Category Fitness

Saturday night was a rough one from a sleep perspective.  It was cold out so we had the in room air conditioner on heat mode.  It ran until the room got up to 75 degrees, providing the white noise I usually need to sleep.  Unfortunately once it hit that temp it’s thermostat would shut it down, removing the white noise.  Once the temp would drop a couple degrees it would cycle back on.  This all night cycle meant I never truly felt like I fell asleep all night long.

In addition to the AC unit I heard a ton of street noise.  Our room at the hotel is only on the 3rd floor, making it susceptible to hearing pretty much everything going on down there.  Cindy also still was having issues with her coughing from illness.  I got up at 7 AM feeling absolutely exhausted.  I had no time to be tired since it was IronLoo day.

We got up and ate breakfast at a place called the Oxford Cafe which was right next to our hotel which was convenient.  They had a great selection of food however I stuck with something simple, ordering oatmeal, not wanting anything that would get in the way of what I knew was going to be a very tough day physically.  For most of our breakfast Cindy and I were the only ones in the cafe which felt odd.

When we got back to the room I tried to map out our plan.  We needed to catch a 10:22 train out of Penn Station which looked to easily be walking distance from our hotel.  I had some instructions from Lou as far as which train to get on.  As we walked I mentioned how it was dumb of me to not have brought a knit beanie for head warmth.  We just happened to be approaching Macy’s so we went inside to try to quickly find one.

Cindy was immediately impressed with the size and grandeur of the store, a throwback to when store shopping was actually a thing.  It was very busy with the holiday decorations looking amazing.  It took some trial and error but eventually we found knit hats on the 4th floor.  I was excited that we got to ride a few sets of the ancient wood escalators that I had told Cindy about in the past.  They are so awesome.  Cindy also found it very interesting that as we were exiting we arrived at floor 1 1/2, the only store I know of that has such a thing.

We found our way out of the store and continued our way towards Penn Station.  We saw a small sidewalk entrance that was labeled as Penn Station so we figured we could get to the train there.  A transit worker informed us that the trains were a block away at the actual station that was inside of Madison Square Garden.

When we got there it was an instant beehive of activity, the station was packed.  We saw a lot of people with Giants jerseys on, presumably heading to the game later in the day.  Cindy and I were very confused as to where exactly to go.  Thanks to some direction from a cop we discovered we needed the LIRR and not Amtrak in order to reach the Oyster Bay line.  We headed downstairs and managed to buy two tickets via the self service kiosk.  We had around 15 minutes to kill so we grabbed ourselves our first NYC DD coffee of the trip, it was much needed.  I didn’t like the feeling of being so clueless in regards to how to get where I wanted to go.  It was frustrating.

So we found the track for our train and found a seat on the nearly empty car.  We had more confusion in regards to if/where we needed to transfer to get to our end destination.  The ticket taker woman told us we needed to get off at the Jamaica station to catch the Oyster Bay line.  The ride out of the city was cool.  It was interesting seeing the landscape transform from skyscrapers to neighborhoods.

Once we got off at Jamaica we only had a short wait until our next train showed up.  It was a bigger train with two levels.  I told Cindy we should head up top where better views were to be had.  The ride to the Seacliff depot was very scenic and calm, the calm before the storm.  When we got off the train we saw a huge white van which we knew was Lou’s work vehicle.  The time had come.

I have known Lou for years but only from a distance.  We met via our shared interest in calisthenics and my involvement with the Bar-barians.  We never had spoken but we have chatted extensively over the years about both things exercise and life related.  As we descended the stairs Lou pulled the van up and got out.  Of course Cindy ran up and gave him a big hug which I did as well.  It was so nice to see Lou in person.

Despite our lack of face to face contact we interacted like we just talked the other day.  Lou is very outgoing and funny.  When teamed up with Cindy and her talkative personality I could just do a lot of listening and laughing which was fine by me.  In the back of Lou’s van were a huge collection of strongman gear including weight plates, farmer carry handles, and a log press.  Every time we would hit a bump they would clang loudly.

Lou drive through a Starbucks to grab us some coffee.  He normally works a night shift and drinks coffee like others drink water.  His ON switch is permanently welded in place.  We then unexpectedly got to meet Lou’s grandfather.  We were picking up an atlas stone Lou had made that was sitting in the backyard.  In the yard were a number of broken tools.  Lou said he broke most of them, he just has a way of doing that.

Lou’s grandfather was actually born in Italy.  When he came out he was giving Lou shit for breaking stuff, especially his garage door.  It was funny how he could switch between yelling and laughing so quickly.  He was very funny, I could see where Lou gets it from.  So the plan was to get the 365 pound atlas stone into the back of the van meaning we had to get it out of the backyard that has a downhill slope to it.  Lou brought out a very old looking handtruck of his grandfathers to use but was worried about breaking it as well.

We used the cart for the first and last part of the transport but I told Lou I would roll the stone up the steep, wet part of the climb.  Sure it was a nearly 400 pound stone ball but I figured rolling it up the short hill shouldn’t be bad.  Well I was wrong.  I barely managed to get the stone to the flat patio above.  It’s weight combined with the wet grass made it very difficult.

When we got to the van we were debating how to get the stone in the back.  At first Lou thought about using the hand truck to pull it in but again fear of breaking it killed that idea.  Lou then decided he would lift it up himself.  That seemed like a really bad idea to me.  He grabbed an old sleeve from a piece of clothing to use as a strap and proceeded to hoist the stone cleanly into the van, resting it inside the wheel of the spare tire.  I couldn’t believe he could lift it.

We all piled back in the van, we had more supplies to grab for the workout.  First we stopped at GNC where Lou grabbed pre-workout drinks which are kind of like supercharged coffee, supposedly to give you more energy.  We then went to a Rite Aid where Lou bought some of that rubberized medical tape normally used to keep large bandaged areas in place.  He uses the tape as arm wraps for lifting atlas stones.  Before we got to Stone Park Lou gave us a quick tour of the some of the areas I had only seen in the past via his numerous exercise videos.  It was cool seeing first hand where all of this stuff went down over the years.

So finally we had made it to the park.  I had seen this park dozens of time on video but being there in person was surreal.  There is the parking lot he has walked bare foot across, there are the monkey bars he has lifted stones over, there is the pull up bar I saw him muscle up over, it was so cool.

Well there was now work to be done to get all of the equipment set up.  Not only did we have to unload the van we had to retrieve items from the park itself.  Lou keeps monster tires and atlas stones there full time.  The tires are kept back in the brush, chained together for safekeeping.  The stones are in a big hole Lou and his friends dug by hand.  It almost looked like a huge dinosaur laid round stone eggs in there.  By the time all of the stuff was set up/rolled out I was already breathing heavy.

Just as we were getting the last stones out a car pulled up.  It was Ray (the inventor of Ray’s Way), another calisthenic friend I met in the same way I knew Lou.  He had come with his girlfriend which was very cool.  He had been to Stonepark once before over a year ago.  It was so great having both Lou and Ray there.  A little later another friend of Lou’s showed up, Patrick.  Patrick actually owns a gym and has been working out with Lou for a little while.  He brought with him a special deadlift bar along with more weights.

So finally the fun could begin.  Lou has a total of 5 atlas stones there of varying weight ranging from 185 pounds to the massive 365 pounder we brought with us.  We alternated between the stones and deadlifting at first.  I have deadlifted before at the gym for awhile.  I was surprised that Lou said my form looked decent as it never has felt great.  I worked all the way up to 375 on the dead lifts with Lou which was the most I have gotten in the last year.  Ray and I were very close strength wise.  Despite not looking it, he only weighed 5 pounds less than me.  Of course everyone there was at least 20 years younger than me.

The atlas stone lifting was much, much harder than I expected.  I figured with my extremely long arms lifting these should not be horrible.  I was able to get the 185 pound stone onto my lap and up without huge difficulty.  I next tried the 205 pound stone that despite being only 20 pounds heavier had a much larger diameter.  This combination made it feel tremendously more difficult.  I barely got it on my lap and when I tried to stand with it I felt a tremendous strain across my abs as I tried to extend upwards.  It felt “you just gave yourself a hernia” bad.  I was officially worried about really hurting myself but I had to continue on.

I had never done real farmer carries before where you have two independent handles loaded down with massive weight that you walk forward with, as fast and as far as you can go.  With my high center of gravity it felt odd trying to balance and move at the same time.  Lou started us off “light” with only 140 pounds of weight in each hand.  Each time we successfully handled a weight that meant it was time to add more.

At my top end Lou threw 230 pounds on each handle which before yesterday I would have told you I had absolutely no shot getting off the ground.   Hell just last week I failed getting 400 pounds off the ground at the gym with a hex bar.  With Lou screaming at me to pump me up I  somehow managed to get 460 pounds up in the air and walk 20-25 feet with it.  It was nuts.

