My sick day yesterday as well as Monday had a ton of WoW as part of it. I bet I played more in the last two days than I have in years. It was a fun distraction to the cold I have been dealing with since Saturday. I spent most of that time relearning how to play my priest.
I also got an unexpected surprise when my DJI Mavic Pro showed up at my door. I knew it was en route but I did not expect it until maybe next week as the tracking I looked at from Fed Ex Tuesday night showed it had just left Hong Kong. Well for some reason my box got super express service. It arrived in Memphis at 3AM and was immediately flown to Fort Myers where it was put on a truck for delivery, crazy.
Even though I knew just how compact the Mavic was from videos and pictures, it wasn’t until I held it in my hand that I truly appreciated it. Despite it’s diminutive size it packs big time tech and features. It has full obstacle avoidance cameras and sensors and uses the same incredible app the Phantom does.
The way your smart phone integrates with the controller is very slick. Your phone becomes your first person view window along with a TON of additional options. The controller itself almost reminds me of a video game controller and is very comfortable to hold and use.
I was able to get the Mavic into the air very easily but I still felt like a complete novice, even though I have had a drone for several years. The technology has advanced a ton since the Phantom 2. There are so many features, simple flying just scratches the surface of what this thing can do. The video the 4K camera captures is crisp and clean. Being able to fly via FPV is a new experience for me and I can see why it is so popular.
I briefly tested one of the many flying modes, Auto Track. You basically identify something you want the drone to keep in frame by drawing a box around it. It can be a person, a vehicle, or pretty much anything else as long as it has half decent size. Once this is enabled the drone will automatically move and adjust the camera angle to keep that object in it’s field of view. It’s pretty amazing. I ran around the backyard a little and it stayed locked on me easily. Of course I have various ideas of how to incorporate this with EUC rides as well.
I need to do a lot of reading and viewing of tutorials to get familiar with all the drone can do. I am looking forward to the challenge and avoiding fines from the national park service along the way.
It felt weird on Thanksgiving morning to be getting up so “late” at 4:45 am since this was the first time in years I was attending a race as a participant and not a timer. We left the house around 5:30 for the race scheduled to start at 7:30. I wanted to get there early to lend a hand where needed. Once I got there it didn’t take long for me to track down my timer buddy John who was handling the event. I wound up spending almost all of the time pre-race talking and helping John, it just felt like the natural place for me to be.
The atmosphere at the Gobble Gobble was so much different from what I became accustomed to at the running club Thanksgiving race. I would compare the feel of that race to a mob waiting to beat in the doors on Black Friday. It was just chaotic as hell from start to finish. The club race has over 3000 participants, the Gobble has less than half of that. This race breaks the event apart into a chip timed and fun run division which further helps with congestion. They had a woman doing announcements on a small stage during the entire time leading up to the race which made it very clear and easy to figure out what was going on instead of just herds of people following other herds of people, hoping they are going the right way.
Cindy and I were in the timed event which took off first, 5 minutes before the fun runners started. Cindy has not been been able to do consistent running leading up to the race so I knew it was going to be tough for her. Despite her saying I should just go ahead and run whatever pace I wanted , I stayed with her for the majority of the race. She was struggling at points and I tried to give her encouragement to keep pushing ahead.
When we got to the 3.5 mile mark I told her I was going to push for the last half mile which she was fine with. It gave me a chance to briefly indulge in my normal race mode mindset where I acquire targets ahead of me to run down and pass. My official time of 38:30 was slower than most of my training runs but I could have cared less, it just felt good to be a participant instead of an organizer. Cindy came across the line pushing hard about 45 seconds after I did.
The post race scene again was far less chaotic than I was accustomed to due to less people and the simple awards structure where only the top three finishers of each gender get anything. Instead of posting paper results John just had a couple laptops set up that runners could use to print out their individual time slips, further relieving congestion. Cindy and I indulged in some of the post race refreshments. I hung at the finish line with John for a little while before we called it a morning. It was good that I got to see the race director, Matt, who I had not seen in person for a long time although I chat to him online on a regular basis. Cindy and I left the parking lot both feeling very good about the experience, it was such a refreshing change from what I had become used to.
When we got home there was no equipment to put away, no data to be massaged and no results to be uploaded. Instead I got to just flip on the Macy’s Parade and chill. I had not seen more than a few minutes of the parade for the past five or six years. I got to watch almost two hours of it this year and loved every minute of it. The rest of Thanksgiving followed the same general feel good vibe. Cindy did most of the heavy lifting for the day, preparing a hybrid tofurkey/turkey Thanksgiving dinner that we enjoyed with Katie and Daniel. Before dinner I actually shot over to the school with the kids to get some more EUC riding in where Katie once again showed massive improvements in her ability to ride the electric unicycle. The meal Cindy prepared was very, very good. We relived the meal via warm ups during the weekend and it was still delicious.
On Friday I was outside early trying to get chores down to free up the weekend since Randall was rolling in for a visit. After I finished up we headed out for some errands. Since it was Black Friday I didn’t expect it to be a pleasant experience. We stopped at Sam’s Club first which was busy but not a mob scene, I saw some good deals but nothing I wanted for myself or others. I was a bit annoyed that the 4K tv I bought at Sam’s in May was now like 400 bucks less on Black Friday.
We then headed to Lowe’s and Home Depot with a primary goal of securing a new artificial Christmas tree. The tree I have is about 5-6 years old and works fine but I am not thrilled that the built in lights are incandescent which eat a lot of power. I wanted a tree that used controllable LED lighting. Getting into the Home Depot parking lot was just ridiculous. As annoying as it was, I just reminded myself of what date on the calendar it was. I knew what I was getting myself into.
The interior of the store was no better with mobs of people clogging the aisles. Cindy swooped in and claimed the last box of a tree model that seemed to have the specs we wanted, a seven and a half footer with led lights that could be color, white or cycle between the two, perfect. While we were there we picked up a few other items. I felt relieved when we finally got out the door, the Black Friday mindset is just something that leaves me feeling unsettled.
Later in the day we actually went back out to the Bonita Home Depot, bringing Elsa along this time. I wanted to pick up a spot light I could install on the water equipment shelter to provide night illumination for that side of the house since it is where we normally walk Elsa. We took Elsa to Home Depot with Sadie the week before and she seemed to like it. Well without Sadie around it was a different story. Elsa seemed scared most of the time, I felt bad for her. Hopefully more exposure to more people, sights, and sounds will help her not react in such a scared manner.
We did our exterior decorations on Friday. I totally abandoned the all white exterior lights that I used to decorate the house with, replacing them exclusively with colored LED lights. We strung lights on the front palm trees and the opposite front fence lines. When combined with our other color/pattern changing decorations the house looks incredibly colorful. I like it.
Randall did not arrive on Saturday until early in the afternoon giving us time to get stuff done in the morning. One of those things was me installing the new flood light. It was an LED model so I was a bit concerned about it’s ability to light up the yard compared to conventional lighting. When it got dark those fears evaporated, the lights were extremely bright, it almost looked like stadium lighting. I also shaved my head Saturday morning. When Elsa first saw me with the buzz cut she barked in fear, thinking somebody new had replaced me. Once she heard my voice her stubby tail started wagging again.
Randall pulled up in his Prius with his road bike in the back. Even though I wasn’t planning to ride my road bike with him I had an idea of riding my Gotway Msuper with him instead. We hung out for a bit catching up although Randall is usually up to date with most aspects of my life via the blog. It didn’t take long until I was ready to load up the car with PTVs to take to the school, hopefully to get Randall rolling.
I brought a Minipro along as well, thinking it would be good for him to cut his teeth on the far easier to master vehicle. I was surprised that at first Randall was very unstable on the Segway. When he stepped on he was lurching forward awkwardly with the frame of the bot bouncing up and down. He soon became more accustomed to how the gyro felt, balancing for you. Within 5 minutes he was able to roll around pretty comfortably. I tooled around on my Msuper while he followed me for awhile. At first I was thinking it might make sense to just stick to the Minipro on Saturday and maybe let him try the training EUC on Sunday but when I asked him if he was up to trying the unicycle he was ready to give it a go.
We used the same game plan as what seemed to work well for Katie and Daniel, setting up the wheel next to the fenced in bike corral, giving Randall ample hand support as needed. Slowly he was able to go further in between touches and had a number of step offs as he lost balance. Within maybe 20 minutes of trying and falling he was doing better. Randall left the safety of the fence and headed down the sidewalk. He wore his helmet at the start of the EUC training but removed it later, stating he felt like it affected his balance, despite my encouragement to wear it. Randall gave me a verbal waiver of liability, claiming that his mountain biking experience has taught him how to fall. He got to put that experience to the test.
I felt nervous as I trailed Randall around the parking lot. He would have moments of extreme shakiness, sometimes he recovered, sometimes he didn’t. Most of the time he was able to jump off the wheel and let it roll to a tumbling stop. A few times he was the one that went tumbling, hitting the ground hard. To Randall’s credit, the spills didn’t slow him down, he got right back on every time. By the time we left the school some two hours later Randall was still shaky but able to ride around, turn, mount and dismount at a decent level. He said he now understood why I found riding PTVs so much fun.
On Saturday night we enjoyed more Thanksgiving warm ups while watching the latest Netflix rental, Purge, Election Year. I had already seen the first two Purge installments so I sort of knew what to expect. Randall had not seen any of them but knew the general premise. The movie was not bad by Purge standards and in some ways made me think about the 2016 election which is a bit disturbing. If you don’t deal well with movie violence, steer clear. I’d give it a B as is.
Sunday morning I was up early to run, despite logging four miles on Thanksgiving. I let Randall sleep as he isn’t doing much running nowadays. He had indicated he might get up and ride to Ave Maria and then meet me on the way back on my unicycle to head to DD. The air was nice and cool which felt refreshing as I circled the track 16 times. I wound up averaging an 8:55 pace, almost 45 seconds better than Thursday.
