Archives April 2016

Last night when I got home I got started on doing some prep work for the eventual sale of my 99 Tacoma.  I grabbed my socket set and checked the torque on my valve cover bolts.  It seemed like there was some minor seepage of oil going on.  I found a couple that felt loose.  I then grabbed my bottle of degreaser and went to town under the hood. The engine compartment had not been cleaned in many, many years.  In addition to spraying down the area I hit what I could with a stiff brush as well. I also got down on the wet driveway and sprayed the bottom of the engine and transmission to remove years of oil/grease build up.  I thoroughly soaked the engine so I made sure to fire it up and let it run for awhile to dry it out thoroughly.  Things under the hood looked much better when I was done.

I also tried working on a small section of the gross, poor quality clear coat on the passenger side.  The stuff that has not peeled off has become very dark and dirty looking, not a good thing when your truck is white.  At first I tried rubbing the dirty clear coat with a magic eraser, hoping it would help brighten it up.  It had little to no effect.

I then grabbed a small section of sand paper and lightly sanded the shitty clear coat.  I sprayed it with the hose as I worked, my version of wet sanding I guess.  The sand paper did seem to do the trick, the problem is it makes the area look scratched which I may be able to address with finer grit paper.  The experimental section I worked on was about the size of a dollar.  I will do some more experimentation this week.

I also pulled out my trusty bottle of Nu Finish.  I became familiar with the product back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  You may remember their commercials where they would go into a junk yard and polish up the hood of junk cars, turning faded paint to bright and shiny.

I have used the product for a long time.  I remember in the late 80’s my mom gave me her Chevy Citation, sometime after I crashed and wrecked my 69 Buick Special Deluxe that she also bought for me for $600.

The Citation was a decent car and it’s 4 speed manual transmission allowed it to do pretty incredible front wheel drive burnouts if called upon.  It’s biggest visual flaw was it’s yellow paint was fading pretty badly. When it came time to sell it I gave the Chevy a head to toe Nu-Finish polish and it truly did transform the paint.  It looked great and surely helped me get a few more bucks when we sold it.  Ever since then I have been a Nu-Finish believer.

The sun was going down so I just wanted to do a small section of the Tacoma hood to see how it worked.  It was hard to tell just how dramatic the change was in the low light but it definitely looked better.  Sometime this weekend I hope to get a couple hours to go over the entire truck, hoping for similar results as I had with mom’s Citation close to 30 years ago.

Man can you believe Kobe Bryant scored 60 points in the last game of his 20 year career? Wow talk about going out with a bang.  Good for him.

So yesterday I was back and forth with a sales rep at the Delray Toyota dealership.  They told me they had the truck I was looking for except it was the four door double cab with the shorter 5 foot bed instead of the 6 foot bed an access cab has.  I might have been able to deal with the shorter bed but there was one thing I couldn’t deal with, the sunroof.  The premium technology option with the double cab includes a power moonroof which is something most people would like, including myself.  However the problem with a power moonroof is it requires a headroom penalty.  In the case of the Tacoma you lose around three inches with the option which would be enough to put the top of my head firmly in contact with the roof of the truck.  In most cases being tall is a good thing.  This is one of the rare cases it is a drawback.

After letting the sales guy know the double cab won’t work he told me they had exactly what I want coming in about two weeks.  He emailed me the specs of the truck and I verified it had all the bells and whistles I was looking for as well as being an access cab model, sweet.  I told him that was what I was looking for and asked him what was required next.

He responded back that a deposit will hold the truck which I agreed to.  I did so via my credit card.  The weird thing is I have a deposit on a truck without knowing what my final price will be.  I know I will be getting Costco guaranteed pricing but the dealer will not show you the price unless you are physically there with your print out from Costco and your membership card.   My car salesman background makes me still weary of the dealership trying to do some fuzzy math when I show up however the Costco affiliation would be in jeopardy if they try to fck around so hopefully it will go smoothly.

I went a step further and got pre-approved on financing the truck through my credit union.  My strong credit score qualified me for a 1.75% interest rate.  Getting the loan already handled makes the transaction very simple.  I write them a down payment check and hand them the voucher from the credit union and I am done.  Of course the dealer would love to have an opportunity to make back end money on me by financing in house, selling loan insurance or an extended warranty. It is an opportunity they won’t be getting in my situation.

I now need to start thinking about the sale of my 99 Tacoma.  There are a few things I would like to do/clean up to make the truck as sellable as possible.  There isn’t much I can do with the exterior since a poor clear coat that was  applied when the truck was repaired prior to my ownership is peeling off on the passenger side.  I may try to at least polish the hood to get some shine back.  The interior of the truck is in solid shape and it still is running well despite almost 190,000 miles on the odometer.  I was surprised to see in my research that even at 17 years of age and that number of miles I could realistically sell the Tacoma for around $4000 which would be like a cherry on top.

