Lou's Blog - It's hard to be original.

What ever happened to...?

2011-11-25T21:55:00.000-08:00

Okay an odd post, haven't touched google blogger (formerly blogspot) in about a year (or two) with facebook around. I digress... Every once in a while, I'll think of a former classmate anywhere before college. Out of pure curiosity and to see how far the internet has come as far as information gathering goes, I'll see what information I can track down. Why a person comes to my mind, I'm not quite sure... I'll have a random moment or situation where maybe someone made a comment, had some sort of positive influence, remembering a cool time or someone that said something that changed the way I think or behave today... even though we were just kids. The person that came to mind was Frank Mamone. I recall him being of smaller stature in elementary school, having some physical condition, part of the -in- crowd (I wasn't) but pretty studious. Then meeting up with him again in high school the one year that I went to public school. I was part of the *anti* crowd that year, but I'm a different person today and curious to see how the -in- crowd fared as adults. What I was able to find was a distant memory of some of who he was and what he became during his short life -

>>
Frank L. Mamone 1970-1994 was a life long student of the San Bernardino City Unified School District. He attended K-6th grade at Marshall Elementary. While at Arrowview Middle School he won the American Legion award for outstanding student and served as school president. He
graduated with honors from Cajon High School. While attending Cal State University San Bernardino he worked as an Instructional Aide at Newmark Elementary. He did his student teaching in a kindergarten class at North Verdemont Elementary. Upon his graduation from Cal State University, he was hired to teach fourth grade at North Verdemont Elementary.
Though Frank had cystic fibrosis, he pursued his dreams and lived his life fully. He was an inspiration to his family, students, and friends. Cystic fibrosis took his life during his first year of teaching but his students and co-workers said it best when they placed a stone bench with shade trees on the lawn outside of his classroom at North Verdemont Elementary with an inscription that reads, “He touched our lives, he touched our hearts.”

>>

RIP Frankie, someone thought of you today.

8 weeks post op. Video, booted the boot, life marches forward.

2010-09-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry this update was over due. I met the doc last week at the 8 week post op mark. I gave the official Dr. approved “good riddance” to the boot (although I actually did this just prior to 7 weeks). Officially - no hard exercise (running) for another month or so, but I’m working hard at least every other day. PT is now working on more strength exercises now.

The daily usual: Stretching, Theraband, ABC’s, Icing, raised foot.
Added in PT this week: double heel lifts, more stretching, core exercises, balancing on one foot (which works other foot and leg muscles).
Added on my own: Squats, 10-15 mile bike rides (almost ready to clip-in, but common sense is getting the better of me).

The good: ROM is about 90% all around. I mostly don’t feel the tightness at the back of the leg on Achilles and calf. There’s still some swelling, but it’s to be expected, it’s not debilitating.

The bad: I feel tightness when the toes are pulled toward me - not at the back of the ankle, but at the front as if the “arch” between the top of the foot and shin is pinched at the end of the range. However, the ROM is the same as the non ATR’d foot.

The ugly: I know I’m making improvements everyday, but I’m struggling with calf weakness. The flexibility is there, the strength ISN’T. My stride looks almost normal and I’m moving pretty fast when I walk. Heheh, I’ll grudgingly say “frustrating plateau” although I won’t give in to it.

What next: I meet the doc at 12 weeks (1 more month). PT continues at twice a week. I plan on riding on dirt tomorrow night (just easy fire roads) with very light climbs. I think I’ll paddle my kayak over the weekend. I’m going to try to do some very light Karate beginning October (stretching, forms, no contact)

Calf measurements are: Non-ATR’d 18.5 inches, ATR’d is back at 18 inches (plus two inches in circumference since the cast came off).

Here are the clips utilizing a tripod - I’m getting better at this:
(side view, front/back, heel lifts, squats, stairs).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVZzSpsUmlA

Kaleo's Green Belt Testing

2010-09-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

A lot of practice, falls, and yes, tears we've got a green belt. Sensei Wayne runs no McDojo.

All of Heian Yondan Mastered.

For a beginning martial artist, check out this student karate uniform which is $14.95 - $24.95.

Cast-rophobia - My cast didn’t make it to 6 weeks post-op and died a horrible death.

2010-08-27T15:24:00.001-07:00

Cast-rophobia (cast anxiety) was very real (to me anyways) . I don’t know what caused it or maybe it was just the power of suggestion. (Stop reading if I’m going to jinx any cast worry on you!). I generally have a high tolerance for pain and uncomfortability, but I never experienced anything like this before.

We were posting in another thread comparing time lines about how long our casts would be on. Someone mentioned "castrophobia" and I didn’t think anything of it because my first 5 weeks in a splint/cast were uneventful. However the 2nd and last cast was put on a little tighter, but I thought it’d loosen a bit as my leg atrophied more and the compress underneath the fiberglass would "break in" like in the first cast.

At this point, I believe the catalyst for the behavior was when I rode the stationary bike last weekend. I’m thinking the activity "woke" my foot up. Now, subconsciously, I’m wanting move my foot around, rotate my ankle, crack / flex the toes, scratch - the usual things you do with your foot that you take for granted. I’m not a jittery person (like those types that do the nervous leg shaking), so this comes as a surprise to me.

I’ve been unusually busy, work stressed and somewhat sleep deprived this week which made the symptoms worse.

Oh the symptoms - where do I start… I think the feeling of inescapable confinement was the worse. My ATR’d foot also felt hot, stuffy and started to itch inside the cast. No amount of ice packs would make it go away. This lead to restlessness and irritability - you can ask my wife… I started feeling this on Tuesday night 8/24, so I decided to move my cast removal appointment on 8/31 up to Thursday (8/26 soonest appointment) knowing I would be demanding for my cast to be removed early. The symptoms got worse on Wednesday night. I tried a lot of things to get my mind off the uncomfortableness - went to the grocery store, bank and gas station at midnight, chewed gum. I was hoping to tire myself out so that I could crash quickly, but when I got home the anxiety got worse and I couldn’t sleep. 12 hours to the appointment seemed like an eternity. I reckon some Xanax or left over pain pills might have helped but I needed to be awake and alert for the next day.

As a lot of you guys stated here, I own my leg and it’s well being. This reminder gave me the push to do the needful. Mr. cast didn’t make it past 2 a.m. The Dremel tool would have made too much noise that time of night so off it came with tin snips and into the trash in two pieces. I slept like a baby.

Woke up rested, put my boot on NWB, got to work, gave a presentation to my V.P. and went to the Dr’s office.

The Aftermath: I go into the Dr’s office, and told the medical aid what happened and why. She was not happy and gave me the evil stink eye. They put me on a patient bed, leg raised on a pillow, boot off waiting for the Dr. to chew me out. Might I add, the amount of hard, dry, flaking skin is incredible. I need to grab a pumice stone when I get home tonight and start grinding away… The Dr. comes by, and I give him my explanation. He checks my leg for healing and asks about what kind of pain I’m in and I say "none, my leg feels great other than the episode". He says he’s seen crazier and worse things and totally understood my reasons. I ask a few more questions about PT, washing the wound, weight bearing and my next appointment.

What next: NWB boot for 5 days, then WB and PT. But I’m already PWB/FWB much sooner than that. I come back and see the same Dr. in three weeks.