When I got back I saw Randall’s bike was still in the garage so I figured he scrapped the Ave Maria ride idea. We instead shoved off for Dunkin Donuts with Randall on two wheels and me on one. At first my intention was to handle the ride like I did the first time I tried it, almost exclusively on sidewalk. I started off that way but found it annoying to have to slow down at the crosswalks as Randall would be able to keep cruising along in the bike lane. About a mile and a half in I swung into the bike lane and just stayed there, riding within a few feet of Randall, taking advantage of his wind breaking.
I told Randall that if he could keep his speed around 18 mph I should be ok, well within the 25mph+ top speed of the wheel. I had never cruised this fast for this long. The wheel felt very stable at speed although I was obviously a bit nervous having nothing between me and vehicles other than a painted line. Randall said he was surprised how easily I was able to keep up. At one point his bike computer was showing we were over 20 mph and I was still right there.
After enjoying a large coffee at DD we headed the opposite direction and it was much more challenging. A strong head wind which was more like a cross wind made Randall ineffective as a wind blocker. There were periods of time where I was struggling big time to stay in place as the wind was pushing me towards the curb. I was worried that the additional wind pressure could gobble up battery life to the point where I may have an issue. The Msuper chugged along, I still had about 30% battery life when we pulled back into the driveway. The video of the ride is pretty interesting. It looks like we are going VERY fast at times.
Late morning Katie and Daniel showed up for us to go for our Sunday ride. Despite logging 20 hard miles a couple hours earlier I was happy to go back out. I had just enough vehicles to cover all of us although we are running into an electric unicycle issue. Both Katie and Daniel have advanced enough that the training wheel is just not enough machine for them. At first she rode the black MiniPro with Cindy who was on the white one. I was on my Msuper with Daniel on the Ninebot One, while Randall continued his learning curve on the training wheel. Randall was already feeling beat up from his day one of training. After a pretty bad spill he said his back was really bothering him. We switched things up and had Katie get on the training wheel while Randall got on the less physically demanding MiniPro. Once again Katie did fantastic, she was able to actually navigate the boardwalk at North Collier Park on one wheel. After the ride we all headed to Panera for a nice late lunch. It was quite busy but fun first half of the day with me logging four plus miles by foot and another 25 miles or so by wheel.
Late in the afternoon Randall, Cindy and I headed to the Miromar Outlets, a sort of holiday tradition when Randall visits. He wanted to primarily check out the Oakley outlet but we ducked into a few other stores. It was crowded but not a madhouse so my skin wasn’t crawling to leave immediately. We picked up a few heavily discounted items before calling it a day.
Before Randall left I asked him if he was interested in my Phantom drone. I plan to get a new Mavic Pro drone once they become available again and I knew in the past he had expressed interest in drones. Randall was surprised by and accepted my offer. I was happy to let him have it as opposed to selling it. I have been through a lot with the drone that Cindy so generously surprised me with years ago. It last saw consistent use when we went out west last year, capturing the footage that resulted in my prosecution by the national park service which was one of the more aggravating experiences of my life. In some ways I am sad to see it go but glad to give it to Randall instead of selling it to a stranger. I put the drone up in the air once last time Saturday morning just to make sure it was in good working order.
We thanked Randall for his visit. Elsa had up and down moments with Randall, mostly erring on the side of caution when he was around. He still had fun interacting with her.
So this weekend had two noticeable deaths on far opposite sides of the popularity spectrum, Florence Henderson and Fidel Castro. I was a big Brady Bunch fan and always thought Florence was the blueprint for the perfect mother. She remained somewhat relevant late into life which I thought was cool. Fidel, who was rumored to have died several times over the last decade finally kicked the bucket for real which has been celebrated wildly in south Florida which has a large Cuban population. The guy was a piece of shit without a doubt.
The Eagles play the Packers tonight. I have no idea which team will show up, the one that dismantled the Steelers or the team that looked so overmatched against the Seahawks.
On Saturday morning Cindy was coaching at her first track meet, leaving me alone to run wild at the house. I did a number of chores around the house including having all four of my cleaning robots running simultaneously scrubbing/vacuuming all of the flooring. I then decided I was going to head out to Home Depot.
Cindy and I decided we were going to add an extra level of castle stone to the landscaped border around the pool. We are both sick and tired of the chickens going into the area and kicking the rubber mulch out into the grass. It has become a constant see saw of work. So our thought was adding the second layer of stone would be enough of a wall to deflect their shrapnel back into the bed where it belongs.
Cindy had counted and we needed a little more than 90 of the 12 inch stones to do the second layer (we already had bought a few). I had bought these stones in bulk once before and just had them bring them out on a pallet which I requested once again. The immense weight immediately bottomed out the Tacoma’s suspension. I am sure I was well over the posted maximum payload of 1700 pounds. I drove very conservatively on the way home.
On the drive home my cell phone rang from an Oregon number. It was a guy named Al that was calling about the SSR. He had not seen the ad on Craigslist. In fact he didn’t see any ads at all. He was called about it from one of the main guys from SSR Fanatics. On Friday I decided to also post my truck on their forum for sale. I didn’t expect a lot from the posting but obviously I was wrong. Al was called because the SSRF guy (Dick) knew he was looking for a 6 speed truck. So anyway Al said he could leave Cape Coral right away to come see the truck so I told him to come on down.
When he showed up I was a bit shocked to see ANOTHER SSR parked in the driveway. I had no idea he already had an SSR, a 2004 with a slick custom paint job. He actually has owned his truck for 4 or 5 years but he was interested in a 6 speed. Since Dick has met me and worked on my truck at a few of the meet ups he personally vouched for my truck, letting Al know it was nice.
Al was like the vast majority of SSR owners I have met, of retirement age and very nice. Of course I didn’t have to give him a walk through of the truck like I did last week since he was already very familiar with the vehicles obviously. When I told him some of the upgrades I had done like the LS7 Corvette clutch swap he knew exactly what it was and why it was a good thing. We went on a decent test drive and he confirmed he liked the truck, just like Dick said he would. Unlike last week where the buyer was all about lowballing, Al was fine paying my asking price, his background as a SSR owner made my price fair to him when compared to other trucks out there.
After the test drive Al hung at the house for quite awhile talking with Cindy and I. Most of the conversation was not SSR related at all, just exchanging snippets of our background. Al has been retired since he was 55 and spends 3 months out of the year living on his boat in Oregon. It sounded like he was very fortunate the way things fell in place for him when retirement came around and he was grateful for it. So we got around to making plans for the sale. He left me a check for a deposit and said to call him Sunday after he checked his calendar to see when we could do the sale.
We worked it out that I am leaving work early today to get it all done. I brought the SSR to work and will be driving it to Al’s house with Cindy following me in the Tacoma. We will then leave the truck there and head to the bank and DMV office to finalize the paperwork. It will feel weird for sure to walk away from the R but it is offset by getting much more money for it than I was willing to accept a few days prior. It’s funny how things work out. It’s also funny that Al will have two SSR’s in his driveway until he manages to sell his 2004. 🙂
After Al left I wasted little time heading outside to work on the 2nd level of our castle stone border. Cindy and I first unloaded all of the stones, putting them in place on the wall where they would go. It was only temporary as I needed to go stone by stone and reset both the first and second layer. When I originally put the castle stone in place I just used the sandy soil as the base under the wall. Over time areas of the wall have shifted as a result. A good number of the stones had a slight downward facing angle which looked shitty.
Along with the pallet of stone I also bought 6 bags of substrate normally used under a paver installation. The substance was basically very small stones, designed to give a firm base to support the blocks. I began a very arduous process of pulling up each and every stone and re-leveling it, using the stone base to provide support. It was not enjoyable as you can imagine. Most of the work required me to be on my knees which gets painful very quickly. I just kept my blinders on and focused on getting done. Before I called it quits for the day I had about 75% of the wall complete which was cool.
We cleaned up and headed out to Germain arena for an Everblades game. We had not gone to see the local minor league hockey team for a couple years. I saw it was Star Wars night so I thought it would be fun to go. When we got there the parking lot was pretty full, something we arent used to with the sparsely attended Tarpons games we are used to.
As we walked up to the ticket window I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw signs on the window saying SOLD OUT. WTF? Germain seats between 5000-6000 people I could hardly believe the game would be sold out. Cindy and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders.
Just as we were ready to start walking back to the parking lot a couple behind us stopped us. The man said he had spare tickets and we could have a couple of them. I told him I would gladly pay for them. He said to not worry about it they were already paid for by his business. Cindy and I could hardly believe our good fortune. When we got inside I tried to repay their kindness to at least a small degree by buying the guy a beer. It’s always nice to confirm that not all people are assholes.
Now I am the farthest thing from a hockey fan you can get but it was still fun to be at a live game. I downed a couple large Shocktop drafts to help up the fun level. We also enjoyed chowing down on our standard arena menu of pizza, a soft pretzel and roasted nuts. At the end of the second period Cindy wasn’t feeling great after downing her alcoholic cider. The home team was down 2-0 at that point. I told Cindy I was fine heading out and although she didn’t want to be the impetus to leave I could tell she liked the idea. After thanking the couple once again for their generosity we headed out. I saw later the Everblades wound up losing 2-1.
On Sunday morning there was no way I felt like running/riding after the block work Saturday afternoon. Plus I wanted to take advantage of the cooler morning temperatures to finish up the wall. Of course I was just a little short of what I needed to finish so Cindy and headed out for yet another Home Depot trip. We grabbed more castle stone as well as 12 more border stones that looked like smaller cousins of castle stone. We wanted to lay them down as a test in the rock border area to see how they look. Unfortunately the chickens have no problems kicking small river rock out of a landscape bed either. Cindy has been putting the displaced stones back in place several times a week. Surprisingly the chickens don’t listen when we ask them to stop scratching in those areas. 🙂
When we got back I finished up the main wall. Both Cindy and I liked the finished product and we have not seen any projectile mulch clear the wall since it was extended. We laid down the smaller stone border on a small section of the river rock bed and it looked good. Although it is significantly smaller than castle stone in height we are thinking it should be high enough to block the stones since they won’t fly as far as mulch.