This morning I once again awoke without an alarm, over an hour before it was scheduled to go off.  I get annoyed when I waste potential sleep time since it is generally in short supply.

So far I have met with nothing but frustration in my efforts to get a Toyota dealer to assist me in my search for an Inferno 2016 Tacoma with 2WD, an access cab, and the premium technology option package.  I have expanded my search to some east coast dealers but mostly got a run around where they were quoting me bullshit inflated MSRP prices.  When I informed them I knew what actual MSRP was supposed to be on the truck the communication stopped.

Well last night I think I may have found a a light to guide me through the fog of “stealerships”, Costco.  I knew that Costco had some sort of car buying service for their members but didn’t know much about it.  Evidently certain dealerships sign on to be Costco affiliated.  In turn for this affiliation which funnels customers in their doors they agree to no haggle, discounted pricing on their vehicles for Costco members which is in most cases below MSRP.

When I went on their website and punched in my zip code it revealed that no Toyota dealers in my immediate area participate in the program, surprise, surprise.  So I went old school, picked up the phone, and called Costco.  The woman I got on the phone was great.  She said although no one in my immediate area was a participant in the program, there was a Toyota dealer in Delray Beach that was.  Delray is on the other coast but close enough to buy a vehicle from if it potentially will save me $2000 or more.  The woman confirmed that the dealer MUST honor Costco member pricing and in fact Costco double checks after the sale to make sure they do, awesome. Immediately after the call I got an automated email from the dealer about the Costco contact.  I am hoping sometime today we can get the ball rolling.

The other issue I have been having is availability.  The combo of things I am looking for are not plentiful and the trucks I have found on the Toyota site are being sold before they even get to the dealer.  I found out that I can actually place a factory order for a Tacoma with the exact specs I want, something I thought was only a possibility for domestic car companies. But since the Tacoma is actually built in the US I have that option available to me which is again, awesome.

When you factory order a truck not only do you get exactly what you want, you also avoid some of the bullshit add ons the regional distributor puts on a vehicle and then overcharges you dramatically for, a sweet bonus.  The only negative is time, it could easily take two months or longer for me to get the new truck.  However in my situation, that is hardly a negative at all since I have no pressing need to have the new vehicle asap.  In a way it would feel good to step out of the instant gratification cycle that engulfs most of our society and actually wait for something.

I had a very weird dream last night where I was in a bike race around a track.  We were on the last lap and there were a number of bikers tire to tire.  I had no desire to be that close to the other bikers so I laid back a safe distance.  Just as we were entering the last turn one of the lead bikes in that pack wiped out and caused a chain reaction, taking out at least 10 bikes behind him.  I swung around the pile up and got up off my seat, pedaling as hard as I could, hoping I somehow could now be one of the top finishers.  The dream ended with me still unsure of my official place but excited that my caution transformed into an advantage at the end.

Last night on my way home I saw a baby deer running down the other side of the divided road all by itself.  Of course my initial reaction was to see if I had any way to quickly turn around to get over there.  I had no pull offs or turn around points for at least a half mile.  I saw there was a biker about 100 yards from the deer.  I hoped he was a good samaritan and would at least make sure the little deer got off the roadway.  I felt guilty for not doing more.

I made a last minute decision to take last Friday off.  Of course as is often the case, the day was targeted as an opportunity to do more work around the house as opposed to relaxation.  There were two projects on the agenda for Friday,rebuilding the door to the chicken run and laying castle stones.

Before we got to work I drove Cindy to the fitness center where she has been teaching classes.  While she taught the half hour class I walked to the Pet Supermarket right up the street to grab some stuff for Tuki.  On the way home we stopped at Home Depot to grab another pallet of 60 castle stones.

The original door to the chicken run was built out of 2×4’s with hardware cloth.  In the year it has been in place the 2×4’s have started to warp which was making the door difficult to close and left uneven gaps around the opening.  A couple weeks ago Cindy and I bought a gate kit that is designed to fit a variety of openings.  It is basically a steel frame that you attach your own lumber to.  Having the core of the gate being steel should prevent the warping problem.

Assembly of the new door was not hard but it took me much longer than the one hour time listed on the box of course. The extra time was spent mostly coming up with the face board layout and adjusting the opening to allow for maximum swing.  We discovered that if you close the door while inside the run you were potentially locked in due to the new latch arrangement. Cindy came up with an emergency string set up that will allow us to open the latch from the inside, just in case.  We were both very pleased with the new door as it looked good and felt very sturdy.

While I was working on the door Cindy was busy doing the preliminary placement of another big load of castle stones.  Originally we were going to line the rock area with the smaller castle stones but I reconsidered when I stood out there and looked at the area again.  Visually I thought it would look better to use the same size/style of stone we had on the pool border. The larger size of the castle stone would also provide a better barrier to stones kicked around by the chickens. By the end late afternoon rolled around both Cindy and I were beat.

