After work last night I went out in the driveway on my EUC to do some more backwards riding practice. I am still improving for sure but I am miles from being comfortable. I was doing a lot of direction reversals and found for some reason I have a lot more struggles going from reverse to forward than forward to reverse. To me it seems like switching into backwards riding would be tougher but that has not been the case. I can successfully do the front back reversal probably 80-90% of the time. I would estimate when I go backwards to forward my success rate is maybe half, and half of those involve a lot of arm flailing.
I also can’t believe how taxed my lower body feels after riding backwards. My legs feel like they are under near constant tension when riding in reverse. As a result my lower body almost feels like I did a weighted leg workout the day before. There is a weird thing going in on my head since I started the trek to riding backwards, riding forwards feels like cheating. It almost feels like until I am equally adept at riding backwards as I can forwards, doing a forwards only ride is not effort towards accomplishing that goal, which is bothering me. It’s sort of weird that riding backwards is somehow negatively affecting conventional riding enjoyment.
So Sadie went back to Ali’s this morning. The 4-5 week construction projection at her place has hit some road bumps that have delayed things. It is almost done at this point and should be safer for the dogs. The only major portion of the project that remains is installing countertops. What was done looks nice and gives Ali a lot more functional storage and counter space.
So I woke up Saturday knowing there were a lot of small to medium things I needed to address. What I didn’t realize was I would be addressing them pretty much all day long. It was one of those days where I am doing one thing in the yard and I notice another thing that needs to get done which gets tacked onto the list. I did a full mow and weedwhack of the property myself, the first time that has been done in close to a couple months due to sparse rainfall. Having the new fenced in chicken area definitely is going to add more time to yard maintenance.
I finally got around to putting the cactus that was in a large pot next to the chicken coop into the ground. I got tired of it getting blown over repeatedly during high winds. I was surprised with how shallow the roots for the cactus were, they were pretty much non-existent. I made a trip to Home Depot to grab some castle stones to finish off a couple spots around the yard as well as a stop at Auto Zone.
At AZ one of the things I grabbed was a headlight restoration kit for Cindy’s Prius. When I replaced the headlight bulbs in her car I got a front row seat to how cloudy the headlights were. After a lot of scrubbing, polishing, and sealing the lenses looked much better. Unfortunately it is the kind of thing that needs to be done periodically as the only long term fix for cloudy headlights is getting new headlights.
Despite busting my ass all day I still had a chance to take the Tacoma out for a quick test run of my new bed GoPro mount that was custom fabricated by a guy I met on YouTube, Chuck. He made a video about making the mount and I told him I would be happy to pay him to do the same for me, so he did.
The mount gives a unique perspective while driving and is something I hope to mix in to my Tacoma videos here and there. Chuck is also the guy that has gotten me a lot more interested in swapping out the wheels/tires on my Tacoma as well as doing a small lift on the truck. He did something similar to his SR5 Tacoma and the visual transformation as a result was dramatic.
Sunday morning I awoke without an alarm a few minutes before 6 and got up to go run. Despite my body being pretty beat up from Saturday’s labor I wanted to start off my Sunday with the weekly 5K I have been putting in for a month or so now. The morning temps and humidity were higher than I have been enjoying in recent weeks but I still put in a decent effort.
I assumed Cindy and I would do a joint EUC ride later in the morning but Cindy was feeling beat up from teaching a bunch of group classes this week. She suggested instead we bring Elsa with to the Greenway so Cindy could walk her while I rode. That worked for me so we piled in the Prius and headed out. Elsa seemed to have a lot of fun and wasn’t as freaked out by other people as she can be at times. I worked a little backwards practice into my ride, some of it more successful than others.
A little later in the afternoon I got the itch to take a shot at a challenge I had in my head ever since I started learning to ride backwards. I wanted to see if I could ride an entire 1/4 mile lap around the track at the school. The skies looked menacing as I started riding around. After a little warm up I got onto the track for the attempt. My biggest worry was negotiating the curves, something I definitely am not great at in reverse. The first couple hundred yards went pretty smoothly but as I was coming out of the first curve I got smacked by a big headwind in advance of the coming storm. Multiple times I flailed my arms wildly to regain balance. Somehow I completed the entire lap but it definitely was far from pretty. Just as I finished up it started to rain pretty hard so I called it a session.