I was pooped from the labor that covered portions of both days of the weekend. Late in the afternoon I decided to finally get to making a video that told the story regarding my drone prosecution. Although I kept the video pretty in the middle, not trash talking the NPS tactics as much as I could have, I wanted to get a video out there shining a light on what happened. Perhaps the same ranger that thought it was fair game to ruin my Xmas holiday will stumble across this video as well. Hopefully it makes him sleep better at night.
The video is about 15 minutes long. I don’t believe I have ever talked at that length on film at one shot. As expected there are some stumbles along the way but all in all I give a pretty clear outline of what went down and why I feel it was handled poorly.
Yesterday was our last in Durango. Even though we were there almost 3 days the time went by very quickly. We really enjoyed our time in Durango and our time in Colorado in general. We tried to make sure we got on the road early since we had over 500 miles to cover with a stop in White Sands sandwiched in the middle of it.
The drive from Durango to White Sands was through a very, very remote area of New Mexico. It was so remote that we literally were looking for a place to eat lunch for over two and a half hours. There were just no towns at all during that time period.
As we drove towards south there were a lot of rain clouds overhead and we drove through several periods of rain. I was worried that it could be raining at White Sands. Luckily the skies at White Sands were partly cloudy but not dropping any precipitation.
We went in and bought our sled which they buy back after you are done. There were two types of sleds available, one for 16 bucks and one for 18. We opted for the cheaper model but I think we would have been better served spending the extra two dollars. The saucer we got seemed to be made with thinner, shittier plastic.
Last year when we visited the park they had a huge amount of it closed off because of flooding associated with monsoon season. Since we were back at almost the exact same time of year I was worried that again we would be restricted to only the front section of the park. Surprisingly that was not the case, we had full access to everything.
I drove deep into the dunes, the further back you go the bigger and less cluttered by vegetation the dunes become. We parked in an unoccupied area and stepped out into the pure beauty of nature that White Sands provides.
We first tried a nearby hill that had a lot of footprints but that wasn’t all that tall or steep. The sled hardly moved down the hill, we obviously needed to find more incline. We walked over a couple dunes and spotted what looked like a better spot a couple hundred yards away.
We bought the block of wax along with the sled to hopefully decrease the drag coefficient on the bottom of the saucer. I was doing my best to completely cover the bottom as we walked along. Despite an air temperature of just under 80 degrees, when the sun poked out the heat intensified very quickly thanks to the sun and heat bouncing off the bright white gypsum sand.
Cindy was the first to do a test run down the bigger hill. It was a much better result although it looked slower than what we were able to do last year. I attributed it to the lower quality sled. I tried to help matters by reapplying wax after nearly every trip down the dune.
My early rides were not good. As I was going down the dune the front end would dig into the sand due to my trying to keep my feet awkwardly perched in the front of the saucer. It resulted in poor speed and a saucer full of sand at the bottom. Later I started simply holding my legs up in the air as I went down the hill. This resulted in much better results, almost too good, as hitting the bottom of the dune resulted in a serious jolt due to speed. I started using my size 13’s as brakes as I approached the bottom of the dunes later on.
Cindy and I did a number of dune sledding trips. It was a decent workout since each ride required trudging up the steep hills of powdery gypsum sand. Since we were only one day removed from our dangerous hike/climb up Smelter Mountain, climbing the dunes felt even more difficult. In between rides we were taking pictures of the absolutely gorgeous scenery. Even though this was my fourth or fifth time at White Sands I am never less impressed by just how awesome of a place it is.
I then pulled out my Phantom, White Sands was the primary reason I wanted to bring it along. Getting aerial footage of the dunes seemed like it would be really, really cool. Getting the copter in the air wasn’t difficult but the Phantom was working very hard to maintain a steady hover against the consistent wind in that part of the park. I got some awesome footage including Cindy sledding down some other hills. By the end of the second flight we only had an hour to go before the visitor center closed so we packed up our gear and turned in our sled while getting a couple cool souvenirs before pulling out.
We only had slightly less than 100 miles left to get to El Paso. We stayed at a La Quinta that had the exact same older style layout as where we stayed in Colorado Springs. Cindy wasn’t thrilled with staying there because of the outside door layout and the very affordable room rate of $55 a night. The place actually wasn’t bad at all except for one rather glaring issue, a large damp spot on the carpet. Cindy threw a towel over it after stepping in it.
It was pretty late at this point so we didn’t feel like going out anywhere to eat. Instead, we just ordered a small pizza from a place the desk clerk recommended. It was pretty good and quick. We watched a good portion of Hall Pass on TBS before falling asleep. It was actually pretty funny, I’d give it a B+.
This morning we had a 6AM alarm which allowed us to eat and get back on the road by 7. Today is our other monster drive of the trip of roughly 835 miles. The next 3 days will be all about gobbling up miles as fast as possible, home is calling our names.
I took a picture of the new solar lights I bought from Costco. I told you they were cool.
Last night after work I had a number of packages to open that arrived. Two of them were used in two “how to” videos I shot later.
One item was a fresh set of batteries for one of my Neatos. Installing batteries in a Neato is a pretty simple and straightforward process hardly needing an instructional video. Regardless, I saw it as an opportunity to suck dollars into my AdSense empire so I recorded it.
The other item I bought was a special adapter to allow me to balance the props on my DJI Phantom. The props on the new Phanton have an integrated hub which allow for very easy prop installation. Unfortunately their design also makes them not fit on my Dubro prop balancer. The lack of a center hole is the issue.
The adapter screws into the prop, eliminating the problem. Balancing a prop is a pretty simple procedure. After mounting it on the balancer you turn the prop so it is sideways. If it is balanced it will hang in that position. If it is not it will fall to whichever side is slightly heavy.
You then take some fine grit sandpaper and sand the back of the heavy side, removing small amounts of material. You check balance and repeat the process until you can get the prop to hang.
The reason it is good to balance your props is because of vibration. The less balance, the more vibration. When you are using an aircraft to do stuff like shoot aerial video you want as little vibration as possible.
After balancing all four props I threw my GoPro on the copter and shot some test video. To be honest I couldn’t really tell a difference although it was quite breezy outside, making stable flight tough anyway. More rigid carbon fiber props are another recommendation to get the shakes out. I may grab a set of them as well to test them out. Here is the prop balance video.
GAME OF THRONES SPOILER ALERT
Last night Cindy and I watched the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. It was quite shocking, unexpected, yet very, very satisfying. That little, annoying, evil, smarmy kid king died of poisoning. Even though there are tons of hate-able characters on the show, Geoffrey was easily on the top of my “must die” list. His actions from day one have been nothing but despicable. The actor that portrays him deserves kudos for doing such a good job playing such a bad role.
Well unfortunately I was unable to do entries as the road trip progressed like I did for the Grand Canyon trip. As a result, prepare for one massive brain dump, a full extra large coffee’s worth and maybe even a half cup refill after that.
Thursday night the van was loaded with as much as possible to facilitate a very early 4:30 am departure Friday morning. The plan was to get the majority of the driving out of the way Thursday which would allow us to stop and see my sister en route Saturday and still get to my dad’s in time for dinner.
Despite some dire predictions regarding driving conditions, the roads were totally fine. Sure there were visual reminders of the storms that week like a ton of downed branches from the ice storms that hit Carolina, but by the time we passed, the roads themselves were 100% fine.
Driving went well with Cindy and I switching off behind the wheel. Cindy got to see her first snow as we hit North Carolina which was very exciting for her since growing up in South Florida she had NEVER experienced snow.
We wound up stopping in Emporia, Maryland, just past the border with North Carolina. We logged a MASSIVE 930 miles for the day. For dinner we ordered pizza from a place recommended by the front desk of the Holiday Inn Express we were staying.
The hotel room was clean and comfortable. Sadie wasted no time making herself comfy on one of the two full size beds. Cindy and I decided for the sake of restful sleep we would each claim our own bed. Of course Sadie bunked with me as well.
Since we put in so many miles Friday we could afford to leave at a more reasonable time of day Saturday. We even had time to indulge in the free continental breakfast. While I was sitting there I immediately noticed the woman that was tending to the breakfast spread. She greeted me and repeatedly asked me if I needed anything else and if I liked the food. I am not used to the staff tending complimentary breakfasts being pleasant. She was so pleasant I actually walked to the room and back to the breakfast area with a few dollars in hand to tip her. She was like a breath of fresh air.
The t-shirt and shorts that I wore for the drive Friday was no longer appropriate as temperatures in Maryland were much, much colder, as in below freezing. Saturdays travel attire included jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt and my fleece winter coat. We hit the road around 6:30 to push towards my sister and brother-in-laws place in State College.
The driving on Saturday definitely was more challenging. I did all of the driving since Cindy had no winter driving experience. We drove through some steady snow throughout the day, even hard snow at times but for the most part it wasn’t really sticking to the roads. We had lunch in Hancock, Maryland where Cindy got the full winter experience. It was freezing, windy, snowing and the ground looked to have at least a half foot of snow covering it. In her typical way, she ignored the obvious discomfort caused by these conditions and instead was excited to finally be experiencing “real” winter conditions. Sadie seemed very happy to be back in snow, leading Cindy on a very long walk around the gas station while I filled up.
So we pulled into Damon and Torrin’s place between 2 and 2:30. I knew it had snowed there again on Friday but I didn’t quite expect there to be quite that much snow. Their street was snow covered and quite slick at spots. I proceeded quite slowly with the van as once it starts to slide it does not want to stop until it hits something bigger than itself.
The sidewalks were outlined by a couple foot high snow walls at various spots. Seeing them instantly made me very glad that I no longer have to be the one that digs those canyons out.
