Archives 2014

Well unfortunately I was unable to do entries as the road trip progressed like I did for the Grand Canyon trip.  As a result, prepare for one massive brain dump, a full extra large coffee’s worth and maybe even a half cup refill after that.

Thursday night the van was loaded with as much as possible to facilitate a very early 4:30 am departure Friday morning. The plan was to get the majority of the driving out of the way Thursday which would allow us to stop and see my sister en route Saturday and still get to my dad’s in time for dinner.

Despite some dire predictions regarding driving conditions, the roads were totally fine.  Sure there were visual reminders of the storms that week like a ton of downed branches from the ice storms that hit Carolina, but by the time we passed, the roads themselves were 100% fine.

Driving went well with Cindy and I switching off behind the wheel.  Cindy got to see her first snow as we hit North Carolina which was very exciting for her since growing up in South Florida she had NEVER experienced snow.

We wound up stopping in Emporia, Maryland, just past the border with North Carolina.  We logged a MASSIVE 930 miles for the day.  For dinner we ordered pizza from a place recommended by the front desk of the Holiday Inn Express we were staying.

The hotel room was clean and comfortable.  Sadie wasted no time making herself comfy on one of the two full size beds.  Cindy and I decided for the sake of restful sleep we would each claim our own bed.  Of course Sadie bunked with me as well.

Since we put in so many miles Friday we could afford to leave at a more reasonable time of day Saturday.  We even had time to indulge in the free continental breakfast.  While I was sitting there I immediately noticed the woman that was tending to the breakfast spread.  She greeted me and repeatedly asked me if I needed anything else and if I liked the food.  I am not used to the staff tending complimentary breakfasts being pleasant.  She was so pleasant I actually walked to the room and back to the breakfast area with a few dollars in hand to tip her.  She was like a breath of fresh air.

The t-shirt and shorts that I wore for the drive Friday was no longer appropriate as temperatures in Maryland were much, much colder, as in below freezing.  Saturdays travel attire included jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt and my fleece winter coat.  We hit the road around 6:30 to push towards my sister and brother-in-laws place in State College.

The driving on Saturday definitely was more challenging.  I did all of the driving since Cindy had no winter driving experience.  We drove through some steady snow throughout the day, even hard snow at times but for the most part it wasn’t really sticking to the roads.   We had lunch in Hancock, Maryland where Cindy got the full winter experience.  It was freezing, windy, snowing and the ground looked to have at least a half foot of snow covering it.  In her typical way, she ignored the obvious discomfort caused by these conditions and instead was excited to finally be experiencing “real” winter conditions.  Sadie seemed very happy to be back in snow, leading Cindy on a very long walk around the gas station while I filled up.

So we pulled into Damon and Torrin’s place between 2 and 2:30.  I knew it had snowed there again on Friday but I didn’t quite expect there to be quite that much snow.  Their street was snow covered and quite slick at spots.  I proceeded quite slowly with the van as once it starts to slide it does not want to stop until it hits something bigger than itself.

The sidewalks were outlined by a couple foot high snow walls at various spots.  Seeing them instantly made me very glad that I no longer have to be the one that digs those canyons out.

We were greeted enthusiastically by everyone.   When I had stopped by last year on my winter roadtrip they were still in the middle of completing MASSIVE renovations on the house that were done almost exclusively by Damon.  Those renovations were now done so the place looked much different than I last saw it.  Damon showed me some pictures of what things looked like when they bought it.  The transformation is HGTV  worthy.  It looks like a totally different space on the inside.

It didn’t take all that long until we headed into the back yard to play in the snow with the kids.  Damon had created a makeshift luge track by running a sled down the deep snow a few times.  We took turns going down the track, it was fun especially for Cindy since she never sledded in real snow before. Sadie LOVED the track as well, sprinting up and down the hill repeatedly.  It was very funny.

In addition to the track, Damon had a huge swing set up in the back yard.  The swing was attached via 70 foot long ropes to a tree branch far overhead.  Both Cindy and I took turns on the swing.  The long ropes meant the swing arc was quite large.  As I swung back and forth Sadie would try to chase me at the low points.

As I mentioned, it was quite cold out.  The zipper on my coat was being problematic and I gave Cindy my gloves so it didn’t take long for my extremities to get quite cold.  I was amazed that Damon spent most of the time in the yard with just a t-shirt on. Emily and Griffin ironically warmed up to us more in the frigid temps, taking turns throwing snowballs at me.  Emily even asked me to help her collect some branches for some wood structure she was erecting.

After spending a good chunk of time outside we headed back in to warm up a bit before we had to shove out for Marienville.  It was great seeing everyone again.  It was the first time I saw Torrin and the kids since last year and the first time I saw Damon since the Ireland trip something like 2.5 years ago.

Originally I hoped to get back on the road early enough to avoid nighttime driving on the narrow and potentially treacherous roads as you get closer to Marienville.  Last year I had vivid memories of white knuckle driving as logging truck after logging truck hurdled at me with minimal clearance at high rates of speed.  Unfortunately we pulled out of State College later than I planned but spending more time with Torrin’s family was a good trade off.

It turned out to be a non-issue anyway, for whatever reason the logging trucks were not active on a Saturday night.  The drive to dad’s was uneventful until I got to the road he lives on which appeared to have had minimal plowing done to it.  I slid past the driveway on my first attempt to enter it.  We arrived right around 7PM.

It didn’t take long before we had a dog greeting party that included Maggie, Clara, and their newest canine addition, Charlie.  Charlie was found by my dad wondering the roads a few months ago.  He was in poor health, dad suspects he may have been owned by some Amish people, that are generally not known for giving a fck about their animals.

Charlie was a bit freaked out by the new visitors but it didn’t take long until he realized we were on the good guys team.  All 4 of the dogs were scurrying about the property in no time.  In addition to my dad and Teresa being there, Patrick, one of my brothers had driven up from Pittsburgh to hang with us, which was awesome.