Back to work, I can scratch and shower, life is good.

4 weeks post op.

2010-08-18T23:01:00.001-07:00

Post Op Status:
2 weeks splint - done
2 weeks cast 20 deg plantar flexion - done
2 weeks cast Neutral/0 deg - in progress

I got my 1st cast off today and was able to really move the foot around a bit. I was asked to really dorsi-flex the ankle position so they could put me in a neutral position cast. I did so and took the 10-15 minutes to massage, stretch, wriggle, rub, repeat on the leg. It was nice to get some sensation back, but stretching the tendon and calf was a lot tougher than I ever imagined. The swelling had gone down so much more than the last visit so I felt better about the tingles - nerve damage was a concern for me, but I was told that was normal due to swelling and lack of sensation in the cast.

My ROM was pretty good (not sure how scientific this is),but in a sitting position I put both feet together toes pointed forward and they were equal. Pulled both toes backwards towards the my body, and the ATR’d foot was about 1-2 inches less than the good one. There’s just no strength behind it and now locked in neutral…

When it came time for the PA to see me, I was not successful in convincing him into putting me into my boot (NWB) instead of the cast. Apparently they did this for two people last week who pleaded and begged, got their way, and ended up falling (for whatever reason) and re-ruptured. Of course, I could have absolutely demanded it, but by the way my stretching went and the two "cases" that went wrong I opted to just wait it out and follow their program.

So I’ve got 13 more days ( I tried to up my appt.) in this cast and again I hope it loosens up a bit so I can do more flexing in there. Then it’s on to rehab.

The scar still looks like @$$, but overall I think I’m doing well.

Achilles Recovery - 2 weeks post op.

2010-08-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

I went to the Ortho for my 2 week follow-up. They cut my splint off and the Physician's Assistant visually checked it out and said all was okay. The incision looks like it's healing pretty well, but I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the nasty scar. To my surprise, they didn’t do another Thompson test nor did they try to flex anything.

When the splint was removed, all the blood came rushing down and the parts of my foot that were splinted swelled up like the Goodyear blimp. Those parts of my foot also felt tingly as if they were asleep. There just wasn't much sensation due to the swelling (I think). I also didn’t get a chance to massage the foot as they were about to pull the stitches and PUT ME IN A CAST! (I was expecting a walking boot, because I'm really not feeling any pain. I thought I'd be ready for some partial weight bearing rehab, but that wasn't to be).

So my protocol is:
2 weeks in a splint, toes point slightly down. (completed post op)
2 weeks in a cast, same toe position (in progress)
2 weeks in a new cast, foot in neutral/perpendicular position. (which will stretch the tendon)
After that, walking boot and rehab.
And I’m to keep my foot elevated a lot more than I’m currently doing.

I think the cast is probably for the best for me, I’d be to aggressive with a boot (taking it off and stuff) and end up falling and pulling something unnecessarily.

On a crappy note - I can now see 1 month's worth of atrophy. My dominant right thigh is slightly thinner than my left. At least I can notice it. I'm going to be digging for some exercises.

Here's a picture of my current cast, I thought long and hard about hot pink, but people already stare way too much with the prosthetic Randy loaned me.

My Achilles Rupture Recovery Journey

2010-07-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

I ruptured my right achilles playing basketball on the night of July 7th.

My Background: I have been on the road to basketball league comeback at the age 40 and had been playing for about a month before the injury occurred. I hadn't played competitively in two years and thought it'd be great to get back into shape. I'm a stocky 220 lbs. 5'10" looking to get down to 200 lbs.

The Injury: The night previous, I had done a 7 mile mountain bike ride that may have contributed to the tightness, but I never felt any tightness. Having done nothing spectacular to contribute to the tear, I was warmed up, no felt no tightness, playing well for about an 1.5 hours before it snapped. I came down after someone had rebounded the ball and I turned to go up the court in the other direction. I heard a dull pop or thud as if someone landed or kicked the back of my shoe. No one was near me and I went down. It didn't hurt, just swollen and tightness in my shoe from the swelling.

The ER: I went to the ER that night straight from the court, where they splinted me, prescribed some pain meds, put me on crutches and referred me to an orthopedist. On the pain meter, I was about a 3/10, not painful enough to take any meds. ER trips are expensive on the insurance companies, I'm guessing at least 2K when the EOB comes out. But when you don't know what the heck you just did to yourself at 8pm at night, the ER is the only sense of security you're gonna get. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't go again, but if this is your first time…

The Ortho: I got to the orthepedist the next day and of course the two PAs (Physician's Assistant) recommended surgery. There was an obvious gap and the Thompson test was conclusive of a complete tear/rupture. The ortho gave me a boot to keep it stable until my appointment for surgery which was scheduled two weeks later. The boot would also be used Post-Op or during rehab I was told.

The two weeks leading up the surgery was uneventful, the pain and swelling somewhat subsided and I had no problems sleeping. I could actually drive and gimp around in the boot they gave me. It would only hurt if I actually tried to put any pressure or the ankle turned a certain way, it was very manageable and I couldn't wait to get the surgery over with.

Surgery day: July 21st (two weeks after the initial injury): I met the Dr doing the surgery for the very first time right. He had just gotten done with another ankle procedure before he met me.. He looked at my chart, then the achilles and confirmed the full rupture. He also spent about 5 minutes with me talking about how it happened, the mechanics of the injury and procedure to fix. He said that they would incision, clean out the "junk" (probably meaning clots, loose material), then sewing/suturing the tendon back together. He said that it would probably heal in 6 weeks and then I could rehab. "Wow" I think to myself "only 6 weeks?", which has been contrary to the 10-12 weeks I've been reading and hearing about.

Pre-op: IV hooked up, anti-biotics dripped in. Here's the most interesting part. The anesthesiologist came to do what I call the Jedi nerve trick to numb my leg. I was on my stomach and he put some kind of pulsing electrical probe in behind my knee to locate the proximity of the nerve that controls feeling of everything below the knee. The ticking of the probe would cause my foot to twitch… tick tick tick, twitch twitch twitch - spot found. He then put in some medication behind the knee and numbed it much like the dentist does to your jaw before drilling. This numbing would last about 24 or 36 hour after the operation I was told.

Operation: They rolled me into surgery where I could hear some rock music playing, the last thing I remember seeing and hearing was 5 people or so in the operating room and someone saying "Dr. loves his rock music". That's my kind of Doc. Next thing I know I'm being woken from a deep sleep and very groggy, but not in much pain at all - my leg is numb. I can't feel or move my toes (from the nerve numbing). My leg from the knee down is in a splint (vs. a hard cast) with toes pointing slightly downward as to not put any tension on the tendon. If you were to look at the right leg, the toes are at about the 2 o'clock position.if the leg were at the 6 oclcok position.

My wife drives me home and I sleep pretty much the rest of the day, waking up in the evening conscious enough to email my co-workers and tell them everything went fine. I go back to work the next days (Thursday and Friday). I'm allowed to work from home so I didn't lose much time. I've been told to pre-manage the pain so I did end up taking 1 or 2 Norco's the night after surgery and the day after, but I really don't think I needed them at all.