I went into veg mode for most of the rest of the night, working on yet another large WoW virtual task. I figured I earned the time off.
So despite being told Saturday that the doors of the gym would be locked Monday, I changed into my gym clothes and went anyway just to confirm the closure for myself. Imagine my surprise when I saw the gym was open for business. I saw the manager and asked him what was up. I told him on Saturday gym staff said the doors were being locked Monday.
He looked embarrassed and a bit nervous as he said “no, no, we are open!” I asked for more details. He said that evidently the man that bought the local franchise will be out of the picture, the landlord was ready to evict him due to non-payment of rent. However supposedly the gym is now going to be taken over by corporate RetroFitness which according to the manager is a good thing. I asked him flat out if the gym was going to remain open during this transition and he said yes. Hopefully he wasn’t lying to my face.
Last night Cindy was out so I tended to a few things before heading out to do a little more reverse riding practice in the driveway. I actually had more struggles than I expected but I think a part of that reason was my legs were pretty stiff and tired from all the backwards practice this past weekend. My legs are utilized much more heavily when riding in reverse.
So we decided Friday afternoon we would go to the second Tarpons game of the season. We dropped Sadie off at Ali’s on the way there so I was worried we might get to the arena late. When I pulled into the parking lot, despite it being 10 minutes before kickoff the parking lot was dramatically less full than it was for the first game. I’m not sure why there was such a big drop off. Maybe those week one fans realized that arena football at this level is sort of sad. It was ironic, despite the terrible attendance they had double the amount of food stands open as they normally do. There was absolutely no waiting for your food or beverage items.
For the second time this season the visiting team had on generic uniforms with plain black helmets. Most of their players were dramatically undersized compared to their Tarpon counterparts. The tiniest of them all was number 26 that you would have sworn was 12 years old. The guy was barely over five feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than 120 pounds. He also was their kicker and was absolutely awful at it, kicking spinning tops that would travel no more than 15 feet in the air. It was a joke.
As you would expect, the Tarpons absolutely steam rolled their opposition, winning something like 70-24. It very well may be the last game we attend this season as of the two remaining games one is a Sunday afternoon and another is a Monday night, neither time slot excites me. I will likely have better things to do than watch the Tarpons beat up on whatever bush league team comes in next.
I got some very annoying news on Friday. Cindy, who teaches a few classes at my gym, got a call from the fitness director that the gym was closing it’s doors, again. Regular blog readers may remember that my gym closed once before for about six months when the prior owners, who did a terrible job of running the place stopped paying rent.
Well guess what, this new owner evidently stopped paying rent as well. He also stopped paying employees recently as several paychecks have bounced. The employees had no idea this was coming. As recently as a week or two ago the manager was claiming there was soon going to be a lot of money coming into the business, not sure what he meant by that, maybe he meant the money they weren’t going to pay the employees.
I stopped by on Saturday and verified the closure which is supposed to officially happen today. This scenario creates a large hole in my lunchtime workout plans. I basically have two options, do bodyweight workouts outdoors or go back to the hated and crowded Planet Fitness, where they have pulled out much of the free weight equipment I like to use. Neither option is great. We will see what happens.
On Saturday morning I was in the yard a good portion of the morning attending to a number of things as Cindy was not home. Late morning I loaded Elsa up in the truck with me to get coffee and run the truck through a touch free car wash. As I was waiting in line to enter the wash I thought how she may react since Elsa can be VERY skittish and is easily scared. I tried to remain optimistic.
So as the wash started with the low pressure pre-wash process Elsa seemed curious about what was going on but not scared. However that changed once the high pressure water started hitting the truck. She immediately jumped over into my lap. I held onto her tight and reassured her everything was ok. She wasn’t a fan of the the high power drying blowers either.
Mid-afternoon I ran out to do some errands as well as do some more backwards EUC practice. I decided I would use the Sugden Park parking lot to do so. I had a lot of struggles early on but then suddenly something clicked. I was doing consistently long backwards rides and at the end I even did more advanced moves like mounting the wheel in the backwards direction as well as doing “pendulums” where you reverse direction on the wheel without stepping off. I was very encouraged by the rapid progress.
