Archives April 2022

I had my second cardiologist test yesterday, an ECG.  They attach only a few electrical leads compared to the 7 or 8 that got attached for both the EKG and the stress test.  They then use an ultrasound machine that seems very similar to what they use on a pregnant woman to look at a baby. I laid on my side while he maneuvered the wand around the left side of my chest.  He would pause at certain spots.  The instrument also captures the sound of my heart which I could hear occasionally which I did not like.  For some reason the loud sound of my beating heart invoked a reaction similar to when I give blood.  Unlike the stress test where the tech gave me some immediate feedback, I got no feedback on the ECG.  I assumed the cardiologist needs to look at the results.

So for a month or two I have been loosely looking for an inexpensive used EUC.  My intent was to have something that I could use primarily as a “beater”.  This would be the wheel I would use if I was trying to teach someone to ride.  For example Clay has indicated he would like to try to ride.  I would prefer to not teach someone on one of my main stream wheels which cost as much as $3000.  Learning to ride always means the EUC is going to be hitting the ground at some point so I would rather this happen to a wheel I don’t care much about.

I inquired about a couple used wheels I saw on FB EUC sale groups.  One of them was a V10F that was in pretty rough shape.  It had 2000 miles, a banged up shell and slightly bent rim.  The guy wanted $900.  I offered him $700 which he initially agreed to but then he didn’t follow through on the transaction.  Another seller was also selling a V10F in better shape with less miles.  He wanted $1200.  I told him I was looking to spend less than $1000 including shipping which ended that conversation as well.

So for some reason the other day I entered “inmotion” into FB marketplace, expecting to not get any hits.  I was surprised when I saw ANOTHER Inmotion V10F come up for sale in Fort Myers, only 45 minutes away.  From the pictures it looked to be in good shape and the best part was it was only listed for $600!  I reached out to the seller but did not hear anything back for a day.  The listing was approximately a week old.

A day later I pinged him again and got a response.  He said he still had the wheel.  He said he bought it from a friend but then decided it was too much to learn to ride.  I asked him if he would take $500, as paying asking price on FB Marketplace is an extreme rarity. He agreed, sweet!  He gave me his address and I made arrangements to pick up the wheel last night.

When I got there he already had the garage open.  The guy had an impressive PEV collection going with two very expensive beach cruiser style e-bikes, regular e-bikes, and two Ninebot scooters.  He told me he was a pilot.  He said he got the wheel from a friend who claimed he rode it very little.  The seller said his riding time consisted of him turning the wheel on, stepping on to it while holding onto something and then almost immediately stepping off, determining it was not for him.  I told him some people do have that reaction.

I turned on the wheel and as the seller watched with amazement I hopped on and did a quick ride up and down his driveway to verify everything was working.  I also connected to the wheel with my phone to check the stats, including mileage.  I was blown away when I saw the mileage number, 9 miles….  This thing was practically brand new and I bought it for less than a third of what a new one costs.  I could hardly believe my stroke of good luck.  I drove home basking in the glow of the transaction.

So even though this model came out at least three years ago it’s new to me so I plan to do some basic testing with the wheel.  It has a top speed of roughly 25 MPH and a range of more than 30 miles so it is not bad spec-wise.  I look forward to putting it through it’s paces and using it to hopefully teach others the basics to perhaps get some more local riders into the community while possibly making a friend or two along the way.

Speaking of friends, Randall is going to be arriving tonight to hang this weekend.  It should be a good time as always.  I just hope my annoying left IT band pain subsides enough to not impact any possible physical activities we may want to do.  Monday the skin cancer cut-a-thon begins, I can hardly wait.

Yesterday my fake chicken finally arrived a week late but in one piece.  The “bird” is much smaller than I expected but upon double checking that is because of my lack of attention to detail.  I thought 18x12x24 was in inches, it was actually in centimeters.  It’s big enough to serve it’s purpose hopefully.  I felt the need to name the fake chicken.  After a very short period of time I landed on the name Helen.  I’m not sure why but that was the name.