This was the first time Cindy had met any of the other half of my parenting duo.  She had no problem fitting right in.  I had told her ahead of time that she has a lot of the same tendencies as my step mom Teresa who is a very hard worker that loves to cook and get things done.  Teresa and Cindy seemed to hit it off almost immediately.

Teresa had our dinner on a holding pattern waiting for our arrival.  It was a delicious meal that started out with soup, followed by vegetable pie and concluded with a chocolate on chocolate cake that was incredibly moist.

We got to see the culmination of dad’s retirement dream as well Saturday night, his churro sheep and llama.   Sometime during my dad’s time living in New Mexico he got the idea in his head that he wanted to raise sheep.  He associated raising sheep as being that itch that he never quite has been able to scratch since retiring.

When I first heard of his intentions I was not very supportive as I looked at the workload of raising/maintaining farm animals versus the constantly declining physical condition dad has been experiencing the last decade.  To me it seemed like he should be having retirement dreams that involved less physical labor, not more.  I also knew that my step mom, as she often does, would wind up picking up much of the responsibilities for the animals whether she wants to or not.

Well the first impression when I saw the sheep in the barn was, wow, that is a lot of sheep.  Including two recently born lambs, they now had 12 sheep and a llama.  It looked like the space allocated was fully utilized with little room to spare.  Teresa told me that she believedone or two more of the sheep had been impregnated by the one non-castrated ram in the group, named Blackhawk.    For some strange reason dad did not see any urgency in getting Blackhawk sterilized when he got the sheep several months ago, despite the limited sheep housing arrangements.

I also got to meet their llama, named Dhali Llama.  A llama acts like the protector for sheep, willing to take on any and all threats to the flock.  The llama was very funny as he stared us down while gnawing on hay.  The other thing that you notice right away about sheep in a barn is the smell which is pretty awful.  It quickly will permeate any items of clothing you are wearing and your hair.  It is not a scent you will be looking for in a perfume bottle.

We had a very nice evening Saturday night just catching up with everyone as we sat in front of the wood burning stove.  Dad got a new stove since I was last there.  This one is designed to burn wood and does a nice job of doing so, supplying the majority of the heat for the main living area during waking hours.

I already warned Cindy that the guest bedroom gets very cold by Florida standards at night.  To try to moderate the temperature we slept with the bedroom door open but even with doing so, any body part that was not under covers became very chilly very quickly.  When I awoke Sunday morning the remote thermometer was showing an outdoor temperature of 3 degrees, ouch.

On Sunday morning dad took all of us to the Gateway Lodge for breakfast, a place I had gone to before for dinner last year.  It is a beautiful ski lodge style building without the skiing.  We all enjoyed nice meals and took some time to just walk around inside to take in the beautiful interior.

A nice lady took Cindy and my picture inside the billiards room which featured one of the coolest looking pool tables I ever saw.  On the way back from the lodge we stopped at the local convenience store.  While we were there I had to laugh at the snowmobile, a viable form of transportation during Marienville winters, that was pulled up to the gas pumps.

Late in the morning we decided to give sledding a try on the huge hill dad has towards the back of the property.  I put on 4 or 5 layers to prepare for the icy air which was hovering in the low double digit area.  Even so I felt quite frozen in short order, especially since the wind was starting to pick up in advance of the light snow that was falling.

The hill had not been used since the most recent dumping of heavy snow within a week so Patrick and I had to do a few slow runs to try to make a path for the sleds to follow in the 12-18 inches of snow that was on the ground.  It took exactly one run to the bottom of the hill before I knew that the number of trips I would make down the hill would probably not take more than one hand to count. You see the hike back up to the top of the hill was BRUTAL.  The hill was long, steep and covered in snow that was mid-shin high or higher at spots.  To make things more fun, the air and wind made it feel like you were sitting in a freezer with a fan blowing on you.  A single trip to the top had me sucking major wind.

Cindy, who is all about physical challenges actually had to tap out after 2-3 sledding runs.  The cold air was triggering her asthma, making it very tough to breathe.  Sadie also fell victim to the conditions.

At first Sadie was sprinting up and down the hill, the best she could with snow that was belly high.  She was having a ton of fun.  There was a hilarious moment where she had her front legs stationary on the back of the toboggan Cindy was riding while running with her back legs.  It looked like she was pushing Cindy down the hill.

I actually got Sadie in the front of one of the sleds and held onto her as we did a complete run all the way down to the bottom.  It was cute.

Well I could tell Sadie was exhausted and cold after awhile, despite her love of the snow.  She also acted like she pulled something in one of her legs as she really didn’t want to walk.  I wound up carrying her about halfway back to the house before setting her down to let her walk the rest of the way.  Cindy who had already had enough went inside with Sadie to warm both of them up.

Patrick, Teresa and I stayed out for a little while more.  I looked at the trudging back up the hill as a physical challenge.  I refused to stop mid-hill, even opting to do one of the climbs in totally virgin snow to add to the effort level.  Even Patrick, whom I consider to be ultra-fit, was struggling with the climb so I didn’t feel as bad as I gasped the 15 degree air.  We headed in to eat lunch, a very tasty grilled cheese variety prepared by a Cindy/Teresa tag team.

 

Later in the afternoon I took the Phantom out for it’s first ever winter mission.  I had been waiting for a break in the weather as it was snowing most of the day.  The best conditions I could get was some light flurries, I hoped they would not impede the flying ability of the quad.  The bad weather conditions really came through in the video as everything looked different shades of gray.  When you see the video I did on the next day which was sunny, the difference is startling.

Flying in the cold was a bit different other than the obvious cold hands problem.  The cold air seemed to be a bit tougher for the Phantom to navigate and cut into battery life.  Dad and Teresa really liked the footage I captured, showing their property in a way neither of them had seen before.

Unfortunately Patrick had to head home Sunday evening since he worked Monday.  It was great to see him.  We talked of doing a team tri event sometime in the future where Pat would run, Cindy would bike and I would swim.  We would kick some major ass.

Sunday night Teresa, dad, Cindy and I played some Scrabble, a game I am pretty sure I never played in the old table top format.  I wound up stealing defeat from the jaws of victory when I got caught with a Q in my hand when Cindy ended the game by emptying her tiles. Shucks.