Post-op: So here I am 5 days post op in a splint. No pain at all. ( I did have some in my heel because it seemed all the weight seemed to be focused there when the leg was resting). There is also swelling and aching when I stand up right for too long so I'm trying to keep it raised. The splint is loosening up a little bit - not sure if it's my leg atrophying (shrinking) or the guaze from the splint is naturally loosening up. I was told to NWB on the leg and have been struggling to find a good wheel chair for work. Crutches really suck. Let me say it again. Crutches really suck. One more time, Crutches really suck. Instead, I found a friend that had a prostheic from his micro-fracture ankle surgery a few years back. I must say after you learn to balance, this thing works well, and I don't think I'll need a wheel chair or these damn crutches any longer. I go in for a follow up in another 9 or 10 days.

I love MMA

2010-04-12T01:24:00.001-07:00

Facebook has me not blogging.

2010-02-22T00:20:00.001-08:00

I really don't have much eventful to share. Just daily living, working, surviving and family life. All my little gripes and small successes in the last year ends up on some random comment on FB. Not that any of my past acquaintances or friends on FB are really interested... I did turn the big four-ohw this month and I've got a great outlook for the next 40. I'm gonna stop preparing and planning so much and start living in the moment a lot more. (I swear this is not mid-life!) For me, this also means not taking the conservative approach so much and not worrying about future consequences.

When you're young you think that there's always more time to do stuff. Then you hit some milestone and realize "Hey, I've only got one shot at this". Don't get me wrong, I've done a lot, accomplished a lot, but I really don't want to wake up one day and realize that I'm too old or too late to do something or that I've let money get in the way of trying things. I'm going to start knocking things off my bucket list way early, hopefully without too much planning.

I end the post with a picture of a bucket list item - Desert RV'ing with friends.

1st Tournament! and a placing

2008-11-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

Kaleo took another positive step towards his career in the UFC ;). Tournament was held on Saturday night at the KFA facilities. There were three sets of skills to be done at the tournament - basic skills, KATA and sparring. Of course the highlight of the night would be sparring tournament.

Kaleo did average on the skills and didn't place. When Kata demonstration was performed, to my surprise, he picked the Heian Neidan which is difficult Kata, but was where he needed to be before achieving his next belt (Orange). I think Sensei was surprised he chose that one too. He performed the first 10 or so steps and was ahead of where he should have been to my surprise. What was also surprising was that he was first up on all events aside from sparring and did not crack under pressure, or get any sort of stage fright. Pretty awesome for a 7 y.o. at his first tournament.

The sparring tourney was great. First three points wins the matchup. The first round took him up against an older child with some crafty moves and an orange belt. After a flurry of non connecting punches in a squirmish, the opponent would drop to the ground. At this point Kaleo (as well as myself) did not know that you could hit an opponent while he was laying on the ground. So Kaleo kinda stood there waiting for the other kid to get up. The other kid scored a couple of good up kicks from the ground landing solidly. Darn! I think to myself 0-2 and we're going to be out of the tournament in less that a minute. The deficit would be tough to surmount. The next points Kaleo landed some solid combos as well as a couple of accurate kicks scoring the next point. When the other kid went to the ground again, I hollared at Kaleo to throw some punches and he responded, getting a point while the kid was grounded. 2-2 tie great. Kaleo scored the final point with solid combo punch kick and Bam! first round comeback from 0-2 deficit. I was stoked!

2nd Round matchup was against another taller yellow belt. No much to say here, Kaleo scored three straight point with front punch kick combos. He got a warning for "excessive celebration" on his 2nd point which was appropriate. In another match, another kid got points taken for taunting by saying "c'mon" egging other opponents on. I felt bad for the other kid in this round as he lost quickly in three straight.

3rd and final round was against another Orange belt who was bigger taller faster, but to my surprise Kaleo was not intimidated and moved forward pushing the action, but fell in three straight. I was really happy about his performance though. He placed 2nd in the sparring tourney.

Here are some pics. He was really happy to place, and went up against higher ranked and much more physically mature kids and placed. I'm gonna give Dana White (president of the UFC) and see if we can get some sponsorship dollars for more training ;) -lol.

November 08' (see? it is hard to be original)

2008-11-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

1.5 months til 08' is over. Time flies when you're busy and having fun. I think from now til year end every weekend is booked with some family thing. BTW, my 20 year reunion is in two weeks. Should be a hoot seeing how everyone has changed since the 10 year and since H.S. I must say facebook's been great as far as connecting with a lot of old acquaintances. I found a couple of HS friends from Cajon high, who had left lasting impressions on me during an interesting time in my life. It's great to see that they have families and doing very well. If you were to look at us back then in 86', you'd never thought we would become well adjusted, family people.

Eh, I was in the middle of writing this and got interupted - I'm going to post this as-is with half my thoughts down...

1 month, and things have gotten worse...

2008-10-09T23:50:00.000-07:00

Bailed Out, Thanks for your reply on my previous post.

Now one month has passed and things have gotten extremely bad in the market. Things have deteriorated so bad in the last week. I'm thinking that the 80k I talked about last month (of the 100k you had on 1/1/08) is now worth about 65k. That's about a 35% loss YTD- looking at fund performance within Fidelity 401k, this about right.

Does it get worse? A better question would be "Does it get any better?". I don't think so, not in the short term. The Dow is under 8600 and there's no telling where the floor is. A few us timers knew the bubble would be bursting, and my guess was that the dow was gonna floor at 8500. What I didn't realize was how fast this would happen and that things can get a lot worse than 8500.

Hard to know what to do with cash on the sidelines. I'm going to be looking at P/E ratios and see if we can't eek out any information on some value investing for the long term. Aside from market timing, isn't investing about dividends and interest? I believe there are still good companies out there - even sectors - that are going to make money in this market. Hard part is finding which... Energy stocks are in the toilet, just check out XLE . Gold seems to be the hot tip, but I'm too late to catch that train.

Everyone's expecting some kind of magical pill that will turn the entire market around. Isn't going to happen (credits tight, unemployment high, earnings (for 3Q, we'll see). From, experience we're only in year 1 of at least a 3 year downturn (this one's expected to last at least 5). We've got a long ride on the back of this bear.

The ridiculousness of "Holding" during a bear market.

2008-09-09T21:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the stock market has been taking a massive dump. I've been watching this bear market unfold since Sept. 07' and luckily I've been mostly out of the market since then. In one year it's been nearly impossible to make any money (by conservative means, not gambling on individual stocks or shorting them). All indexes YTD show between -15%-20% performance. If you're one of the unfortunate ones that haven't gotten out of the market, be prepared for worse.
Here's why:

Global Economy - Euro indexes are in the dump, China and India economies are receding - The global economy is not tied to the United States

Domestically, we have our own inflation worries to deal with, mortgage/credit crisis, with more bad news on the way, the worst is not over yet.

I think it's ridiculous for these advisors telling people to hang on, to hold on to investments when we've clearly have at least 12-18 months for recovery.

Here's something that would make it more clear for you if you're not catching my drift... If you had a 100k invested in some index fund in Sep of 07, you'd probably have 80k left today. My guess is if you keep what you have left invested, in about 6-12 months, it'd be worth about 65k.

What is the pyschology behind holding on to losing investments?