I took Helen out with me to give Kathy her afternoon treats.  I sat the bird a few feet away.  Kathy looked at it but didn’t react one way or another.  Before I put Kathy to bed last night I put Helen up on the perch with her.  Helen was still on the perch this morning so at least I know Kathy didn’t attack her.  This morning I moved Helen out to the chicken run.  It will be very interesting to see if Kathy starts hanging out with her new inanimate friend.  Troy pointed out to me how his parakeet used to love the fake bird that was in it’s cage.  Maybe the same  thing will happen here, sort of like how children get attached to stuffed animals.

My replacement road bike tire showed up yesterday as well.  Randall is supposed to come over this weekend so I wanted to have my road bike in safe riding shape in case we ride.  Since I already changed the front tire several months ago it wasn’t a huge struggle to get the back tire on outside of a few little sticking points.

If you have read my blog for any period of time you know of some of my struggles mentally with dealing with some of the hurdles in life.  I have an inner critic that is constantly clashing with my desire to live a happy life.  This negative thought process can creep into so many parts of my life and in most situations the outcome is not good.

I have been working on sorting out this behavior and identifying why my thought processes chain together like they do.  The real key is to break that chain right at the onset before anything takes hold.  There are ways to do that but for anyone that says it is easy, especially for someone that has been around for over five decades, isn’t being realistic.  The first step in the process is being cognizant of the behavior.  The second step is trying to make changes to your thought patterns to reprogram your brain from following the well worn path into unhappy, negative thinking.  I need to apply the same mantra as I have used for physical activities where consistent effort results in slow and steady improvement.

Speaking of physical activity, doing the stress test yesterday which included running for several minutes on the treadmill was exactly what my sore left IT band did not need.  I was gimpy as hell once again last night and this morning.  I need to find that magic stretch that releases this tension that sends lightning bolts of pain down the side of my leg and across the top of the knee.  Today I have my heart ultrasound. Hopefully it doesn’t reveal that I am pregnant.

As the sun was setting last night I got the desire to go to the park.  The day was very hot but by the time I got there it felt quite pleasant.  I brought Elsa with and first got a walk in with her, doing a lap around the perimeter.  As usual she was very nervous at the beginning but calmed down within 5-10 minutes.

I then let her rest in the truck while I grabbed my original OneWheel and rode around for about a half hour.  There weren’t a lot of people there by that time of night so it was very chill.  Riding a One Wheel is more relaxing for me than an EUC for some odd reason.

This morning I had my first cardiac test, a stress test.  I had one of these back in 2019 when they were testing me for everything under the sun for my mystery fatigue I experienced for almost a year and a half.  Because of this I knew what to expect.  It was a 10 minute treadmill session that starts very slow but wound up being a steady run.  The run wasn’t taxing me terribly from a cardio perspective but it definitely did not feel good on my joints.  My left IT band has been tweaked for the last couple days, sending shots of pain up and down the side of my hip/leg regularly.  Running was not the activity that is ideal in this state.  Anyway the tech said I passed the stress test and described my performance as “very good”.  I would have been concerned with any other result.

Tomorrow I have the ECG.  It was described to me as basically taking an ultrasound of the heart.  The test is supposed to reveal if there is any damage to the heart which the EKG seemed to indicate.  If I get an all clear on this test I have a feeling the end result of all of this is going to be a shoulder shrug.

Yesterday afternoon there was a massive Comcast outage that they attributed to a single fiber cut.  It affected everything, tv, residential and commercial data services.  It makes you wonder how single points of failure still exist in a mega-network like Comcast.  It was a hard down that lasted several hours.  At home my cable internet came back up a little before 7PM.  It was funny I had already resigned myself to an offline type of night and in a weird way was looking forward to it.

I had the first of my two week marathon of appointments yesterday, the dentist.  Luckily I escaped without any cavities.  The hygienist who I have been seeing for at least 15 years and I traded stories about the joys of being 50 plus and how in some ways it was like a switch flipping, to the off position.  Next up on the appointment list is tomorrow where I get my cardiac stress test.  I expect to pass the test.  On Friday during the headwind hell bike ride I almost got up to 170 beats per minute and didn’t die.

I don’t think I mentioned my visit to the Pickleball US Open Sunday afternoon.  I met up with Rich to watch some high level matches.  It gave me a good appreciation for just how far away I am from being anything resembling a decent player.  We found some empty courts and actually played three games which was very unexpected.  My IT band was already hurting before we started to play so I knew it was going to be a rough go.  My lower body pain was still left over from the Tuesday night 3 hour plus pickleball session at Veterans Park.  To still be hurting that many days later is not great news.  I managed to win one of the three games and was a sweaty pig by the end of it.  After we finished we both headed out, Rich in his Tesla, me on my V11.