We were greeted enthusiastically by everyone. When I had stopped by last year on my winter roadtrip they were still in the middle of completing MASSIVE renovations on the house that were done almost exclusively by Damon. Those renovations were now done so the place looked much different than I last saw it. Damon showed me some pictures of what things looked like when they bought it. The transformation is HGTV worthy. It looks like a totally different space on the inside.
It didn’t take all that long until we headed into the back yard to play in the snow with the kids. Damon had created a makeshift luge track by running a sled down the deep snow a few times. We took turns going down the track, it was fun especially for Cindy since she never sledded in real snow before. Sadie LOVED the track as well, sprinting up and down the hill repeatedly. It was very funny.
In addition to the track, Damon had a huge swing set up in the back yard. The swing was attached via 70 foot long ropes to a tree branch far overhead. Both Cindy and I took turns on the swing. The long ropes meant the swing arc was quite large. As I swung back and forth Sadie would try to chase me at the low points.
As I mentioned, it was quite cold out. The zipper on my coat was being problematic and I gave Cindy my gloves so it didn’t take long for my extremities to get quite cold. I was amazed that Damon spent most of the time in the yard with just a t-shirt on. Emily and Griffin ironically warmed up to us more in the frigid temps, taking turns throwing snowballs at me. Emily even asked me to help her collect some branches for some wood structure she was erecting.
After spending a good chunk of time outside we headed back in to warm up a bit before we had to shove out for Marienville. It was great seeing everyone again. It was the first time I saw Torrin and the kids since last year and the first time I saw Damon since the Ireland trip something like 2.5 years ago.
Originally I hoped to get back on the road early enough to avoid nighttime driving on the narrow and potentially treacherous roads as you get closer to Marienville. Last year I had vivid memories of white knuckle driving as logging truck after logging truck hurdled at me with minimal clearance at high rates of speed. Unfortunately we pulled out of State College later than I planned but spending more time with Torrin’s family was a good trade off.
It turned out to be a non-issue anyway, for whatever reason the logging trucks were not active on a Saturday night. The drive to dad’s was uneventful until I got to the road he lives on which appeared to have had minimal plowing done to it. I slid past the driveway on my first attempt to enter it. We arrived right around 7PM.
It didn’t take long before we had a dog greeting party that included Maggie, Clara, and their newest canine addition, Charlie. Charlie was found by my dad wondering the roads a few months ago. He was in poor health, dad suspects he may have been owned by some Amish people, that are generally not known for giving a fck about their animals.
Charlie was a bit freaked out by the new visitors but it didn’t take long until he realized we were on the good guys team. All 4 of the dogs were scurrying about the property in no time. In addition to my dad and Teresa being there, Patrick, one of my brothers had driven up from Pittsburgh to hang with us, which was awesome.
This was the first time Cindy had met any of the other half of my parenting duo. She had no problem fitting right in. I had told her ahead of time that she has a lot of the same tendencies as my step mom Teresa who is a very hard worker that loves to cook and get things done. Teresa and Cindy seemed to hit it off almost immediately.
Teresa had our dinner on a holding pattern waiting for our arrival. It was a delicious meal that started out with soup, followed by vegetable pie and concluded with a chocolate on chocolate cake that was incredibly moist.
We got to see the culmination of dad’s retirement dream as well Saturday night, his churro sheep and llama. Sometime during my dad’s time living in New Mexico he got the idea in his head that he wanted to raise sheep. He associated raising sheep as being that itch that he never quite has been able to scratch since retiring.
When I first heard of his intentions I was not very supportive as I looked at the workload of raising/maintaining farm animals versus the constantly declining physical condition dad has been experiencing the last decade. To me it seemed like he should be having retirement dreams that involved less physical labor, not more. I also knew that my step mom, as she often does, would wind up picking up much of the responsibilities for the animals whether she wants to or not.
Well the first impression when I saw the sheep in the barn was, wow, that is a lot of sheep. Including two recently born lambs, they now had 12 sheep and a llama. It looked like the space allocated was fully utilized with little room to spare. Teresa told me that she believedone or two more of the sheep had been impregnated by the one non-castrated ram in the group, named Blackhawk. For some strange reason dad did not see any urgency in getting Blackhawk sterilized when he got the sheep several months ago, despite the limited sheep housing arrangements.
I also got to meet their llama, named Dhali Llama. A llama acts like the protector for sheep, willing to take on any and all threats to the flock. The llama was very funny as he stared us down while gnawing on hay. The other thing that you notice right away about sheep in a barn is the smell which is pretty awful. It quickly will permeate any items of clothing you are wearing and your hair. It is not a scent you will be looking for in a perfume bottle.
We had a very nice evening Saturday night just catching up with everyone as we sat in front of the wood burning stove. Dad got a new stove since I was last there. This one is designed to burn wood and does a nice job of doing so, supplying the majority of the heat for the main living area during waking hours.
I already warned Cindy that the guest bedroom gets very cold by Florida standards at night. To try to moderate the temperature we slept with the bedroom door open but even with doing so, any body part that was not under covers became very chilly very quickly. When I awoke Sunday morning the remote thermometer was showing an outdoor temperature of 3 degrees, ouch.
On Sunday morning dad took all of us to the Gateway Lodge for breakfast, a place I had gone to before for dinner last year. It is a beautiful ski lodge style building without the skiing. We all enjoyed nice meals and took some time to just walk around inside to take in the beautiful interior.
A nice lady took Cindy and my picture inside the billiards room which featured one of the coolest looking pool tables I ever saw. On the way back from the lodge we stopped at the local convenience store. While we were there I had to laugh at the snowmobile, a viable form of transportation during Marienville winters, that was pulled up to the gas pumps.
Late in the morning we decided to give sledding a try on the huge hill dad has towards the back of the property. I put on 4 or 5 layers to prepare for the icy air which was hovering in the low double digit area. Even so I felt quite frozen in short order, especially since the wind was starting to pick up in advance of the light snow that was falling.
The hill had not been used since the most recent dumping of heavy snow within a week so Patrick and I had to do a few slow runs to try to make a path for the sleds to follow in the 12-18 inches of snow that was on the ground. It took exactly one run to the bottom of the hill before I knew that the number of trips I would make down the hill would probably not take more than one hand to count. You see the hike back up to the top of the hill was BRUTAL. The hill was long, steep and covered in snow that was mid-shin high or higher at spots. To make things more fun, the air and wind made it feel like you were sitting in a freezer with a fan blowing on you. A single trip to the top had me sucking major wind.
Cindy, who is all about physical challenges actually had to tap out after 2-3 sledding runs. The cold air was triggering her asthma, making it very tough to breathe. Sadie also fell victim to the conditions.
At first Sadie was sprinting up and down the hill, the best she could with snow that was belly high. She was having a ton of fun. There was a hilarious moment where she had her front legs stationary on the back of the toboggan Cindy was riding while running with her back legs. It looked like she was pushing Cindy down the hill.
I actually got Sadie in the front of one of the sleds and held onto her as we did a complete run all the way down to the bottom. It was cute.
Well I could tell Sadie was exhausted and cold after awhile, despite her love of the snow. She also acted like she pulled something in one of her legs as she really didn’t want to walk. I wound up carrying her about halfway back to the house before setting her down to let her walk the rest of the way. Cindy who had already had enough went inside with Sadie to warm both of them up.
Patrick, Teresa and I stayed out for a little while more. I looked at the trudging back up the hill as a physical challenge. I refused to stop mid-hill, even opting to do one of the climbs in totally virgin snow to add to the effort level. Even Patrick, whom I consider to be ultra-fit, was struggling with the climb so I didn’t feel as bad as I gasped the 15 degree air. We headed in to eat lunch, a very tasty grilled cheese variety prepared by a Cindy/Teresa tag team.
Later in the afternoon I took the Phantom out for it’s first ever winter mission. I had been waiting for a break in the weather as it was snowing most of the day. The best conditions I could get was some light flurries, I hoped they would not impede the flying ability of the quad. The bad weather conditions really came through in the video as everything looked different shades of gray. When you see the video I did on the next day which was sunny, the difference is startling.
Flying in the cold was a bit different other than the obvious cold hands problem. The cold air seemed to be a bit tougher for the Phantom to navigate and cut into battery life. Dad and Teresa really liked the footage I captured, showing their property in a way neither of them had seen before.
Unfortunately Patrick had to head home Sunday evening since he worked Monday. It was great to see him. We talked of doing a team tri event sometime in the future where Pat would run, Cindy would bike and I would swim. We would kick some major ass.
Sunday night Teresa, dad, Cindy and I played some Scrabble, a game I am pretty sure I never played in the old table top format. I wound up stealing defeat from the jaws of victory when I got caught with a Q in my hand when Cindy ended the game by emptying her tiles. Shucks.
Early on Monday there was surprising news, Teresa said one of the sheep had just given birth to TWIN lambs. We all headed out to see them, they were both black and both surprisingly capable for just being brought into the world a few hours prior. Teresa said that you had to make sure the babies feed from the mother shortly after birth which initially both of them seemed to have problems doing. Thankfully they eventually figured it out.
Sheep don’t make it easy for their babies to eat. They don’t lay down to allow babies to feed. Instead they stand up with their bellies hanging very low to the ground. The lambs have to wedge themselves under the mothers awkwardly to get anything. It looked very uncomfortable. So just like that, dad’s already large sheep count had jumped up to 14. There was sheep shuffling that had to be done so the mother and babies could be in a small isolation pen. I also found out what a sheep placenta looks like and that the mother will often eat the placenta. I would have been totally fine not seeing or knowing either thing.
During the day I made another aforementioned aerial sortie with the Phantom, going through two battery packs this time. The bright sunshine made for much better picture quality.
Three of the four dogs were all limping at one time or another on Monday. Sadie appeared to have some residual effects from running the sledding hill and would just pull up lame randomly if she tried to run too hard. Clara, who recently had dog ACL surgery would run like a maniac and then be walking on 3 legs shortly afterward. Charlie had something going on with his front paw that was causing him pain so he was gimpy as well. Maggie was the only dog that appeared to be pain free.