Lou had two monster tires on the lot, a 600 pounder and an 800 pounder.  Early on in the workout I tried getting the 600 flipped a couple times and failed miserably. Later in the workout Ray tried it and failed but then after some form tips from Lou actually got the thing flipped up and over.  Well that convinced me I needed to try again.

I spread out my arms to widen my grip.  I moved my feet further away from the tire, allowing me to get my shoulders lower, pressed against the rubber.  I then just pushed with all I had.  The 600 pound tire moved slowly but it continued to rise upward until it was upright.  I shoved it back down on it’s side triumphantly.  I did it once again a few minutes later to prove it wasn’t a fluke.

At one point Cindy tried to budge the 185 pound stone which I knew wasn’t a great idea.  She couldn’t quite get it off the ground but got close.  Of course her back was feeling all out of whack afterward.  She spent most of the afternoon watching/filming the action.  I felt badly as the day went on because I could tell she was very cold.  She didn’t realize just how long Lou’s workouts go.

Ray and my last major achievement of the day was with the 70 pound log press bar.  After some failures at a higher weight we both managed to get the awkward bar overhead with 35 pound plates on each side.  It was a tough movement.

For most of the afternoon we just cycled between the various lifts. Of course Lou and Patricks lifts were far more impressive.  They both walked around with 600 pounds on the farmer carry with relative ease and Lou lifted the 350 pound atlas stone repeatedly.  I was honestly surprised I was able to keep going that long, especially after the pain I felt with the 205 pound atlas stone early on.  We wrapped things up as darkness was setting in.  Putting all the stuff away was a good workout on it’s on.

We bid farewell to Patrick, Ray and his fiance Natalie.  I really appreciated them making the effort to come out and share the Stonepark experience with us.  Cindy and I got in the van and enjoyed the heat pouring out of the vents.  Even with all the exercise my extremities were feeling quite cold.

Lou was our ride back to the city but we first want to relax and eat.  Lou stopped at his place to change while I changed out of dirt covered sweats and into some spare clothes.  We found a nearby pizza place and had a great time chowing down while enjoying a couple beers.  Lou has had some very interesting life experiences and shared some more of them with us at dinner.

Finally it was time for the drive back to Manhattan.  Despite it being Sunday night the traffic was substantial.  Lou delivers stuff for a living in his extended van.  I just could not stand dealing with that sort of traffic day in and day out.  It was nuts.

Lou got us back to our hotel in one piece and swung to the side of 5th avenue to drop us off, bringing a chorus of horns from annoyed drivers.  Lou answered back with his own prolonged horn symphony.  We both hugged him again, thanking him for a great day.  We told him we hoped to see him in Florida someday.  It was quite a day.

I could already feel the repercussions from the workout settling into my muscles and joints.  After a lengthy shower I collapsed into bed and flipped on the Eagles game.  Thankfully I didn’t even stay awake until halftime, I was so exhausted.  It looks like I avoided watching them get blown out by the Cardinals, reaffirming my feeling the last two wins were an anomaly and not a trend.

I slept better last night and we are now ready to limp around NYC in full tourist mode.  It should be a great day.

So for the huge Thanksgiving race I left my normal job early two days to be able to help at the running store that was hosting early packet pick up.  This week the race was large with over 1000 runners but I didn’t anticipate being involved in packet pick up since it was not a chip timed event.  Well I got reports during the day from the store owner that he was being overrun with people and he had  no volunteers assigned to help out in the task.  Evidently this need was never considered for some unexplainable reason.  Anyway I again made arrangements to leave work early to go help for a couple hours.  I felt bad for Carl, he actually was having to ignore actual customers to address the huge lines of people waiting to get their race stuff.  This theme of poor planning resounded consistently throughout the entire event.

Our race morning responsibilities were reduced from their normal level since the event was not chip timed.  Somehow the morning still had a high level of stress again from a lack of planning.  When we showed up on site we looked around at each other wondering where we were supposed to set up, another detail that should be well established and known well in advance.  Once the location was established I asked where the closest power connection was located, another detail that is supposed to be scouted ahead of time.  The school liaison said she wasn’t aware we needed power for registration.  Luckily our equipment manager had brought our portable generators.  I fired one of those up to provide power for the registration laptops.

I left Cindy alone to handle data entry while I went with the equipment manager and a couple others to set up the finish line.  Since this was a first year race the course was new.  It was designated as finishing on the track inside the football stadium.  Apparently whomever laid out the course did not measure it accurately, the advertised 5K race (3.12 miles) was actually more like 3 miles in reality.

While we were unloading the finish line equipment a school security guard/track police came rolling up in his golf cart.  He was extremely irate and started chastising the equipment manager and anyone else in the area for daring to drive the truck on the track.  He said it was STRICTLY forbidden and the truck had to be removed immediately.  The equipment was off the truck at that point so the equipment manager took the truck out of the track area.  The track look unaffected by the truck’s presence.

Even after the truck was off the forbidden zone the track police followed our equipment manager after he parked the truck and continued to scold him for driving on the track.  Bill finally had enough and told the guy there was nothing he could do about it now and he should just shut the f up abut it.  The track cop was not very happy with the response.  I’m glad it didn’t escalate into a “Don’t taze me bro!” situation.  The incident somehow seemed appropriate going along with the very messy planning for the event.

So even though the event was not chip timed it was supposed to have very basic awards.  They were supposed to recognize the overall first place winner for adult male and female as well as the top boy and girl in elementary, middle, and high school.  The way the kids were supposed to be identified was by looking at the bib of kids as they crossed.  The bib was supposed to have an A, H, M, or E on them to identify the classification of the finisher.  In theory this plan should have worked but it was again missing a key component, volunteers to execute it.

There was nobody actually tasked with collection this information so last second I threw Cindy out there to try to collect what she could.  We got some of what we needed but not all of it.  We were lucky that the event organizer from the school district has a very can do, go with the flow personality.  She ad-libbed the awards in such a way that did not put a spotlight that all of the advertised awards were not being presented.  The race was a very frustrating reminder of why I no longer enjoy being part of this process.

Not long after getting home I was outside working in the yard working on getting weeding and some other basic stuff done.  After eating lunch Cindy and I headed out for a Rural King/Home Depot trip.  Shortly after leaving home we were on Immokalee Road.  I spotted an object moving across the road , close to the bike lane on the right.  I swung left and saw the turtle creeping along, I was amazed it got that far.

I immediately identified the turtle was in danger.  Cindy said she thought the turtle would be fine, I told her there was no way it could get over the curb it was approaching.  I made a command decision and cut over to the left turning lane that was maybe a 100 yards down the road and threw the Prius in park.  I crossed back across the road and started running towards the turtle in my flip flops.  My pace accelerated as I saw what I feared was coming true, the turtle got to the curb and turned around, now heading back out into the lanes of traffic.

As I ran I started pointing to the right and yelling at oncoming traffic to get over, hoping to get the attention of the drivers, even the ones that stupidly had their face in their smartphone.  As I closed the distance there were a couple close calls where the car did not get over until the last second.  I imagined how terrible and furious I would feel if some idiot would hit the animal just as I was moments away from saving it.  As I got there, there was a small break in traffic allowing me to scoop up the soft shell turtle and put him on the bank of the canal he was trying to reach.  I felt fortunate to have reached the turtle before an idiots tire reached it instead.

We grabbed our stuff from the two stores and returned home.  At Home Depot we grabbed some mulch to replenish the areas that the chickens keep emptying.  They find scratching in mulch, even the fake rubber variety to be a lot of fun for whatever reason.  If you are the type of person that places a lot of value on perfectly maintained mulched areas do not adopt free range chickens. Saturday night we were quite tired from the race alarm clock.  We decided to just stay home and catch up on DVR content which was fine with me.

Sunday morning we headed out to do a run.  We only ran a little over 3 miles but doing it at a 9:20 pace was enough to make me work at a level higher than I should have to.  My running endurance just sucks anymore.  The only positive I can say about it is my regular IT band stretching seems to at least have made the day after soreness and pain on my right side much less severe than it was.

Since the Eagles didn’t play the Patriots until 4:30 I had some time to get stuff done.  I hopped on the tractor and mowed the property which was looking pretty shaggy from the unusually high amounts of November rain.  While I did this Cindy took it upon herself to wash all three of the vehicles.  The skies were overcast which made for some very comfortable temps for mowing, I actually didn’t sweat.