"The Buy and Hold strategy suggests investing in high-value stocks or mutual funds and leaving them in place long term based on the assumption that, over time, the market increases in value. The investors who employ this strategy assume that since the market will increase in value over time, their investment will too."

What a crock... I'm not saying it won't work, but there's nothing worse than watching thousands of dollars go *poof* in a matter of days. Here, just let me open my wallet and hand you several hundred dollar bills.

Anyways, I leave you with that thought to chew on. I'll have more to add when I'm a bit fresher - about my experience with market timing and investing on momentum. It doesn't work for everyone, but has worked for me. I've been lucky to get in on the 90's .com market boom, then to get out before the crash. I was also lucky enough to get in during the 2k's real estate boom and then out before the crash. Luck? probably not. Skill? definitely not. Common sense? absolutely.

Obligatory monthly post...

2008-08-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

August. Olympics have been great, but I'm sick of NBC's control over what games are being shown. I wish more obscure sports like table tennis or BMX would be televised. I'm especially disappointed over (non swimming/gymnastic) U.S. gold medalists that got very little coverage. Yahoo medal count is also a joke, it shows that we're first at getting the most silver and bronzes...

So I finally get on facebook and the connections and networking it makes far surpasses Myspace. So much in fact that I want to ditch the MS account as well as classmates. So much easier to connect with current and past aquaintances.

Anyways, I'm trying to keep up with my riding again, and after a two week layoff I still have some legs - must have been the consistent weekend surfing that kept my cardio up. The guys I'm surfing with have got me wanting to ride a short board again, but I'm not 100% convinced my body can handle it. For someone with my build, the waves have to be 4'+ to be any fun and so far this summer we haven't had that kind of swell.

Quad riding has been a blast too. A couple of weeks ago, we did the same trail called Trestles, only we went further, got lost and again finished in the deep dark. Kaleo took a few hard spills, but upped his difficulty quite a bit. His bike now goes a bit faster with a different rev limiter and he's got a lot more confidence. I think we'll be hitting El Mirage dry lake bed around the holiday weekend so hopefully it stays somewhat cool.

Lastly Kaleo tests again next weekend for his next stripe which reminds me we that we have to practice this week.

Some parting shots attached:

Next Hobby Please

2008-07-13T23:57:00.000-07:00

Okay,

I was scratching my head all spring thinking of a new hobby so that I could spend more time doing something with Kaleo. When I say "something", I mean an activity of at least 4-6 hours in nature that will wear him out. The type of Mtn Bike riding I do would be too strenuous for Kaleo. I can't tow him anymore because he and his new bike are HEAVY. Last year when he weighed about 35-40 lbs and had a small 12" bike he was towable. We'd be able to go 15 or so miles on hard Mtn bike terrain, but last summer proved to be too difficult (he now weighs about 52# and his new bike is about another 25#, imagine pulling a 75+#s of bored kid/bike up a steep hill in the heat) so we've stopped going all together. I still ride regularly however... He doesn't want to go surfing (yet) because 3' surf and rough water intimidates him, he's not quite large enough nor does he have the dexterity yet to paddle the kayaks, but I know he loves the outdoors and yes.. we didn't renew our Disney passes this year.

So where did the money go? I ended up finding a couple of used Quads from a co-worker. Kaleo's is a small 50cc and I found nice barely used 200cc which I will eventually retire for a Dual Sport bike next month. (registration and prep for these things was an adventure in itself... read DMV and equipment)

I met up with Harold and his son up near the Cajon pass. He had scoped out some nice trails the week before, but I was leery about the 95 degree weather that was supposed to hit that area. We got lucky and did some epic riding. A storm front was arriving and kept things breezy and cool. Kaleo hung in there like a champ and to every one's surprise, especially Harold's, he made about 30 miles of up and down climbing. It got dark as we arrived back at camp. The freak thunderstorm hit, with lighting and fast rain, we packed our junk and were out of there by 8:30 p.m.

Anyways, here's a picture of us a the top of one of the peaks near Cajon pass. I think we've found a good hobby to do together for longer outings and hooking up with friends with a similar interest. I know it's a dangerous sport, but I've been taking as many precautions as I can with equipment and have no hesitation barking out commands at Kaleo when I think he's being too ambitious. BTW, he crashed once trying to do a 15' high berm stunt (he stalled at the top of a bank and rolled backwards off a small ledge, fell off the bike but was OK). The other no-no was another 15' berm stunt when he was trying to mimic what some some forest rangers were practicing earlier. I stopped him at the top of the ledge before any damage was done.

We didn't stop to take too many pictures, we were too busy enjoying the ride.

Big K earns Yellow

2008-06-02T01:04:00.000-07:00

Kaleo on the Left, Aiden right

Ready for the UFC - Kaleo in Black/Red.

I'm gonna make you tap-out!

Yes!

After many weeks of dedicated practice (his test kept getting delayed). Kaleo finally earned his yellow belt. The yellow belt requires the first 9 moves of Heian Shodan, but with the extra weeks of practice, he did the whole thing (21 or moves). It also requires demonstration 3 basic punches, 3 blocks, 3 kicks, falling, and 3 stances, attack and defense move- most importantly he's had to display self control and discipline. He's also been sparring alot and picking up a lot of (applied punch, kick, and block) and is getting better at his spacing. I love watching him excel at this, I can sense that he loves the feeling of accomplishment.

Here are some pics, Receiving yellow after the test, sparring partner Aidan.

Ooof... More time between posts

2008-05-06T01:10:00.000-07:00

It's late, and I just remembered that I had a blog and that I haven't updated it in a month and a half. What's new? At work, a biz trip to New Jersey, a re-org at work, putting in about 50 a week nothing new. Home life is good and we have settled in to a routine again since the holidays. I'm able to work out twice, thrice a week, and I'm getting back into shape again. Unfortunately, my May race was cancelled due to lack of entries. Need to find something else to keep my motivated in my training. I've also been busy with MMA on weekends and it's hard on my old body. My bad sleeping habits have been better, which reminds me... time to hit the sack.

Ooof One Month since the last post

2008-02-19T23:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, I turned 38 this month. You would think "eh, it's just another day - any other day and I am no different physically or mentally, I'm just another year older..." Well something physically happened to me. All of a sudden, it has become extremely hard to lose weight. I bounced up about 13 lbs and cannot get it off. Excercise and maintaining my wind has been extremely difficult. I am s l o w. Someone flipped on the "You're fu%^#ng old now" switch, and I am now officially an old fart, a weekend warrior, a hack. Every potential of ability I ever had or was going to fulfill is now gone, over, pau, finished. My window of opportunity for being a world class athlete (big fantasy) is done/shattered. I'm as good as I was ever going to get and it's all down hill from here. Okay okay, enough doom and gloom, and now for some excuses... Okay it's been too cold, too wet to train. Holidays have been busy and with my mom in town, difficult to eat right. Work is busy, but now manageable, so there's hope. We race this weekend in Temecula, I'm ill prepared (not enough training), but ready to have good time. Outlook for the next 5 or so years. I figure in my late 30's into my 40's if I'm able to drop about 20-30 lbs and get back to about 185-200, I can still be competive. (I haven't seen 190 since college). It'll take some hard work, but I think for the 2nd half of my life I'm ready for the challenge.