As we were cleaning up Cindy took notice of a bird circling over the back yard that at first looked like a hawk.  She said she saw it dive bombing something in the back yard.  It’s flying pattern looked very non-hawk-like to me.  We found out later it was probably a Cara Cara which is a type of falcon.

Cindy saw the small animal still moving in the yard so I said we should go out and see what it is.  I told Cindy I was worried it could be a baby bird as in the past there have been some ground nesting birds in the back yard.  My fear was confirmed when we saw a small baby bird struggling in the grass.  I didn’t see any blood but it seemed like the falcon damaged it’s wing.  It was a small turtle dove, a very common bird on our property.

As we got close the little bird jumped and carried on, afraid we were yet another predator.  Cindy and I had a very brief discussion about what to do.  Cindy asked if we should just let nature take it’s course.  I of course did not like that option and said we should try to do something.  Although the bird was injured it didn’t seem like a fatal injury.  Cindy carefully picked up and held the bird as I put some shavings in a rubbermaid bin to hold it temporarily.  The little guy carried on a little bit but seemed to settle down once he realized we weren’t trying to harm it.

Cindy called the local animal conservancy and found out she could still drop the bird off today.  We pulled out one of the small bird animal carriers in the shed to put the baby in.  Cindy drove the bird there while I finished clean up from the projects.  I really appreciated Cindy going out of her way to take the little bird in.  The good news was the people at the conservancy said they think he will recover from his injury.

Speaking of birds we had been noticing some weird behavior from one of our black hens, Cupcake.  She had been spending tons of time in the nesting box.  A couple times we found her in the nesting box at night even.  In addition Cindy noticed she was missing some feathers on her belly.  We were worried she had some sort of health problem so we looked up the symptoms online.  What we discovered was she was healthy but was exhibiting “broody” behavior.

When a hen becomes broody that means they are wanting to hatch baby chicks.  As a result they will sit on eggs, even unfertilized ones endlessly, hoping they will hatch.  We read that the hen will actually pull it’s own feathers off it’s belly to expose skin to facilitate more heat transfer to the eggs.  When chickens get broody they can become more ill tempered and will sometimes stop laying eggs.  Their broodiness can also become somewhat contagious, making other hens become broody as well.

Typically a broody chicken will snap out of it after 3 weeks.  You can try to shorten that time span by removing the hen from the nesting box which we have been doing when we see her camping out there.  In addition over the weekend we have been putting Cupcake in the old chicken tractor and run to isolate her from the other hens while giving her plenty of room to roam around if she chooses.  Even in the tractor she has been spending most of the time up top in the boxes, trying to hatch babies that will never come.  It is a bit sad in a way but hopefully she will snap out of it sooner rather than later.

On Saturday we had our second day of mostly hard labor.  Cindy and I swapped places, she worked on doing the finish work on the new door, sanding and painting it.  I was on my knees leveling the castle stones.  After looking at how the stone was sitting currently, taking note of any forward or side lean I would pull it out and then throw down some paver base.  I would then use my level to make sure the front and back of the stone was more or less even with the previous stone.  It didn’t take real long for each stone but when you have to do it 60 times it added up to a nice tedious session of work.  When I was done Cindy and I both were glad we went with the same style stone we used for the pool area.  It just looked good.  Now that we have solid barriers in place we can get more rock/rubber mulch to even out the area the chickens have excavated.

On Saturday night we were both beat from two days of yard work.  We stayed home and watched our latest Netflix rental, “Burnt”.  It seemed like it was almost a Gordon Ramsey biography, complete with a a loud mouth chef that threw things and swears a lot.  It just had nothing all that interesting going on.  I’d give it a B- rating.  Cindy rated it lower.

On Sunday I was determined to not have the last day of my three day weekend be another labor intensive workfest.  The temperatures Sunday morning were surprisingly cool, in the mid-50’s to start.  Despite us both feeling sore, I pushed for us to do a bike ride, the shorter 20 mile back and forth to Dunkin Donuts.

I mounted my GoPro to the drops on my handlebar to capture the ride from a unique 1080P perspective.  When I reversed the camera direction for part of the return ride I got a lot more crotch and a lot less of Cindy than I intended.  As is normally the case with this route, on the way there we enjoyed getting pushed by a tailwind and on the way back we fought against the same wind in our face.  With the cool temperatures it made the ride more or less enjoyable overall, way better than the 30+ mile hot and humid Ave Maria ride when Randall visited a couple weeks ago.  Even with the modifications I made to my Trek, raising the handle bars and adding aero bars, my $300 Dawes still is more comfortable for me to log miles on, despite it’s much heavier weight.