On Monday Cindy made most of lunch and dinner since Teresa was busy trying to tend to the two new lambs. Both meals were great. Teresa was definitely grateful for the assist.
So Monday evening I was tired and dirty. I had hopped in the bathroom to take a well needed shower. As I am in there Cindy comes to the door and tells me ANOTHER sheep just had TWIN lambs. You have to be kidding me. This time it was a white and black lamb. We now had a space problem. There were no available isolation pens. We had to somehow come up with a way to split the existing pens.
The first thing that had to be done was to get the other sheep outside and out of the way. Moving the sheep around wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for Blackhawk, the only ram that still has it’s balls. He is aggressive. Dad and Teresa had described his behavior, specifically how he will try to ram you. I got to experience this first hand on Monday.
As I was assisting in getting the sheep outside I found myself about 10 feet from Blackhawk. Well he immediately drops his head and runs at me. I caught his horns and grabbed them, stopping his momentum and then pushed him backwards with force, hoping it would convey the message he shouldn’t fck around with me. Well instead it seemed to just piss him off as he charged me again and again. Although I am strong enough to stop him dead in his tracks, after 7 or 8 such efforts I was getting tired of it. I side stepped one of his charges and then kept a tree between the two of us which finally put an end to his ramming attempts.
So anyway after some scrambling we used a a piece of metal fencing to temporarily split one of the stalls at a 45 degree angle using a combination of brackets and bungee cords to attach it. It was during this process where I got up close and personal with sheep shit as I was on my knees driving in screws to attach the fence section.
Once the temporary divider was in place, getting the correct sheep where they belonged was very difficult. Certain sheep were freaking out as they didn’t want to be split up. Sheep are very attached to their flock and even more so to their mothers. I found out that trying to physically restrain a panicked sheep is not for sissies.
There was another complication with this newest set of twins. The mother appeared to be rejecting the white one. Every time it would try to get under her to feed the mother would knock it away with her head. Teresa was very worried and got out her sheep how-to manual for guidance. It indicated it was very important for the babies to feed shortly after birth. Since the mother wanted nothing to do with the white one Teresa wound up bottle feeding the poor little thing.
Both Cindy and Teresa tried a number of tricks listed in the book to get the mother to accept the white lamb which included some pretty disgusting activities like rubbing placenta on the lamb and other fluids so the scent was right. None of it seemed to work.
Cindy was not afraid to jump right in and get her hands and everything else dirty. She took turns feeding the baby, staying put even when the lamb took a leak on Cindy’s leg. Cindy got to add lamb feeding to her list of firsts on the trip.
So originally before lamb twin set number two were born, we had made loose plans to go to the movies on Tuesday, our last full day in Marienville. Well the modifications that we did to the isolation pens were not going to be very workable long term. I told dad that he should utilize my being there, I would be fine helping him build a real wall to divide the pens on Tuesday.
He felt bad that our vacation had morphed into something so sheep-centric but I told him neither Cindy or I cared. With dad’s physical condition it made sense for me to help him to make the job easier. After taking my second shower of the day, I collapsed in bed.
We awoke Tuesday morning to another half foot of snow on the ground, awesome. I tended the fire, a role I sort of absorbed as the days passed. There is something satisfying with starting a successful fire.
Dad and I headed out relatively early to get the supplies we would need for the construction work. The first stop was at an Amish woodmill for 10 foot long 1″ x 6″‘s. I found the place fascinating as I walked into the office of the mill that was stationed with one of the sons. He seemed somewhat surprised to have someone pull up on such a snowy morning.
The kid, who was maybe 15-17 was classic Amish in appearance, not a speck of facial hair, big brimmed hat, and hair that looked remarkably like steel wool. I found the method used to run a woodmill interesting as well since the Amish do not utilize electricity. All of the saws, planars, and sanders were driven from a centralized pulley drive that ran the length of the floor. The system was powered by a diesel motor in an adjacent outbuilding. I guess they simply connected and disconnected pulleys as needed. This 100 year old way of doing things struck me as very cool. Another one of the sons came out to help us load the 10 boards into the back of the truck. The cost, $3 a board, made me do a double take.
The next stop was the hardware store to get fasteners, hinges and a 4×4 that would be used for the project. I drove dads Tundra to the back of the store to throw the 4×4 in. He said I should just stay behind the wheel when I came back around the front. The 4×4 Tundra feels like a tank compared to my Tacoma. Despite the snow covered roads it felt very sure footed. I have considered replacing my Tacoma with a Tundra when the time comes. After a stop at the gas station we returned to the house ready to go.
Construction of the wall and new gate took place both indoors and outdoors. Dad’s mitre saw rig was located in the adjacent open air storage area. Although the two walls protected you from precipitation and some wind, it wasn’t exactly warm and cozy. Building the wall required discarding any aversion to animal waste as we were working in the middle of sheep fecal central. I simply didn’t think about it and did almost all of breathing exclusively though my mouth to minimize smell issues.
We got the front wall split/re-constructed and the new divider wall in place before lunch and then knocked out the gate afterwards. As we were working Cindy and Teresa were taking turns tending to and formulating plans on how to care for Snowflake (initially named Tessa) since her mother continued to reject her. The good news was at least the lamb was taking to bottle feeding pretty well. When the baby was asleep on Teresa’s lap it looked so peaceful.
Finally we finished up and distributed the now sixteen sheep accordingly. The space in the barn is now totally filled. The bad news is there could be other ewes that are pregnant. Yea dad, not getting Blackhawk fixed right away, not a great idea…
After construction there was another task to be done, plowing the driveway. I told dad I would do it but I needed a brief refresher on the operation of his big Cub Cadet tractor which has both a front bucket and rear plowing blade. I was a bit hesitant doing so as I recalled my frustration the last time dad had me on the tractor doing the same job. He got annoyed with me because I was not plowing in the way he liked, probably because I never used a tractor to plow snow before.
Well this time around he left me alone for a good portion of the plowing experience which was good. However when it came time to clear the area right in front of the garage doors he assumed the project manager role, directing me to clear the snow in a way that I was not going to, claiming my way would not work. Dad stood there directing me with frustrated hand signals which only served to frustrate me more. I was thoroughly frozen at this point so I was really not appreciating the additional direction.
Then when I finally thought I was done, and anxious to thaw out my feet and hands, dad wants me to use the tractor to clear snow around one of the gates so it is able to open more freely. Well doing so required maneuvering the tractor in tight quarters with little room for error. Dad went even heavier into his hand signals that were inaccurate because he was facing me, meaning the direction I needed to go at times was actually the reverse of what he was gesturing. I just bit my lip and continued to scoop and dump snow until dad was satisfied with the radius the gate opened.
Much like the last time I sat on the tractor, I found it much more frustrating than fun. It was like sitting in the seat of a time machine that took me back to my childhood. Dad has many skills, being good at directing someone without losing patience is not one of them. I parked the tractor, determined the next time I offer to plow dad’s driveway it will come with the requirement that he remains inside by the fireplace sipping a cup of coffee. I will manage just fine on my own, I always do, lol.
Well Tuesday flew by as you would expect since there was so much going on. Even so dad wanted us to do something fun. He had been talking about going to The Kelly, a local bar to play team longboard. (tabletop shuffleboard) Cindy and he had been doing some good natured trash talking about it. Cindy is always happy for some sort of competitive event.
The bar was sparsely patronized, when we walked in there were two people at the bar and the bartender, that’s it. We had a lot of fun drinking beers, playing longboard and eating a bar food dinner which wasn’t too bad. The longboard teams were my dad and I against Teresa and Cindy. We wound up each winning one game which worked out well. The rubber match could wait until our next trip north.
Tuesday evening we had to pack up for our planned early departure Wednesday morning. We found some time to chill out by the warm fire, the feelings of sadness about the trip coming to an end started to set in a little bit.
During our time there I got close to Charlie, dad’s new dog. Charlie is relegated to living in the heated garage since he appeared to never have been house broken. He had this weird thing where sometimes when you would go in the garage, especially if the other dogs weren’t with you, he would bark and take an aggressive approach to you. He did it to Cindy once and it scared her enough that she started going in the front door instead.
When he would do it to me I would put my arms out wide and say “Charlie, it’s me!”, within two seconds his tail would be wagging and we were best buddies again. He’s a good boy. He loved playing with the other three dogs.
During our time there Cindy and Teresa really hit it off like I mentioned earlier which I was glad to see. She seemed to fit right into the Marienville environment, despite it being as foreign as foreign can be compared to what she is used to. Dad and Cindy seemed to enjoy each other’s company as well.
So my alarm went off Wednesday morning at 5am for our planned 6am departure. It was the warmest morning of the trip (figures) with temps in the mid 30’s. It also happened to be raining. I had heard on the news about the potential for icy conditions but I figured it couldn’t be so bad. We loaded up the van and after one last goodbye to the sheep, the dogs, Dad and Teresa we shoved off for home. The trip felt shorter than it was because we were so unexpectedly busy with the birth of 4 sheep in 24 hours.
As soon as I pulled onto Gilfoyle Road I felt my grip tighten on the steering wheel and my blood pressure rise. The roads were icy, REALLY slippery. As I approached the first intersection and turned onto 899 it was even worse. The road looked ok, practically devoid of snow, however it was covered in ice. Despite pulling out at a snail’s pace the van was losing traction. I was genuinely worried and expressed it to Cindy which worried her even more. I assured her we would be ok, even if I wasn’t quite so sure of it myself.
I kept the van in second gear so the engine could assist in braking as any sudden acceleration or deceleration was asking for trouble. There were portions of open road where I was rolling around 25-30 mph and I could feel the rear wheels break free, it was downright dangerous. Despite my difficulty, I pressed on slowly. I started seeing oncoming vehicles flashing their headlights at me. I was unsure of their intent but I knew it couldn’t be good.