Arcade Party

2008-01-17T00:03:00.000-08:00

So it was another tough week on me at work. Personally, we've had some parenting challenges (who doesn't?!). As it so happened there was another local arcade collector less than half a mile from me who was having a get-together for all O.C. collectors. Clarice, knowing what stress I was under, gave me the green light to let off some steam.

It was a good time, and I got to meet a lot of people from the http://www.klov.com/ forums. Somewhat more importantly, I got to forget about work for a few hours.

So Cal Arcade Party

Karate

2008-01-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

Yes, work and Holidays have been busy. Kaleo has been in Karate the last 4 weeks or so and already earned his first black stripe. He's going to do well and I see him doing this for a long time. We have our own workouts once or twice a week at home.

Here'a a photo of his current class.

Fire Pictures

2007-11-12T21:54:00.003-08:00

Catch-up #1 - Desert Rage Lake Hodges and FIRE!

2007-11-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's been an extremely busy month with work, but let me get you caught up on October.

Desert Rage - Lake Hodges -take your pick... 1st Place Masters, 1st Place All Male 3 Person, 6th place overall!!! My best showing. I'd been fighting a stomach virus the week before, but Friday night, my gut came through and I did well during the race. "Did well" for me means no cramp attacks. It did help that it wasn't more than 90 degrees. We were supposed to go as a 4 person co-ed team, but Deb got some arthritis inflamation in the knee. She had to bail out the night before the race. Overall 14 miles bike about 8 in the kayak, and 5 to 7 miles on foot. I twas about a 30 mile race done in 7 hours. When I asked Jay (our new triathalete guy) what was harder, a triathalon or adventure race - he replied - Adventure race by far...

The next day, Sunday, the fires occured and Lake Hodges burned. So did the area close by my house, but we were okay. Enjoy the pictures.

Just When you think it gets better...

2007-10-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

it gets worse...

Okay so I didn't do some of the things I said I'd do in my last blogger entry. Rancho Penasquitos training race was one of them. It rained the night before, Nick got sick, I caught a slight bug the day before, so we both opted out like a couple of wussies. Travelling to Ohio for work had my schedule all out of whack too. Add to that 50+ hours a week at work and it's just a bad combo all around.

Okay so what else happened in September? Work work and more work. I did start basketball season again where we are 5 wins - 1 loss. Heh, we actually have a good chance of making the playoffs this season. I haven't been to the playoffs in about 2 or 3 years, and the older we get the worse our chances are. Average age for our team is about 40, and we're having to run and gun with kids that are in their early 20's. What's that they say about old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill ?!?? Hate to say it, but I'm feeling old.

I got another team together for our desert rage on October 20th. I've also been able to ride some more, run and paddle a little bit so my body is not too far out of conditioning. I think it's going to be fun, I'm racing with Corey from the last race and picking up a rookie and another female who's been racing about a year - should be fun. Nick opted out because of some GMAT for his MBA or something... Glad to have finished my Masters in my mid 20's. I can't imagine going back to school (EVER AGAIN) at my age.

Kaleo started the 1st grade and seems to be doing pretty well. He has a hard time sitting still in class and some days are worse than others. I think it's an adjustment period, but he seems to be making friends and getting along in the new routine. The scary thing is seeing these 20 somethings teaching my kid. Mrs. Togawa couldn't be much out of college - again the age perception thing... has me feeling like an old man.

I wish I had some recent pictures to share, but I don't. I'll have to work on that for my next entry.

Been a while since the last update - Busy!

2007-09-08T01:27:00.000-07:00

I've been slacking on this blogger. I'm going to treat this like a project at work to get you updated on my month of August:

Status:

Adventure Racing: - Training race coming up in Rancho Penasquitos on 9/22. I've only been riding about 1.5 times a week and running 0. I'm going to suck, at least it's getting cooler

Surfing: Lots. Labor day weekend. 2-4 foot days at Huntington. Two weekends before that, San-O trails. Old Man's the week before that with a new group called "meetups". A lot of beginners there, but I don't mind sharing my experiences while breaking up the monotony of surfing alone. I had to do a lot of dodging during the holiday, and saw an a-hole or two in the water, but it was all good and my arms are fried.

Work: Too Stressful. Too much to do in too little time. My next job? "Paper or Plastic".

Arcade/Pinball Restoration: Finished up this Funhouse pin. Rudy rocks. Upgraded the Robotron to a multi-williams game that includes defender, stargate, joust, bubbles and splat. Still have to put a capacitor kit in the monitor. The garage is still a damn mess. It's been too hot the last couple of weeks to really do much in the garage.

Family: Kaleo started the first grade. Damn, he's growing up fast. This weekend is the Clarice's birthday, date night Saturday.

September outlook? Cooler temps means more comfortable workouts. The days are getting shorter so it's almost time to bust out the night riding/running lights.

That's about all I can think of tonight, I'll try and post a pic or two of the Funhouse I've been cleaning up...

Scout AR

2007-07-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

Scout Adventure Race 2007

This year I decided to team up with Nick and take on two first time racers as a four person team at the last minute. We had pretty good training lead-up to the race with regular workouts a few times a week. In addition, I was able to meet up and train with Corey and Angela before the race to gauge compatability and temperment before spending 10 hours under hot racing conditions with them. They were A-OK in my book. As you may know, putting together a team is hard, getting along under pressure is a greater task.

I had been monitoring the weather 2 weeks prior to the race, but in July there was no getting around the heat and I knew we were going to have to deal with 90+ degree temperatures with no shade. Crap, this would have been my 3rd or 4th race in a row with 95+ degree temps. The saving grace was a 3:30 a.m. start time, but this also meant no sleep the night before. The Friday night before consisted of receiving maps and vague instructions at about 9pm. We decided to head to Wendy's to grab a bite to eat and go over Navigation because the boat couldn't be dropped til 10:30 p.m. By the time Corey and I dropped off the boat, I headed back home and was in bed by 12:30.a.m - gads, only two hour sleep I would attempt to get (I ended up tossing and turning for those two hours). The race was in a Rogaine format, meaning we would try to grab as many differently weighted checkpoints (CPs) as we could in under 10 hours. "Great" I think to myself "I only have to suffer for a max of 10 hours"(instead of 12 or 14).

3:30 a.m. race started of with a three or four mile run to grab 4 CP's also meant to spread the teams out. All the running Nick and I did in training paid off. We were back at TA by 4:30 off to get some more maps and instructions.

The next 10 checkpoints were another 13 miles of steep elevetion gain on foot which took four hours. I was certainly the weak link in this section, and was lagging back behind the other team while they prodded up to the check points. Our navigation was spot on and we got every checkpoint on foot, with the exception of 2.
About 3 of them we stumbled on by luck.

Back to the TA to grab our bikes and the temps hit 99 a this point. We proceeded to blackstar canyon (which nick and I were familiar with). About 3 miles into the ride, we realized we had forgotten the map case back at the TA. This cost us about 45 minutes. Nick and Corey went back for it and met us part way up the trail. We grabbed another three checkpoints where we were all struggling with the heat and decided to go to the kayaks to cool off and finish the race. The short cut route we tried to take didn't pay off and we ended up dead-end climbing to far east of the kayak drop point. We decided to go back to the TA, finish a rope section and try not get penalized for being late. We finished in about 9.5 hrs cramped, tired and hot, but we finished... Turns 22 place out of 44 teams. Right in the middle.