During Sunday afternoon we did actually get to chill out a little bit.  I hung the hammock I bought Cindy for Christmas and pulled over a chair next to it.  I read a little bit while Cindy was on the iPad.  It was such a beautiful day.  A couple times Cindy and I looked upon the various fruits of our labor with pride.  We really have done a lot.

We had our first Tarpons game of the year on Sunday.  The 5:30 start time was a bit odd but it worked out well as far as the chicken bedtime goes, we would be home shortly after they go into the coop for the night.   This is my 4th year as a Tarpons season ticket holder.  I was hoping that perhaps this was the year that fan attendance finally picked up.  When we sat down we quickly saw that was not the case.  We were literally the ONLY two people in our entire section.  If I were to estimate, maybe 300-400 people total were there.

Things really hadn’t changed much in other areas either.  They had the same silly contests, the same low rent small cheerleading squad, and a product on the field that was less than exciting.  The Tarpons did not really play that well.  Their QB Chris Wallace looked fatter than ever and made a bunch of bad throws, repeatedly missing open receivers.  Despite this they still crushed their opposition, 65-22.  Hopefully this isn’t another season of lopsided blowouts.  I find it to hard to believe that the team has made it to a 4th year.  They HAVE to be bleeding money at this point. Somehow after going to see the Tarpons for going on 4 years I still underdressed for the game.  I was frozen due to the ice rink being under the football field.  I will be wearing long pants from now on.

The big highlight of the game for us came very early.  The Central Florida Jaguars QB overthrew his receiver, sending the ball into the floor area just over the wall.  One of the Tarpons DB had half flipped over the wall trying to defend the pass.  He stretched far to reach the ball and then flipped it to me since we were literally the only fans in the area which was cool.  I am now the owner of TWO game balls after catching another a couple years ago.  I am sure they will be collector items someday, not. We got home around 8:15, leaving mid 4th quarter when the game outcome was already decided.

It was obviously a very busy three day weekend.  Maybe sometime in the future I will actually feel caught up on home projects.  I just don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon.

So when the guy backed out of the sale of my SSR last week, flipping from seemingly all in to all out in the span of 18 minutes it was a classic case of buyers remorse.  When I sold the truck on Monday I described how I felt surprisingly little sadness as we pulled out of the driveway of it’s new home.  I wondered if as time passed if a little bit of seller’s remorse would come into play for me.  Four days post sale I can tell you so far, absolutely not.   I’m enjoying the money in my bank account and the extra space in the garage. I removed the pic of my SSR that adorned the background of my iPhone for the last several years without feeling any sense of pause whatsoever.

I have been trying to find a car dealership that is interested in taking my money in exchange for tracking down a Tacoma  with the trim, color and equipment I am interested in.  I have found no less than three vehicles, complete with VIN numbers on the Toyota web site of trucks in our region that would work for me.  I have provided this information to two dealers and have not heard any follow up.

Since I sold cars briefly for a little less than a year and a half in my early 20’s I have some insight into the process.  If I had a customer lead where they were ready to buy and all I had to do was provide/find the vehicle they wanted I would have busted my ass to make it happen.  So far, at least in Toyota world, it seems like if the dealer does not have the vehicle already sitting on their lot they just don’t want to be bothered.  Plus to make it work for them they normally need to have a truck in their own inventory they are willing to trade to another dealer, otherwise it gets costly.

I’m sure I will eventually find somebody that gives a damn.  The good thing is I have my 17  year old Tacoma to serve my transportation needs indefinitely until that time comes.  Being in the position to buy a new vehicle with absolutely no pressing circumstances is a great spot to be in.  Of course car salesman hate people in my position.  We always preferred the customer with shaky credit, an upside down trade in, or some circumstance where they NEEDED to get a car asap.

I’m sure many of you heard/saw the clip of a woman in a local Starbucks chastise our governor Rick Scott for just one of the many slimy things he has done since buying not one but two elections.   Slick Rick couldn’t get out of there fast enough.  If you haven’t seen it, look here.

For the second day in a row I left work early.  This time it was to help Chris with timing a county championship track meet.  I had been to a couple other meets to get some familiarity with the hardware and software used for the meets.  This was the first time I was being counted on to be there for the entire meet.

My primary role was to work the computer used to import times for track events into the scoring software.  I also manually entered all of the field results into the meet software as well.  This can be rather tedious when you have to figure out tie breakers when kids finish with the same height or distance.  Chris was primarily working the system that runs the finish line camera, the job that carries more responsibility.

The flow of stress in timing a track meet is definitively different than what I encountered in roughly 8 years of chip timing road races.  In a chip event there is a lot more pre-race work that needs to be completed ahead of time.  On race day once runners start crossing the finish line and times are posting correctly you are just hitting a couple buttons on a regular basis but for the most part things are on cruise control, unless a problem arises.