Early on Monday there was surprising news, Teresa said one of the sheep had just given birth to TWIN lambs.   We all headed out to see them, they were both black and both surprisingly capable for just being brought into the world a few hours prior.  Teresa said that you had to make sure the babies feed from the mother shortly after birth which initially both of them seemed to have problems doing.  Thankfully they eventually figured it out.

Sheep don’t make it easy for their babies to eat.  They don’t lay down to allow babies to feed.  Instead they stand up with their bellies hanging very low to the ground.  The lambs have to wedge themselves under the mothers awkwardly to get anything.  It looked very uncomfortable.  So just like that, dad’s already large sheep count had jumped up to 14.  There was sheep shuffling that had to be done so the mother and babies could be in a small isolation pen. I also found out what a sheep placenta looks like and that the mother will often eat the placenta.  I would have been totally fine not seeing or knowing either thing.

During the day I made another aforementioned aerial sortie with the Phantom, going through two battery packs this time.  The bright sunshine made for much better picture quality.

Three of the four dogs were all limping at one time or another on Monday.  Sadie appeared to have some residual effects from running the sledding hill and would just pull up lame randomly if she tried to run too hard. Clara, who recently had dog ACL surgery would run like a maniac and then be walking on 3 legs shortly afterward.  Charlie had something going on with his front paw that was causing him pain so he was gimpy as well.  Maggie was the only dog that appeared to be pain free.

On Monday  Cindy made most of lunch and  dinner since Teresa was busy trying to tend to the two new lambs.  Both meals were great.  Teresa was definitely grateful for the assist.

So Monday evening I was tired and dirty.  I had hopped in the bathroom to take a well needed shower.  As I am in there Cindy comes to the door and tells me ANOTHER sheep just had TWIN lambs. You have to be kidding me.  This time it was a white and black lamb.  We now had a space problem.  There were no available isolation pens.  We had to somehow come up with a way to split the existing pens.

The first thing that had to be done was to get the other sheep outside and out of the way.  Moving the sheep around wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for Blackhawk, the only ram that still has it’s balls.  He is aggressive.  Dad and Teresa had described his behavior, specifically how he will try to ram you.  I got to experience this first hand on Monday.

As I was assisting in getting the sheep outside I found myself about 10 feet from Blackhawk.  Well he immediately drops his head and runs at me.  I caught his horns and grabbed them, stopping his momentum and then pushed him backwards with force, hoping it would convey the message he shouldn’t fck around with me. Well instead it seemed to just piss him off as he charged me again and again.  Although I am strong enough to stop him dead in his tracks, after 7 or 8 such efforts I was getting tired of it.  I side stepped one of his charges and then kept a tree between the two of us which finally put an end to his ramming attempts.

So anyway after some scrambling we used a a piece of metal fencing to temporarily split one of the stalls at a 45 degree angle using a combination of brackets and bungee cords to attach it.  It was during this process where I got up close and personal with sheep shit as I was on my knees driving in screws to attach the fence section.

Once the temporary divider was in place, getting the correct sheep where they belonged was very difficult.  Certain sheep were freaking out as they didn’t want to be split up.  Sheep are very attached to their flock and even more so to their mothers.  I found out that trying to physically restrain a panicked sheep is not for sissies.

There was another complication with this newest set of twins.  The mother appeared to be rejecting the white one.  Every time it would try to get under her to feed the mother would knock it away with her head.  Teresa was very worried and got out her sheep how-to manual for guidance.  It indicated it was very important for the babies to feed shortly after birth.  Since the mother wanted nothing to do with the white one Teresa wound up bottle feeding the poor little thing.

Both Cindy and Teresa tried a number of tricks listed in the book to get the mother to accept the white lamb which included some pretty disgusting activities like rubbing placenta on the lamb and other fluids so the scent was right.  None of it seemed to work.

Cindy was not afraid to jump right in and get her hands and everything else dirty.  She took turns feeding the baby, staying put even when the lamb took a leak on Cindy’s leg.  Cindy got to add lamb feeding to her list of firsts on the trip.

So originally before lamb twin set number two were born, we had made loose plans to go to the movies on Tuesday, our last full day in Marienville.  Well the modifications that we did to the isolation pens were not going to be very workable long term.  I told dad that he should utilize my being there, I would be fine helping him build a real wall to divide the pens on Tuesday.

He felt bad that our vacation had morphed into something so sheep-centric but I told him neither Cindy or I cared.  With dad’s physical condition it made sense for me to help him to make the job easier.  After taking my second shower of the day, I collapsed in bed.

We awoke Tuesday morning to another half foot of snow on the ground, awesome.  I tended the fire, a role I sort of absorbed as the days passed.  There is something satisfying with starting a successful fire.

Dad and I headed out relatively early to get the supplies we would need for the construction work.  The first stop was at an Amish woodmill for 10 foot long 1″ x 6″‘s.  I found the place fascinating as I walked into the office of the mill that was stationed with one of the sons.  He seemed somewhat surprised to have someone pull up on such a snowy morning.

The kid, who was maybe 15-17 was classic Amish in appearance, not a speck of facial hair, big brimmed hat, and hair that looked remarkably like steel wool.  I found the method used to run a woodmill interesting as well since the Amish do not utilize electricity.  All of the saws, planars, and sanders were driven from a centralized pulley drive that ran the length of the floor.  The system was powered by a diesel motor in an adjacent outbuilding.  I guess they simply connected and disconnected pulleys as needed.  This 100 year old way of doing things struck me as very cool.  Another one of the sons came out to help us load the 10 boards into the back of the truck.  The cost, $3 a board, made me do a double take.

The next stop was the hardware store to get fasteners, hinges and a 4×4 that would be used for the project.  I drove dads Tundra to the back of the store to throw the 4×4 in.  He said I should just stay behind the wheel when I came back around the front.  The 4×4 Tundra feels like a tank compared to my Tacoma.  Despite the snow covered roads it felt very sure footed.  I have considered replacing my Tacoma with a Tundra when the time comes. After a stop at the gas station we returned to the house ready to go.