We came upon a line of stopped vehicles that appeared to be at the crest of a small hill. I assumed that somebody wiped out and was not surprised that they would. While we we were stopped I got out to take a look under the hood. There was a noise that sounded like a water pump bearing going bad that only started since arriving in cold PA. (Luckily since entering warmer climates the noise went away)
Anyway when I stepped on the road I could not believe how slippery it was. It would be tough to walk on safely, trying to drive on it seemed like lunacy. We sat there for a long time, probably close an hour. During that time a firetruck approached and then backed off, probably not wanting to get stuck itself.
After awhile a snow plow came from the opposite direction spreading much needed road salt and cinders to break down the ice. We talked to one guy that walked ahead to see what was going on. He said two tractor trailers were stuck at the bottom of the hill and it didn’t seem like they were going to allow people past for awhile.
Despite my dislike for abandoning a plan , I decided it made sense to just turn around and go back to my dad’s place until the ice melted. Since the salt truck just went the other way I was able to get back to the house pretty easily following it’s lead. I called dad and gave him a heads up, letting him know we were delaying our departure. He was on his way for a blood test but said Teresa was there.
We pulled back in and said hi to Charlie and Teresa once again. We wound up staying at the house until shortly before 9AM to play it safe. We said our second set of goodbyes and pulled out again. This time the roads were much better, the ice was melted and we got onto the interstate without issue.
Since we got a 3 hour late start that put us behind from the get go. I knew I had a long day of driving ahead. The drive seemed slow, especially going through West Virginia that felt like it took half the day. We must have traversed the absolute fattest portion of the state. I found myself going into my almost trance like driving zone where endless miles roll by without much conscious thought occurring. You say things like, oh, such a place is ONLY 300 miles away, like that is relatively close.
I set a mental goal of wanting to get at least get 800 miles under our belt since we did 913 on day one coming up. In order to do so we wound driving until after 11 pm, pulling into a Savannah La Quinta in a near zombie-like state Wednesday night. The La Quinta did not appear to merit the 4 star rating Cindy said it had (she later realized she misread it) Hotels with outward facing doors almost always are not a good sign. That proved to once again be the case. The room was smelly, not well stocked with supplies, had a shower scaled for midgets and was just overall pretty shitty. We hardly cared, we just wanted a place to crash.
Both Cindy and I were experiencing some weird dizzyness that night, perhaps from being dehydrated. When I was emptying the van it felt like it was rocking. When I took a shower it felt like I was on a ship, I literally was grabbing walls to steady myself. It was bizarre that both of us had the same thing going on.
Despite our late finish, I still wanted to get up for an early start. I set my alarm for 5:30 and then somehow managed to wake up without the alarm at 5AM. Cindy was not happy about my early start but we used it to get a jump start on our final day of driving. It seemed weird to be able to once again don a t-shirt and shorts for the drive after being in the midst of a winter wonderland 24 hours earlier.
The drive on Thursday went smoothly with no more winter weather to slow us down. When Cindy drove I spent much of my time buried in Plants vs Zombies 2. I cleared all 75 levels during the trip although some of the levels would bog me down for 30 minutes or more depending on the difficulty.
I also continued reading Inferno, which I started in Marienville, the most recent Dan Brown book that Cindy bought for me months and months ago. I never read books but when I do, I always regret not doing it more.
One of the reasons I wanted to get an early start was so we could stop at a used car dealership in Sarasota. Before we left on the trip I had stumbled across a 2006 conversion van they had on it’s lot. It seemed to be a really sweet upgrade to the 18 year old party van and was decked out with some nice tech/geek gear to boot. When I had looked at the carfax they had available for it I saw it was bought at auction in October, meaning it has sat on their lot for 4-5 months. I figured another few days would be no big deal.
Well of course you know what happens, I stop in and the guy tells me it was sold the day before, just my luck. I wasn’t looking hard for a new van but this one seemed worth investigating. I guess the current party van will continue to serve it’s role as dog transport and comfortable road trip transportation for the near term future.
We got back to homebase around 4PM but we actually got off the exit about 2:30. I had to drop off Sadie and get groceries on the way home as well. We arrived tired but glad both that we made it home and that our trip was full of lasting memories and new experiences.
I was quite glad I took Friday off as well. I have spent most of the day catching up on things. Those things included putting the new bed cover on the Tacoma and setting up my new gel infused king size mattress for the guest room. When I separated from Ali the king size mattress in the guest room became my bed and the guest room was filled with a queen size bed Jeremy donated to me.
A queen size bed is ok if you have a solo visitor but for couples it is pretty tight. It felt good to have my guest accommodations back up to snuff. I got lucky and was able to give away my old queen mattress to a co-worker of my neighbor. They stopped by this afternoon and took it away.
Last night had a nice combo of activities that I find enjoyable. I wanted to do the bar dip version of this month’s BB challenge but I wanted to do it from a different perspective, overhead. To do so I mounted my new GoPro on the Phantom.
To mount the camera I actually used the waterproof mount that came with the camera, the mount that comes with the Phantom is actually a little big for the Hero 3+ which is smaller than the Hero 3.
I also utilized my moon gel. I put one piece under the foot that attached to the bottom of the quadracopter and then another under the camera inside the waterproof mount. The combo seemed to work very well, there was very minimal distortion in the video. I still need to balance the props, the audio from the flight make the props sound quite “buzzy”.
So anyway, I figured with the very wide field of view the GoPro has and the ability of the Phantom to more or less hover in place without pilot input, I should be able to film my attempt from above. Mounting the GoPro in the waterproof case actually resulted in the cam being upside down. Luckily the GoPro has the ability to flip video on the fly just by telling it that UP is the other direction.
So I got the copter in the air and positioned it so it looked like the GoPro was more or less pointed at the pull up bar. I set the transmitter on the table and got to work. The copter drifted around slightly due to wind but with the wide angle lens it didn’t matter. I think it turned out quite well, I will surely dig deeper into this video recording method in the future. Here is the finished product.
After the challenge was over I flew around some more, capturing some more cool aerial footage. I am having ideas float around in my head of some future uses of my flying aerial rig that could be pretty cool.
My enjoyable night was rounded out with some gaming time playing both WoW (dinged 90 with my second toon) and Hearthstone (kicked some ass with my Warlock & Hunter). It felt good to have a night of doing nothing except what I want to do instead of things I have to do.
I had a weird dream last night.
I was back at the house I grew up at in Gouglersville. I was walking down the road near the bottom of the hill with my dad. We had Sadie along. Dad had her on a long extend-a-leash. The creek that runs along the road was much bigger than I remember, looking more like a small river.
Sadie, as she often does, was far ahead exploring. She headed down the slope that lead into the creek/river and started wading in. Before I knew it she was a good 15 feet from shore with my dad still holding the leash. I yell to my dad, “You shouldn’t let her go in there, there are sharks!” “I know, I know” my dad said in his mildly dismissive tone. Dad is never one to take much heed to potential danger, confident that he will always somehow fall outside the odds.
Well as soon as my dad gets done speaking I see two large shadows moving quickly in the water which was no more than knee deep. As my eyes focused I saw it was not one but TWO sharks and big ones at that, 7-8 feet long at least. I scream at my dad, who was now in the creek/river himself as Sadie pulled along, about the sharks. He says he sees them and starts “running” as fast as you can in knee high water, pulling Sadie back behind him.
As Dad is hauling ass towards the bank the sharks pass directly in front of him, I was sure he was going to either step on them or trip over them. He somehow avoids them and makes it to shore, however he momentarily forgets that Sadie is still in the water. I run towards him and yell, “GO, GO, GO” meaning he needed to pull Sadie out the rest of the way.
My eyes widened as Sadie was moving towards land, both sharks had swung around and were hauling ass straight towards her, like twin torpedoes. As Sadie came out of the water the sharks shot out of the water, missing her barely before they both roll back into the river/creek.
Sadie had no idea anything was wrong at all, standing there with her typical dog smile after she shook off the water. End of dream.
Randall had originally predicted an arrival time Friday night of about 7:30PM. I know Randall well enough that I immediately dismissed that time as being accurate. He rolled in about 8:30 which was fine since I had plenty to keep me busy with prep for the race.
Once he showed up Cindy, Randall and I hung out for a little bit but we didn’t want to stay up too late since the plan was for a very early 4:30 AM departure the next morning for the race. Luckily the forecast for the morning had moderated somewhat, from the low 40’s to the upper 40’s which is still cold but more bearable.
In the morning I dressed warm but not with quite as many layers as last week. We got on site right around 5AM, there was already a lot going on as Humane Society staff had showed up even earlier. Randall and I hung parking signs, dropped off the equipment for the start line and then headed back to the registration area. Once we were there we set up everything we could until the GCR truck showed up a little before 6. It felt cold but tolerable, especially as we were moving around constantly. By the time the truck showed up we only needed a few things to complete the registration area.
As the sun started to rise the participants and their dogs started to show up. Having nearly 200 dogs participating meant for a VERY busy and fun registration area. Prior to the race I sent out an email to all participants warning them that they needed to pick up their packets early to avoid long lines on race day. My warning seemed to work as somewhere around 75% of the people did pick up early, however another problem arose.
People that picked up early still had to pick up a timing chip on race morning. Well evidently a lot of pre-registered participants didn’t show up until around 7:30 (race at 8) . In a very short period of time we had a MONSTER line of people waiting to get their timing chip. It made it pretty clear that using disposable timing devices for next years race would make more sense where people could pick up their timing device early as well.
Once daylight hit Randall jumped from equipment set up help to his event photographer role, shooting hundreds of pictures using Ali’s nice camera. I was basically overseeing the day of race entries as we had two other people doing them to free me up.
About 7:45 I told Ali I was ready to head down to the start line, I was taking the Tacoma to make my commute to and from the starting area as fast as possible since the distance between start and finish causes me logistical problems. As we were on the road I swore loudly, I forgot to grab the laptop I use to pull the timing files from the box, shit. Ali called back to Christy who was in the registration area and asked her to run the laptop down to me, thank goodness.
