The weekend that had it all
My weekend was busy, very busy, but it had a fulfilling mix of work and play with a cherry on top ending with the Eagles dominating win over the Cowboys. It didn’t start out that well as I had a horrible night of sleep Friday night. I awoke somewhere before 3AM and did not fall back asleep until at least 5. I then awoke again, on my own at 6:05 and decided, F it, I’ll go get my run out of the way. Despite the lack of sleep the run went ok, certainly fueled by the cool air in the lower 60’s.
When I got home I spent very little time inside before heading out to get started on a long list of things I wanted to accomplish. First up was weeding which always begins in the garden area. The greens that we planted a few weeks ago are all looking fantastic so far. We have kale, three types of lettuce, eggplant, and spinach in there.
After I got done weeding I got ready to weed whack. Not just a normal 60-90 minute session of the unfun activity, I wanted to do EVERYTHING, meaning the entire fence line, both sides. Doing the fence line is an awful job. This time was probably the worst ever as I have been negligent in doing the task on a more regular basis, resulting in thick, high, tough grass integrating with the galvanized fencing. In certain spots I had to go ridiculously slow, chopping at the thick growth one level at a time.
Weed whacking against a wire fence consumes trimmer line by the mile. I was on my third spool refill when the trimmer head broke. The bottom of it was wearing thin and the fence line was enough to wear it out for good. I was only about 2/3 of the way around the inside fence line when it broke. I decided to use the DeWalt electric whacker to get the rest of the conventional trimming around the house done with the intent of getting a new trimmer head for the gas whacker to finish later.
During the afternoon I dug into additional projects like redoing the runs on the ladder for the chickens perch, installing my two new mods on my Tacoma and installing a swing arm mount in Cindy’s RV for a small tv. All three projects went well but only one of them was documented on video.
Late afternoon I finally received a package I have been waiting for for almost a month and a half, my new Gotway Mten3 EUC. I ordered/paid for the wheel in early October but have been patiently waiting for it to make it’s way across the Pacific Ocean on a boat. This wheel is the exact opposite of the last wheel I bought, the Gotway Monster which is a 22 inch, 60 pound behemoth. The Mten3 is a tiny 10 inch wheel that weights roughly 20 pounds. What makes it unique is despite it’s small form factor it is equipped with a very strong power train, allowing the wheel a top speed of around 25 mph which is nuts.
I didn’t have much time on Saturday to do much more than unbox the wheel and take it out on the driveway for a couple minutes. Those couple minutes were rough. The wheel felt incredibly unstable and foreign to me, I could hardly do even basic turning. This was not unexpected, I knew it would feel weird, just not that weird.
Saturday night Cindy and I went to see Justice League. I again opted for the VIP theater at Prado, guaranteeing us good seats despite it being opening weekend. I found the movie to be entertaining, even with trying to cram in origin stories for the previously never shown heroes of Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. Of the three I thought Aquaman was the most out of place. He did very little Aquaman-esque stuff with the vast majority of his action being on dry land. It was a Zak Snyder movie so of course there was going to become ridiculous stuff but I found Justice League to have less of that than Batman vs Superman did. I was entertained from start to end, enough to give the movie an A- rating.
On Sunday morning I wanted to get in some extensive acclimation time with the Mten3. Cindy needed to do some grocery shopping so we combined the two activities for efficiency. She dropped me off at North Naples Park so I could ride while she got the groceries. So my initial 15 minutes of riding my new wheel had me wondering if I made a mistake. I felt so unstable. My feet were as big if not bigger than the case of the EUC. I wobbled around the paths hoping my body would soon adapt to the different physics of the tiny wheel.
It took awhile but it slowly started happening. The wobbles started to fade and I started to get a feel for just how responsive the little wheel could be. Thanks to it’s small diameter, ample power and low pedals I was able to do incredibly tight and slow turns, unlike anything I have been able to do on any EUC. By the end of the ride I was excited about the wheel and the potential fun it has in store for me.
After eating lunch we headed back out, this time with Elsa in tow to hit Rural King and Home Depot. I was frustrated that Home Depot sold no conventional universal bump feed trimmer heads. All they had were the type where you insert individual blades or line into the head which always turned me off as it seemed to be a set up with very high cost consumables. With a conventional bump feed with trimmer line I can buy a spool of line and be good to go for a year. Well my desire to get the fence trimming done pushed me into buying a head that used plastic “blades” which seemed like a good choice with the thick vegetation I was dealing with.
Just getting the new head installed was a struggle, just because I didn’t see something obvious in removing the old beat up head. Once I got the new bladed replacement in place I headed back out to the fence line to do battle. I had no idea how these blades would hold up to the beating of a wire fence. I bought an extra pack of blades just in case.
I have to say I was very surprised by the results. Despite being subjected to extremely brutal conditions, the three original blades held up to around two hours of abuse. I wish I could say the same about my hands and forearms. My hands were tingling and numb from running the whacker that much over two days. I am pretty sure in total I put in at least four hours of weed whacking over the weekend. Now that I have the fence line knocked down I want to follow up by spraying RoundUp as well to retard the growth of new vegetation along the fence. This is something I used to do but stopped when we had the chickens free ranging the entire yard. Now that they are more restricted it’s time to do it again.
Late in the afternoon I got to turn my attention to my problematic CR-10. I tried another solution for my filament feed problem, once again choosing a simpler solution involving installing a higher quality collet fitting to hold the feed tube in place. I was very happy that this seemed to fix my issue for real this time. I am in the middle of a 20 hour print that ran all night without a problem.
My weekend wrapped up with a fantastic Eagles win against the hated Cowboys, in Dallas no less. The first half of the game was very tightly contested with the Birds looking a bit rusty coming off their bye week. However once the second half started things totally went the Eagles way. They simply steamrolled the Cowboys and it felt great.
I am looking forward to a quick three day week followed by a four day weekend.