So I sort of assumed that once again my Sunday Ticket would be wasted this week.  I was pretty sure the local Fox affiliate would be broadcasting the game which would mean it would be blacked out on satellite.  I was surprised when I saw FOx was actually showing the Panthers/Saints game.  Ok, well I guess I will flip over to the Sunday Ticket.

So I fire up the satellite receiver and find the Eagles game in the guide.  When I select it I get a message that the game is blacked out locally, WTF? Surely it has to be a mistake so I call up DirecTV.   I explain to “Omar” that the game is being mistakenly blacked out  on my receiver since it is not being broadcast locally. ( I checked cable and OTA antenna)  He said he did see the game being marked as blacked out but did not know why.  He also claimed there was absolutely nothing he could do about it as this is controlled by the NFL.

I found this statement illogical.  I told him I receive my feed from Directv.  If Directv agrees a game is being blacked out incorrectly, why can they not remedy the situation?  Omar had no resolution available except to apologize repeatedly.  I found this situation extremely annoying since I have already had 5 or 6 Eagles games this year that I have not used the Sunday Ticket for since they were broadcast elsewhere, significantly lowering the bang for the buck the 250 bucks I fork out for the service delivers.  I told him I would expect Directv to compensate me in some way for not providing content I pay for and should be entitled to.  He said he would transfer me to a “customer loyalty representative” who would arrange for appropriate compensation.

I am transferred to another rep named “Eva”.  I explain the situation for a second time to Eva.  Unlike Omar, she says she doesn’t see the game as being listed as blacked out.  However I asked her if she showed the Panthers/Saints being being blacked out (it was as well) in my area.  She said no so I think she just was not looking at relevant or correct information.  She again apologized and said she would speak to her supervisor to see what compensation they could offer me.  While I was on hold I figured a $20-$25 credit would be reasonable.

When Eva returned she said her supervisor authorized her to offer me a $5 credit.  I laughed out loud and asked her if she was serious.  I then asked how they arrived at that tiny number.  She said her supervisor said there are a total of 512 games available on the service over the course of the season so through some fuzzy math that equated to 5 dollars for not being able to see one game.  I explained to her I don’t watch 500 games, at most his year I will be able to see 10 games of the Eagles.  For that privilege I am paying roughly 250 bucks, hence my $25 idea.  When I expressed my dissatisfaction with 5 bucks she placed me on hold and came back a few minutes later saying the most the supervisor would authorize was $10.  All of a sudden I felt like I was in a car negotiation except Directv was haggling me over much smaller amounts of money.  When I threw out my 25 dollar figure Eva challenged my math, wanting to divide my 250 bucks by 16 instead of 10, regardless of how many Eagles games I get to actually see on the service.  She said it works out to more like $15 a game.

I found myself flabbergasted that I was actually getting haggled over $10-15 in a situation where Directv is clearly in the wrong and not providing service that I paid for.  I said to Eva, “so just to be clear, you are telling me that Directv is that concerned with $10-$15 that it is willing to haggle a 15 year customer of theirs over it?”  Eva was silent for a few moments and then started to just repeat the same crap.  I cut her off and told her to just forget the $10, instead letting her know this interaction will be communicated to Directv support and will be considered when it comes time to renew the service. Without waiting for any further response I said goodbye and hung up.  Idiots.

To be honest I expected the Eagles to get smashed anyway so being forced to just listening to the game wasn’t a huge penalty, or so I thought.  It turns out that thanks to Directv I did not get to see the most exciting game of the season.  It seemed to be a very odd game where the majority of the 35 points the Eagles put on the board were scored by members of the team not playing offense.  The Eagles scored every non-conventional way you can imagine, a blocked punt, interception return, and a punt return were the way 21 of the 35 points got on the board.

The Eagles were up 35-14 with the time running out.  The Eagles almost managed to completely collapse allowing two quick Patriot touchdowns which included a successful onside kick in between.  Then after an apparent near game clinching defensive stop Sam Bradford gave the Patriots one last shot with an inexcusable fumble.  The Eagles barely escaped with their lives as the Patriots ran out of gas driving for a game tying touchdown as time expired.  I am pretty sure this will be looked back on as the highlight of the 2016 Eagles season and I didn’t get to see any of it thanks to Directv, thanks guys.

These next two weeks are going to be quite busy with normal work, timer work, holiday prep, and the the NYC trip all occurring simultaneously.  I will try to pick off action items as efficiently as possible as procrastination is something I just don’t do.

So I will do my best to recap four days packed with more stuff than my memory is comfortable regurgitating.  Wednesday I left work early after reports of the mob scene at the running store with hundreds of people signing up last minute for the Thanksgiving race.  I got to the store and saw people lined up 10 deep.  There was no way I would have room to set up my laptop at the registration table so I instead went into the back room of the store and made my own desk comprised of a white board laid across two piles of shirt boxes. I worked back there on data entry non-stop for a couple hours.  The pile of paper I had to burn through during the last two days was just ridiculous.

When I got home Cindy had loaded most of the race equipment in the truck which was a huge help, allowing me to concentrate on getting  the data from the last minute entries handled.  We tried to get to bed as early as possible to be some version of rested for what surely was going to be a mentally demanding morning.

I was quite unhappy when I woke up at 1AM and rolled around unsuccessfully for 90 minutes trying to fall asleep a bit before the 3:30 alarm went off. At 2:30 I had enough, Cindy was already awake as well.  We got up and got ready to leave an hour or so earlier than we planned.  I knew the running club equipment truck was going to be there so I figured we could get a head start on the set up.  We wound up pulling into the start line area at a ridiculously early 4AM.

We immediately started working on laying out the start mats.  We had the 8 rubber mats in place and had just started laying the first cable when we saw a pair of headlights approaching.  The vehicle appeared to be approaching a little faster than it should be and we had a 10 meter coax cord loose in the road so I stood up and started waving my arms and yelling for the vehicle to slow down.  Well as the car got closer I saw the lights on the roof, it was a city cop.  He stopped right in front of the mats and started giving me shit.

He didn’t appreciate my tone of voice as I was yelling for him to slow down.  I didn’t appreciate him not appreciating it.  We had a rather angry back and forth exchange. He was quite put off that I was not nice in asking him to slow down and probably further put off that once I saw he was a cop that I did not drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness.  I told him that I had a loose cable on the ground and did not want it getting caught in his vehicle and damaging the equipment.  The cop asked where the safety cones were, which I had not grabbed from the equipment truck yet.  I guess I foolishly assumed two bodies on their knees in the middle of the street were a good sign to slow down, although I should have had cones there from the get go. I pulled the wire out of the way and told the cop he could go now.  He definitely won’t be sending me a Christmas card this year. Wouldn’t it have been awesome if the race timer got arrested?

As we were finishing up another vehicle rolled across the mats faster than he should have.  Again we yelled for him to slow down.  He thanked us for the warning with a stream of expletives as he drove away, a Happy Thanksgiving to you too buddy.  I did post about 8 cones around the start line mats, many of which adorned with SLOW signs to dissuade drivers from flying over them.  They were not successful.  When I returned to the start line later the mats were buckled and shifted from idiots going too fast over them.  I guess my ideas about leaving mats across the road prior to the race start just isn’t going to work out.

So as we started setting up the registration area other volunteers started showing up to help get everything rolling.  I had asked Chris to show up to help me handle race day registrations since I knew I had to make sure all of my timing equipment was up and running before the race started.  After I got done setting up the finish line equipment I returned to the registration area where the line of people signing up on race day had swollen greatly.  I was flabbergasted that this many people waited to the absolute last minute to sign up, especially considering the huge influx of people that already signed up the last couple days.  It was nuts.  I told Chris, who was also running in the event to just do as many as he could before he had to head to the start line.  I had to get there to get the start equipment up and running.  I told him whatever entries that were left I could enter at the finish line.

So the race start group was huge as you can imagine.  Having roughly 3000 people compacted into roughly a block of roadway creates quite the crowd.  I had to wait nearly 5 minutes until I could disconnect the start box.  I ran over to the registration desk and grabbed an incredibly thick pile of yet to be entered paper entries and the main laptop and ran back to the start.  I threw the timing box  and computer in the back of the golf cart and hauled ass to the finish line.  This race is brutal logistically because not only do I have to wait at the start line forever for all the runners to clear, the event also has some VERY fast participants.  The winning runner crossed around the 15:30 mark.  I got the finish line up and configured with literally less than 60 seconds before he crossed the finish mats.

Normally by the time I am at the finish line I am just collecting times and posting/printing them.  Because of the deluge of paper entries I instead found myself doing data entry for the majority of the race.  I had over 50 paper entries that were handed in last minute.  Chris didn’t stop keying them in until 7:23.   Almost all of these people were out of towners that I did not have in my participant database that made the process very slow, made slower by trying to publish some finisher results while getting peppered with questions from participants who assume I know everything since I am sitting behind a computer.  I did not get my last paper entry into the system until after the one hour mark of the race, utterly ridiculous.