Here is a picture I took of the wood structure in the rock garden after a fresh coat of Thompsons along with the new solar shade and twinkle lights.  Thanks to the magic of modern iPhone night mode photography this picture came out cool despite it being almost completely dark when I took it.

It looks like the last entry I made was Friday morning.  Elsa and I went to the park again.  I walked her around but then loaded her up in the truck with the AC running while I pulled out my pickle ball gear.  I wanted to hit some balls around, specifically practice serving.

One of my problems while playing is a hesitancy to strike the ball aggressively because I don’t trust my accuracy.  Most of the time I can hit a ball much harder than I choose to.  I also tried to see if there was any way I could serve left handed since it is actually my throwing hand.  I had very poor results.  This all ties back to when I took tennis lessons as a child.  My coach did not want me to play left handed so I was taught as a righty.  I only recall having a few lessons but it was enough to make me play racquet sports right handed my entire life, it’s bizarre.

Friday afternoon I got on my bike to ride.  As I was pumping the tires I noticed the rear was unusually low.  As I focused on the tire I was amazed at just how worn it was, dangerously worn.  I am not quite sure how I did not notice this previously.  Of course it didn’t stop me from riding.  It was a BRUTAL ride containing some of the worst head wind I have dealt with.  My heart rate topped out close to 170 beats a minute.   When I got back I did make sure to buy a new tire.

Saturday was not horribly busy.  The most ambitious thing I did was redo the solar string lights on the wooden structure in the rock garden followed by installing the new solar shade.  I bought a bigger solar shade than I used to have out there.  Trying to get it in place with one person was a unique challenge.  I am not thrilled with the end result but it will shade the area I want which was the goal.

Saturday night I again went to a bar myself however this time it was a movie theater bar.  I went to the Prado theater in Bonita.  I got there well in advance of the movie I was seeing, Secrets of Dumbledore, so I could eat and drink.  The bar again was lightly populated but I enjoyed myself.

The movie was long at two hours and twenty minutes but I liked it.  There was a couple that brought their little boy to the movie.  He was talking loudly through about half of the film.  At one point people near them asked if they could try to keep it down.  The entitled couple instantly got angry and barked back that this was a children’s movie.  (it’s actually rated PG13)  I was far enough away that it didn’t bother me much but I still found it amazing that the parents made absolutely no effort to encourage the kid to be quiet.  I’d give the movie a B+, nothing will ever match the magic of the original Harry Potter cast.

Today I have a few disorganized things I’d like to do.  I have a massively busy roughly two week period coming up.  In addition to several work related projects I have four cardiologist related appointments, three skin cancer surgeries, a dentist appointment, Elsa’s annual vet visit, and a few other things I am forgetting.  I very much look forward to coming out the other end of this very busy tunnel that is filled with things I’d rather not have to deal with.

My day yesterday was pretty chill since my to do list was essentially done.  Elsa and I did our coffee run and 20 minute park walk which she is getting more accustomed to.  It sucks that once I go back to work it becomes much more difficult to do it.  Maybe I’ll have  to adapt and try to walk her around the backyard at night.  The park is typically busy at night which makes her more nervous.

I talked to Clay about meeting up to ride at the Greenway Thursday night.  I have never ridden there in the evening so I thought it would be fun.  Clay had gotten his new GT since I saw him last.  I also brought my XR with it’s new tire I just installed.  I got there a little early and took the XR out to get more of a feel for the new rubber which I actually really like at this point. Once Clay got there I switched over to my GT.

We had a great ride where we took the Greenway through Baker Park and then into downtown Naples.  Clay rides the area all the time so he knows back ways to get places that I had no clue about.  We snaked through traffic and pedestrians getting the double takes from people that you are used to when riding one wheeled PEVs.  Clay talked a lot about his other huge hobby, kite boarding.  He has repeatedly encouraged me to try it, which he did again last night and I have repeatedly declined.  It just doesn’t sound appealing to me, especially with how ocean water kicks off ear infections for me almost always.