Construction of the wall and new gate took place both indoors and outdoors.  Dad’s mitre saw rig was located in the adjacent open air storage area.  Although the two walls protected you from precipitation and some wind, it wasn’t exactly warm and cozy.  Building the wall required discarding any aversion to animal waste as we were working in the middle of sheep fecal central.  I simply didn’t think about it and did almost all of breathing exclusively though my mouth to minimize smell issues.

We got the front wall split/re-constructed and the new divider wall in place before lunch and then knocked out the gate afterwards.  As we were working Cindy and Teresa were taking turns tending to and formulating plans on how to care for Snowflake (initially named Tessa) since her mother continued to reject her.  The good news was at least the lamb was taking to bottle feeding pretty well.  When the baby was asleep on Teresa’s lap it looked so peaceful.

Finally we finished up and distributed the now sixteen sheep accordingly.  The space in the barn is now totally filled.  The bad news is there could be other ewes that are pregnant.  Yea dad, not getting Blackhawk fixed right away, not a great idea…

After construction there was another task to be done, plowing the driveway.  I told dad I would do it but I needed a brief refresher on the operation of his big Cub Cadet tractor which has both a front bucket and rear plowing blade.  I was a bit hesitant doing so as I recalled my frustration the last time dad had me on the tractor doing the same job.  He got annoyed with me because I was not plowing in the way he liked, probably because I never used a tractor to plow snow before.

Well this time around he left me alone for a good portion of the plowing experience which was good.  However when it came time to clear the area right in front of the garage doors he assumed the project manager role, directing me to clear the snow in a way that I was not going to, claiming my way would not work.  Dad stood there directing me with frustrated hand signals which only served to frustrate me more.  I was thoroughly frozen at this point so I was really not appreciating the additional direction.

Then when I finally thought I was done, and anxious to thaw out my feet and hands, dad wants me to use the tractor to clear snow around one of the gates so it is able to open more freely.  Well doing so required maneuvering the tractor in tight quarters with little room for error.  Dad went even heavier into his hand signals that were inaccurate because he was facing me, meaning the direction I needed to go at times was actually the reverse of what he was gesturing.  I just bit my lip and continued to scoop and dump snow until dad was satisfied with the radius the gate opened.

Much like the last time I sat on the tractor, I found it much more frustrating than fun.  It was like sitting in the seat of a time machine that took me back to my childhood.  Dad has many skills, being good at directing someone without losing patience is not one of them.  I parked the tractor, determined the next time I offer to plow dad’s driveway it will come with the requirement that he remains inside by the fireplace sipping a cup of coffee.  I will manage just fine on my own, I always do, lol.

Well Tuesday flew by as you would expect since there was so much going on.  Even so dad wanted us to do something fun.  He had been talking about going to The Kelly, a local bar to play team longboard. (tabletop shuffleboard)  Cindy and he had been doing some good natured trash talking about it.  Cindy is always happy for some sort of competitive event.

The bar was sparsely patronized, when we walked in there were two people at the bar and the bartender, that’s it.  We had a lot of fun drinking beers, playing longboard and eating a bar food dinner which wasn’t too bad.  The longboard teams were my dad and I against Teresa and Cindy.  We wound up each winning one game which worked out well.  The rubber match could wait until our next trip north.

Tuesday evening we had to pack up for our planned early departure Wednesday morning.  We found some time to chill out by the warm fire, the feelings of sadness about the trip coming to an end started to set in a little bit.

During our time there I  got close to Charlie, dad’s new dog.  Charlie is relegated to living in the heated garage since he appeared to never have been house broken.  He had this weird thing where sometimes when you would go in the garage, especially if the other dogs weren’t with you, he would bark and take an aggressive approach to you.  He did it to Cindy once and it scared her enough that she started going in the front door instead.

When he would do it to me I would put my arms out wide and say “Charlie, it’s me!”, within two seconds his tail would be wagging and we were best buddies again. He’s a good boy.  He loved playing with the other three dogs.

During our time there Cindy and Teresa really hit it off like I mentioned earlier which I was glad to see.  She seemed to fit right into the Marienville environment, despite it being as foreign as foreign can be compared to what she is used to. Dad and Cindy seemed to enjoy each other’s company as well.

So my alarm went off Wednesday morning at 5am for our planned 6am departure.  It was the warmest morning of the trip (figures) with temps in the mid 30’s.  It also happened to be raining.  I had heard on the news about the potential for icy conditions but I figured it couldn’t be so bad.  We loaded up the van and after one last goodbye to the sheep, the dogs, Dad and Teresa we shoved off for home.  The trip felt shorter than it was because we were so unexpectedly busy with the birth of 4 sheep in 24 hours.

As soon as I pulled onto Gilfoyle Road I felt my grip tighten on the steering wheel and my blood pressure rise.  The roads were icy, REALLY slippery.  As I approached the first intersection and turned onto 899 it was even worse.  The road looked ok, practically devoid of snow, however it was covered in ice.  Despite pulling out at a snail’s pace the van was losing traction.  I was genuinely worried and expressed it to Cindy which worried her even more.  I assured her we would be ok, even if I wasn’t quite so sure of it myself.

I kept the van in second gear so the engine could assist in braking as any sudden acceleration or deceleration was asking for trouble.  There were portions of open road where I was rolling around 25-30 mph and I could feel the rear wheels break free, it was downright dangerous.  Despite my difficulty, I pressed on slowly.  I started seeing oncoming vehicles flashing their headlights at me.  I was unsure of their intent but I knew it couldn’t be good.

We came upon a line of stopped vehicles that appeared to be at the crest of a small hill.  I assumed that somebody wiped out and was not surprised that they would.  While we we were stopped I got out to take a look under the hood.  There was a noise that sounded like a water pump bearing going bad that only started since arriving in cold PA. (Luckily since entering warmer climates the noise went away)

Anyway when I stepped on the road I could not believe how slippery it was.  It would be tough to walk on safely, trying to drive on it seemed like lunacy.  We sat there for a long time, probably close an hour.  During that time a firetruck approached and then backed off, probably not wanting to get stuck itself.