I had the club’s new portable PA system in the back of the truck for Ali to make announcements. One of the important things to announce was people with dogs were supposed to be at the back of the start line group and that they were supposed to wait to start, so non-dog runners had a chance to get ahead. Unfortunately the crowd size and noise made it impossible for people towards the back to hear. We wound up having to try to stop a few people with dogs that shot off with the main pack of runners. It was a bit of a mess.
Even with driving back to the start line I still had precious little time to get everything set up. Luckily this year the first place runner was slower than years past, clicking in a little after the 18 minute mark.
Timing the event went smoothly except for a power malfunction. As I was sitting there I heard the motor for our blow up finish line cut out. In a split second I shot out of my chair and started sprinting towards the building where we were tapping power from. I instantly suspected the two coffee machines that were tapped into the line as being the problem. I quickly unplugged those and then ran into the building with an extra extension cord I grabbed. I hooked it to the existing cord and plugged into a jack on a different wall, hoping it was on a different circuit, it was. As I walked back outside I saw a number of people standing under the finish arch, supportting it as it was half deflated. It started to slowly rise, crisis averted.
The rest of the event went well, lots of smiles of both the human and canine variety were seen everywhere. I got off site between 9:30 and 10. Ali thanked Randall and I for our contributions to the race which clicked in with 750+ participants, the second highest amount ever.
On the way home we picked up some DD coffee to help stave off the inevitable drowsiness that comes with such early morning alarms. I spent a couple hours working on stuff after the race. After doing so Randall came with me to go pick up the girls at Ali’s place. They were quite excited to see Uncle Randall as always.
We both agreed that taking a nap would be a wise decision. Randall headed into the bedroom around 2:30. I wanted to quickly uncover all of the landscape stuff that was wrapped in cold protection cloth since it looks like the short term threat of cold was over. Well it took longer than expected, I didn’t get into the bedroom to shut my eyes until 3:30.
I told Randall that we could nap until around 4:30 since we had tentative plans to go to the movies Saturday night. I set my alarm and got up at about 4:45 even though it felt like I could have slept much longer. When I came out Randall’s bedroom door was still closed. I knew he said he didn’t sleep great the night before so I just let him go.
It turned out that Cindy was stuck working too late to make going to the movies viable so I continued to let Randall slumber. He didn’t come out until around 6:15PM.
We spent some time outside with the Phantom. After I got the quadracopter in the air I handed the controls over to Randall to let him see just how easy the thing is to fly. Randall was amazed at just how easy it was. Within a few minutes of flying it he said he would definitely be getting one.
Instead of hitting the theater we had a good in home night. We drank some beer, enjoyed a fantastic grilled cheese and tomato soup dinner Cindy prepared, played some Xbox Kinect Sports 2 and then watched the latest Riddick movie.
Randall and Cindy were surprised that I never saw the first two Riddick installments, it seems like the type of movie I would like. I don’t think coming in late really affected my digesting the movie much. The flick was pretty good. I was not a big fan of the animal violence, especially the dog like creatures. The action through out the flick was steady otherwise and delivered a solid B+ viewing experience.
Our Sunday morning started on the slow side, with everyone sleeping in somewhat. Sadie was the alarm clock when she started whining to go out. We had plans to go do the long Ave Maria ride but were in no rush to start early, hoping the pretty chilly temps in the low 50’s would go up a few degrees.
Cindy and Randall really bundled up for the ride. I did not, wearing just shorts and a t-shirt. Although the air felt chilly, the sun felt warm so I thought it would be ok, it was.
The ride out there was not easy, it felt like we were working into a moderate head wind for a most of the way. I was looking forward to having that wind push us on the way back in. Randall had brought his GoPro with and had it mounted to his handle bars. It made for some interesting perspective when we watched it back. The wide angle and superb video resolution really makes for some sharp video.
Randall had also used the GoPro for some mountain bike riding, I was surprised how relatively smooth the video was just using the stock GoPro mounting system. I had plans to later try the camera on the Phantom.
After fueling up at the Ave Maria with chocolate milk we headed back home. I was quite disappointed when I turned back onto Oil Well Road and felt like I was still working against a head wind. Damn it. We let Randall pull for awhile. On the ride back we encountered riders doing an organized event, some of them riding as far as 100 miles total, no thanks.
Cindy hit something on the way back and got a flat tire which we fixed by the side of the road. She wanted to do as much of the repair herself as possible, she just likes to fix things herself if at all possible. She had a tiny, sharp metal shard in the tire that Randall discovered when it pricked his hand. For the 30 miles we averaged a very tough 17.5 mph. My legs felt pretty dead by the end of it.
After eating lunch we headed outside to play around some more. I took out the Phantom and attached Randall’s GoPro to it. I shot in total something like 20 minutes of video. The quality of the video was much improved over the rigged FlipCam video I shot before. There was some of the “jello” effect which is common with aerial video but not enough to be too distracting. It cemented my desire to get a GoPro of my own. I’ll be posting the edited video of the flights this week.
I also tightened up the slackline so Randall could take a shot at it. Cindy, Randall and myself took turns crossing the line. As expected, Randall struggled mightily at first and got better as time went on, even getting almost all the way across on one attempt, albeit in a mad dash manner. Cindy’s daughter and her friend stopped out during our session as well. Unfortunately we only could get Cindy’s daughter up on the line for a single attempt before she called it quits.
Randall had mentioned he wanted to head out sometime during the afternoon but he also wanted to stock up at the local Trader Joe’s before doing so. I suggested it would be a good excuse for he and I to take the SSR out. We both filled up our respective carts with TJ goodies and had to make an auxiliary stop at Publix for me to grab a few other items. On the way back I gave Randall a demonstration of the SSR’s burn out ability. It was a pretty good one.
Once we got back Randall had to pack up and head east. It was a fun weekend. The fun may be repeating next weekend since Randall is going to try to head back over for the Super Bowl party I am hosting.
So Saturday it was cold, dreary and rainy pretty much all day. I decided I was going to use the bad weather as a reason to get a lot of stuff done indoors. I was a chore whirlwind, knocking out all cleaning, watering, laundry, dusting, vacuuming and any other indoor task that came to mind. I finished up my marathon chore session late afternoon. The Eagles didn’t play until 8 so I decided to run out to Target to get a couple things.
Once I was in Target I happened to walk by the remaining Xmas inventory that was marked down a ridiculous 90% to blow stuff out. I couldn’t help myself but to take a look. I wound up getting 4 rolls of Xmas wrapping paper for a crazy 25 cents per roll, score.
Well when I walked in the store I didn’t grab a cart since the items I was targeting were small. Well the addition of 4 rolls of wrapping paper all of a sudden made going cart-less very difficult. It was made more annoying by my inability to find calendars in the store. Despite directions from different Target employees, telling me the calendars were in a certain area, I was unable to find them. Looking for calendars while holding 4 rolls of wrapping paper, fish food, and a card really taxed my patience. I was shifting my grip strategy every couple minutes. I eventually gave up my calendar search and figured I could look in World Market a couple doors down.
So I walk in WM and see they do indeed have 2014 calendars AND they are 60% off! Sweet. The selection wasn’t great but I snagged a Peanuts calendar for the kitchen and a french countryside photo calendar for the office. So there were two lines open for checkout. Both of them only had one customer in them but both of the cashiers seemed to be having some sort of complication while checking them out. I picked the line with the young, mildly attractive girl. Well, I chose poorly. I literally spent 15 minutes waiting.
The first problem was some stupid candy bar where she couldn’t read the bar code. She scanned the thing 10 times without success. She even had the customer try scanning it. I was wondering why she couldn’t just manually punch in the numbers in the UPC code. When she called a manager up front to help her, they did just that, punched in the numbers.
Ok great, I thought I was in the clear. Well then the customer plops down some $10 off coupon. Well again the coupon had the clerk baffled, she said it scanned ok but it was not applying the discount. This delay went on forever. This time the same manager chick came up and this time was unable to fix the issue. Now if I was the customer I would have said 10 minutes ago, f the coupon, f the candy bar. Evidently the sugar fix and $10 was really important to them.
Of course I was annoyed and I could have easily jumped into the other cashier line which had started moving. For some reason I stayed put, thinking to myself it was a good test of patience. In fact it almost became comical, just how insistent the customer was and how inept the clerk was. Well the end result of all of this fcking around was the guy did not get his 10 bucks off, the coupon in fine print had an expiration date of 1/1/14. Lol. When I finally got to check out I assured the girl I didn’t need any candy bars and had no expired coupons to present.
So before the Eagles game I got to take in about the last half of the Chiefs/Colts game. I was amazed how badly the Chief were destroying the Colts, holding as much as a 38-10 lead in the early 3rd quarter. I was them amazed as the Chiefs imploded allowing that lead to evaporate, giving the Colts the second largest comeback victory in the history of the NFL.
I had odd feelings as I watched Fat Andy walk off the field dejectedly. I had seen this scenario play out so many times when he was wearing Midnight Green, big leads blown, shitty time management, team crumbling when the game is on the line, in a weird way I was glad to see it happen to another team instead of my beloved Eagles. A small part of me felt badly but that part sat quietly in a corner.
So the Eagles game had a lot of hype focusing on the Saints poor performance on the road and their failure to ever win a road playoff game. There was also talk of playing in the open air of Philly in January but that wasn’t a huge factor. Temps in the mid-20’s with almost no wind didn’t really put a huge cramp in the Saints game plan.
The game was closely contested where a few key plays could have made a large difference. I have to question Chip Kelly’s apparent like of going on it on 4th and short when the offense has proven repeatedly they aren’t good at it. McCoy may be the leagues best rusher this year but must have short yardage plays are not his thing. Conversely, the Saints DESTROYED the Eagles in short yardage. Drew Brees did a number of QB sneaks where the entire offensive line steamrolled the Eagles D, getting 3-4 yards when they needed one.