We wound up at the beach, sitting on the benches and watching a complete sunset over the water, a rarity in my life. Clay let me have one of his Miller Lites he had in his backpack while we chilled out.  We then headed back.  On the way we went through the Bayfront area.  Clay suggested we could grab another beer at some outdoor bar called The Cabana.  It was packed with people, even on a Thursday night.  We again got a few questions about our boards.  There was some drunken woman that was trying to make conversation with me.  She was so drunk I could hardly make out what she was saying.  I just did a lot of smiling and head nodding.

After leaving the bar we went through this underpass.  Clay pointed out how there are footprints all over the walls and ceiling.  Evidently this is a thing.  He encouraged me to leave my own mark, which I did, removing my right shoe and leaving a mark on the wall.  Clay made his mark on the ceiling.  Clay said they have repainted this corridor three times, I guess someone thinks having it covered in shoe prints is un-Naples like.  Every time they do it, the public just foot prints it right back up, very funny.

Riding back through the Greenway later at night was a weird but cool experience.  We more or less had the entire place to ourselves.  The only noise was the sound of our boards with stillness all around.  Clay and I talked about meeting up over the weekend to go ride the abandoned golf course which he never got to do yet.  It was one of the most unique Thursday evenings I have had in a long time.  I hope to continue the trend of new experiences with new people as my future rolls out ahead of me.

Yesterday and today have been stuffed with things.  Yesterday morning I spent an  hour or two wire brushing the various wood structures in the yard to prep them for a new coat of waterproofing/stain.  In the afternoon I finally tackled replacing the tire on my original OneWheel.  I have been talking about doing this for at least two years, possibly closer to three.  I kept putting it off because of the potential hurdles of taking the board apart plus I sort of liked the stock Vega tire it comes with.  Well late last year the board started to develop a slow leak in the Vega.  Even though I had a new One Wheel GT on order I still wanted to change the tire on the XR so whomever gets the board after me has a solid tire under them.

I bought the tire and again it has sat, probably for at least two months as I tried to summon the motivation to dig into the project.  Yesterday was that day.  I followed a recommended YouTube video for the procedure as I filmed a video of my own.  There were several friction points that had me flustered a few times but I worked through it.  In about two hours I had successfully completed the swap.  The brief test ride I took afterward confirmed the new tire has a much different feel, more responsive similar to my old OneWheel Pint.  I hope to get out for a more extended ride on the board soon.

I talked to my friend/co-worker and arranged to meet him to play some pickle ball at Veterans Park Tuesday night. He had been going there for awhile at night.  It was a lot of fun although all of the games are doubles.  I really prefer playing singles but doubles is the de-facto standard.  I bet I played at least 10 games and lost every single one although a lot of them were very close.  My pickle ball reality is very odd.  When I was very young I took tennis lessons.  They taught me to play right handed because playing left handed was bad, for some reason.  I throw, bat and play most sports left handed.  So the end result is I play pickle ball right handed which is very weird.  I have much more whipping ability in my left arm.  I do occasionally switch hands when playing.

I think my biggest issue is a lack of confidence when playing.  The end result is making conservative plays instead of attacking the ball aggressively.  Playing against all of these different people was a good experience, despite losing to everyone. I need to keep playing/practicing.  I was pretty wiped out by the end of the night, both of my knees were sore.  I woke up this morning feeling even more sore, but I didn’t have time to be sore.

I designated today as waterproof/stain day.  After getting my coffee and walking Elsa around the park I started the work on all of the outdoor wood, there is a lot of it.  I redid both ramps for the sheds, the chicken coop/run, the bar park, and the stone garden area.  In total I bet I spent over 5 hours doing this.  It was physically grueling.  The ramps required me to be bent over for prolonged periods of time, the structure in the rock garden required me to working over my head for prolonged periods of time.  I was hurting but driven to get it done.  Everything looks much better after the work, I am hoping to not have to revisit it for a couple years, if I am lucky.

At 6PM I had the guy from the window company show up to give me an estimate on windows.  I immediately liked the guy and we talked about a ton of non-windows related things for a half hour before he started to measure.  I liked that his company offers a lifetime warranty on both accidental and hurricane related damage.  The price was a little steeper than what I expected but I was able to negotiate it down a couple grand more to get me to about 2k per window.  These windows are impact rated, insulated and tinted. The windows that came with the house are pretty much junk.   It’s a major improvement that should add to the already escalating value of my home.