After awhile a snow plow came from the opposite direction spreading much needed road salt and cinders to break down the ice.  We talked to one guy that walked ahead to see what was going on.  He said two tractor trailers were stuck at the bottom of the hill and it didn’t seem like they were going to allow people past for awhile.

Despite my dislike for abandoning a plan , I decided it made sense to just turn around and go back to my dad’s place until the ice melted.  Since the salt truck just went the other way I was able to get back to the house pretty easily following it’s lead.  I called dad and gave him a heads up, letting him know we were delaying our departure.  He was on his way for a blood test but said Teresa was there.

We pulled back in and said hi to Charlie and Teresa once again.  We wound up staying at the house until shortly before 9AM to play it safe.  We said our second set of goodbyes and pulled out again.  This time the roads were much better, the ice was melted and we got onto the interstate without issue.

Since we got a 3 hour late start that put us behind from the get go.  I knew I had a long day of driving ahead.  The drive seemed slow, especially going through West Virginia that felt like it took half the day.  We must have traversed the absolute fattest portion of the state.  I found myself going into my almost trance like driving zone where endless miles roll by without much conscious thought occurring.  You say things like, oh, such a place is ONLY 300 miles away, like that is relatively close.

I set a mental goal of wanting to get at least get 800 miles under our belt since we did 913 on day one coming up.  In order to do so we wound driving until after 11 pm, pulling into a Savannah La Quinta in a near zombie-like state Wednesday night.  The La Quinta did not appear to merit the 4 star rating Cindy said it had (she later realized she misread it)  Hotels with outward facing doors almost always are not a good sign.  That proved to once again be the case.  The room was smelly, not well stocked with supplies, had a shower scaled for midgets and was just overall pretty shitty.  We hardly cared, we just wanted a place to crash.

Both Cindy and I were experiencing some weird dizzyness that night, perhaps from being dehydrated.  When I was emptying the van it felt like it was rocking.  When I took a shower it felt like I was on a ship, I literally was grabbing walls to steady myself.  It was bizarre that both of us had the same thing going on.

Despite our late finish, I still wanted to get up for an early start.  I set my alarm for 5:30 and then somehow managed to wake up without the alarm at 5AM.  Cindy was not happy about my early start but we used it to get a jump start on our final day of driving.  It seemed weird to be able to once again don a t-shirt and shorts for the drive after being in the midst of a winter wonderland 24 hours earlier.

The drive on Thursday went smoothly with no more winter weather to slow us down.  When Cindy drove I spent much of my time buried in Plants vs Zombies 2.  I cleared all 75 levels during the trip although some of the levels would bog me down for 30 minutes or more depending on the difficulty.

I also continued reading Inferno, which I started in Marienville,  the most recent Dan Brown book that Cindy bought for me months and months ago.  I never read books but when I do, I always regret not doing it more.

One of the reasons I wanted to get an early start was so we could stop at a used car dealership in Sarasota.  Before we left on the trip I had stumbled across a 2006 conversion van they had on it’s lot.  It seemed to be a really sweet upgrade to the 18 year old party van and was decked out with some nice tech/geek gear to boot.  When I had looked at the carfax they had available for it I saw it was bought at auction in October, meaning it has sat on their lot for 4-5 months.  I figured another few days would be no big deal.

Well of course you know what happens, I stop in and the guy tells me it was sold the day before, just my luck. I wasn’t looking hard for a new van but this one seemed worth investigating.  I guess the current party van will continue to serve it’s role as dog transport and comfortable road trip transportation for the near term future.

We got back to homebase around 4PM but we actually got off the exit about 2:30.  I had to drop off Sadie and get groceries on the way home as well.  We arrived tired but glad both that we made it home and that our trip was full of lasting memories and new experiences.

I was quite glad I took Friday off as well.  I have spent most of the day catching up on things.  Those things included putting the new bed cover on the Tacoma and setting up my new gel infused king size mattress for the guest room.  When I separated from Ali the king size mattress in the guest room became my bed and the guest room was filled with a queen size bed Jeremy donated to me.

A queen size bed is ok if you have a solo visitor but for couples it is pretty tight.  It felt good to have my guest accommodations back up to snuff.  I got lucky and was able to give away my old queen mattress to a co-worker of my neighbor.  They stopped by this afternoon and took it away.

This weekend I will have plenty to keep me going.

All of my pictures from the trip can be seen here.

My fingertips are starting to bleed, I think that is a good sign to stop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So as planned last night I was buzzing around the house attending to various pre-roadtrip needs.  I will be putting in a half day at work today and then heading home to resume prep.

One of the many things I did last night was pack up my Phantom is this SWEET travel case that is specifically designed for it and the typical accessories that go with the quad.  The case has a foam cut out for EVERYTHING I have and then some.  The case will make taking the Phantom out for various aerial sorties much more practical and much less risky.

Checking out the current weather conditions in the northeast do not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling since they are getting smacked with yet another nasty storm.  However if there is any good news to be taken from it, the area my dad lives is out of the dumping area.  Unfortunately we have to drive through a lot of dumping area to get there.  My optimistic thought is that by the time we are hitting those areas later in the day tomorrow enough time will have passed for road conditions to improve.

Depending on how well or poorly the drive goes, we may be stopping by to say hi to my sister briefly in State College on route to Marienville.

The van will be pulling out well before sunrise tomorrow to get a good headstart on the roughly 1300 miles we will be covering in two days of driving.  Another 7 days of road trip memories will begin getting forged shortly. Onward.

 

So I hurried home last night and got busy with van maintenance.  I threw it up on the ramps and changed the oil and filter.  Every time I do this with the van I always emerge from underneath it feeling like I am running on borrowed time.  You see the party van spent the majority of it’s life in the brutal snowbelt of Michigan.  As a result the underside of it is one big rusty mess from countless road salt baths.  It almost seems impossible that the van has carried me as far as it has with that much corrosion going on.  I am crossing my fingers it will get me through one more trip.