Finally I was able to breathe and realize I was officially past the worst part of the worst race I had left to time.  I may have actually smiled just a little bit for the first time all morning.  The timing for the race went smoothly overall.  I had a couple problem times which is pretty unavoidable with an event this size.  I fixed those problems and have heard only a couple post race issues which again is great with a 3000 person 5K.

Cindy once again reclaimed her role as the event mascot, spending a good portion of the morning in a turkey suit encouraging the runners, especially the kids.  She really excels in this role. We rolled off site around 9:45 after helping to clean up the majority of the race equipment.  The DD coffee on the way home felt especially satisfying, we survived our last Thanksgiving race, the largest event I have ever been involved with to date.

There was little time to relax when we got home.  I had post race stuff to attend to, Cindy had a big Thanksgiving dinner to coordinate.  Her family was due to show up around 4.  We both buzzed around for a good portion of the afternoon prepping despite both of us having low energy reserves from the skimpy sleep followed by the race craziness.  We combated it with some afternoon coffee.  I followed up with a 5 hour energy just as people were starting to show up.

I did watch some of the Eagles embarrassment on tv during the afternoon but don’t even feel like wasting time typing about it.  It was a horrible, horrible game on a national stage.  Chip Kelly has been exposed as a miserable NFL personnel manger and a one trick pony when it comes to game plans. That is all I can say about it.

In addition to Cindy’s family, a friend of ours came over with her dog, Sage, who is a high energy labradoodle.  Before we let her into the backyard we corralled all the chickens back into the run for safety.  As we expected Sage was very interested in the chickens, running around the coop barking at them.  The chickens of course did not realize they were completely safe in there and started freaking out.  We tried to distract Sage and get her to play in other areas of the yard but her interest always turned back to the chickens so we headed back inside with her.

We had a lot of people under the roof, double digits including ourselves.  Cindy prepared a varied meal that was very tasty, she got good feedback from all.  The 5 hour energy and the natural energy from having all of those people around helped me stave off tiredness.

Kim was the last one there.  As her and Cindy talked I was hanging with Sage on the floor.  She was laying next to me and very content to let me rub her for as long as I wanted to.  It was cute.  When they left Cindy and I got most of the stuff cleaned up before retiring for a much needed night of sleep.  I slept like a rock with no recollection of the time in between closing my eyes and waking up around 7:30 Friday morning.

In the past I have messed around with the Black Friday scene, doing some occasional shopping.  This year I was not all that into it.  Cindy had her 9AM walking class to run so I used that time to get stuff done around the house outside, taking advantage of the cooler temps and lower humidity.  Once she got home we headed out to run some errands.  We took the SSR to add enjoyment to the trip.

One of the stops was Sam’s Club.  We took a look at some of the Black Friday stuff they had out.  One thing that caught our interest was an Atari 2600 package.  It’s basically an Atari looking console with some updates like wireless controllers and over 100 classic Atari games built in.  Cindy had an Atari 2600 as a kid and was very excited by it.  I never had one, opting for the more high end Mattel Intellivision as my first video game console.  I made an impulse buy and spent 40 bucks on the Atari system.  Later in the day when I hooked it up it did not take very long for me to realize that it was probably $40 wasted as any game I played normally was only briefly before I tired of the block graphics and klutzy controls.  Cindy, whose excitement was the main drive behind the purchase did not seem very excited about playing either.  Nostalgia sometimes sounds better than it actually is.

On Saturday I had plans to start with a run which were scuttled by an unsettled feeling stomach.   Instead we picked up Sadie and brought her home for a weekend visit.  We then got busy on part one of the two day Christmas decoration project.  I wanted to get the exterior decorations done on Saturday and the inside stuff done Sunday.  Our decorations got a few new additions this year with four fresh sets of colored string lights for the two front palm trees and a set of “AppLights” icicles for the front of the house, which are controlled via a smart phone.

The colored string lights are a first for our property.  Ali had a deep dislike for colored Christmas lights so as a result I bought/hung nothing but white lights during the last 15 years or so.  I continued the all white thing even after we split for no particular reason.  Well both Cindy and I were very happy with the addition of color to the holiday landscape.  It looked really cool and I suspect next year it will expand to the second set of four palm trees.

The icicle applights looked cool as well as they cycled through dozens of patterns and light combos.  When combined with our LED snowmen heads and techno LED string light tree we bought last year the front of the house is very busy.

We also got the chicken coop into the holiday spirit, stringing a long set of lights around the front of the run and roof line of the coop.  When it got dark out we walked the property admiring our handiwork, we were pleased.

Mid-afternoon I took part in an odd physical challenge.  When I posted about my shoulder issues last week an older calisthenics buddy of mind on FB who happens to be a physical therapist mentioned that bear crawling is a different type of way to help build up the shoulders.  I decided I would put that theory to the test in a rather large way.

I have done bear/death crawls in the backyard a few times.  Once I crawled out to the back fence line and back.  Another time I did it while towing the tractor with Ali steering it.  I thought I would up the stakes and crawl the perimeter of the fence line this time, more than doubling the total distance.  Of course I did it on video and had a stop watch running.  As expected the crawl got very uncomfortable very quickly.  I paused multiple times during the attempt but never let my knees touch the ground.  I returned to the start line after about seven and a half minutes, completely out of breath.

Cindy, who was filming my attempt then said she wanted to try it which I thought was a bad idea.  Cindy never has done bear crawls, to make her first one just short of a 1/4 mile seemed excessive.  When she started out her pace seemed slower than mine but she kept going, pausing much less than I did.  At first I thought she would stop rather early in the attempt.  Instead she kept plugging away and actually completed the circuit almost a full minute faster than I did.  My ego was officially deflated but I took it in stride.  It was a testament to Cindy’s competitiveness and determination.  We both have been feeling the side effects of the bear crawl since with some pretty major back and shoulder soreness/pain.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched our Netflix rental, Vacation, the reboot of the National Lampoon series I have always loved.  My hopes of it delivering the same level of entertainment as the original films was probably unrealistic.  There were plenty of laughs in the film but overall it fell pretty short of the bar Chevy Chase and the gang set 20-25 years ago.  Seeing Chevy in the film for a small cameo role did nothing but depress me.  Man, he looks just awful nowadays with no hair and an extra 100 pounds or so on his body.  Beverly D’Angelo looks like she has botox for breakfast every morning which was scary in a different way.  Overall the film was ok, I guess I can give it a B+ rating despite it failing to capture the magic of the originals.

Sunday morning we finally got that run in.  We decided to keep it simple and just run to the end of our dead end road and back, which worked out to be a bit more than 3.5 miles.  The cooler temps made the run feel more comfortable although Cindy’s GPS indicated we ran it at a slower pace than it felt.

When we got back we let Sadie out and noticed she had diarrhea going on, something that she has from time to time.  Cindy made rice to supplement her meals to help her solidify things.   Ali had told me she gave Sadie turkey from their Thanksgiving meal and we had given her left over turkey Ali gave to us.  I later found out that giving a dog turkey skin is actually a really bad thing.  The sky high fat content in the skin can cause big problems for dogs ranging from diarrhea to full blown pancreatitis depending how much is consumed compared to the size of the dog.   I asked Cindy if the turkey we got from Ali had skin on it, she confirmed it did. I was quite surprised by this revelation and amazed I had not ever heard it before in my many years of dog ownership.

After doing a coffee run we got started on the inside decorations which included setting up the tree and other decorations which have been reduced significantly over the last few years.  Cindy spent a lot of time tweaking the branches of it to make it look as full and pretty as possible.  The interior of the house looked warm and festive by the time we wrapped up around lunch time.

The rest of Sunday was more relaxing, the first real relaxing we did during the four days off.  I did still need to pay my bills which included a pretty big accomplishment, making the last payment on the SSR roughly a year ahead  of time.  Owning the muscle truck free and clear has been a goal of mine for quite awhile.  The removal of that loan payment means the only long term debt I am currently holding is on the house in the form of the main mortgage and the HELOC.  It feels good. I plan to continue adding to my car payment budget column even though I won’t be having a payment.  I figure it will come in handy when I finally decide to replace the venerable Tacoma.

We started Saturday off with a trip to the track, I wanted to give a short run a try.  In general my IT band has been hurting less since the road trip so I wanted to see how I would feel.  For the first two or three laps the answer was not good as I felt pain in my right hip and knee.  Eventually as my body warmed up the pain faded.  We completed the 8 laps and I probably could have pushed to a 5K distance if I wanted to.  So far I haven’t had any serious blowback as far as follow up pain or soreness.

