.

This was the last significant improvement I had targeted for the house when I moved in. Once it is in the rear view mirror it will be time to recast my mortgage to apply the equity from the sale of my old house to the new mortgage. After that it’s time to buckle down on my financial discipline that has clearly been very fast and loose the last several months.

Friday night Christine and I drove down to Marco Island to look at an inflatable boat I had found on FB Marketplace. It cost less than my high end pickelball paddle but was a decent size and included expensive add ons like an electric trolling motor and a large marine battery. The older hispanic man that was the seller was very cute and thorough when explaining how everything worked. We loaded the boat and all of it’s accessories in the truck and headed to dinner at a cool little bar nearby. I guess I am going to be getting on the water.

On Saturday morning I did my first significant auto maintenance since moving to the house, rotating the tires on my Tesla, something I try to do every 10,000 miles or so. I got rid of a TON of stuff when I moved but luckily I still have my low profile floor jack and impact wrench, both of which are crucial for the job. It went well besides sweating like a pig. I was done in less than 30 minutes. I’m happy to see that the tires are holding up well 31k miles in.

Late morning I rode my OneWheel to the gym to work out. It was a combo of things I never did before and it was kind of cool. It’s nice to be close enough to have options like that.

Saturday night we saw the new Mission Impossible movie which is dubbed as part 1 of a 2 film series. This was the first MI movie in quite awhile and the first time I saw one where I thought that maybe Tom Cruise is getting a little too old for the role. Sure he is in great shape for his age but still, it’s noticeable. The plot was sort of dumb. I would probably say it was my least favorite MI movie of the series which makes less than thrilled that they have another one lined up. I would feel it’s safe to say that this will be the last of the it’s kind although after seeing Harrison Ford do another Indiana Jones movie at 80, never say never I guess.

Sunday morning I met my buddy Juan to once again play pickleball at that expensive community. Evidently the club members we play with enjoy our company. We played for two and a half very hot, humid and sweaty hours. My final game was a singles match against the 21 year old club tennis pro who also plays pickleball. The kid at one point was ranked top 10 in the country in his age group in tennis. My initial goal was to hope to score a point on him. I managed to get 6 points which in my book was a win considering how tired I already was.

Early Sunday afternoon we loaded up all of the boat stuff to do a test run. We wanted to see how easy/difficult it would be to set everything up and how the inflatable would do in the water. We learned a lot.

Inflating the boat was pretty easy, the included battery powered inflator pushed massive volumes of air. There are three separate chambers that need to be inflated which avoids having a single point of failure.

Mounting the motor happens after the boat is inflated. At first I attached the motor mount and then tried to attach the motor before doing so and couldn’t do it, more on this later as it was one of the many learning opportunities I had. So once the motor was on all I had to do was lift the very heavy battery on board and connect the wires. We were off and moving.

I initially planned to sit on a fold up chair but I found myself more comfortable just laying in the rear of the boat using the sides as armrests as I steered with one arm and drank a margarita with the other. I had on my sun repelling fishing shirt on as well as my Eagles bucket hat to cut down on my UV exposure. The 46 pounds of thrust motor was nothing resembling powerful but pushed along at a what would be a fast walking speed which was good enough.

Christine and I were enjoying the slow tour of the area where she does shelling on a pretty regular basis. We then switched spots and I let her run the motor as the goal was to get her familiar and comfortable with the set up. She was warm and hopped into the water a bit. When she got back in the boat she got back in the driver position but we were having a hard time going anywhere. Well to be more accurate we weren’t going anywhere, the motor had stopped working, oh shit…

I hopped out of the boat to take a better look. The water was quite shallow, shallow enough that the prop was probably hitting the sandy bottom. My initial thought was the motor overheated, I started looking for some sort of reset button on it which I could not find. The LED battery indicator on the motor was dark. I started to wonder if perhaps the battery had just run out of juice which seemed unlikely as it is a huge battery and was reading full charge at the beginning of the ride. So I needed a plan to get back.

Luckily we threw the oars in the boat. I pushed it until we got to the main crossing channel under a bridge which is much deeper. After testing the motor again, hoping it cooled down/reset I resigned myself to having to row. Rowing this thing was very awkward and tiring but I managed to eventually get us across the channel and back to an opening on the beach where we could dock. I was tired.

We had another lesson when removing the motor mount. Trying to remove all the fasteners at once carries a high risk of dropping some of the hardware into the water which happened. Luckily I was able to get the same size at the local hardware store. When we got everything loaded back into the truck we were both pretty wiped, it was hot.

As soon as we got back to the house I wasted little time before I threw the battery on the table to test it’s voltage, it was still basically full so the battery was definitely not the problem. I then reconnected the motor but it still showed dead. I again looked for a reset button on the motor but found none. However I then looked at the little device that was inline on the positive motor battery cable. On the side of it was a little black button. I pushed it in and the motor lit right up, son of a bitch. It’s basically an inline circuit breaker to protect the motor.