With a track meet you constantly have your hands on the sticks, timing is very much a manual process.  When the finish image processes you are manually placing a line on the chest of each finisher and making sure that line is associated with the correct lane.  You also need to be able to quickly determine DNS (did not start) lanes when kids don’t run for whatever reason which happens often.

The distance events get really stressful since they all finish in one lane.  As kids came in I was trying to write down their assigned number in finishing position.  Sometimes they were bunched so tight it was too hard to tell and in some cases the hip bib number the kids were wearing either fell off or was folded over and not clearly visible.  In those cases you need to be able to identify kids by uniform from the image.  Chris has been involved with high school running for years and knows the uniforms like the back of his hand.  If I was doing it solo I would have struggled a lot more.

During the prelims I ran the camera system for a few heats and did ok with it.  I have a decent general understanding of how the stuff works but there is still a ton of stuff I am clueless about like meet logistics, various rules, and just how things are supposed to interact and flow.  Despite my being new to the scene we did well time-wise, finishing the meet sooner than expected.  However finishing “early” meant around 9PM which still meant I put in close to 7 hours.  Although it is interesting learning how camera based timing works, when I factor in what the school pays for track timing I don’t think it is going to be something I will be doing long term.  My free time is more valuable to me at this point in my life.

Yesterday I contacted our local Toyota dealership, hoping they would be helpful in finding a Tacoma with the specs I am looking for. I was hesitant to even involve them since they have a reputation for having poor inventory and big fat addendum stickers. I supplied a sales guy with the VIN number I found on the Toyota web site of a truck very close to my specs that was supposed to be available at the end of April.  When he called me he said could not find that VIN in his inventory system. He said it could just be “something weird”.  Uh ok.

So I again tell the guy what I am looking for.  He said he would talk to his sales manager and call me back.  He does call back as promised but tells me that his manager said he didn’t have anything available with those specs for a couple months and if they get it, it will have “premium pricing”.  I asked what that meant.  He said $5000 mark up.  I laughed out loud and asked him if he was serious? I told him there was no way that was something I would go for.  He said he had no input with pricing and was just letting me know what his manager said.

I told him it sounded like they weren’t very interested in selling me a vehicle.  I told him I guess I would just contact other Toyota dealerships and see if they were more interested in doing some legwork for me.  It was a real turn off.  It was like if I didn’t have an easy sale to throw on their lap on an in stock vehicle they didn’t want to be bothered.  Oh well, fck them.

I saw last night the good news that Bernie won Wisconsin, his 6th consecutive primary win.  Even though his win streak has been putting cracks into the Hilary battleship, the reality is because of the ridiculous super delegate system, Bernie not only has to win states but he has to win them by large margins.  His refusal to participate in the traditional corrupt campaign finance system means he doesn’t have the huge super delegate ace in his pocket, which seems to be owned by the highest bidder.  So despite his win streak, the reality is Bernie still faces a steep uphill battle.   If he manages to win New York, the state Hilary was a senator for for eight years, a lot of people might start taking notice that maybe Hilary is not necessarily the de facto democratic nominee.

I checked out of work at noon yesterday to handle the SSR transaction.  I took the SSR to work and made arrangements to meet Cindy at the Bonita Home Depot en route to Cape Coral.  She had my Tacoma with the SSR spare parts loaded in the bed.  I used the GPS in the SSR to find Al’s house.  Unfortunately it defaulted to take me the route that was the least distance, not the fastest.  As a result we weaved slowly through Fort Myers instead of just cruising at 80 mph to the next exit on I-75. We finally got there, about 15 minutes later than I predicted.

We unloaded the parts and and all three of us headed out in the Tacoma with Cindy on the small rear jump seat.  We first stopped at Al’s bank for him to get a cashiers check cut for the sale.  I have not been to the Cape Coral area for a long time and after yesterday I really don’t have much need to return anytime soon.  The one word I would use to describe it is, congested.

The bank was quite busy despite it being the middle of the afternoon.  All of the customer waiting area seating was occupied and the line for the tellers was double digit long.  Of course the majority of the people you saw were retirement age.  After getting the cashiers check which I promptly handed to Cindy for safekeeping we headed to the Lee County Tax Collectors office which was nearby to do the title transfer.

I had a bad feeling when the first thing I saw when walking in the door was a scrolling LED sign stating the wait time is over an hour. Geezus.  They were inaccurate, in total we were waiting around two hours before a clerk helped us.  It was maddening.  The number they gave you had a letter followed by a number.  The letter seemed to indicate the type of transaction you were there for.  In our case our number was B148.  When we first sat down the first B number we saw called was B138 so we figured we had 10 people ahead of us, not so bad.  Well somehow it took 120 minutes to process 10 title customers.  When we finally got in front of the clerk we had all of our stuff ready to go, we were done with our transaction in 10 minutes or less. We walked out of there relieved but frustrated the process was so horribly slow.