Despite their problems the Eagles actually grabbed the lead with a few minutes to go with a late touchdown. The first thought that went through my head was there is too much time left. The special teams then fell on their face, allowing a big return punctuated with a horse collar tackle penalty that gave the Saints a ridiculous starting position of the Eagles 48 yard line, 20 yards from field goal range. To win the game, the Eagles defense had to come up huge with no room to spare. Well they didn’t, allowing the Saints to move the sticks easily before they kicked a playoff ending field goal as time expired. Damn.
I was disappointed but not crushed by the loss. It was way better than the way Andy’s Chiefs went down, snatching defeat from the jaws of 99% assured victory. The Eagles turn around from the halfway point this year had been dramatic, so much so that perhaps I had drank just a little too much Kool Aid, thinking the team actually had a shot to go deeper in the playoffs.
The good news is the team seems to be on the right track now, but make no mistake they still have holes to fill, especially on defense and special teams. All things considered, year one of the Chip Kelly era is definitely a success.
I did so much on Saturday around the house that Sunday it felt like I tons of time to spare. We didn’t do our psuedo-normal Sunday bike ride because of a late morning brunch that was scheduled for Cindy’s daughters birthday. (which was later cancelled) I started off my Sunday slow, playing a bunch of Hearthstone. I used to start my weekend mornings off with WoW play all the time however if I do it now I almost feel guilty.
The slow start to the day seemed to carry through, it felt like I got little done.
There were things that happened of course. I installed the slackline that I bought for Cindy for Xmas. I strung it between two palm trees roughly 50 feet apart. Obviously a slackline needs to be very tight to support a human beings weight. I had no idea how to judge if I was exceeding the 85 pounds of torque that is established as the red line in the instructions.
Both Cindy and my initial attempts on the line were very, very short. The instability of the line felt impossible to overcome. Cindy was practicing much, much more than I was and did much better.
I also got my Phantom up in the air for some more aerial video. I bought some moon gel, a substance that is used primarily by musicians for vibration dampening. Well I read it also works well for absorbing vibration associated with aerial video. My clumsy camera mount looked funny but definitely worked better than my first attempt. Even without using YouTube stabilization, the video was noticeably less shaky. Eventually I need to snag myself a used/cheap GoPro to use for aerial footage. You can see the videos I shot here and here. On the second video I pointed the camera more forward instead of straight down.
I did manage to rip the dash of the SSR off again to crank down the stereo volume gain. I think I have found a decent balance point now.
I then got wrapped up in a very frustrating battle with Cindy’s old iPhone and her laptop. I still had not successfully gotten her music collection pulled off the iPhone. Itunes would not see the phone and as a result I could not see her music. Before I knew it it was close to 7PM and Sunday had almost expired. It felt like I wasted the day, even though I was busy doing various things as depicted here. I told Cindy my mood almost felt full moonish, even though we are two weeks away from the next cycle.
Tonight I get to do the cold weather scramble. A huge blast of icy air is coming our way, necessitating the aggravating and often fruitless task of trying to protect the garden and fragile landscape plants. Thank goodness Cindy is off so she can help me.
The transplanted fish seem to be doing ok in their new surroundings although the pond water is already looking murkier than I recall it being before they moved in. I went down to get the remaining fish from the foreclosed houses pond but came up empty. On Saturday a crew was in there cleaning the landscape up, mowing the grass, weed whacking and trimming up plants.
Well one of the things they trimmed was bush that hung over the pond. They trimmed it hard, leaving the pond wide open. The water, sitting on top of the shit bottom was actually still and clear and devoid of any fish. My guess is once it was opened up a hungry bird came in and helped themselves. I felt like I failed the left over fish a bit, no fish left behind….
So after work I needed to pick up a large package of chicken to use in the meals for the dogs. I figured I may as well do so at Costco. Well as soon as I entered the parking lot I knew I was going to be in for an annoying Costco experience, something which is the case more often or not.
I joined Costco last year, looking to a support a warehouse chain with a better business model than Sam’s Club. Costco pays their employees better, treats them better and are generally viewed as the anti-Wal-mart, the godfathers of Sam’s Club.
I want to enjoy shopping at Costco. I want to support the good things they stand for. But regardless of my intent, time and again my shopping experience at our local store is anything but enjoyable. The place is always packed and yesterday was even worse than normal.
There is nowhere you can look that does not include human beings scurrying about. Once you enter the store you merge into a current of shopping carts. If you pause without making sure you exit the current you risk being rear ended. If you forgot something and need to turn around against the river of humanity you are taking your life into your own hands.
Maybe they are just too successful, all I know is I can not STAND shopping at a place where I am bumping elbows with people repeatedly. I literally feel like an ant in a colony, it sucks.
To make matters worse, for some reason they had absolutely NO CHICKEN. I dipped myself into this humanity soup unnecessarily, great. I grabbed a few other items but not the main reason I went there.
As I made my way to Sam’s to score the chicken, I tried to ascertain why Costco was SO horrible on a Thursday evening. I came up with a common cause of misery during this time of year, snowbirds. A ton of them have probably just flocked back into town now that the holidays are over, necessitating stocking up their seasonal cupboards at Costco.
Ironically Sam’s was a calm and pleasant scene, 180 degrees from the Costco chaos I had just left. The wide aisles left my personal space intact, I didn’t feel my blood pressure rising as I made my way to the poultry section where they had boneless breasts on sale for a very cheap $1.70 a pound. I walked up to the self checkout line (Costco doesn’t have them) and exited the store without a fuss.
I wish I could get the shopping environment of Sam’s within the walls of Costco.
When I got home I had something else waiting to annoy me. It was a bill from the state of Florida for their TOLL-BY-PLATE system. It was from when Cindy borrowed the party van to go to Key West and I knew the bill was coming. However I still found myself being very annoyed by the premise behind the system.
So basically in certain areas of the state they decided that paying toll takers was an unnecessary expense so they removed them. Their removal meant you are no longer able to simply pay for a toll with actual cash. You have to have one of the prepaid Sunpass transponders. If you don’t have one, they have a system in place that takes a picture of your license plate and then uses the plate registration info to mail you a paper bill. This aggravates the shit out of me on several levels.
I can understand wanting to save costs but I think having at least one booth available to take cash for tolls is not a lot to ask. Maybe I would like to just throw a buck for the toll instead of having to get a bill in the mail that I have to write a check for 3 weeks later. To add injury to insult, the state charges you an additional $2.50 “administrative fee” for the privilege of not being able to simply pay for a toll on the spot.
I am sure the thinking behind this process was hoping the admin fee plus the inconvenience of having to deal with a physical bill will push more people into buying a pre-paid Sunpass, where the state gets to hold our money in advance before it is actually spent.
Perhaps I am just being old fashioned but when push comes to shove I still think physical currency should be accepted in these situations.
This weekend I have things to do of course. I think I will be removing my interior Xmas decorations but once again will leave my outside lights up for an extended period of time. I just like having them out there. I’d like to once again rip apart the SSR dash to turn down the gain on the stereo to silence the maddening electronic whine.
I’d also like to to string the slack line I bought for Cindy for Xmas. It will be interesting to see how well we can balance on a 2-3 inch wide strip of fabric. I also am looking to do another quadracopter aerial video session. I bought some stuff called Moon Gel that is supposed to do a good job of reducing the amount of camera shake.
Saturday night will be consumed cheering on the Eagles to hopefully a first round playoff win.
I also got an unexpected surprise when my DJI Mavic Pro showed up at my door. I knew it was en route but I did not expect it until maybe next week as the tracking I looked at from Fed Ex Tuesday night showed it had just left Hong Kong. Well for some reason my box got super express service. It arrived in Memphis at 3AM and was immediately flown to Fort Myers where it was put on a truck for delivery, crazy.
![10171073_10152900844932841_3442772200797677497_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/10171073_10152900844932841_3442772200797677497_n1.jpg)
![1656399_10152791537307841_102965115_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1656399_10152791537307841_102965115_n1.jpg)
![1660701_10152794497077841_1596831278_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1660701_10152794497077841_1596831278_n1.jpg)
![1897938_10152794495212841_587944159_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1897938_10152794495212841_587944159_n1.jpg)
![1796562_10152794867812841_905470716_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1796562_10152794867812841_905470716_n1.jpg)
![1901889_10152796648897841_1291514611_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1901889_10152796648897841_1291514611_n1.jpg)
![1798419_10152795294312841_25070620_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1798419_10152795294312841_25070620_n1.jpg)
![12760_10152794868432841_1055556980_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/12760_10152794868432841_1055556980_n1.jpg)
![1901736_10152795295072841_824463814_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1901736_10152795295072841_824463814_n1.jpg)
![1653540_10152803099227841_19761328_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1653540_10152803099227841_19761328_n1.jpg)
![1901318_10152799186647841_414296132_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1901318_10152799186647841_414296132_n1.jpg)
![1653313_10152798363357841_765599588_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1653313_10152798363357841_765599588_n1.jpg)
![1888608_10152803098772841_1549630089_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1888608_10152803098772841_1549630089_n1.jpg)
![988783_10152803099472841_955002547_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/988783_10152803099472841_955002547_n1.jpg)
![1779237_10152804445537841_989202313_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1779237_10152804445537841_989202313_n1.jpg)
![1535761_10152026071633649_1584278306_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1535761_10152026071633649_1584278306_n1.jpg)
![12713_10152751131677841_968066963_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/12713_10152751131677841_968066963_n1.jpg)
![1545679_10152028578213649_1803264589_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1545679_10152028578213649_1803264589_n1.jpg)
![1621672_10152753271707841_227005845_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1621672_10152753271707841_227005845_n1.jpg)
![1535522_10152712772202841_1798035570_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1535522_10152712772202841_1798035570_n1.jpg)
![1546093_10152706502307841_985004810_n[1]](https://blog.duf.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1546093_10152706502307841_985004810_n1.jpg)