We headed out to Home Depot to grab sod and top soil needed to repair the now massive excavation the chickens have performed at various spots around the yard.  Cindy and I worked in tandem to complete the work.  The humidity in the air was noticeably less on Saturday.  The combo of cloudy skies, breezy conditions and temps in the low 80’s almost felt pleasant to work in. Cindy and I set up the inflatable Halloween cat by the front door to complete our decorations. (unless Cindy decides to decorate the coop)  We anchored the cat with opposing 35 pound dumbbells to keep it steady as much as possible.

We have had a wasp problem on the one side of the house that I mentioned last week.   I finally broke down and bought wasp spray although I don’t feel good about killing the insects, despite their aggressive intentions towards me.  The wasps had somehow survived a couple spraying sessions, one by Cindy and one by myself.  I eventually pulled the hose holder off the wall and soaked every inch of it with wasp spray, hopefully putting an end to their persistent unwelcome habitation.

Recently I saw a Lincoln commercial where it showed off the built in ground projection logo set up.  Basically you open the door and an LED projects a crystal clear image on the road.  It’s just a cool thing.  This reminded me that a couple years ago I had bought the hardware to do this for my SSR but never installed it.  I found the box in the garage and hooked one of the projectors up to my 12V DC power supply to verify it worked.  I showed Cindy the bright image it cast on the rug which she thought was cool.

I have two of them as I originally planned to install them as prescribed, in the bottom of both doors.  I have since changed direction.  I want to try to hook one up in the back of the vehicle under the rear bumper.  I am hoping to tap the back up light circuit for power.  When you unlock the truck the back up lights stay on for several seconds so I thought it would be cool to have a projector in the back. I haven’t gotten beyond the thought process stage of this.  I need to put the back of the truck on ramps so I can do some thorough investigation about mounting options.

Speaking of the SSR, I made another large payment on the loan for the truck this weekend during my bill paying session, leaving less than a thousand dollars to go before it’s paid off.  It will be nice to have my only existing vehicle payment evaporate although I still am a bit sad that for the most part the SSR is a much smaller focus of my entertainment sphere nowadays.

We did take the SSR to the movies Saturday night.  It was our first trip to the theater since before the road trip.  I bet it has been a month and a half since we went to the movies which is surely a record for us.  We went to see The Martian, both Cindy and I are big fans of sci fi/space flicks.  The movie theater was decently full, probably half the seats were occupied.

I thought the movie was great and extremely well done.  Really the only negative I can give is it’s long, if you are annoyed by lengthy movies.  Personally I don’t care if a movie is long as long as I find it entertaining and interesting (ie Lord of the Rings).  I felt like I just watched the best space themed movie since Apollo 13 by the end of it.  I give it an A+.  Cindy felt similarly.

Cindy and I had talked about doing the 20 mile DD ride on Sunday morning as a follow up to Saturday’s run.  However Cindy wasn’t feeling great and the skies looked very threatening so we bailed.  It turned out to be a good thing as it started to rain shortly thereafter.  The weather all day was very unstable with periods of sun and rain which I assume were the fringe effect from hurricane Joaquin.

After skipping the ride my day became very lazy.  We grabbed coffee and some gas for the mowers and I paid my bills, other than that I was in slug mode.  Part of the slogfest was watching the Eagles game which was so shitty for most of it that I split time watching it with playing Hearthstone on the iPad.  I really don’t enjoy watching this team play, let me break down the latest loss.

Chip Kelly seems to be a one trick pony.  His vaunted hurry up offense which seemed to frustrate defenses in his first couple years in the league now seems to be passe and easily addressed.  The only thing it seems to do consistently is tire out the Eagles defense since they spend so much time on the field.  In addition Chip’s personnel management skills are proving to be pretty damn awful.  We are seeing the end result of coring out the majority of a team and inserting a random cast of characters like it is fantasy football. The team has no character, no personality and no leaders.

I have not been impressed by Stafford, our new QB.  Yes the offensive line has been more or less horrible and the receivers have dropped some catchable balls but his accuracy is reminding me of Donovon McNabb.  I have seen him miss wide open receivers A LOT, something I did not expect.  So far I certainly don’t see his play as a step up from what Nick Foles could have done for us. It was nice to see Stafford complete a couple long balls.  I think I heard the announcer say yesterday was the first game the Eagles had a play over 20 yards.  If that is true it is a pretty damning stat considering the team used to lead the league in plays over 20 yards.

The running game continued to be awful, again in large part thanks to the shitty offensive line that Chip constructed in the offseason.  Their inability to create anything resembling a consistent running attack further cripples their ability to pass as play action fakes mean absolutely nothing.

Huge kudos to Chip for signing a kicker that obviously has a mental block, missing a short field goal and an extra point which would have changed the game outcome.  I expect Calebs stay with the team to be brief.

Even with the Eagles leading late I had a sickening feeling in my stomach they were going to collapse at the end, which they did, allowing the Redskins to mount a confidence crushing 15 play drive to score the winning touchdown.  The offense came out onto the field with roughly 25 seconds to go and promptly shit the bed, allowing two sacks before crawling off the field with their tail between their legs.

I have read some former Eagle coach comparisons for Chip Kelly, the most accurate one I saw was with Ray Rhodes who did well his first couple seasons until the wheels completely fell off.  At this point I can see this team of misfits scraping together 6 wins.  I am curious if double digit losses is enough to merit the end of Chip Kelly’s pro coaching career.  The miserable Eagles game did nothing to pick up my already gloomy mood which was enhanced by my lack of tangible productivity backed by off and on shitty weather all day long.

Despite us being well past the vaunted super moon my overall mood has not been great.  I am concerned that as I advance further into the depths of middle age that I am acquiring more of the traits I saw in my mom as she got older, beyond wrinkles.  I am lucky to have Cindy’s positive energy to slow my descent.  I just don’t feel like dealing with things a lot more often than I recall in the past.

So after work last night I made a pit stop to my old gym stomping grounds, RetroFitness. (formerly Royal Fitness and then RetroFitness before that).  As soon as I stepped in the door I could tell they gave the place a thorough cleaning, it looked practically brand new.   I immediately spotted Luis, the guy that was managing the place before I left.  Like I mentioned earlier, he was pretty much the only person on the staff that seemed to have a clue about how to treat customers.  He was very happy to see me and greeted me by name.

I had at least a 15 minute good conversation with him by the front desk as he filled me in on why things went downhill before and how much better things should be moving forward now that there is new ownership in place.   In addition to cleaning the place thoroughly they did renovations/tune ups on all of the equipment.  They also are going to restore the cardio theater room which was turned into a junk room and have bought the adjacent vacant space which will be used for fitness classes and some medical/health services.

I left there totally on board with signing back up.  My 40+ glory days of fitness all went down inside the walls of Retro.  I like their equipment more as they have dumbbells that go all the way up to 120lbs, a squat rack, and spare olympic bars that can be used for stuff like deadlifting.

All of these are items missing at Planet Fitness. Also, the locker rooms/showers are mediocre and the gym can get annoying full at times, even in the middle of the day when I go. I also question Planet Fitness’s decision to fill their staff mostly with individuals that are very overweight and not representative at all of a healthy lifestyle.

To be fair, Planet Fitness has not been awful.  The Lunk Alarm has not sounded off once in the 8 or 9 months I have been a member.  They keep the place relatively clean and I like that they have the Concept 2 rowers, something Retro does not have.  I wound up getting better workouts in there than I did at the Wellness Center at least.

I need to inquire at the PF membership desk about how financially painful it will be to cancel my membership early.  I signed up for the 10 bucks a month plan which includes a 1 year contract which I still have a few months left on.  If the penalty is very stiff it may actually be cheaper to just keep plopping down 10 a month until the contract is fulfilled.  Either way I plan on rebooting my membership at Retro asap.  I am excited about getting back to my fitness roots after drifting around for 18 months inside of the Wellness Center and The Judgement Free Zone.

Speaking of fitness, I awoke today with extensive lower body soreness from Tuesdays lower body resistance training backed up with yesterdays cardio brick which included 20 very difficult minutes on the rower.  Cindy is feeling much the same after her first full session at Orange Theory yesterday.  The workout she described to me sounded very intense.

Hey, the Pope is here.  Evidently there is a rock star aura surrounding his visit with 24/7 media coverage and throngs of catholics surrounding his every step and and hanging on his every word.  Don’t get me wrong, as far as popes go, I think the current pope is the best I have seen in my lifetime.  He seems to be willing at times to inject a little common sense into his positions on various issues that contradict the normal religious narrative which is a good thing.  I am also glad he just looks like a good person, not look like Satan spawn, as the last pope did.