Our Saturday night was quiet as we caught up on some of our backlogged DVR content while enjoying a tasty vegetable lasagna Cindy made.
Sunday the 6AM alarm gave me an unwelcome jolt out of bed, I felt like I could have slept longer. I quietly got my running garb on and gear together for my run at the track. It used to be I would always be joined later in my run by some walkers around the track. Since I rebooted my running a month or so ago that has no longer been the case. I end my run as I begin it, alone.
I was surprised when I saw the numbers my old GPS gave me, my average pace seemed slower than it felt. When I reviewed the lap times I saw it had one of my laps showing an 11:45 pace which is impossible and the likely reason my numbers were inflated. The GPS hardware in my old Garmin is first gen, newer units definitely are more accurate. I was almost annoyed enough to consider the prospect of plunking down a couple hundred bucks for a new watch, That was until I realized that my current level of running has no real need for accurate speed measurement, it’s all slow.
I went right from running into chicken coop cleaning at home. Cindy always acts like she feels guilty when I do the coop work but I really don’t mind it. I love the chickens and they seem equally fond of me. I have mastered the art of mouth breathing so cleaning the excrement coated rubber mats isn’t as bad for me as it could be for others.
So mid-morning Cindy and I headed out with our wheels to North Collier Park. As we entered the park we saw something very unusual. A bald man was walking slowly through the park with his guitar around his neck. As he strolled along he was playing the instrument while singing quite enthusiastically. I’m not sure what the deal was but it certainly was a first for me.
So my hope was Cindy would get some more one wheel practice while riding with me and I also could get some more backwards practice in. As we were riding around the back loop in the park I decided I wanted to start the backwards practice early. I did a reversal from going forward to backward which went well. However as I tried to stop and step off I lost my balance and went rolling backwards off the side of the path. I didn’t hit the ground that hard but I did land one a bunch of rocks that left various bruises/scrapes on my back. I also somehow wound up with a small branch wedged inside my helmet. It’s too bad the GoPro wasn’t rolling, it had to look ridiculous.
Cindy continued to do well with her riding. Even though she was very resistant to the entire idea of trying to learn an EUC again I can tell that she is now proud of her accomplishment which makes me happy.
My backwards training went pretty well, I rode backwards a couple tenths of a mile in one shot and did a number of free standing reverse mounts and pendulums. My control in all aspects of backwards riding is still very shaky and needs a lot of cleaning up and practice but the fact that I have at least a base level of backwards proficiency after only a week of focused practice makes me feel good, nearly as good as when I learned to go forwards.
On our way home from riding we decided to stop at our brand new Publix which opened up last week. This store has actually been built since November but problems with the water hook up has delayed it’s opening until now which is sort of crazy. The store is located less than three miles from our door which is awesome.
It’s funny, back in 2001 when we bought our land one of the things our realtor told us was how a Publix was going to be built there “very soon”. Sixteen years isn’t very soon in my book but regardless, I am very happy it’s finally here.
The store was packed, just like the parking lot. Unfortunately the parking lot is undersized for the amount of use the store will get. Some people were parking in the shoulder across the road and walking across traffic to get inside, it is kind of crazy.
The store itself was bright, clean and beautiful. Cindy and I walked the aisles to get a general lay out idea but it seemed to follow the same blueprint as most Publix stores built in the last 10 years. We waited at the deli probably 20 minutes to get a couple subs for lunch. I am hoping as a little time passes shopping at the store won’t be such a consistently congested experience.
Last night as we were watching TV I decided to soak my feet for a pretty disgusting reason. Back when I built the fence around the chicken coop I somehow damaged the toenail on my left big toe from being in my work boots with thick socks all weekend long. The nail has gone through various color changes since then but lately has looked more cadaver like.
Well it also has recently started to feel loose. When I would put on socks sometimes it would snag on the nail and I could feel it pulling upward which was not a pleasant sensation. Clearly the nail was going to come off sooner or later. I decided I would rather get it done sooner so after soaking the toe for awhile I started the nauseating task of rocking the nail up and down. I did this while the toe was still submerged in the foot bath and obscured from view, to minimize the disgusting visual. I finally was able to break the old nail free. It wasn’t really painful, it just felt really strange in a gross way. Under the dead nail I could see the tiny beginning of a new nail forming which I am sure will take months and months. It was a stomach turning way to end my weekend.