In hind-sight (which is always 20/20) a couple things we might have done differently.

After mandatory trek CP2, we should have probably gone to get the bikes and got the Mandatory 3 (at the cross) on bike by way of the paved road. When we reached the bottom of the Canyon, we werent that far from TA. That would have saved some energy and time on foot because of the distance covered to get to mandatory 3.

We may have gone to the kayaks via paved road. When Corey and I went to pick up the kayak, it was 5 miles each way (10 paved miles total - still along blacktop grind) from blackstar entrance. I also found out later that the kayak section only took 20-30 minutes to complete. In addition, Corey and I were trying to spot where we were when we took the shortcut over the fence, and we weren't even close to where we needed to be at the lake without some more up and down fire road.

Middle of the pack is not bad at all, given the first timers and the 99 deg temps.

Some race photos:

An update!

2007-07-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... I didn't break the 50% mark, but I guess everyone has a little nerd in them, just like everyone's got a little Captain Morgan in them.

How White and Nerdy Are You?

Got a little captain in you?!

Camping at San O

2007-06-30T18:04:00.001-07:00

I love beach camping at San O. Kaleo is getting less and less afraid of venturing out into the break. He loved catching sand crabs in the receding white wash. SPF 8 certainly doesn't work well, my back is fried. Yes, that's my trusty 10 footah, and yes, I ride it well.

This is funny

2007-06-10T08:20:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bK63uSTTNs

Central Coast Adventure Challenge

2007-05-23T17:25:00.000-07:00

I had teamed up at the last minute with Lori K and Kyle W from team Nuked as team “My Kind of Party”. They had both come off very good results at Sea Otter and Castaic courses which made me hesitant to team with them because I’m more of bottom to middle packer just happy to finish any race.

Kyle had a great attitude over e-mail and was very well prepared, and because “My Kind of Party” got destroyed by the heat at Castaic Lake (110+ degrees), I was motivated to go ahead and sign up for the race secretly hoping I wouldn’t hold them up.

To prep for the rappel section, we had to buy a lot of equipment and a couple of us took some rappelling lessons from the local rock gyms.

I would leave OC at 8p.m. Friday night, drive 250 miles in 5 hours, sleep for another 5, wake up, stage gear, plot then race, then be home by Sunday morning.

Gates opened up at 6 a.m. We got everything staged in time despite having to drive about 8 or so miles to stage the bikes at the other end of the lake and drive back. That’s where I met Kyle and Lori for the first time. Get back to TA, fitted Lori and Kyle in my yaks, pfd, paddles. Get our game plan together check packs and we were good to go. Race start was typical, rules maps handed out at 7:30, race start at 8.

I love it when the rules of travel end up only being about 3 quarters of a page long.

First section was a short 2 or 3 mile paddle to the infamous “boat slog” (if you’ve read the other reports). This was very hard on the hull of my Sedas, but we were able to carry the yaks on the way in. Drop the boats at the flag, short run to the bikes and we were off pedaling.

Here we made our first of two mistakes. We missed the left turn on the road to the “sandy check point” and we ended up on Pozo road all the way to the Ranger station. I would say it was about an extra 6 or 7 mile out and back detour of about 30 minutes, but luckily it was flatter pavement. When we got to the sandy check point I was encouraged to see a couple of teams still making their way, so I figured we weren’t that far off the main pack.

The next section I’ll call the “bike slog”. Much like the “boat slog”, we had to slog our bikes over some 4WD sand pits and of course some steep sections. We’re about 3 hours into the race and it started getting hot and steep. Race forecast was like 80 degrees, it seemed like 90 and I started having flashbacks of Castaic 3 weeks earlier. This is where I started having some problems with thigh cramps. We peaked at a manned CP, and then my legs decided to lock up. CRAP, a bit frustration set in and I wasn’t having fun anymore. At this point I thought my race was over. Lori convinced me to take some time to work through it. Kyle checked the maps during this time and showed that it was mostly descents for while. This turned out to be okay, because I descend very well on my bike and knew that if they got ahead of me in the climbs, I’d catch back up on the downs. From then on I was never more than 100 yards behind my team, and got a lot of team help from Kyle when I was having difficulty on the steeper sections.

We got a few more CPs (3-7 I think) on the bike and got to the first aid station where EVERYONE was out of water, including the first aid station. Never mind, we just need to get back to the Sandy Check point, then to the bike TA and then back to the boats. From this point, we took some chances, had a really good pace line and tow going on the bike and we were back in the middle of the pack at the bike TA (cp8). From here we were given our next coordinates 9-12 which required some more decision making and risk taking. Kyle plotted the next points while Lori and I gathered ourselves. It was a very fast and efficient TA, we made up a lot of time here (in and out in 5 minutes). But first, more “boat slogging”. By this time, my fiberglass yaks were too heavy to be carried, so we just dragged them. Ughh…. Actually Kyle and Lori did most of the dragging.

We finally get to where we can paddle across to another shore to get 9-12. We came up with some ideas and chances with fancy navigation and by the time we were back at the TA to drop the boats, we were in 11th place. Woohoo!. Drop the boats set out on foot to get the last 2 or 3 CP’s. This is where we made our Second mistake. 15 was a tough find, we ended up going up a horse trail, which took us in the direction of 15 and 16, but did not actually take us to 15. We spent about an hour trying to find a way down to 15 in a ravine, but it was not to be. At this point we have an hour til dark, decide to get 16 despite the fact that the rappel was closed and take another a stab at 15 on the way back.

We get 16, climb back down a bit frustrated that we don’t get to use all this new rappelling gear. Decide to skip 15 (probably the biggest regret) when we find we’re totally off course trying to find it. Run back to the finish for a Tecnu shower, and some tasty habanero chicken sausages and pasta.

Lessons learned:
We worked well as a team despite me being the slow-poke, we finished pretty high. Pacelines work, Towlines work well too.
Have food, gu, gear ready where you can grab them without having to stop and take off your pack.
Keep your receipts for gear that you may not use. I’ll be returning a raft, some extra biners and some climbing slings.
Carry too much water.
IVY Block works.
Jelly Belly Sport Beans are mmm mmm good.

Overall, it was a great race. As Blake from Scrat said as we passed, “It’s always something!”, something that will frustrate you, something that will make you doubt yourself, something that will get you out of your comfort zone. That’s adventure racing.

I want to say a big thank you to Lori and Kyle for a great race and picking up my slack.

Also a shout-out Yishai and volunteers for putting a very smoothly run (but tough) race.

Castaic Lake Race

2007-05-07T21:02:00.000-07:00

How many different ways can you express the word "hot"? en fuego, scorching, flaming, feverish, torrid, fierce, fiery, fire, summery, sweltering, thermogenic. I think I'll stop there, but AFRICA HOT about describes it.

8 a.m start. We started off the run in LAST place because I forgot some mandatory gear in the transition area and had to go back for it. 1.5 mile run to the boats where we caught up a little bit to bottom 2/3's of the pack. From there it was a short kayak to the hike section where we had to grab 4 check points on foot. We made up a bunch of time there because we didn't bother to plot the hike too carefully. We decided to gamble and followed other teams. From the 4 CPs it was about 150 cliff decent to about a 75 yard swim across a lagoon. The water was about 55 degrees, very refreshing.