So we went back to Al’s place where I took off my famous MUSCL UP license plate and installed his brand new plate.  I gave Al a quick lesson on the stereo system, told him about the clutch fluid drain line, and a few other pointers about the truck.  We also got a little info regarding Al’s plan’s for my SSR.  He wants to get it painted in a manner similar to his 2004 which is cool.  However he also wants to undo the lowered suspension which I found quite surprising. I always felt the lowered stance was one of the coolest things about my truck and set it apart from most other SSR’s I have seen.  I am curious how you go about undoing the process.  I have no idea what all was done to lower the suspension several inches, hopefully it is undo-able. At first I assumed Al was going to sell his 2004 SSR since he was buying mine.  Yesterday I realized he may wind up keeping both.  His issues with owning two SSR’s isn’t financial, it’s garage space.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up keeping both.

As we thanked Al and pulled out of his driveway I was feeling strangely not sentimental about the whole thing.  When I bought the SSR it was my pride and joy.  After I separated I had these glorious visions of me and the truck on a cross country road trip.  I thought I would literally own the truck until my last breath.   Well obviously times have changed.  A lot of things have changed over the last couple years.

The death of my Mom and Nicki sort of realigned some of my views about things.  The SSR was definitely a “hey look at me” vehicle and the classic mid-life crisis crutch.  I just did not feel the need for it anymore.  The addition of Cindy to my life also certainly made gaining happiness from a material object less and less necessary.  I’m happy the SSR is in the hands of somebody that will take pristine care of it and invest money to make it even nicer than it is today. But if I said I was really sad to see it go I would not be truthful.

Cindy and I watched the Walking Dead season finale last night.  It was impactful to say the least.  The entire episode you are waiting for the other shoe to drop and went it does it is hard and heavy.  I woke up in the middle of the night and found my mind replaying it again and again. Crazy.

I saw this morning Villanova won the NCAA college basketball championship game last night which I know I should be really excited about since the small school is from my hometown area.  I am happy for the team but I am being honest I just don’t care about college basketball, at all.

On Saturday morning Cindy was coaching at her first track meet, leaving me alone to run wild at the house.  I did a number of chores around the house including having all four of my cleaning robots running simultaneously scrubbing/vacuuming all of the flooring.  I then decided I was going to head out to Home Depot.

Cindy and I decided we were going to add an extra level of castle stone to the landscaped border around the pool.  We are both sick and tired of the chickens going into the area and kicking the rubber mulch out into the grass.  It has become a constant see saw of work.  So our thought was adding the second layer of stone would be enough of a wall to deflect their shrapnel back into the bed where it belongs.

Cindy had counted and we needed a little more than 90 of the 12 inch stones to do the second layer (we already had bought a few).  I had bought these stones in bulk once before and just had them bring them out on a pallet which I requested once again.  The immense weight immediately bottomed out the Tacoma’s suspension.  I am sure I was well over the posted maximum payload of 1700 pounds.  I drove very conservatively on the way home.

On the drive home my cell phone rang from an Oregon number.  It was a guy named Al that was calling about the SSR.  He had not seen the ad on Craigslist.  In fact he didn’t see any ads at all.  He was called about it from one of the main guys from SSR Fanatics.  On Friday I decided to also post my truck on their forum for sale.  I didn’t expect a lot from the posting but obviously I was wrong.  Al was called because the SSRF guy (Dick) knew he was looking for a 6 speed truck.    So anyway Al said he could leave Cape Coral right away to come see the truck so I told him to come on down.

When he showed up I was a bit shocked to see ANOTHER SSR parked in the driveway.  I had no idea he already had an SSR, a 2004 with a slick custom paint job.  He actually has owned his truck for 4 or 5 years but he was interested in a 6 speed.  Since Dick has met me and worked on my truck at a few of the meet ups he personally vouched for my truck, letting Al know it was nice.

Al was like the vast majority of SSR owners I have met, of retirement age and very nice.  Of course I didn’t have to give him a walk through of the truck like I did last week since he was already very familiar with the vehicles obviously.  When I told him some of the upgrades I had done like the LS7 Corvette clutch swap he knew exactly what it was and why it was a good thing.  We went on a decent test drive and he confirmed he liked the truck, just like Dick said he would.  Unlike last week where the buyer was all about lowballing, Al was fine paying my asking price, his background as a SSR owner made my price fair to him when compared to other trucks out there.

After the test drive Al hung at the house for quite awhile talking with Cindy and I.  Most of the conversation was not SSR related at all, just exchanging snippets of our background.  Al has been retired since he was 55 and spends 3 months out of the year living on his boat in Oregon.  It sounded like he was very fortunate the way things fell in place for him when retirement came around and he was grateful for it.  So we got around to making plans for the sale.  He left me a check for a deposit and said to call him Sunday after he checked his calendar to see when we could do the sale.