Cindy was out at an event last night so I had an open evening to do whatever came to mind. Of course the first thing that popped into my head was to get my fourth day of serious practice of reverse EUC riding in. The session started out kind of rocky with me struggling to get to the distance mark I set on Tuesday night for quite awhile. I then made a subtle adjustment, supporting the wheel more with my calves to help stability as well as leaning back more to keep my speed up. By the time I was done I had obliterated my previous best of 37 feet, rolling 90 feet without stepping off. To be honest, on that 90 foot roll I intentionally stopped myself because I was approaching the garage so I might have been able to go further.
I was very encouraged by my progress. I think I am at the point where I should be heading to the school parking lot to increase my reverse practice real estate. I still have a TON of work to do but considering a week ago I couldn’t roll 5 feet without falling off, things are looking up.
This weekend has no formal schedule although we might take in a Tarpons game tonight.
I was back out in the driveway last night working on riding backwards on my EUC. I had some tweaks to my technique I was anxious to try. The biggest one was consciously pushing my hips back so I keep steady speed. Part of my problem Monday night was I would run out momentum which in turn made me step off.
Things started out slowly but I then suddenly had a ride that went a dozen feet past my prior best that I had marked with a branch. A few minutes later I managed to ride another 10 feet past that, a little short of 40 feet. I still had plenty of wobbly, shorter rides mixed in there but the fact that I was able to hang on that far was very encouraging.
Tonight we plan to make our annual visit to the county fair. A night of simple fun, animals and people watching awaits.
So even though I was beat up from my backwards riding practice on Sunday I headed back into the driveway last night to work on it some more. I had a number of things I wanted to do differently after watching the video from Sunday. I pulled the Tacoma down toward the entrance of the driveway. I wanted to use the rear of it as my launch point. Instead of going along a fence I wanted to just push backwards and have it with no safety crutch on either side of me, hopefully forcing me to adapt to the physics of backwards riding quicker. I also saw a lot of technique things I was doing wrong which I needed to work on. It’s been a long time since I have had to consciously think about riding the EUC but in a way it was cool to have another mountain to climb.
So I definitely had some improvement and I had no major wipeouts. My best backward ride was approximately 15 feet. I had an unexpected treat when Cindy came out on her wheel to ride around as well. She is really good at getting on and off the wheel as well as adept at going straight. Her next hurdle is getting the hang of turning which she made some progress on, being able to do a 180 degree turn within the boundaries of the driveway for the first time.
The 15 minutes I had planned to allocate to riding turned out to be more like 45 minutes. It felt good to be making some small progress and it was better doing it with Cindy out there as well. You can see from the video(s) we had fun. I shot a lot of footage, enough for two full videos.
I was outside Saturday morning bright and early. I had a ton of things I wanted to get done, small things that added up to a larger block of time. I placed a new set of solar pathway lights to replace the 4-5 year old lamps that were mostly dead. Cindy asked that I place a couple by the entrance to the driveway for better visibility. Or course no more than 30 minutes after I placed them Katie hit one backing out her truck, breaking the mounting stake. I actually had lights by the end of the driveway before and they got pulled after repeated vehicle strikes.
I also used the steam mop and went over the tiled living area. There has been a constant feeling of grime on the floor since the house has become a psuedo dog kennel. I hoped the steam mop would help alleviate that. I inherited this mop when my mom passed away. I actually bought it for her as a Christmas present a few years before that. Well it seems like for some reason it does not pump steam like it once did. I was not happy with the end result.
Later in the day I bought a new and improved floor steam mop and got dramatically better results. For the first time in weeks the floor actually felt clean to bare feet. Of course with the dogs constantly bringing in dirt and sand, unless I allocate a couple days a week to steam cleaning, the floors will be back to their gritty state in no time.
I volunteered to help Cindy do some work at her mom’s condo. Cindy was doing a lot of painting which I wanted no part of but there were also some shelving that needed to be installed which I have experience with. I first dropped Cindy off at her mom’s place so I could get a look at what would be needed supply wise. We took a few measurements and I headed to the the closest Home Depot.