Back into the boats for 5-7 mile paddle. There was a bouldering section, up a canyon to get 1 check point. We had to dismount the boat and boulder on up a creek canyon. By this time we got back to the middle of the pack. Another few miles in the kayak and a run back to the transition area and we were in the top 1/3 again. Hey, we were very fast on the kayak - something to be said about owning a fast boat and having to big guys motor it.

We're about 4 hours in to the race and we were feeling pretty good. We're ahead of 2/3s of the field. It's about noon.

The next section was a long bike leg. "Great!", we think "one of our strengths", but it was not to be. The next 7 check points was about 18 miles of hell. I won't write much about it other than, 1) there was NO shade for 95% of the bike section, 2) it was very hilly 3) it was about 110-114 degrees. This took a toll on our time, along with one pain in the ass check point that cost us about about 45 minutes. We see about 3 teams drop out from heat exhaustion, life guards were out on the trail providing aid (water and sunscreen) to some struggling teams. We did not turn down the help.

We get back to the transition area to find that we have 2 more things to do, basically a hand paddle in an inflatable boat to get a last coordinate on foot.
With a sigh of hesitation we figure we've gone this far, we might as well complete the race. Ends up we were in the top 2/3's (technically not last because of some scoring errors), but 1/3 of the teams DNF'd (did not finish).

Hindsight: Not too happy about the last place finish necessarily, but while we were out there it was all about survival. The conditions were less than optimal with the heat and I would say a bit dangerous side, but everyone made it through or dropped out as their ability dictated - no ambulances that I heard of.

Next race - Central Coast Adventure Challenge in San Luis Obispo. I recovered pretty quickly and am training again for this one. I teamed up with Nuke as a 3 person co-ed, but we're going as My Kind of Party. This race is supposed to be pretty awesome, with great scenery. Looking forward to it.

QUICK post.

2007-04-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

Been a while, quick update...

Getting ready for Big Blue Castaic Lake race, it'll be my third year here. I hope we do well. I've been training differently by combining my run and riding in the same workout. I'd run like 3-5 miles, then bike 8-12. I need to solve my cramping problem, but I think these "brick" workouts are helping.

Then we're off to race in San Luis Obispo in mid May for the Central Coast Challenge - Dawn til Dusk.

Easter was spent at Adventure City on Friday, then Legoland on Saturday. Sunday I cleaned up the garage, so I could move around. Oh by the way, I did pick up another Kayak - a Seda Viking which basically needs all the deck lashing re-done, parts on order, but I wanted a more stable kayak for open ocean paddles. I need to get back on the water.

Listening to Foo Fighters right now. I'll never be your monkey wrench....

Here's an updated photo of the infamous donut smile 2007 (inside arcade collector joke).

The Broken Man Ride

2007-03-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

So today I rode what was to be a special fundraiser in my back yard as described in the above link. Now after reading that, you would expect that the fund-raisee would have been in a wheelchair, laid up with no movement from the neck down. That was not the case. Although the injuries were serious, he is expected to make a full recovery and was at the event cheering everyone on with a stiff neck-brace. I was a bit surprised, but was glad to see that a fellow rider was not going to be a quadropalgic. I can't even imagine what the medical bills would be like without health insurance. Anyways, it was a great turn out and a good time. Got a little hot on some of the climbs, but it was interesting watching a lot of different people riding Santiago for the first time.

Things that make you go, "oh!"

2007-03-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

Always loved this song from the days of playing Pengo in the arcade. I'm sure we've all heard this in commercials, movie teasers, short video bits and so forth.

Popcorn and it's origin. Written on the Moog no less.

Now to find a couple more obscure tunes...

Truck Bling

2007-03-04T20:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I added truck bling the last couple of weeks. Not so much to make the truck look good, but for some needed functionality. I wish I could have gone with black powder coated parts, but stainless steel holds up better and doesn't rust. Plus SS is guaranteed for life pretty much. Added a brush guard in the front, tail light guards and much needed nerf/step bars. Also TRD license plate frames. Tomorrow, I take the truck to get my roof racks and gear basket put on. Thank goodness those and the license plate frames aren't shiny either. Still need the windows tinted. All this in the name of adventure and adventure racing.

New Toy Hauler

2007-01-25T21:42:00.000-08:00

Well it came to pass. The Ford F150 finally got to the point of where it was nickel and diming me. I didn't want to put any more money into it. He needed: Tires $800, brakes: $400, fix a couple of transmission and coolant leaks (spots on the driveway) probably another $500, corroded battery cable, $350 and the list goes on. All the repairs would have cost more than $2000 (more than what the truck's worth) and I'd still have an old 10 year old truck with parts waiting to fail. The very very sad part about it was that I only got $500 on trade-in, while I was expecting at least $1500. I really didn't want to hassle selling it private party, so I really should have donated it and got more benefit from a tax write-off. Anyways, I have a new 06' Tundra sitting in the driveway and couldn't be happier. Tundra's aren't cheap, but I got it for about 700 above invoice along with a 3000 cash back incentive. I think I did well, but could have done better with those slimebag dealer sales people. They should have paid me to take their 06' stock of the lot! Anyways, the only thing I dislike about this truck are the monthly payments all over again...

2nd tooth OUT!

2007-01-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be a while for another one to fall out, but 1.5 weeks later a tough apple and he's lost another one. We couldn't find it either. Strong possibility that he swallowed it while eating an apple. Good news is the adult tooth for the one he lost a couple weeks ago is starting to show.

first tooth - out - lost!

2007-01-14T21:58:00.000-08:00

This thing has been wiggling in his mouth for about 2 months. Every day we would watch it shift, shift and shift hoping that it would fall out while we were watching. Well it finally happened, but somewhere between Disneyland, Denny's and home, it fell out. We could not find it :-( When he told us about it, we were on the way home and immediately pulled over, but it was probably lost somewhere else and wasn't noticed until we were driving.

Tonight, a Polaroid picture of the gap in his mouth goes under his pillow. Tomorrow, a $5 bill and a lollipop will appear. It's still okay for 5 y.o.s to believe in the tooth fairy.

Second of Two posts

2007-01-07T01:12:00.000-08:00

Crap, I had written up my boat restoration, but lost it. I'm too tired right now to re-type what I did to the boat but here are the pictures anyways. In summary early 90's Seda Glider - Fiberglass:

New Seamline (black strip) that helps hold the boat together. 4 weeks of work.

New Deck Rigging (bungees used to hold gear on to the deck). 2 nights of work.

New Rudder System, hoses, cables, foot controls done twice because the cable was too short the first time. 2 weeks of work.

New hatch cover

New seat back

Polishing and 303 protectant applied.

I bought the boat on the cheap, but I put a lot of time and money into it. I don't think I would find a newer used boat cheaper unless I was really lucky. I guess it was more for the learning experience as I now know how my boat is built and runs should something go wrong.

First of Two posts tonight.

2007-01-06T23:57:00.000-08:00

It was a really December since Thanksgiving. I did a training race On Dec 2, where we finished right in the middle of the pack, about where we expected. I have a new teamate who's pretty enthusiastic but even keeled - more importantly, he's about my speed. I have half a dozen races planned out for 07' and it should be good.