At this point I only have one item left on my staycation to do list, wash the Tesla.  It will be a piece of cake compared to the tasks I have already crossed off.  I look forward to coasting through my remaining time off.

Yesterday I finally had the cardiologist appointment I had been waiting for for over a month and a half.  I had some anxiety about it most of the morning some of which almost felt like it was triggering phantom chest pain.  I think it is quite easy to fall into a psychosomatic response once you are told something like your heart may be f’d up.  So anyway I get in there and the assistant looks at my chart from my physical and suggests we do another EKG.  He said it is not abnormal to get a reading like mine due to the leads being placed incorrectly.  I did not mention to him that they ran the EKG twice, just to make sure, but hoped his hunch was indeed correct.

He hooked me up and within seconds  was able to see that he was seeing results almost identical to what I had in early March, fantastic…  He was still upbeat and said I certainly don’t seem like I am a typical person with cardiac problems based on my overall fitness level and the questions on the survey I filled out.  There were three things however that were not talked about which in retrospect I should have asked.  On the survey symptom list I circled yes on nausea, and stress/depression. Both of these things came on within the last 6 months and I am one of those people that absolutely believe your state of mind has a direct impact on your health.  The other thing was never asking about covid.  I am pretty certain I had Covid at least once, if not twice in the last two years.  I also had the Moderna vax (initial two doses).  There are tons of reports of heart issues suddenly developing as a result. (look up covid myocarditis)

The cardiologist came in and looked at my EKG results, while asking me some additional health questions, again seemingly using my physical condition and lack of other symptoms to fall on the side of there isn’t a significant problem, however, we need to make sure.  I walked out of there with appointments for a stress test, an ECG, and a vein test.  The ECG seems to be the most helpful test as it would identify if there is actually any heart damage consistent with the possible mini-heart attack the EKG could indicate.  I walked out of there not happy but glad that we are taking the next steps to figure out if I really have something to be concerned about.  I was surprised that when I told him my mom had a heart attack at 67 he was not concerned either.  The fact that she was a lifetime smoker and her age at death means there is not a genetic disposition towards heart disease, in his opinion.

Around dinner time last night I took the V11 out for a DD ride.  I stopped at the park and talked about my S20 saga, the wheel that I ordered last August that is still not in my hands.

This morning I took Elsa for another park walk after I grabbed coffee.  She is getting less and less fearful it seems each time we go.  My goal is to get here there every day of my staycation.  I just got done going around with a wire brush on all of the outdoor wood that is treated with Thompsons stain/waterseal.  It was an unfun job but something that really makes a difference in the longevity of the product when applied.  Some of the wood was really in bad shape despite being last done somewhere around a year ago.  If my mental plan holds I will do the brush work tomorrow.

This afternoon the task in my sights is changing the tire on my OneWheel XR.  It promises to be a unique challenge.

The first weekend of my staycation was pretty full as you can imagine based on my long track record of wanting to crush my to do lists before getting around to the more fun stuff.  On Saturday morning after cleaning the coop and weeding the place Elsa and I headed out on a long errand run that had more than a half dozen stops and took damn close to four hours.  As I was unloading the truck I noticed I was missing the mower blades I bought from Lowes, damn it.  When I retraced my steps I knew I paid for them but I was pretty sure I just left the blades in the bottom of the shopping cart in the parking lot.  I figured I was screwed and I certainly wasn’t going to drive back there without knowing they were there.  I called up the store and was quite surprised that they did actually have the blades in their hand.  I picked them up later on my way to dinner.

I hopped on the tractor and mowed the back of the property which has now started to grow once again with the return of rain and warmer weather. I also knocked out another list item, rotating the tires on the Model Y.  I recently crossed 10,000 miles on the car which seems hard to believe that I am at that milestone already.  The process went smoothly although I was a sweaty, dirty mess by the end of it.

I wanted to continue my new tradition of heading to a restaurant bar for dinner Saturday night.  I decided to mix it up this time and figured I would go to what was my long time favorite restaurant, Carrabbas. I have not been there in at least two years thanks to Covid and the various direction changes in my life.  I thought despite it being Saturday night I could find a single seat at the bar to squeeze into. Wow, was I in for a shock.