Speaking of the trip, the storm that is supposed to hit Wednesday night into Thursday sounds positively awful.  My hope is that by the time we enter into the start of the kill zone later Friday that road crews will have made things passable.  Even if that is the case, I have no doubt there will be some challenging driving conditions I will be encountering.  If the forecast holds, it will be absolutely frigid when we pull into my dad’s place on Saturday.

So anyway after changing the oil I also topped off the coolant and windshield washer fluid, two things crucial to cold weather driving. I plan to grab a fresh set of wiper blades as well on the way home tonight.

Tonight I will be doing more prep in earnest, as expected.

So last night I started the prep for the trip albeit minor prep.  I stopped and grabbed food for Sadie  on the way home from work, washed the bedding in the van and started to pull out a few things for the trip.  This morning I dumped my two used oil containers at Wal-mart and picked up fresh oil in to put in the van tonight since it just hit 3000 miles since the  last change in September.

I had a funny encounter with one of the guys in the automotive department that helped me dump the oil.  I have seen this guy before, he is older, short, with glasses and a straggly beard that is half gray.  He almost reminds me of a dwarf from Lord of the Rings.  Well I have seen this guy before, he has a noticeably different personality, somewhat eccentric but noticeably happy and upbeat, despite working in what is surely a stressful job.  Dealing with people that get their cars serviced at Wal-mart cannot be much fun.

Anyway as he was dumping my used oil he started singing.  The fact that he was singing was somewhat unusual but what he chose to sing is what really made it’s mark, “Fairy tales do come true, it can happen to you, if you’re young at heart…”  Good for him.

Tonight’s van prep will include the oil change, topping off the antifreeze level and the washer fluid.  I also need to look closely at my bills so I can pay anything that comes due while I am out of town.

I am planning to take my Phantom/GoPro along to PA.  I think it would be pretty epic to capture some winter aerial scenery although I’m not sure how the quad is going to like flying in below freezing temperatures.

I saw the weather forecast for the next few days for the east coast, there is a bad storm rolling in that has the potential to drop a lot of ice in the more southern states.  The “good” news is that it is supposed to go down in the Wednesday/Thursday time frame.

The forecast in my dad’s area looks quite brisk.  I am pretty sure Cindy will get a full appreciation of snow and winter in the first 24 hours.  🙂

Ah a couple things I forgot to mention.  On Friday we watched the Biggest Loser finale, the show was filled with impressive amounts of weight loss by several individuals.  Well the actual winner this season had a weight loss that was disturbing, something I never have seen before.

She started the show in the 260’s and showed up on finale night a gaunt and clearly anorexic looking 105 pounds.  The look on the trainer’s faces said it all.  It wasn’t a look of pride for what they helped craft, it was look of distress for a person that clearly went over the edge, trading in an unhealthy obese lifestyle for an unhealthy skeleton thin one instead.  She swapped one eating disorder for another, clearly not the goal of the show.

She didn’t look fit or healthy, she looked emaciated.  I found it hard to believe that the show producers do no monitoring of the contestants for the few weeks between when they leave the ranch to finale night.  If they did, someone surely would have raised the red flag. Even though she is only 23, Rachel looked old, sporting wrinkles in her face from her drastic weight loss and malnutrition.

It was very disturbing end to this season.  I can only hope producers take steps in the future to make sure that contestants don’t lose their mind and engage in things that lead to what we saw on the scale with Rachel.  She lost something ridiculous like 175 pounds which equated to nearly 60% of her original body weight.  It will be very interesting to see where Rachel is weight wise in a year.  Hopefully she doesn’t follow the path some past contestants have chosen where they ride that weight roller coaster back upwards approaching the level they started.

This weekend I finally finished up months long consumption of the entire Sopranos series which I started right after James Gandolfini died in June.  It was great being able to take in all that tv greatness in a relatively short period of time.  Unfortunately the ending, which I actually did see the first time it aired, still sucked.  Oh well.

 

Saturday morning I followed through with my plan to reboot my running program.  Cindy and I did a little over 3 miles at the nearby track.  Running on the track can deliver a pretty high dosage of boredom as you circle the same 400 meters again and again but it is also nice to know exactly how far you have gone and how far you have yet to go without a GPS.

I had to derail Cindy from her usual talk heavy tendencies as the run went on.  Since I hadn’t run since New Year’s Day I wasn’t feeling all that great.  When I don’t feel all that great I try to insulate my mind from my body by letting it drift to whatever subject it lands on.  Responding to someone else’s conversation breaks that process.  The good thing is Cindy knows that and if I give her the NTZ (no talk zone) indicator, she is pretty good at just letting me be.

My GPS and Cindy’s had a pretty large disagreement on how far and how fast we ran.  My Garmin said we logged something like 3.29 miles at an 8:33 pace.  Cindy’s said we did something like 3.17 at a 9:00 pace.  I liked my numbers better.  Either way I felt well exerted and as a bonus left the track without a limp.  My right knee felt ok.

When I got back to the house I headed outside to tend to outdoor chores.  Despite the extensive efforts that were put into the protecting the garden during recent cold spells the tomatoes have officially bit the dust.  I ripped out the two dead plants.

I had everything finished up by noon clearing the way for my next automotive project, bypassing the transmission cooler on my Tacoma.

You may wonder why I was bypassing my perfectly good factory trans cooler?  Well recently a guy commented on one of my other Tacoma videos, thanking me for the guidance it gave him on his repair.  He also clued me in to another common failure of Tacomas around the age of mine, trans cooler ruptures.  Evidently the factory transmission  cooler, which is enclosed within the radiator has a history of failing.  If that happens, antifreeze is pumped into the transmission which will kill it shortly thereafter.  Well the last thing I need to is to replace the transmission on my 15 year old truck so I figured installing a $40 trans cooler was a good insurance policy.

I won’t go into vast detail on the trials and tribulations of the replacement (there were many) as they are outlined in the video.  The end result was I got the cooler installed albeit using methods that are less than ideal in my book.  I will be keeping an eye on the front end of the truck to make sure I don’t see any trans fluid puddles going forward.  So far, so good.

