Kaleo SLOW DOWN!!

Under normal circumstances, you would encourage your kids to run faster, jump higher, take some risks and push harder. In my son's case it's the exact opposite. It's hard to keep him down in low gear, from jumping off everything and to be still and enjoy the moment. Yes, I have an over-active four year old that is in to everything and he is extremely competitive.

It's been joked around in my office that they'd love to see my son put down a Red Bull and "see what happens". I'll tell you what would happen. If he were running, he would wear out the pavement. My guess is that he would make it from L.A. to San Fran in just over 7 hours. To further describe the super-human energy this kid has, last summer when he was three, we went to the San Diego Wild Animal park where it was about 100 degrees. He ran for 5 hours straight, exhibit to exhibit. All this while pushing his stroller because he refused to sit in it. Our annual passes to Disneyland gets used alot, in fact, Disneyland loses money on us. From the time we enter the parking lot, it's pretty much a six hour chase fest for my wife and I, so that he doesn't get lost. At least with my wife, we can tag team. "Hey hon, it's your turn to chase him".

Anyways back to slowing down... We did another pavement ride today where I cut him loose from the tow kit on my bike. He had a similar "crash into the river" incident only this time, it was crash into the *pavement*. Ai yai yai... For the first mile or so I had to constantly warn him to slow down "remember what happened the last time?", he listened to me for about 5 minutes, then he started booking it and took off. Somehow he managed to cross his handle bars and crashed pretty hard. Of course he got up crying, but what was weird was that he was less concerned about his injury and more worried that I would end the ride as punishment for crashing. Anyways, he got a bad knee scrape. He begged me to keep going so we continued and did the three park tour. (three playgrounds along a 10 mile bike path).

In retrospect, I think it's time for a new bike for him. I think a bigger bike wouldn't have such a sharp turning radius and would probably be a bit more stable. I think it's also time to yank off the training wheels. As far as telling him to slow down, I end up sounding like a broken record. Admittedly, I'm a protective parent when it comes to the risky outdoor things we do, but I really don't want to discourage his competitive enthusiasm.

Another Aquisition

You know, I had another post typed in earlier this week and just as I finished it, I flipped IE. windows, then IE crashed. I lost my entry before I could save and publish it. I was so pist, that I didn't bother to rewrite the post again. Anyways, it was to the effect that we went to Carlsbad in our RV to camp, Kaleo got to play at the beach, building sand castle fortresses with me to try and stave off the waves of the incoming tide. It was futile, but Kaleo had a great time trying. I got a couple of hours of surfing despite the wind chop, a couple of nice drops and was able to maintain my arms and chest in somewhat decent paddling shape. We got home Tuesday where I met with the AC/Furnace guy to the tune of 9k for replacing the entire heating and AC unit. As Forrest Gump says "That's all I got to say bout' that". I was able to get some riding in that day to work off some stress. I rode pretty hard and cleared some steep and technical sections that I've never been able to do before. Who says you can't improve at 36?

Another Holy Grail was received a couple days ago: http://lousarcade.com/tz.jpg . To get it, I had to give up a Tales of the Arabian Knights and Terminator 2. I have had those for several years and admittedly, don't have a deep ruleset. I'd mastered those pins pretty easily. Hard to see them go, because I had put many hours and $$$s getting them into perfect playing shape, but the Twilight Zone happens to be one of the most collectable machines out there. I spent several hours tonight shopping it out and it seems to be playing well. As my son said in his broken four year old gibberish while banging away at the flippers - "This is the best game ever!". I think I've got him hooked.

Alien Poker: "When I win, I win big!"

I won this on ebay. http://lousarcade.com/alienpoker.jpg It was actually slightly more expensive than the ending price, because I had negotiated off-auction with the seller. He wanted to dump the game quickly so he turned down higher offers that would have been more hassle. He would drop it off to me (for FREE!) to my house as it was on the way for him, the next day.

Amazingly, the pick-up of the AP went well. The dude was from the Valley area and for all I know, could have shot me and taken my $500. hahah. It's always nerve racking getting games from unknowns. So I met this guy at my office on Sand Canyon (hate strangers coming to my house), as he was on his way down the 405 to Tijuana to pick up furniture.

The guy pulls up and has the AP on it's legs in a trailer. We had to bust the lock on his trailer as he forgot the lock key at home - LOL. Not a good start. Well the game is in average to a bit above avg shape. The cab has dry crazing like the playfield, but there are not very many wear spots at all. The PF is above avg. I was disappointed at the back-glass though, it's useable, but as with all APs, flaking quite a bit. I'll have to keep my out for another. Last one on ebay went for 170 or so, ouch.

Get the game home and leave it in the truck overnight.