I can’t say I have watched 10 seconds of pope coverage.  It just doesn’t move my interest meter a single tick.

So yesterday was a big day for Cindy.  It was test day for her ACE personal trainer certification exam.  This was the culmination of a journey she started about 6 months ago.  She has been reading and studying from day one but the past month or so she was studying her ass off and taking endless rounds of practice tests.    She was very nervous about the exam, worried that despite her hard work she would not pass.  I felt anxious for her because I knew she would devastated if she did not pass.  Well a little after 1PM I got the text message from her that she did indeed pass the exam and was now an ACE certified trainer.  I talked to her on the phone.  She was actually crying which I think was just the culmination of stress and happiness for reaching her goal.   I told her I was very proud of her.

When she first talked of getting this certification I honestly did not think it would be quite as difficult as it turned out to be.  You are required to have a pretty in depth knowledge of physiology, exercise, client analysis and much more.  It was much more comprehensive than I expected.

The certification will help open a number of doors for Cindy.  She already has several promising leads which will allow her to embark on her new career.  To celebrate her accomplishment we went out to dinner at Carrabbas last night.  We enjoyed the non-season light crowds and were able to sit down without waiting, a near impossibility from the months of October to March.  We had a nice meal.  Cindy certainly deserved it.  I could tell she felt so relieved to have the looming test off her shoulders.  I swear during the last week she was studying/testing 8 hours a day.

So almost on cue, after I proclaimed I had been smoke smell free for going on two weeks on Wednesday, the smell returned yesterday.  I can smell it today as well to some degree.  Maybe if I just stop thinking and talking about it it can fade away.  My Uncle Randy messaged me about my Aunt Sis, who was mom’s aunt.  Aunt Sis was very much a believer in reincarnation, ghosts, and that sort of stuff.  He told me the day Aunt Sis died he had a black bird that was watching him and he had an odd sense it was her.  My grandfather also was a believer in reincarnation. I remember one time my mom telling me when I was very young I talked in depth about living a previous life which I have no recollection of.

If you read my blog you know that as an adult I have a very logical view of the world.  I don’t subscribe to religious beliefs nor do I think there is much waiting for anyone when they die besides an eternal nap.  However I also am not the type to be afraid to reevaluate my thoughts when new evidence is presented to me.  I just haven’t had that happen concretely to this point although there have been many moments of coincidence and deja vu throughout my life that don’t have any explanation that would compute logically.

For the first time in a long time Florida is potentially in the cross hairs for a hurricane.  As of now Erika is projected to hit the east coast of the state and swing right up the middle.  I have been a Florida resident long enough and seen enough tropical storm forecasts to know that there is still a lot of opportunity for the forecast track to change.

However regardless of it’s final destination it is very likely that regardless we would see significant rain and wind at the homestead.  The rain especially is unwelcome since our property is still sopping wet.

This is our last full weekend before the road trip which is scheduled to kick off two Sundays from now.  I need to start developing checklists so all that needs to get done is handled before we leave.  It doesn’t help that there is a race to time next Saturday to complicate matters.  Of course my biggest concern with the trip is the welfare of the chickens.  Our chicken sitters are stopping by over the weekend to make sure everything is clear.

On Friday night before bed Cindy and I had a joint Periscope session going on where we just laid in bed and had random conversation with a bunch of people we don’t know.  Of course I let Cindy do most of the heavy lifting in this scenario since she is clearly the more vocal of the two of us.  I prefer to lay in the weeds and just pepper the interaction as needed to add some variety.  There is something about Periscope that is isolating and inclusive at the same time.  I don’t know if there is an app that capsulizes what modern society is becoming better than Periscope and that is not meant as a compliment.  The world is becoming a screen addicted, voyeuristic, ADD riddled bunch of virtual haters.  Sure it is fun and entertaining but so is cocaine, or so I hear.

Saturday was very chore heavy.  I started outdoors with weeding.  I knew it was going to be miserable day when the heat and humidity felt oppressive at 8:30 in the morning.  I also was overdue for a weed whacking session, despite a good portion of the grounds being either underwater or sopping wet.  I emerged from it with my lower body looking like I grew a second, wet green skin.  I also did some of the vehicle prep for the road trip, changing the oil on the Prius.  I utilized Mobil 1 synthetic for the job since it would be well over 5000 miles until I get a chance to change it again.  The air filter got swapped out for good measure

We also made another trip to Home Depot to grab another 250 pounds of sand.  200 pounds of it got pushed under the coop deck to help dry out the soppy and smelly mess.While we were out we made a very unusual pit stop to grab a couple ice cream cones.  With the heat the cone had to be consumed at a very quick pace before it melted.

We decided to skip going to the movies again this week as there was nothing compelling out and saving a few bucks leading up to the road trip was a good idea.  We instead watched Blackhat, a movie where Thor plays a super computer hacker.  For the most part I found the movie good but the transformation at the end where the computer geek suddenly becomes a ruthless action hero did not make any sense nor was it backed up by any groundwork laid out in the film prior.  It was like the director said “Oh yea, we have Thor, I guess he needs to kill some people” Anyway it pulled a potential B+ rating down to B territory for me, a decent rental.

Sunday morning we did a training brick I never tried before, a bike-run-bike combo.  A traditional duathlon is the opposite where you run-bike-run.  Again it was oppressively hot and humid.  The course I laid out was biking up to Everglades Blvd and then back to the middle school track to run two miles before riding back home.  It worked out to segments of roughly a 7 mile bike, the 2 mile run and a final 3 mile ride.

Even though I wasn’t pushing the pace super hard on the bike I was sweating like a pig during the initial 7 mile ride.  If I was sweating that much on the bike I knew running in the same conditions would be extra miserable.  This was a first on many levels.  It was the first reverse duathlon brick and also the first outdoor running I have done in at least 6 months.  As expected the first couple laps felt pretty shitty as I had some pain in the right/leg knee but nothing overly severe.  The run evened out as time went on but I still was counting down the laps, even two miles felt challenging at this point which speaks to my lack of a running cardio base.

I tried to do a relatively quick transition back to riding gear, wanting to keep the cardio pressure up.  I was a little too quick and had to do some circling in the parking lot until Cindy was ready to go.  The last 3 miles to the house felt weird with my legs not being accustomed to the different demands of riding after riding and running previously.  By the time we got back to the house I looked like I was thrown in the pool, a big sweaty pool.  I used a dip in the real pool to quickly bring down my body temperature.

On Sunday and at various points over the weekend I had to scare a hawk away although I was only mildly successful at it.  It was like the hawk knew I meant it no real harm as it ignored my repeated BB gun warning shots.  Even as I approached the bird he just hung out until I got within 20 feet.  He/she only moved a few fence posts at a time.  The good news was this hawk was small in stature.  At this point all of the chickens are getting close to full size and are too big/fast to be carried off by a small hawk.  It still makes us nervous of course as there are always more predators out there.

I have been obsessing lately about a process known as “dipping” your vehicle.  It is something I did not realize was out there until a week or so ago.  Ironically one of the big companies that does this is based in Coral Springs, right across the state.  Basically you are “painting” your car with a high tech material that is peelable like sheets of rubber if you want to remove it.

I watched a ton of videos about the process and found it pretty incredible.  It brought me back to my teenage years where I spray painted a total of three vehicles, one can at a time.  The visual impact of dipped cars can be fantastic.  The fact that it is totally reversible without damaging the original paint makes it pretty much risk free.

DipYourCar sells kits that include everything you need, including a high quality spray gun for a reasonable price, much less than any paint job you could find.  The actual process of spraying the car requires some diligent prep and masking but is nothing all that technically difficult.  Of course when I saw dipping my first thought was the Tacoma, with it’s badly deteriorating paint.  I would literally have nothing to lose although many people dip brand new cars as well since there is no problem undoing it.

I would wait until dry season kicks in down here before giving dipping a go but I definitely think it will happen.  It should be a fun experiment.  You can dip many things, including wheels, another area of the Tacoma that is in poor visual condition.

Sunday afternoon I took back outside to do a few things including mowing the grass.  The property was still wet, very wet in some spots.  When I mow in these conditions I wind up leaving muddy crop circles in certain areas.  I also have to stop regularly to clear the mow deck chute of the green globs of grass clippings that clog it. To add to the fun I was repeatedly swinging at mosquitoes that seemed adept at landing on spots of my body I could not easily reach.  I really don’t like summer in SW Florida.

Sunday evening I finally relaxed a bit playing some WoW while Cindy continued her near endless practice testing for her physical trainer exam.  She has been working very, very hard.