We worked it out that I am leaving work early today to get it all done.  I brought the SSR to work and will be driving it to Al’s house with Cindy following me in the Tacoma.  We will then leave the truck there and head to the bank and DMV office to finalize the paperwork.  It will feel weird for sure to walk away from the R but it is offset by getting much more money for it than I was willing to accept a few days prior.  It’s funny how things work out.  It’s also funny that Al will have two SSR’s in his driveway until he manages to sell his 2004. 🙂

After Al left I wasted little time heading outside to work on the 2nd level of our castle stone border.  Cindy and I first unloaded all of the stones, putting them in place on the wall where they would go.  It was only temporary as I needed to go stone by stone and reset both the first and second layer.  When I originally put the castle stone in place I just used the sandy soil as the base under the wall.  Over time areas of the wall have shifted as a result.  A good number of the stones had a slight downward facing angle which looked shitty.

Along with the pallet of stone I also bought 6 bags of substrate normally used under a paver installation.  The substance was basically very small stones, designed to give a firm base to support the blocks.  I began a very arduous process of pulling up each and every stone and re-leveling it, using the stone base to provide support.  It was not enjoyable as you can imagine.  Most of the work required me to be on my knees which gets painful very quickly.  I just kept my blinders on and focused on getting done.  Before I called it quits for the day I had about 75% of the wall complete which was cool.

We cleaned up and headed out to Germain arena for an Everblades game.  We had not gone to see the local minor league hockey team for a couple years.  I saw it was Star Wars night so I thought it would be fun to go.  When we got there the parking lot was pretty full, something we arent used to with the sparsely attended Tarpons games we are used to.

As we walked up to the ticket window I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw signs on the window saying SOLD OUT. WTF?  Germain seats between 5000-6000 people I could hardly believe the game would be sold out.  Cindy and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders.

Just as we were ready to start walking back to the parking lot a couple behind us stopped us.  The man said he had spare tickets and we could have a couple of them.  I told him I would gladly pay for them.  He said to not worry about it they were already paid for by his business.  Cindy and I could hardly believe our good fortune.  When we got inside I tried to repay their kindness to at least a small degree by buying the guy a beer.  It’s always nice to confirm that not all people are assholes.

Now I am the farthest thing from a hockey fan you can get but it was still fun to be at a live game.  I downed a couple large Shocktop drafts to help up the fun level.  We also enjoyed chowing down on our standard arena menu of pizza, a soft pretzel and roasted nuts.  At the end of the second period Cindy wasn’t feeling great after downing her alcoholic cider.  The home team was down 2-0 at that point.  I told Cindy I was fine heading out and although she didn’t want to be the impetus to leave I could tell she liked the idea.  After thanking the couple once again for their generosity we headed out.  I saw later the Everblades wound up losing 2-1.

On Sunday morning there was no way I felt like running/riding after the block work Saturday afternoon.  Plus I wanted to take advantage of the cooler morning temperatures to finish up the wall.  Of course I was just a little short of what I needed to finish so Cindy and headed out for yet another Home Depot trip.  We grabbed more castle stone as well as 12 more border stones that looked like smaller cousins of castle stone.  We wanted to lay them down as a test in the rock border area to see how they look.  Unfortunately the chickens have no problems kicking small river rock out of a landscape bed either.  Cindy has been putting the displaced stones back in place several times a week.  Surprisingly the chickens don’t listen when we ask them to stop scratching in those areas. 🙂

When we got back I finished up the main wall.  Both Cindy and I liked the finished product and we have not seen any projectile mulch clear the wall since it was extended.  We laid down the smaller stone border on a small section of the river rock bed and it looked good.  Although it is significantly smaller than castle stone in height we are thinking it should be high enough to block the stones since they won’t fly as far as mulch.

I was pooped from the labor that covered portions of both days of the weekend.  Late in the afternoon I decided to finally get to making a video that told the story regarding my drone prosecution.  Although I kept the video pretty in the middle, not trash talking the NPS tactics as much as I could have, I wanted to get a video out there shining a light on what happened.  Perhaps the same ranger that thought it was fair game to ruin my Xmas holiday will stumble across this video as well.  Hopefully it makes him sleep better at night.

The video is about 15 minutes long.  I don’t believe I have ever talked at that length on film at one shot.  As expected there are some stumbles along the way but all in all I give a pretty clear outline of what went down and why I feel it was handled poorly.

So yesterday I saw the electronic lien was cleared from the title of the SSR so I had a paper copy printed.  I now figured I was officially ready to sell the truck so I created my Craigslist ad and posted it.  I was sort of surprised I got a call within 30 minutes.  That call was from a guy that lives in Panama City, some 5 hours away.  He seemed interested and said he might actually make the drive down this weekend to see the truck.