Morning, visual inspection... Before I powered the game on even, I had to replace the battery holder (hmmmm, I may get lucky and the game doesn't work because the CPU is stuck in test mode due to dead batteries...). Replaced that. I also noticed a fuse blown, replaced that. Check for any weird hax0rness, all looks okay... Power on #1, woohoo, signs of life, it's stuck some kind of cycling test mode!! All 5 displays come up!!! Good sign, this may be a cheap repair... (each display is at least 50-70 to replace... but.... no sound.... yikes...

I noticed that the boards were not secured and only being held by 2 or 3 bolts instead of 8 or 10 on all corners grounding properly. I'm having some doubts... but nothing looked hacked or burnt or cut. I resoldered a bunch crusty solder joints. secured the cpu and driver boards down. Power on #2, Bam, game goes into test mode again and I figure out how to cycle through, this time I get to the sound tests and they check out, all the coils start cycling through and they check out. Got the game into game mode - lo and behold the game is playing - but a few sensor switches are out.

To make a long story short, I finally got the thing working by cleaning up a lot of things. I had to do MASSIVE touchup on the Back Glass and a bit of cleaning and touch up on the playfield. All in all the game is now a 7.5/10, but playing perfectly. It was really nice to see a game come back from the silent dead, AP is a real chatterbox.

Not bad for $500 and some elbow grease, glad to get my holy grail. I haven't really played it since 1981 or 1982 in the arcade I grew up with. It's great listening to all those vintage williams sounds again. It's as good as I remembered it.

System 6's aren't really too bad at all. If I get any other 1980's games, it would be Xenon, Black knight and maybe Space Invaders, but there are too many good 1990's pinballs out there to waste space on, this will be my only early 80's pinball I think.

More AP quotes:

"I deal Jo-ker"

"When I deal, you lose"

Training Notes: OC Sheriff

Tonight was a three hour jaunt up black star canyon to the doppler radar at Beak's Place and back down again. Nino and I were the only ones out here tonight. Nino's laid off the bike for the past two months and I've been trying hard to get him back in the saddle. So tonight was a pretty slow but deliberate pace. We basically talked the whole time, catching up on things, but more so enjoying the remote scenery at dusk. The full moon most was the best of all and it was eery being miles and miles away from any other humans, but enjoyable. When we peaked up at the radar station, we could see Corona city lights to the east, Anaheim Hills to the north while all of south Orange County was covered in a fog-like haze to the west about 1000 feet below us. The difference about tonight's ride was that we weren't preparing for some race. We talked about how great it was not having the pressure to try to perform and improve in a short amount of time.

The descent was very fast because of the dry conditions. A bit rutted because of the recent rains, but it was full throttle letting the hands go and laying off the brakes. At the end of our ride we spoke to an OC Sheriff who was patrolling the canyon area for people doing drugs, rednecks shooting guns - basically weird stuff you'd find in San Bernardino county, but only this was in Orange County. I guess whenever you're in a remote area, you run the risk of weirdos, wackos whatever. I've never had good experiences with OC Sheriffs because I'm usually getting a speeding ticket from one, but this officer was way cool. He basically told us what he was up to as far as patrolling the area, that we were sorta parked illegally because of the private land, and to watch out for on local named "Tuttle" who liked to harass bikers and hikers because he thinks he owns the area. (it's actually owned by Irvine Co. ) The sheriff mentioned that "Tuttle" liked to point guns at people, threaten them and run people out of the canyon. He had been arrested and put in jail several times. I've read about the run-ins on mtbr.com, but had never run into this freak.

Anyways, the sheriff was way cool, told us to be on alert, where we could park legally and let us on our way. Friendly guy. I wish Motorcycle Cops giving tickets were this cool.

All in all, it was a beautiful night.

The Joys of Home Ownership

I have been thinking over this topic for quite some time now and have mixed feelings about home ownership. Actually the thoughts were more about owning things in general.

A bit of background: I've owned a condo/townhouse/house for about 15 years now and have finally settled into my (hopefully final) home which is large. It isn't insanely large, but at times a bit more than I and the Mrs. can handle without a housekeeper. We don't have one by the way, I'm too cheap to pay for one, although I do have a gardener. Go figure. Of course, the need to upgrade the house or fix appliances and fixtures around the house, upgrading the paint, floors, counters - are all driven by a sense of "Trying to keep up with the Joneses". Well maybe not, but things around the house need to work and they need to look good. If I were still in my twenties and single, the place would probably look like a shanty and things would be left broken all over the house. "Let's hang out at your place instead".

The last couple of weeks were rough for around the house and my checkbook. The roof above the porch was leaking, The AC/Heating Unit needs to be replaced, the dishwasher leaks from the overflow valve, Kaleo used a water spray bottle on my new Dell flatscreen, the thermistor in the Jacuzzi went out. Yikes, this was going cost some money!!!