Yesterday was my final day off of my extended five day weekend.  In the morning I did my four day blog recap followed by a coffee/Rural King run to get a few things.  I wanted to get some sort of workout in so Cindy agreed to go in the back yard to do some head to head challenges. It was brutally hot and humid with very threatening skies nearby.

We did a several challenges outside including a couple Century circuits and one arm dead hangs before the rain drops started to fall.  We then moved inside for a wall handstand challenge.  I won all of the events except the wall handstand hold.  The Century circuits were very tight, Cindy loves to compete.

Of course we video taped all of it, we all of it except the first Century because I was a dumb ass and forgot to reinsert the SD card into the camera.

You can get a good sense of the silly aura when we workout together from this brief Cindy montage.

So the skies absolutely opened up, dropping several inches of rain on the property in a short period of time.  It instantly transformed what was dry land to instant swamp.  During the worst of it the entire front yard in front of the house mound was under water.  The chickens don’t seem to mind getting wet.  Quite often we will see them running around the yard despite steady rain coming down.

Speaking of the chickens, I forgot to mention we did out first wing clipping of the four young birds.  They are all smaller and better flyers than the six blacks and Lucy.  This was motivated by my seeing two of them by the front office window, they had flown over the four foot fence.  Cindy and I were both nervous about trimming the wings but if you do it correctly the birds don’t feel a thing.

I figured I better gather the fragments of my memory before they are lost.  Friday was my first day of my impromptu 5 day staycation.  Cindy and I started it with a DD bike ride. It was the first time I was taking my freshly modified Trek 2.1 on the road.  Earlier in the week I added a stem extension and aero bars to enhance my riding position comfort.  Despite being a much better/lighter bike, the Trek has spent most of the last two years hanging upside down in my storage shed because it just was uncomfortable to ride.  Instead my 300 dollar Dawes bike was getting all of the road time. My alterations to the Trek had the effect I was hoping for.  It felt good on the road and the higher quality and lower weight of the bike felt noticeable. The 20 mile ride went by without incident.

After we got home I headed outside to get the weeding done while Cindy attended to the chickens and some other things.  After a quick dip in the pool we were ready to head out to Costco.  We wound up getting over $200 in groceries there which is some sort of record.  Hopefully we will be well stocked for awhile.  The grocery slice of my monthly expenditure pie chart in Quicken has been getting quite large lately.

Friday my new megaphone that I ordered for Green Machine Timing showed up.  It’s smaller than the others I have for the running club, only 40 watts max power, but that is part of it’s appeal, it’s easier to carry around.  However the biggest plus for me was it uses a rechargeable lithium battery pack that is encased inside of a built in charger.  The bigger megaphones use 8 C batteries that are a pain in the ass to maintain.  Plus the housing for the batteries is very imprecise so when you have the lid closed you may not get any sound until you jiggle things around.  It’s annoying.  I no longer will have that issue. Cindy and I used it to film a funny Periscope video that she posted on FB.

Friday night was a normal pizza night.  It felt great knowing I had another four days off remaining.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I were up early to go volunteer at the kids triathlon the local triathlete group puts on.   Cindy and my primary responsibility was in the bike transition area where we helped the kids ranging in age from 7-13 stage their bikes and help them as needed during transition.  I also brought my GoPro with to film the event.  I was frustrated that I missed a lot of the little kids with a malfunction early that I got figured out later on.  You can see the kids in action here.  By the time the event was over at 9:30 it felt sweltering hot.

During the afternoon the it became quite rainy and stayed that way for most of the day.  Cindy and I kept ourselves entertained indoors.  There were no movies that came out this week that interested us enough to spend movie theater money for.  Instead we just kept things simple and enjoyed a nice meal while watching my latest Netflix rental, Tracers.  The film was basically one long parkour video but I found it entertaining enough to give an average B rating to the flick.

Sunday we did our second DD ride in three days, something I don’t think I ever did before.  It also meant that in 8 days I rode a total of 70 miles, again new territory for me.  Cindy actually cracked the century mark for those same 8 days since she did an additional 30 mile ride during the week with a friend of hers.  I strapped the GoPro on to my right handlebar for the ride.  It gives an interesting perspective/visual when combined with a soundtrack and ample captioning to fight off the boredom.

After another pool bath we were back in the car to go pick up Nicki and Sadie.  After grabbing them we made a couple stops on the way home.  Sunday afternoon Cindy was quite busy cooking.  She recorded her efforts for her YouTube channel.  I did a lot of video editing, gaming (now have 7 level 100 WoW characters) and paid my bills.

One of the things I wanted to address was the failure email I got from my DD perks account saying the automatic reload of my coffee card failed.  When I logged into my account I saw that the credit card I had associated had the wrong expiration date.  Ok, no problem, I will go in and edit the credit card information.  Well after 10 minutes of futzing around I realized that there is absolutely no way to change the CC info.  Ok, I guess I will just delete the credit card and reenter it with the correct info.  Nope, it won’t let you do that either.  The ONLY way you fix this is with a phone call to them which I made on Monday.  The call required 20-25 minutes of wait time to speak to a person.  After explaining the issue the phone rep says it will take TWO DAYS to clear the card from the system.  I asked her in disbelief “Are you serious?”.  She said it is a limitation of their current set up for credit cards and they are looking to change things in the future.  It seems so odd because in many ways Dunkin Donuts seems very modern and tech savy in their business practices.  To have such a ridiculously inefficient set up to manage credit cards seems very odd.

Monday morning Cindy and I took Nicki (and Sadie) to the vet.  I made an appointment for Nicki to have some large masses on her belly looked at further.  She has had them for awhile but they seem to be really growing and I wanted to get an updated opinion from the vet about them to see if he thought anything needed to be done at this point.  This was the same vet that did the eyelid surgery that drastically helped Nicki’s vision.

He agreed the lumps were getting pretty big but said that labs are prone to growing fatty masses as they age.  The general advice is if they are not causing the dog pain or discomfort the best course of action is to just let them be as the risk of surgery on an old dog could outweigh the benefit of removal.  I mentioned how Nicki’s bark has been sounding progressively weaker.  He said it is likely due to another old lab trait where the tissue that covers the larynx (forget medical term), becomes partially paralyzed.  The end result is difficulty in breathing.  (Nicki also pants all the time)

The vet did aspirate one of the masses to send it out for testing to be sure. (a $200 gotcha) However we basically just confirmed that Nicki is old and is having old dog issues.  I wish I could wave a wand and make it go away.  While we were there both dogs got their nails trimmed which was very needed.

When we got home I got a bug in my head to pressure wash the pool deck and cage.  I HATE this house maintenance chore but a glance at the pure green scuzz on some sections of the cage combined with my extra time off made it seem like I would be an idiot for not doing it now.  The end result was several hours shoulder/forearm burning labor as I directed the 3000 psi wand overhead with sometimes as much as an 9 foot extension hanging off of it.  It is miserable.  Doing it during the crushing heat of the afternoon added to the misery.

I wasn’t happy that at a few spots on the pool deck which we carefully prepped and double coated with pool deck stain lifted off under pressure.  It was in areas where the deck is especially smooth.  Maybe it needs to be roughed up a bit before we touch it up.  Anyway, the pool area looked tremendously better by the time I was done.  Hopefully it will be the holidays before I have to think about it again.

After I took the dogs back to Ali’s place Cindy and I chilled most of the night catching up on a backlog of dvr’d content.  For my final day of my staycation I have no major plans other than some type of workout and whatever other minor things come to mind.  We already had excitement this morning, the unwelcomed type.  There was a hawk no more than 25 feet away from the pond area the chickens were hanging under.  It was sitting in the palm tree.  It was oddly unafraid of me.  I was able to walk right up to the tree with my bb gun in hand without it moving.  I yelled at it to get lost but he only retreated a short distance away.  I then used my weapon to fire a few warning shots and again they were ineffective.  I kept walking and firing until the hawk was a 100 yards off in a tree behind the back fence line.

Yes it makes both Cindy and I nervous to have hawks scouting out the chickens.  The good thing is the property has a bunch of hiding spots for our birds and all of them are healthy, decent sized and fast.  Hopefully this and our continued warning shots makes the hawks realize there are easier targets elsewhere.

Cindy emerged from the operating room quickly on Thursday, around 9:30.  She did so in an extremely silly and loopy manner thanks to the propethol they used to sedate her for the procedure.  The doctor said they removed another large chunk of ingrown nail and then burned the area with acid as opposed to using a suture.  Despite the work only being done on her toenail, Cindy’s entire foot was wrapped all the way to the ankle.