I bought that white wire shelving that is used everywhere. I bought six foot sections that I had a HD employee cut to length using his hydraulic snips, saving me a lot of sawing. I also bought a DeWalt hack saw. I have an old shitty one at home that I didn’t bring. I figured I needed to have a saw in case the cuts the clerk made were not good enough. It turned out that was a good decision as I had to saw a fraction of an inch off of three sections.
Hanging shelving is never fun and of course the most important aspect is that they are spaced correctly and level. After hanging the first shelf which I used Cindy extensively to hold things I developed a better system that allowed me to hang everything else solo with good results. Cindy and her mom thanked me for the work.
I actually had thrown my electric unicycle in the truck. Even though Cindy planned to leave in a few minutes, I told her she should just take the truck, I would ride my EUC the 13-14 miles home. The weather was beautiful and I wanted to get a ride in. She passed me while I was approaching Collier Blvd, waving as she saw me.
On Saturday night we, well mostly I, watched the latest Bourne Identity movie. I was glad to see Matt Damon reclaim the role. I thought the movie was very entertaining, a high energy action flick with a strong revenge plot. I really liked it, enough to give it an A- rating.
I started my Sunday off with a 5K run at the track. I did not have the strong IT band pain this week as I did last Sunday. I completed all laps sans-limp although according to the GPS my pace was slower than it felt. It was pitch dark for most of the run. The only source of light was the moon which was filtered by thin clouds.
I again had a “go” attitude when I got home. I headed directly outside to attend to the chicken duties. I was finishing up by the time Cindy brought Elsa outside. Cindy had several things she needed to do on Sunday but she agreed to go ride with me for a bit which was cool. We went to North Collier Park since it is closer. Cindy continued her excellent riding progress and is demonstrating natural abilities that I don’t possess. At the end of the ride I told her to try my Msuper a little bit, my theory being since it is bigger and more stable she would feel more steady on it. She promptly rode the wheel the distance of the parking lot and did a six or seven foot backwards ride at the end of it. It was easy for her.
During the afternoon Cindy was out. I had some more videos I wanted to shoot. The first one was something that I had in my head for awhile. I wanted to see if I could still flip the 500 pound double stack of tires, a feat I did roughly four years ago, back when I was doing a lot of power training. I wanted to see if I could still pull it off on the doorstep of 50 years of age.
It was windy outside so I thought I would be smart and use my external mic rig that has a wind screen. Well I wasn’t smart enough to test the functionality of the rig ahead of time. The end result was the audio was a mess which I replaced with a music bed and captions. Elsa was out there cheering me on as I got the tire stack flipped not once but twice. My experience at Stone Park with IronLoo was a huge help as I now knew that getting my feet away from the tires and pushing into them low with my shoulder was a key factor in the start of the lift. The side of my face, hands, and forearms were black from the old dirty rubber.
I then had MORE EUC videos I wanted to shoot. I went to the school to first shoot an intermediate rider tips tutorial where I talk about some of the skills to practice once you are able to more or less stay on the wheel.
I then wanted to shoot footage of me trying to learn to ride backwards. Another guy I know, Marty that is a few years older than me recently started seriously to try to learn backwards riding. I felt if he could try, so should I. I have tried riding backwards a little bit in the past but had very poor results. As comfortable as I feel going forwards at this point, it doesn’t seem possible that going backwards should feel so foreign, but it does.
So anyway the video shows my dozens of frustrating attempts. I was actually getting a bit fatigued from all of the awkward stumbling dismounts. Shortly after I commented how I mentally was done, I had a nasty face plant fall where the wheel shot out from under me. My hands/wrists took the initial impact followed by my elbows. Of course I neglected to wear my elbow pads yesterday which would have helped.
Despite having on the wrist guards, both wrists hurt considerably. Both elbows were scraped/bruised and although I didn’t realize it at the time, I sprained my right big toe as well. Despite the crash, I refused to let that be my last experience as I am a firm believer that ending on a positive note is a very important thing. I did a few more attempts and stopped after I had maybe a 10 foot backwards ride. Watching back the video is actually helpful to me as I can see some clear mistakes I am making.