As overwhelming as it was, the only way I could handle it sanely was just to make a short list and start knocking the repairs off one-by-one. The repairs turned out to be not-so-bad and not-so-expensive. First, a call to Dell support, where they shipped me a new monitor within two days, no questions asked. Second, a call to the Lake Forest Pool and Spa, where my spa heater was still under warranty -fixed the next day free of charge. A roofer came out and did a good/fast job fixing my roof although I still need to get through a heavy rain to see if it's all good. It was several hundred dollars less than expected.

Anyways, things turned out well, but they could have turned out expensive as several things usually tend to break around the same time. I guess there's always going to be something that needs to be fixed, but life was sure less complicated and less expensive when I was younger and had fewer possesions.

This is what I tell my wife whenever I reluctantly agree to buy something for the house: "The more we buy, the more we have that's going to break".

Actually we live pretty practically, I just hate it when things break.

Castaic Lake RR:

This race report is from my perspective, which is a guy with aspirations just to finish within 8-10 hours and have a good time:

The 12 hour Adventure Race at Castaic Lake was a hoot, one of the funner events I've done in a long time, and one where I wasn't asking myself "what the hell am I doing out here" over and over again. Maybe I wasn't pushing myself hard enough. Maybe my new teamate was just too nice of a guy and making it easy on me...

I got on a two person team a week and a half ago with someone I'd never met. Thanks team-finder. We were definitely the biggest team out there and would have won the Clydsdale division if there was one (combined 425+ lbs)! It can be intimidating at times looking at all the in-shape flyweights out there. But we never let that bother us.

After I put my kid to bed Friday night, I drove up to LA from OC and arrived at about 1 am because some stupid construction traffic and several accidents (took 2.5 hours to go 85 miles), got to my hotel room, squeeked out 4 hours of sleep, before having to check out early at 5:30 a.m.

2.5 hours left to get to the venue, check in the boats, get my transition box and pack together, look at the maps and plot our route, well not much plotting but we were running very late.

The weather started off cool and cloudy at 8a.m. About 40 teams and I think the elite ones were slated to finish in 5 to 6 hours with a long MTB section.

We got to the start line at about 7 minutes before the gun. Short 1 mile run and we were off in our kayaks for about a mile paddle to the bikes at CP1. (The bikes were ferried over across the lake). At this point, we're at the back of the pack playing catch-up.

Drop off the kayaks, change to biking shoes, put on a helmet and we were on to one of the most scenic rides I've ever done in the Angeles National Forest. It was also very demanding. Lot's of fire road climbing and very technical single track descent comparable silverado motorway 2 or 3 times. Did I mention the bit of heat that sprung up out of no-where when the clouds lifted?

The best part was the canyon ride where there were at least 8 or so crossings switching back over and along side the creek. My chain took a beating and my bike now sounds like a WW2 sherman tank. CP3,4,5 and 6 were along various peaks and basins and we managed to catch
about 6 teams over 27 miles of riding.

Back to the kayaks for about another 5 mile paddle to reach CP 7,8, 9. Nothing much to report here as the paddling was similar to last year's race. By this time it was about 3:30 or 4p.m. and we weren't sure if we were going to be able to finish because the treking section was usually pretty hard, steep and long. I was afraid that we'd still have about 10 miles to go on foot and that they would DNF us if we took to long.

That didn't happen. From Kayaks to CP10 on foot where we were given 3 new OP coordinates to find. We were lucky in that we spotted several teams still on this section that had made some mistakes. It took them a lot longer to find the three orienteering points so we just followed
them, got our 3 OPs and ran to the finish. I think we caught another 4 or 5 teams in this section. We screwed up on a technicality and may have been penalized for not writing down an OP correctly (get instead of eat or vice versa), but two Clydes aren't exactly breaking records, so who cares.

Overall we finished in 9 hours and change just after 5p.m. which I'm guessing is around 30th out of 40 teams. I'm not sure where we finished in the two person division but not bad for me not having paddled or run in many months. We met our goal which was 1) to finish between 8-10 hours or before the food/beer ran out 2) not be last 3) have a great time.

I did this race in 2005 and it was no real advantage. The course was run on the the opposite side of the lake 80% of the course was all new terrain. Not much at all on pavement.

Overall, I think the race for us ran very smoothly. A couple folks weren't happy with the long MTB section (but then it wouldn't be a challenge would i t?!) I thought it was the best part. In fact, I prefer longer rides, and less foot travel!! But overall, it was a good mix of disciplines. The instructions were pretty clear, so there weren't very many snafus on the passport or requirements. The three orienteering points threw me for a loop, I'll have to do a bit more reading on that (176degNM at .59 miles from CP10 as the crow flies - WT#$@#???), I was expecting UTM coordinates.

Looking forward to another BB race. I wish there was more intermediate level stuff down in Southern Cal. Thanks to all that made this race happen.
My teamate and I had a blast.

Louis