Archives June 2023

My new Veteran Patton arrived yesterday. I didn’t even have to run home to sign for it, evidently my FedEx driver didn’t care it was classified as signature required, which is good for me. The only thing that wasn’t good was he left it right outside the garage door instead of the covered area by the front door. If we would have had a thunderstorm yesterday I would not have been very pleased.

I lugged the heavy box inside but did not open it, that will happen sometime this weekend. Instead I opened other boxes, one had my newest pickleball paddle and another had a full face helmet for Christine to use while riding which will give more comprehensive protection.

I had her test it last night when we did our first ride since her crash. The helmet fit her well. We trekked about 11 miles on the Greenway. It was also her first time riding the used XR board I bought. She got accustomed to it quickly and enjoyed the wheel. I think it is absolutely better that we are on two of the same device as our speeds match up instead of me pulling her faster accidentally while I am on an EUC.

I took Monday off to give myself a four day weekend as the 4th of July is Tuesday. I have a number of things I would like to get knocked out, none of which are huge time sinks. On Monday morning I may have a session with my first EUC student. He bought a wheel and reached out to me asking if I could show him the basics. I said sure. I think within an hour or two I can get him at least rolling.

Last night after work I continued my trend of doing things I hadn’t done in awhile. This time it was running a push mower. I offered to help Christine mow her grandmothers property. I have not had to mow grass since I moved in March but I don’t think I mowed grass with a push mower in probably 20 years. I worked up a lot of sweat in a relatively short period of time. The mower had propulsion but I stopped using it after about 30 seconds, it interfered with the back and forth motion too much. It felt good to make the yard look more presentable after maybe 45 minutes of pushing it.

Today my Veteran Patton is scheduled to arrive. Wheels always come with signature required for Fedex so I left a sign on my door asking that they ring the doorbell and if they can do other nearby deliveries I can be home in 10 minutes to sign if needed. We will see if my plan works.

Last night Christine used these suction devices on my painful back. They are basically “cupping” tools although it sure seems like they are industrial strength. You attach them to problem areas. Once turned on they apply strong suction, infrared heat and vibration. It’s painful at first until the area sort of goes numb. 20 minutes later you are left with what you see in the picture.

Christine said the dark color is actually a good thing as it indicates that area was getting inadequate blood flow. The procedure is supposed to encourage healing, we will see. Right now it looks like I was attacked by an angry octopus.

Last night I did a couple things I had not done in years, played Classic WoW and streamed live on Twitch. The reason I played classic WoW was because I wanted to try “hardcore” mode. In the normal game if you die, you resurrect. It’s inconvenient but there is no big penalty for your virtual death. In hardcore when you die, that character is actually dead, you can no longer revive him. It adds a unique twist to the game I have been playing since early 2005. Every action now has to be carefully assessed as one wrong move could result in dozens of play time hours going down the drain.

I decided to make a warrior as that was the first class I ever played in WoW. The nostalgia factor was high and I enjoyed getting to level 6 or 7 successfully. I think I will keep at it as long as I am enjoying it.

As I mentioned I live streamed it on Twitch, I don’t think I had any live viewers which I could care less about. If you want to see the roughly 90 minute session feel free to click the link below. My channel on Twitch is Duf67

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1857597356

I picked Christine up from the airport yesterday. Last night I gave her a surprise I picked up on Friday, a used One Wheel XR. I bought it from a kid in Cape Coral which is nearly an hour away. The only reason I bought it was because he agreed to bring it to me. The kid was about my height, longer hair and looked like he weighed about 130lbs soaking wet. He owned the board since new and had put almost 2800 miles on it. The board looked well used but I did a quick test ride and everything seemed to still be in good working order.

The board had a nearly brand new tire and a good one at that. It also had hub savers, 3rd party foot pads and a set of “fangs” on the front. Fangs are small wheels that are designed to allow the board to be able to drop onto them in certain situations. In some cases if a rider is skilled enough they would allow you to recover from a cut out situation similar to what Christine had.

Christine was surprised and excited. I told her that to me the big advantage is we can both ride One Wheels. With me being on an EUC which can go much faster than a OneWheel I think it inadvertently pushed her to ride faster. With us on PEVs with similar capabilities I am hoping it will help curb the possibilities of going faster than what is safe.

Over this past weekend I put at least 30 miles on the XR making sure it was good to go. It rides great. This board has slightly less power and 5-6 less miles of range than my GT but it should be a non-issue as 15 miles is about as far as I would ever want to go on a OneWheel anyway. I look forward to getting out there for a tandem OW ride soon.

I know I have made reference to this in the past but I feel like bringing it up again. It is the scenario where a person makes a decision, performs an action or says something that they know is not in their best interest and then laments the consequences of it. I can certainly raise my hand as being guilty of this during various times of my life. Well the doing things not in best interest part at least. I think for the most part I am self aware enough to accept full responsibility for what happens as a result and deal with the shrapnel. The best you can hope for is to learn from the situation and not hit yourself in the face with a hammer, again…

On Friday after work I got inspired to do the fan location swap I talked about last week. It wasn’t hard but man was I sweaty from working in the high temperature, high humidity conditions. It was nice having a source of air flow over the furniture although the fan itself was not in great shape. The blades were starting to droop and it didn’t push tons of air, which triggered more action later.