I pulled into the lot around 7:15 which normally would be prime time.  I was astonished how empty the parking lot was.  I was accustomed to having to circle the lot looking for that one elusive open space.  I could have parked an RV in the lot and no one would have cared.  When I went inside the shock continued. MAYBE a third of the table were used, maybe 25%.  It felt like I was in an alternate universe.  The reality I used to be in had Carrabbas always full.  Going on a Saturday night meant you should expect a 60-90 minute wait.  I sat down at the bar which was empty except for one other couple having dinner.

I spent most of my time there in disbelief that this was what Carrabbas now was.  I asked the bartender if this is the new normal.  He said it slows down a lot after season.  Well I have been there plenty of times outside of season and it was never like this, not even close.  I tried to come up with why this may be.  Perhaps it’s still covid related although as far as I have seen most restaurants have been not impacted by pandemic related fear for quite awhile.  Maybe it’s because there are so many dining options in our area now.  The amount of construction in the greater Naples area is staggering and the restaurant industry has been expanding with it.  Or maybe people are just tired of Carrabbas, who knows?  Regardless I enjoyed my two beers and bowl of spaghetti although I’m not sure when I will be back.

I knew this Easter was going to be weird.  For my entire life Easter meant celebrating together with either family, my significant other or a combination of both.  I am not exaggerating when I say that was the case for every one of the last 53 years.  I no longer have any local family or a significant other and that was impactful on my mood.  I tried instead to treat it like any other day.  I tried to fill my day with tasks to keep my mind busy.

I was glad to see DD was open a half day.  I threw a $5 tip to the drive thru staff in appreciation of them working on the holiday. After grabbing my coffee I stopped at the park with Elsa to get a lap in around the path.  I really need to try to get her out and walking more.  She spends weekdays just sleeping all day I’m sure so it isn’t good for her.  She acts so scared when I try to get her out of the truck at the park and almost instantly poops once we get there.  However I know it’s good for her and I need to make more effort to keep her moving.

My bill paying session took forever as it was CC reconciliation week which is a PIA.  I found a fraudulent charge on there which is going to result in me getting a new card and number.  That will set off a chain reaction of aggravation as I will need to change all of the services I bill to the card monthly.

I knocked out the mowing around the house and then headed inside where I cleaned the carpets and steam cleaned the hard surfaces.  I finished up back outside where I did maintenance on the tractor including new blades, oil and oil filter.  I just crossed 100 hours on it so I made a video of the work as well.

So despite the day packed with work I still found myself in a poor mental state by the end of it.  I thought back to moments in my childhood and drew some parallels to what I was feeling now. The sense of sadness when reality washes away any past disillusions.

So recently, spurned on by the calisthenics reflection video I did a couple weeks ago I have been reminiscing on how seriously I was into body weight training a decade ago.  It was a time in my life where I was the most fit of my life.  Not only was I doing high level calisthenics, this was also the time period where I ran three half marathons, dead lifted almost 400 pounds and completed three Tough Mudders.  I have been wondering just what I can and can’t do at this point, a decade later.

The long distance running portion of the glory years clearly seems out of reach.  My lower body just won’t allow it.  When I tried to reboot my running a few months ago my left knee blew up after only three short 1 mile runs.  However I still do pull ups, push ups, and dips regularly but with a mindset of maintaining my current level.  I lost the PR mindset years ago where you are always trying to set a new best in reps, time or weight moved. However lately I am feeling the embers of motivation smoldering.

Last night I wanted to see if I good do a move I used to do semi-regularly, an elbow planche.  Surprisingly, I could.  It wasn’t easy but I still had the ability to do the movement which puts various stresses on your core, arms and lower body.  That small success has given me a little extra push to keep moving forward, back into the mindset where each week you make little micro-improvements in what you are doing.  All of a sudden you look back months later and realize how far you have moved.

So I am on the eve of my second week long staycation in a month.  Having vacation time to burn is a nice problem to have.  Sure it would be nice to use it doing something more exciting like a road trip but logistically that doesn’t work for me right now. Much like the last staycation I have a decent size list of things to do but none of them on their own should take much more than a few hours to complete.   Also like last staycation I want to take plenty of do whatever the F I want time, an increasingly important part of my life.  I do have fun things like my cardiologist and replacement window appointments during the week to keep things lively.  I’ll drop in here along the way to share the latest.