My assumption is the motor was trying to turn in the sand which drew enough power to pop that circuit breaker. Knowing that all of that rowing could have been easily avoided was frustrating but a good learning experience. We learned a number of other things from the journey like we could have inflated the boat a little more than we did and that we actually had the motor mounted backwards. This revelation made my earlier discovery that the motor had to be on the mount before attaching it to the boat invalid. Reversing the mount should put the prop in a better position to drive the boat and make the quick release latch that is used to get the prop in a higher position functional. Even with all of the bumps in the road it was a fun time. I can not give you any where near an accurate estimation of the last time I was out on the water like that. I do however expect to happen on a more regular basis in the future.

Yesterday a I got a visualization of just how much stuff I bought on Prime Day as the majority of it arrived. Last year I don’t think I bought anything during Prime Day. I certainly made up for it this year. It was mostly all small stuff. The most expensive thing I bought was a pair of shoes. It took a solid 15 minutes for me to open it all, recycle the packaging and put everything where it needed to go.

Last night I played some more hardcore WoW, getting my paladin to level 11. The grind gets slower and slower as you advance but I am still enjoying it. I streamed it on Twitch but it looks like my audio was not working when I checked it this morning, doh.

I also did a little bit of customizing of my Patton. I painted the plastic inserts on the acceleration pads orange to match the EUC ARMY badging on the front. I always have liked the black/orange contrast on my wheels.

Rich stayed at my place again last night. We wound up running to Brunina’s for dinner later where we got a chance to talk about a number of different subjects. When we got back we both had our pickleball bags out on the dining room table. I applied overgrips to two of my paddles while Rich put an edge guard on one of his. It was a true pickleball geek session.

Elsa, who originally was hesitant about Rich has quickly warmed up to him, often choosing to sit on the couch with him instead of me, it’s cute. Rich is going to be staying with another friend of his the rest of the week but it was good to have my first official test of my guest facilities. Rich said everything was great.

I have mentioned numerous times how much I am into pickleball. Last night after I was done working on my paddles I snapped this quick picture of my pickleball bag. Sometimes they say a picture is worth 1000 words. In this instance I would definitely agree.

I had my first overnight occupant of my guest room since I moved in last night, Rich. He is in the middle of some house limbo right now so I offered him my guest room. He also got to test out the guest shower as well, something else that has never been used since March.

Last night we played pickleball for about an hour. Rich has been injured for most of this year but he LOVES pickleball. We played a couple games against younger guys who were quite good. We lost both games but they were very close. He really enjoyed getting back out there on the court.

I finally have rebooted my 3D store. It has basically been dormant since before I moved. The opportunity for me is much, much less than it once was. There are tons of other options out there for EUC stands nowadays and a number of wheels now have built in kickstands that can make a stand unnecessary.

To me I think wheels still look best when stored on a stand. I do still have a few things that others don’t like the adjustable width and the ability to customize a stand to have unique wording if the customer desires. We will see if my sales go anywhere. With the way I have been burning through money lately some ancillary income could never hurt.

I made the mistake of not taking Unisom on Friday night. My penalty for doing so was waking up at 4AM and not being able to fall back asleep. I decided to drag myself out of bed a little after 6 and get my day started. One advantage of doing so was catching this great view out the garage door as the sun was coming up. It wasn’t all bad, I got an early start on my Saturday chores that made me feel like I was ahead of the curve most of the morning.

On Saturday night Christine and I went out to see the new Indiana Jones movie. It is a bit insane that Harrison Ford, who is now 80 years old was able to put out what surely has to be the last of the series. I have to say, for being 80 years old he did a damn nice job and surely does not look his age. I didn’t have huge expectations for the movie as the last couple were pretty lame. There were definitely lame/silly aspects to this film as well but overall I enjoyed it. Early on the creepy CGI was used to magically take 50 years off of Indie. The effect is good but you can definitely tell when you are looking at CGI. I’d give the movie a B+. Christine enjoyed it as well.

Sunday morning I got up with an alarm to meet up with Juan to play some 8AM pickleball once again. The thought is starting early will be more tolerable due to the extreme heat and humidity which July in Florida brings. It made no difference, I looked like I was thrown in a pool after a couple games. The members seem to really enjoy playing with Juan and I so hopefully it becomes a more regular occurrence. I played surprisingly well, not losing a single time despite rotating partners every game.

I was tired when I got home but I knew if I sat still long I would probably fall asleep. Instead I grabbed my new Veteran Patton and drove out to the swamp to ride. The Patton continued to impress, feeling great in the off road environment, I really love this wheel.

When I got back I again wasted little time before heading back out AGAIN, this time to go ride OneWheel with Christine at the Greenway. We had a very fun ride. It has been very enjoyable to have a riding partner once again.

I have a pretty standard week up ahead of me, as far as I can tell, so far. However if the last 7 months has taught me anything it is to expect the unexpected.