I decided to do a live stream Friday night to talk about my latest impulse buy, a Veteran Patton euc. I plan to sell one of my other EUC’s to lighten the financial load but of course this was far from a must have buy. I talked about a number of other things as I drank four Cayman Jacks along the way.

On Saturday I decided that just moving the old fan wasn’t enough, I went to Home Depot and bought a new one. I am pretty sure it is the exact same model I bought and installed at my old house before moving. The install was relatively easy and the new 52″ fan has a bright LED light along with a more powerful motor that moves significantly more air than what it replaced. I was very pleased with my upgrade, especially after sitting on the couch without sweating my ass off.

During the afternoon I headed out to the swamp to get a ride in on the S22. When I left my house the skies looked menacing. When I got out to the swamp area it was even worse with dark clouds, rain and lightning nearby. I knew it was a dumb idea but I headed out anyway.

As expected I wound up getting soaked during the ride but the wheel held up well. When I got back to the truck I found my phone sitting on the bed rail of the truck where I mistakenly left it. It was soaked but luckily Iphone 14’s are pretty water resistant. The video captures the moments pretty well.

Saturday night I took ANOTHER ride, this time around the neighborhood just as the sun was going down. It was peaceful and therapeutic.

I had no real tasks on Sunday other than paying my bills which was nice. I went for yet another ride on the Greenway in the middle of the morning. It was a very enjoyable 10 or 11 mile jaunt.

I went over to the park to see if I could get some pickleball in later. The place was a ghost town with only 6 or 7 people using the courts. I wound up just doing some solo drills for maybe an hour.

During the afternoon I went to the gym at work since it is 24/7 access. I had the entire place to myself as I worked chest. One thing I have recently started doing is a heavy negative after I do my 1 rep max. It seems to be helping me as my 1RM has been inching upward over the last few weeks.

Sunday night I did yet another evening ride and again I enjoyed it. The area I live in has a bunch of roadways with a 25MPH speed limit and light traffic which makes for a very low stress experience, I love it.

I was to bed early last night because I was taking Christine to the airport early this morning. Although I have no real need to get up very early anymore I still function just fine getting up way before the sun rises. On the drive to the airport I thought about how I was getting up at 5:30 every morning to take care of the chickens. I then thought back to my days as a race timer when I would be getting up even earlier to drive my loaded truck to the race site. That conditioned my brain to be up and firing first thing as pre-race prep had a lot of moving parts. In a weird way it felt good to be out and about in the world while many are still in bed.

This weekend I have a few things I want to do. One of them is to do some swapping around of fans/lights on the lanai. My new outdoor sofa is positioned at the south end of the space. The ceiling fan is in the middle so when it’s running you can’t feel it if you are relaxing on the couch. A zero dollar fix for this issue is to move the fan where the light currently is above the couch and put the light where the fan was. I eventually would like to get different lights out there but for now this will address the issue.

I also would like to take my newly repaired Kingsong S22 out to the swamp for a ride. It will give me a chance to revisit my old stomping grounds. I realized recently that I never rode the S22 in the swamp so this will give me an opportunity to correct that oversight. Other than a few small tasks I would like to just enjoy the time in whatever way I please.

Yesterday I got on a kick where I pulled clips out of some of my old YouTube videos and made Shorts out of them. The all involved me falling/failing in some way, a very popular genre.

Last night I played volleyball. For some reason before we started I had the inspiration to rake the sand court. They have a large rake designed specifically for that task. So I spent at least 15 minutes carefully dragging the rake down both sides of the court, leaving a pristine even trail behind it. The other players commented on how they never played on the court that looked this good. So we started our game and within 10 points the court basically looked exactly how it did before I started. I won’t be raking it again.

My play last night was decent. My passing was better. When it gets erratic it is usually from one of two reasons (or both), not moving my feet to get in a better position and/or not bending my knees enough to get the ball trajectory more up instead of out. I had a few good hits which always give me hope. I also continue to have an annoying more or less constant ache down what feels like my right IT band which affects my ability to move quickly or jump. It would be great if that went away. There was more movement than normal last night since we played triples the entire 2 hours.

The other day I got back from the gym, reached in my pocket and realized I was missing one of my airpods. Almost instantly I wrote it off as a lost cause and used some of my Amazon spiff dollars to get another set of Airpod 3’s (mine were 2’s). So AFTER I place the order I decide to back track my path back from the gym just in case. I got four steps outside the door and found the missing pod. Oh well, I gave my old set to Christine since one of her boys lost his awhile ago.

I am looking to have a pretty quiet weekend where I can do whatever I feel like doing. I plan to do that.

Yesterday I saw a Ring notification pop up. I did a double take when what looked to be a large animal passed by the driveway camera. I went into the app and watched it back. The camera didn’t start shooting until the animal was almost out of frame but it seems clear that a small black bear had just walked by my house.