On Saturday night we watched Don Jon, a movie about a guy that is majorly addicted to porn.  The movie was entertaining enough but I can’t really tell you much about the plot, I am not sure if there really was much of one. It was a solid Netflix rental but if you are a sexual prude, steer clear. It gets a firm (no pun intended) B.

Sunday morning was utilized mostly to get more maintenance done, both the automotive and landscape variety.  Cindy’s Miata was due for an oil change.  She helped me do the work and actually enjoyed participating.  After that I recharged her AC system as it was not blowing cold air anymore, despite the large chunk of money Cindy spent getting the compressor replaced last year.

Adding coolant to the system got it blowing cold again.  I am hoping whatever is leaking is doing so in small quantity so I can just recharge it every couple of months of instead of throwing more repair money into the Miata which is already firmly in the “throwing good money after bad” category when it comes to repair costs.

After car maintenance was completed we headed to the backyard for landscape work.  The areca palms outer fronds had all turned brown from the cold temps.  I wanted to give them a nice haircut, they were overgrown anyway.  I threw the hedge trimming attachment on my weed whacker and went nuts, leaving piles of decapitated palm fronds in my wake.

Cindy was on clean up duty, picking up the fronds and throwing them in the yard cart I had attached to the tractor, dumping them in the trench in the rear of the yard.  Having her help made the task go MUCH faster than it would have flying solo.

Most of Sunday afternoon was low key.  Sometime mid-afternoon a thought hit me as I glanced at the calendar while doing my bills.  I noticed that next Monday was President’s Day, a day off for me.  I recalled that Cindy said she had off Friday and Saturday as well.  I wondered if somehow I could turn this into a short notice road trip to PA to visit my dad and step mom?

In March I have work and race commitments that would make a trip impossible.  If I wanted to do it in 2014 it would have to be now.  When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was all for it, she was excited about the prospect of seeing and playing in snow in person, something she never has had a chance to do, ever.  Of course this was all preliminary, I had to get a number of things lined up, first of all checking with Dad if he is ok with a short notice visit.

Dad was surprised by my proposal but happy to hear it.  After verifying with my step mom, since she is the one who winds up doing most work associated with having company, he said he was cool with us coming up.

Next up I floated the idea to Ali. Ideally I would have liked to take both dogs along for the visit, despite the fecal disaster I encountered last year from Nicki.  Ali was not agreeable to my taking Nicki again for fear of a relapse of that very poopy scenario so Sadie will be making the trek solo.  However once we get to my dad’s place she will have my dad’s three dogs to keep her company.  She will have a TON of fun.

Today I got the green light from work to take the time off so the trip is officially a go.

All of a sudden I now I have a massive list of things to get handled before the early Friday morning departure.  I have a lot of mental checklists to mark off.  Of course a lot of those marks are party van related.  Everytime I push off for another road trip in the van it is always a leap of faith to some degree since it is an 18 year old vehicle.  However each time I have called it into action it has gotten me to and from my numerous destinations with only a few small bumps in the road.

This winter in PA has been brutal, cold and long.  The temps at my dad’s place have been non-stop frigid almost every day since Christmas. We will be lucky to see a couple days that get above freezing. It will be quite the eye opener for Cindy since she gets cold when temps dip into the 60’s. Seeing the new sheep and llama additions to my dad and stepmom’s animal menagerie should be fun as well.

I got a call from my accountant yesterday letting me know he was done with my taxes already.  I am hoping the refund I am getting will be enough to cover getting the pool enclosure re-screened, something that is probably a year or two overdue.  There are a number of panels on the top of the cage that are torn along the spline.

 

 

Last night I “made dinner” for Cindy and myself, juice.  When I was flying solo I had a period of time where I was juicing pretty regularly and days I didn’t juice a lot of my meals were wraps with just veggies/nuts in them.  It’s probably not a coincidence that when I was doing that I weighed 10 pounds less.

I got away from juicing primarily because I found it to be above the hassle quotient I was willing to tolerate with food prep.  Between prepping/cleaning the fruits/veggies to juice and the pretty messy clean up afterwards I just tired of it. Not only was cleaning the juicer a PIA, cleaning up the food shrapnel that sprays out during the juicing process was annoying as well.

Well last week I got the inspiration to pick up the juicing ball, at least on a limited basis.  I am thinking maybe I could do it one or two times a week as a dinner replacement.  Cindy, who is always game for pretty much anything healthy lifestyle related was excited to juice.  Well she was less excited after taking the first sip.

The juice was a mixture of celery, carrots, tomatoes, and beets.  By the time I was finished the juice container was filled to the very brim.  I would best describe the juice as tasting very “earthy” as in like you were drinking dirt.

I attributed the taste to perhaps me not cleaning the beets as thoroughly as I should have although I don’t think I did anything differently than I did in the past.   The only thing  I might have done differently in the past was add an orange or apple to it as well.

Cindy tried to amend the dirt juice by mixing in some orange juice from the bottle.  She said it didn’t help much.  I choked mine down as is.  Cindy got hers down as well.  So our dinner last night consisted of a salad and the cup of dirt juice.  Surprisingly I didn’t feel ravenous later.  Despite the bad taste, the juice was a super concentrated shot of everything great fresh vegetables gives you .

I watched some of the Olympics last night, I originally thought the opening ceremonies were last night.  Instead it was just some of the events like snowboarding and skating.  Still I watched a hour or so of it.

I mixed it in with doing so server work at the office from home.  I have been trying to get a few things implemented this week and have only been partially successful in doing so which is frustrating.  I followed up with getting to work an hour early this morning to continue tweaking.

This weekend has a lot of potential things to keep me busy.  I may try to start it off with putting in 3-5 miles at the local track to see how my tricky right knee feels.  After that the chores will begin in earnest.  I would like to get the auxiliary trans cooler I bought for the Tacoma installed and perhaps a partial trans fluid swap while I am at it.  I have the supplies to change the oil on Cindy’s Miata as well so that should get knocked out too.   The front discs on the Tacoma are going to need to be replaced in the near future as well.