I got a second call from a Wisconsin number.  He is from there but recently moved to Estero.  Frank said he had been looking at SSR’s for a short while as a perfect cruising vehicle for his retirement lifestyle.  He said he could come by last night to look at the SSR, I told him that would be fine.

Cindy offered to give the SSR a thorough bath during the day which was great since I had not had a chance to do it myself yet.  Frank pulled up in his Tundra just as I was finishing up doing a few things outside.  He immediately struck me as a nice guy.

Very early on in the conversation he identified himself as a serious lifetime car hobbyist, the hard core type that restored vehicles from the 40’s and 50’s.  The guy knew way more about cars than I did, that was very clear to me very early.  During the test drive I knew if he made an offer on the truck it wasn’t going to be very close to my $25,500 asking price.  He talked about another SSR he looked at that only has a ridiculously low 9000 miles and untouched from factory original options.  I actually saw this truck on Craigslist myself when I was looking at comps.  Anyway the seller had that truck listed at 32-33k.  Frank told me he could get that truck for 24k.

He asked me what I needed to get out of my SSR dollar wise.  I didn’t have a clear answer for him.  I told him that since I am under no pressure to sell the truck, I just listed the truck as being for sale, and I have a guy from Panama City that seems very interested I wasn’t looking to give the truck away.  After the test drive we were discussing dollars further.  I told him I could agree to dropping the price to 24k.  Frank clearly already had his number in mind and it wasn’t close to mine.  He offered 21k and said it would be a simple all cash deal that could be completed the next day which of course was appealing.

I went inside for a couple minutes and talked to Cindy about it.  Frank’s offer was a lowball but the reality was it would still more than easily allow me to execute my plans for the new Tacoma.  She came back outside with me.  I was hoping Cindy’s friendly personality could possibly help me disarm him enough to accept a counter offer.  I came back with 22 and he wouldn’t budge, not even a little bit which of course was annoying.  He claimed with some of the work he would want to do on the truck he couldn’t justify going any higher, especially with the 9000 mile SSR as another option.  After exchanging some glances with Cindy I told him I would do the deal. The appeal of a simple cash deal and getting the transaction completed quickly was appealing enough to be worth it to me.

I did some paperwork regarding the sale.  Frank suggested that he could take the spare parts now so I wouldn’t have to try to jam them into the back of the SSR tomorrow.  We planned to do the transaction at my office on Friday morning.  He gave me $100 deposit in good faith and headed out.  Although I didn’t feel great about the negotiation or lack there of I was happy everything was falling into place quickly.  I felt good that the truck would be going to a true car enthusiast that would take great care of it.  That good feeling faded away about 7:48PM.

My phone rang and I saw it was Frank’s number.  He told me that he thinks he may have jumped the gun and he reconsidered.  He said with the work he wants to do on the truck the dollars will get out of hand.  I was shocked at first.  When he was at the house he seemed pretty sure of himself and his number.  Him taking the spare parts now seemed to further cement it was a done deal.  I expressed my surprise but wasn’t a dick about it.  I am not sure if his wife at home was the fulcrum behind his reversal.  The whole thing seemed extra weird when I realized I had a voicemail from Frank at 7:30, asking me to take the ad off Craigslist, not something a person that was having buyers remorse would normally do.

So whatever the reason behind his decision, we made plans to undo what we did.  He agreed to meet me at work today to give me back the parts.  He said I could keep the deposit if I wanted which of course I refused.  When I met up with him this morning he apologized for the trouble and indicated he could still be a potential buyer at an even lower number which I pretty much brushed off.  At this point I will see what comes my way the next couple weeks.  Like I said, there is absolutely no pressure on me to move in any particular direction so for now I will just chill.  In some ways I am glad to have an opportunity to potentially get more for the truck but also a bit sad to not have quickly turned the transaction around.

After I got the call from Frank I headed out to the coop to put the chickens to bed.  Stephie, the chicken that gets picked on the most by the others seems to really like Cindy and I.  When I went in the coop to count heads I didn’t see her at first.  I called her name and she immediately sat upright so I could see her.  She then started to move around the perch to get to the front where I was.  As she was maneuvering closer one of the other hens pecked at Stephie.  I put my arm up to scold the pecking hen and as I did Stephie instantly hopped on my forearm and used it as a perch.  She immediately lowered her body like she was making herself comfortable for the long haul.

It was so cute.  I let her there for a minute or two as I petted her.  She seemed as content as a chicken can seem.  It almost looked like I was a falconer with a big hawk on my arm.  I eventually coaxed her back down on her perch.  I have a feeling she will be using us as human perches more often. It was a nice moment to lessen the disappointment of the phone call.

This weekend I might start tackling adding a second row of castle stone to the pool landscape border to stop the incessant chicken vandalism.  It should be lots of fun.