Now if this was the old house out in the estates this wouldn’t be all that surprising. I used to have bears walk by the house pretty routinely. However to see one where I live now surprised the hell out of me. There is a scarcity of the type of environment you would think a bear typically comes from. The bear was definitely young but hopefully old enough to be on his own. I didn’t think I would ever have another bear sighting again in my new zip code.

I also seem to have picked up a black cat that likes hanging out in my back yard. I have seen him/her randomly over the last few days. Elsa is not a big fan.

Last night after work I got out on my newly motor transplanted S22 to give it it’s first road test. I was a bit nervous as the motor is the heart of an EUC, if somehow I messed something up the consequences could be severe. Luckily all went well and the noise I was hearing that initiated the swap was no longer present. I shot a video documenting the test.

Friday night I ran a late live stream out of the blue. I wanted to talk about riding safety and my personal experience with what can happen when things go wrong. It was two hours of talking about that and a number of other things.

On Saturday morning I was busy doing my normal Saturday things like speed weeding the property, getting groceries, and tending to small to do’s around the house. I made arrangements to go to the movies with Christine to see the Flash. Historically most DC superhero movies fall flat for me when compared to their Marvel counterparts. Unfortunately Flash was not an exception to that track record. I am not a big fan of the guy that plays Flash, he just does not have the personality I would imagine Flash to have. I thought the plot was dumb/weird with more of the alternate timeline bullshit that I already dislike in the Marvel universe. (SPOILER) Really for me the best parts were when other characters were involved. (Batman(s)) A lot of things just made no sense but it had good action and a number of laughs in there so overall I would give it a B. I could have definitely waited to see it on a streaming platform.

Sunday was a very rainy day with storms rolling in and out most of the day. This was the first time I got to see what heavy rain looks like on the property. During the worst of it the brick patio out back was submerged underwater. I was glad I had the gutters to divert at least some of the water elsewhere. There was a blast of lightning that I saw out my office window that seemed to be only a few hundred yards away. There was a weird side effect afterward.

When I was out in the garage I saw the sprinklers in the front of the yard were running. I thought it was odd since I had turned the sprinklers completely off for rainy season. I thought maybe the quick loss of power from the lightning strike may have messed with the controller. When I checked the box it looked fine indicating all zones should be off. I tried power cycling the controller but it made no difference. I eventually had to manually turn the valve on the solenoid for that zone closed to get the sprinklers to stop. It will be something I’ll have to troubleshoot more in the future.

On Saturday I received a new motor for my Kingsong S22. The original motor had started making noise last week. This batch of wheels also had a known defect in the motor that potentially could cause catastrophic failure so once I started hearing a noise I didn’t want to f around.

Months ago I changed the tire on this wheel and it was a colossal pain in the ass. I actually put off doing that tire change for a couple months because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle. This time, I waited one day.

This was the first major EUC work I have done since moving. With that being the case it took some time to find certain tools that I needed for the job. Christine came over later and actually helped me with some of the work, most importantly getting the tire installed on the new motor which is the toughest part of the entire process. Luckily with this being my second time through I was able to utilize some of the lessons learned to get the tire on more efficiently. We both had a sense of satisfaction when I hit the power button after reassembly and everything fired up as planned. This upcoming weekend I plan to take the wheel out to the swamp, another reason I pushed myself to get this work done sooner rather than later.

Over the weekend I saw a video Matt Walsh published about introverts, which I am a card carrying member, and their relationship with small talk. I am not a huge fan of many of Matt’s opinions on a lot of things but on this subject he perfectly verbalized how I view small talk and interactions with most human beings.

On Wednesday night I was riding with Christine, her on the One Wheel and me on one of my EUC’s. She has gotten very good, very quickly. She has been gaining confidence.

We were on our way back from the Greenway. She was carving back and forth and having a great time. Then it happened. In the matter of a split second the board cut out and she hit the roadway, hard. I immediately jumped off my wheel to run back to her. She was dazed and could not respond to me. A woman on a bike immediately stopped who said she was a EMT. She recommended I call 911, which I did.

A quick look at the helmet showed the result of the impact, the helmet was busted with deep scratches. This was bad. In addition to the head her right shoulder took a big impact and she had road rash on various parts of her body. The ambulance came and evaluated her. They recommended she go to the hospital but Christine signed a waiver, thinking she would be ok.

The Cliff Notes version is she wasn’t. She was in severe pain and had dizziness/nausea throughout the night. I convinced her to go to the ER with me yesterday morning. She had a CT and X-rays done. The good news is there was nothing broken and no sort of brain bleed going on. However she clearly has a concussion which is serious. Symptoms from it can linger for weeks.

A post crash analysis pointed to one of two possible reasons. I found a big metal U-clamp in the middle of the road around where she went down. She could have hit that which would have caused the fall. The other possibility is she was just going too fast and the One Wheel cut out. Regardless I felt partially responsible, I should have been paying closer attention to her speed.

She will heal up but I have no doubt any future riding will include additional gear. It was a scary reminder of just how quickly and unexpectedly things can go bad.