So yesterday I was pointed to various stories that were tied into a statement made by Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary.   The full statement was this:

Over the longer run, CBO finds that because of this law, individuals will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time rather than working into their elderly years or choosing to spend more time with their families. At the beginning of this year, we noted that as part of this new day in health care, Americans would no longer be trapped in a job just to provide coverage for their families, and would have the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

However conservatives took a few key words to represent the statement in a manner that is obviously 180 degrees different than how it was intended.  This tactic is used again and again by the media to gain influence with the massive portion of the population that are too ignorant, lazy , or indifferent to actually form their own opinions.

Carney was saying that the availability of the ACA act allows individuals to not be stuck in a job that is inadequate in other ways because it was the only way they could get health insurance for themselves and/or their family. They can instead pursue other work or even start a business without fear of not having a way to get affordable health care insurance.  Conservatives and their media counterparts instead ingested this positive idea and crapped out that instead it means it encourages people to quit their jobs, stay at home and have others pay for their healthcare.

Anyone with the ability to construct a sentence of more than 5 words should be able to see just how ridiculous it is to interpret what Carney really said as meaning “Americans should stop working to “pursue their dreams” (stay at home).  It’s absolutely moronic yet sadly there are millions of Americans that will eat every morsel of this bullshit and come back asking for seconds.

America is so fcked up.  Thank you Koch brothers for your diligent and tireless work to ensure this is more and more the status quo every single day.  Distract the masses by pitting them against each other while those at the top chuckle at all of us from their golden balconies.

Last night had a nice combo of activities that I find enjoyable.  I wanted to do the bar dip version of this month’s BB challenge but I wanted to do it from a different perspective, overhead.   To do so I mounted my new GoPro on the Phantom.

To mount the camera I actually used the waterproof mount that came with the camera, the mount that comes with the Phantom is actually a little big for the Hero 3+ which is smaller than the Hero 3.

I also utilized my moon gel.  I put one piece under the foot that attached to the bottom of the quadracopter and then another under the camera inside the waterproof mount.  The combo seemed to work very well, there was very minimal distortion in the video.  I still need to balance the props, the audio from the flight make the props sound quite “buzzy”.

So anyway, I figured with the very wide field of view the GoPro has and the ability of the Phantom to more or less hover in place without pilot input, I should be able to film my attempt from above.  Mounting the GoPro in the waterproof case actually resulted in the cam being upside down.  Luckily the GoPro has the ability to flip video on the fly just by telling it that UP is the other direction.

So I got the copter in the air and positioned it so it looked like the GoPro was more or less pointed at the pull up bar.  I set the transmitter on the table and got to work.  The copter drifted around slightly due to wind but with the wide angle lens it didn’t matter.  I think it turned out quite well, I will surely dig deeper into this video recording method in the future.  Here is the finished product.

After the challenge was over I flew around some more, capturing some more cool aerial footage.  I am having ideas float around in my head of some future uses of my flying aerial rig that could be pretty cool.

My enjoyable night was rounded out with some gaming time playing both WoW (dinged 90 with my second toon) and Hearthstone (kicked some ass with my Warlock & Hunter).  It felt good to have a  night of doing nothing except what I want to do instead of things I have to do.

I had a weird dream last night.

I was back at the house I grew up at in Gouglersville.  I was walking down the road near the bottom of the hill with my dad.  We had Sadie along.  Dad had her on a long extend-a-leash.  The creek that runs along the road was much bigger than I remember, looking more like a small river.

Sadie, as she often does, was far ahead exploring.  She headed down the slope that lead into the creek/river and started wading in.  Before I knew it she was a good 15 feet from shore with my dad still holding the leash.  I yell to my dad, “You shouldn’t let her go in there, there are sharks!”  “I know, I know” my dad said in his mildly dismissive tone.  Dad is never one to take much heed to potential danger, confident that he will always somehow fall outside the odds.

Well as soon as my dad gets done speaking I see two large shadows moving quickly in the water which was no more than knee deep.  As my eyes focused I saw it was not one but TWO sharks and big ones at that, 7-8 feet long at least.  I scream at my dad, who was now in the creek/river himself as Sadie pulled along,  about the sharks.  He says he sees them and starts “running” as fast as you can in knee high water, pulling Sadie back behind him.

As Dad is hauling ass towards the bank the sharks pass directly in front of him, I was sure he was going to either step on them or trip over them.  He somehow avoids them and makes it to shore, however he momentarily forgets that Sadie is still in the water.  I run towards him and yell, “GO, GO, GO” meaning he needed to pull Sadie out the rest of the way.

My eyes widened as Sadie was moving towards land, both sharks had swung around and were hauling ass straight towards her, like twin torpedoes.  As Sadie came out of the water the sharks shot out of the water, missing her barely before they both roll back into the river/creek.

Sadie had no idea anything was wrong at all, standing there with her typical dog smile after she shook off the water.  End of dream.

 

 

Feel free to ignore this.

I forgot to mention that Monday night I watched This is 40, a comedy about what married life is like after you cross the four decade barrier.  It had some really funny parts that I could definitely identify with.  Unfortunately the movie suffered from another bout of drowsiness on my part, my eyes closed quite a bit during it.  Still, it was definitely a solid Netflix rental, deserving of at least a B+ rating.

All of a sudden yesterday I started seeing a locust swarm of “My FB Movies” popping up on people’s timelines. Evidently as part of celebrating being in existence for 10 years, Facebook has implemented some sort of script that creates a 62 second video for each and every user, scraping their metadata to poop out a recap of their “lives” on Facebook.  It appears to do so primarily by using pictures and updates that received the most attention.

This morning I posted that I would not be sharing MY FB movie with anyone.  Part of it is based on my dislike for lemming mentality. Part of is it my like of absurd/ironic statements, since most aspects of my life have been out front and naked in social media for the last half decade or more.  For me, of all people, to say I don’t want to share my canned FB movie makes no sense. Working as intended.