My Msuper took some nasty falls along with me. I added a bunch of new scratches to the case. Later last evening I added some foam bumper material to key impact points to hopefully minimize additional damage as long as I am trying to learn the skill. I awoke this morning feeling all sorts of aches and pains from the running, tire flipping, face planting activities of the weekend.
Last night after work I threw the wheel in the truck to ride by the school. The grounds were unusually empty because we are in the middle of the one week spring break the school system down here observes. I didn’t have a very long ride but I must have been talking/recording through almost the entire thing since the video turned out to be over 20 minutes long. It covers at least a half dozen various topics.
This morning we were rudely awakened by the sounds of Sadie vomiting next to my side of the bed. I got up and cleaned up the mess in a sleepy haze and then tried to fall back asleep for what felt like some much needed additional zzzz’s. I think I may have finally fallen asleep about 5 minutes before the 5:55 alarm went off which was incredibly awesome.
The weather this weekend is supposed to be really nice. I hope to take advantage of it some way other than not sweating as much doing house/yard chores.
Cindy and I got out to see Logan Saturday night. Instead of going to Coconut Point we went to Paragon which is sort of a lower level Silverspot with preassigned “luxury” seating. The seats in Paragon are actually power recliners which on paper sound good. The reality is they don’t actually recline far enough for me to ever be comfortable. I was constantly shifting position the entire movie.
So I did zero research going into the movie. It was a Wolverine movie so I knew I would enjoy it, I always do. Well within the first couple minutes when I saw extreme gore and the F bomb being thrown around nonstop I realized that they decided to go the Deadpool route with Logan, another R rated super hero flick. I am the farthest thing from a prude you could find but it was a little over the top even for me. I never thought I would hear Patrick Stewart say “fck” in a Xmen movie, until Saturday.
I also didn’t realize the movie was intended to be the last in the Wolverine series even though I did recall Hugh Jackman saying awhile ago that he would not be able to keep playing the role for much longer because of the physical demands. So anyway I liked the movie although even at the end I was still fuzzy about exactly what caused Logan to be ailing as he was. I also was annoyed that even though this was a Marvel flick, I sat through nearly 10 minutes of post movie credits and didn’t get the mini-preview payoff of whats to come that has become the norm, just a black screen. I am going to miss the Wolverine character for sure. I’d give the movie a solid A-.
Sunday morning I got up early to run, once again increasing my distance by two laps which worked out to just over 5K distance. It felt quite challenging to complete. I am on week three of the running reboot, hopefully things get a little smoother soon. My right knee today is feeling a little tweaked.
Cindy and I met up with a mutual friend of ours from the running club and his daughter to do some EV riding at the Greenway. Mike has a HUGE off road electric skateboard that sounds like a tank as it rolls along. He let me get on it briefly in the parking lot but I felt VERY unstable on it. He thought my Msuper was extremely cool and couldn’t believe the speed and range it offers.
Mike’s daughter was very cute and quickly adapted to riding one of our Minipros that we brought along, Cindy rode the other one for most of the ride. Cindy and Mike’s daughter immediately hit it off and had a lot of fun during the ride acting silly. Once we got back to the parking lot Cindy pulled out her electric unicycle and did fantastic, not even needing a hand support. She went straight to free wheeling.
We were at the Greenway for a long time, a full two and a half hours. The weather was pretty much perfect and we took full advantage of it. We all agreed we had to get together again in the future and Mike will be looking deeper into the world of electric unicycles soon.
Mid-afternoon I headed back out to pick up Sadie, get some groceries, and go for another ride. I brought my MCM4 this time and did the big square outside the water park as well as riding inside the water park as well. When I do rides by myself I normally have a lot more to say. See for yourself.
At the store I picked up stuff for Cindy to make galumpkis, something my ex-mother in law used to make years ago. We had a bunch of healthy cabbage in the garden so it was a good way to get some use of it. Of course we didn’t use the ground beef and ground pork pure galumpkis utilize. Cindy substituted veggie crumbles and it still turned out quite tasty.
Last night we watched the latest Netflix rental, Ben Hur. Cindy was excited to see this, me, not so much. I knew absolutely nothing of the Ben Hur story and had no idea it had ties to Christianity. I was very tired and fell asleep during large chunks of the movie but what I did see was not very impressive. Perhaps knowing the back story would have helped some but as is, the best I can rate it is C+.