While they got her ready to check out I was sent downstairs to get the supplies they prescribed to her including antibiotics, pain meds and bandages, lots and lots of bandages.  It was so much stuff that it filled a large shopping bag.  Just like the rest of the VA hospital the pharmacy area was big, modern and efficient.  They wheeled Cindy out as required and we loaded her into the Prius.

Once we got home I had to be vigilant in trying to make Cindy take it easy.  Despite just having surgery she wanted to do work around the house.  I had to basically strap her down to let me go out and clean the chicken coop and run.  She did rest some during the day but not as much as I think she should have.

During the afternoon I made a run to the local AutoZone store.  I was picking up front brake rotors and pads for Cindy’s daughters 2010 Mustang.  She said the brakes felt bad with pedal pulsation which means at a minimum the rotors are warped.  I have replaced the front brakes on three or four different vehicles at this point.  After watching a video briefly on YouTube it looked like doing the same on a Mustang should not be a big deal.  I figured I could knock it out Friday morning.

So before Katie showed up Friday morning I got the weeding done in the yard and prepared the garage for active work.  I pulled out all the tools I imagined I would need including my video camera.  Amateur auto mechanic videos are among the most popular on my YouTube channel.   Katie showed up around nine and I got started wrenching before 10 am.  The front brake pads were worn but not horribly so.  I started with the passenger side.  I didn’t see anything that would necessarily have caused the rotors to warp. However that changed when I got to the driver side.

When I pulled the caliper pins on that side I immediately noticed one of them was dry and sticking.  They are supposed to slide easily back and forth allowing the brake pads to move against and off the rotors.  I was pretty sure I identified why the pedal was pulsating.  The sticking bolt could cause the pad pressure to stay on the rotor even when not braking which would heat/warp it.  Cleaning the pin and applying caliper grease solved that problem.

After putting everything back together I took the car out for a road test.  The brake pedal pulsation was gone but the stopping power still didn’t seem as good as it should be.  I decided since I have all the tools out I should just replace the rear brake pads as well.  The Stang has rear disc brakes, something I never worked on before but I assumed it would be no different than doing the front brakes.  I jumped in the SSR and headed back to AutoZone for the second time in as many days.

I pulled a back wheel and got busy on what I thought would be a 30 minute pad swap.  When I popped out the old pads I saw it was a very good thing I decided to replace them.  There was a small fraction of an inch of braking material left.  No wonder the car wasn’t stopping well.  Things went fine until I got to the part of the procedure where you need to compress the caliper piston.    You compress the piston to make room to get around the new brake pads which will always be thicker than the worn pads you pull out.

The way I have always done this with front brakes is to use a C clamp and an old brake pad to push the piston in.  It is normally quite easy.  Well for some reason the rear piston would not retract.  At first I thought it was just stiff as I tried multiple times with  the C clamp at different positions.  It would not budge.  I then thought that possibly the rear caliper was defective which lead my mind down annoying scenarios where I would have to replace the entire caliper which was an area I was not comfortable with.

In total I bet I futzed around trying to compress that piston for close to an hour, getting continually more frustrated as each minute passed by.  I finally decided to take an additional step in trouble shooting.  I put the wheel back on the driver side and jacked up the opposite side of the car and pulled the wheel.  I then pulled the pads and caliper and again tried to compress the piston with the C clamp.  Again, it would not budge.  I then realized this was likely not a caliper problem  but a knowledge problem on my part.  I was missing something.  I went inside to my computer to do a search on rear caliper problems.

In less than 30 seconds I saw that many rear calipers require to be turned in and can not be pressed in.  This has something to do with the dual function rear brakes share being used for conventional braking and the emergency brake.  When I looked at the rear pistons I noticed they appeared different with two slots in them which I thought nothing of until I got on the computer.  Those slots are what are used to rotate the caliper using a special tool.  I realized I was going to have to make ANOTHER AutoZone trip to complete the job, something I was not happy about in the least.

I picked up a small ratchet attachment that looked like a dice cube.  Each of the 6 sides had a different configuration which worked with different styles of brakes. Once I got back home I slapped the cube on the ratchet and got busy.  Turning in the caliper required a considerable amount of strength as you had to apply major inward pressure while rotating the caliper clockwise.  The little nubs on the cube easily popped out of the slots on the piston if you did not keep it pressed very hard against it.  Finally after a lot of grunting, pressing and twisting I had the caliper fully retracted into the body.  After doing so I was able to finally proceed with the pad replacement which went ok.

So after putting everything back together I took the car out for another test drive.  It did not feel right, the pedal was too soft.  I knew why.  When I was originally fcking with the first rear caliper piston one of the things I tried was opening the bleeder screw, thinking it would relieve whatever pressure I was feeling.  (it didn’t)  I assumed that by doing so I sucked some air into the system.  At this point I had spent hours on the brake work and was very frustrated.  Obviously I needed to get it right despite my desire to jut call it quits for the day.  I hoped I could reach the bleeder screw with the wheel on but a quick glance confirmed I would need to jack the car up and pull the wheel AGAIN.

Once I got the car back up in the air I called Cindy out to help me with the bleeding process.  As I opened the bleeder screw with a tube attached I had her slowly apply brake pedal pressure.  As she did I instantly saw air bubbles filling the tube at first but it quickly turned to all fluid which is what I hoped.  If I wanted to be super thorough or had a hydraulic lift in my garage I would have pulled all four wheels and bled them.  I was hoping that bleeding the only caliper that was opened up would be sufficient.  A quick road test confirmed it was, the brakes felt firm and strong, finally.

I did not finish cleaning up and going back inside until around 6:30 PM. If I did the same job today, knowing about the pitfalls I fell into I could do the same work in probably a third of the time.  Cindy told Katie the car was done so she brought back the Tacoma which we let her borrow for the day.  She was very thankful for my efforts and equally happy Cindy and I gave the car a much needed quick cleaning both on the interior and exterior.

Friday night I really felt like I earned my pizza and Mexican Coke.  We enjoyed it while watching Chappie, my latest Netflix rental.  I really wanted to see this movie in the theater when it was out.  I was surprised when I saw it didn’t do great at the box office.  I was more surprised after watching it, I thought the movie was very good although it was odd seeing a mullet wearing Hugh Jackman play the bad guy.   I’d give the film a strong A- rating.

On Saturday I got up and outside early, starting weed whacking the grass shortly after 8AM.  I wanted to get the labor out of the way early if possible.  Cindy and I then headed out to grab even more sand for the chicken run as well as some more bags of rubber mulch to fill in various areas the chickens have been kicking out.  After spreading both after returning home my only other project for the day involved cutting up some plastic cutting boards to be used as a top shelf on the chickens perch.  Cindy had some thinner plastic up there but it was too flexible, allowing it to bend down and deposit poop along the wall.  Our hope is using cutting boards in that spot till make it more rigid and easier to clean.  I cut them on my portable table saw.

Over the weekend one of the things I did in between projects was upgrading both my computer and Cindy’s to Windows 10.  I was surprised just how smoothly the process went, I really had no issues at all.  The new OS combines the best features of Windows 7 and 8.  So far I am very happy with the upgrade and am still digging into some of the new features like Cortana and the Edge web browser. The system boot up and shut down speed seems even faster as well.  Thank goodness someone at Microsoft realized people actually like the Start Menu.  Taking it away was like forcing people to steer a car with their feet.

On Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the latest Mission Impossible movie.  I have liked every Mission Impossible film.  Hell I have enjoyed pretty much any movie Tom Cruise ever does.  The latest MI kept the streak alive.  It combined smart action, suspense, and story telling.  I have no problem giving it an A- rating all day long.

On Sunday morning Cindy was not able to consider biking with her toe surgery but I had hopes of getting out on the road.  When I looked out the window the skies looked gray and menacing so I scrapped the idea, despite knowing I would probably regret it.  If I don’t get some sort of significant exercise in over a weekend I feel like a bum.  Late in the morning I tried to fill that void by going in the bar park and doing four rounds of short circuit involving push ups, hanging knee raises, and pull ups.  I was surprised how low energy, uninspired and weak I felt during the mini-workout.  It shows on film.

The vast majority of my Sunday was spent geeking out in WoW, another thing that can bring on feelings of guilt.  Sure I had done significant amounts of work the prior 3 days but all it takes is one day filled with primarily screwing off to erase that in my mind and make me feel lazy.

Late in the day Cindy and I sat down to map out a day by day tentative schedule for the road trip.  It includes two days for both Yellowstone Park and Vegas.  Both destinations could easily demand more time but we have to work it in with 6100 miles of travel by road.  The way things are mapped now we would have 12 nights and 13 days of travel which allows us exactly one day of slack if something comes up.  My goal is to spend no more than we did last year on the road trip.  I’m not sure if that is possible or not since there are a couple extra days and more feature destinations this time around.