Since that race, it was time to focus back on family and it's been all holiday, non-stop, up until this week. As planned, my wife had finished all of her shopping in Hawaii where we spent Thanksgiving at my parents place. Somehow we got hit with a lot of bills in December (as to be expected in any household around Christmas), so I tried to keep my personal spending in check. Its now January and I still don't quite feel caught up. With the extra days off for Christmas and New Year's, I've taken to cleaning up the garage, arranging tools, building shelves, organizing, hanging light fixtures, putting things in boxes so that when the Christmas lights and ornaments get put away, they'll have a place to go. So far, job well done, the garage is about 75% of how I would ideally like it to look. I just have to keep plugging away at it even though I have a lot of projects piled up. I hate buying tools and parts for projects only to have it sit there. Idle money sitting in a bag or box only to get utilized when I get around to it

Work has been extremely busy and stressful and I need to handle it a bit better, but I'm starting to ride and train again. This helps my blood pressure and stress levels.

Anyways, Kaleo had a really good Christmas with lots of presents. I've had to do some early spring cleaning and have several bags of toys for donation. The rule of the house at this stage is: "No new toys in until some old toys go out". There just isn't much room for a lot of clutter in this house! I'm just as guilty though, I have a lot of my own "toys" crammed the garage.

Taking pictures.

2007-01-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

I'm really horrible at taking good pictures... but every once in a while I get lucky and the results are magic. California Adventure in front of Soarin'.

switching to myspace?

2006-11-17T21:38:00.000-08:00

Just when I was ready to switch over my blog to myspace.com, seems that Google has taken over blogspot/blogger .com. Since Google is running this show, I'll see what they have to offer.

In the mean time, you can see a bit more stuff at myspace

Desert Rage - San Diego County

2006-10-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hats of to Rick Eastman, Sierra Adventure Sports crew and volunteers for putting together a fast, scenic race in Southern California (Escondido). Numbers of Racers about 75. Weather, it warmed up in Ca this last week with the Santa Ana Winds blowing in a few days before - About 85 deg and dry once the sun came out. Overall elevation gain - some gain. Overall race vibe: Great - always nice to see familiar faces, and everyone from crew, volunteers and other racers were very supportive. My teamate Nat and I (Team "I saved a bunch by switching to Geico") arrived at 6:30 a.m. when the gates opened at the lake along with about 50 fishermen and small boats. It was a bit chilly as the sun hadn't quite come up yet, but we basically had an hour to unload the boats, set the bikes and transition area as the race meeting was at 7:30. The transition area was static (and non-crew supported race) so we would come back here to retrieve bikes, kayaks etc later on. Race start was at 8a.m. and began with a 2 mile jog to the first three marked CPs (check points) where we would be given UTM coordinates and Maps for the rest of the race. After the last of the first three check points, it was time to plot the CPs 4 through 17. We found a bench, sat down and started going over the coordinates. Let me tell, you it's kinda tough to be plotting on the run and I wasn't as accurate as I should have been. As I was plotting, I felt rushed as other teams were getting on the kayaks and taking off. Add the fact that my heart rate was up from the run and it was hard to settle down and focus. Lesson: As Barrie Adsett mentioned to me, we should have had my teamate read off the Northing and Easting numbers while I plotted on the map. Anyways, about 10 minutes and the rest of the Paddle, Run, Paddle, Run, Paddle, Bike, Run points were reasonably plotted. A short run back to the TA to grab the Kayak for the next 4 CPs. Our transition to the kayak was relatively quick and we were off into our boats. CP4 was basically on the other side of the lake towards at a dam and we were able to catch a few teams on the Kayak. From the dam, CP 5 was a a kayak landing, then a short 200 yard hike up a hill and back to the boat again. Kayak to CP6 seemed like another corner of the lake. (Lake Hodges is sorta Triangular) and it took us through some neat areas of "swamp" as I'd like to call it, where trees were basically buried under 10-15 feet of water and branches would stick up through the water. We'd have to paddle navigate through the shrubery. Reminded me of an 80's movie called "Southern Comfort". We landed at a manned CP6 where there was a gear check (kayaks dropped) and then it was off on foot to get another three points. CP7 was a trek up through some hiking trails where Nat and I learned about Flora and Fauna because there were signs all over describing plant life throughout the area. CP8 took us through some more walking paths behinds some houses in a neighborhood. At one point, we had to hop a fence and avoid a very beautiful Australian sheep dog, then down a hill through some bushwack. CP9 took us near a strip mall wear we had to get an address number off a building of some senior center. CP10 was a short hike up a hill, approx 100-200 feet in elevation gain. CP11 was back at the kayak pickup again. All in all I'd say it was about a 4 or 5 mile trek. Back in the Kayak to CP 12. Now during the time of trek, we had hooked up with Barrie Adsett and it's always amazing to see the different teamates he hooks up with. Glad to see that he's sharing the word of AR to newer racers. On our way to CP12 Barry's Tandem broke a rudder and we had to drop them but we'd see him again later. CP 12 was another far off corner of the lake and then it was back to the transition area (CP13). I would have to say we probably paddled around 6+ miles, but the water was smooth with hardly any wind chop or boat wakes to contend with. Now back at the TA there was a scrabble word challenge in which teamates would pick a 5 letter word and then would have to alternate running back and forth to a bucket full of letters retrieving letters to spell the word. Pretty straight forward. Then it was off to the bikes. CP14 was a pretty easy find along a bike path while CP15 was a bit more trouble for us as it was kind of a long climb to get to this one. We had a little trouble around a water tank landmark thinking that the CP was there, but in reality, it was further up on the climb. We decided to drop our bikes (it would have been a bit of hike-a-bike anyways on the loose rocky section), so we headed out on foot, found the manned CP, grabbed our bikes again and headed back down towards 16. CP16 was another booger for us. It just so happens that some of the CP makers were 3 foot orange stakes with markings. Well.... CP16 was under a bridge construction area and whether you know it or not, there were about 100 other orange marked stakes as well used for construction surveying. LOL. Turns out, we blew by the stake marker that was a bit above eye level and we had to re-plot and backtrack to find it. Doh, shame on me for missing this one. CP17 was another bit of adventure that took us through the Escondido Mall area. Here we hooked up with several other confused teams, including Barrie's team again. This CP was extremely tough to get to because of the mall, one way street traffic and bridge construction going on. Once you got past all that and found the bike path, it was a short climb up the top of a hill and back to the TA again. Overall, I logged about 18 miles on the bike. The final game/challenge was a rope/wiffle ball game in which we had to balance a wiffle ball on a ring with 4 rope ends over from on top of one pole to the other. We failed at our first 5 attempts on Pole1, finally we switched to the other pole station and were able to do it on the first try - something about the knots on station one that was harder.?!?!?? The last final orienteering section consisted of five orienteering points (OPs) in which one team member was given 5 points and a radio, while the other (rover) member(s) was given a map with no points and a radio. The nav person would basically have to translate the points verbally over the radio to the rover and the rover would have to find all 5 on foot. We were nearing our last hour before the 5pm. cutoff. so we had one hour to do this. We had some radio problems (out of range) and couldn't communicate so I just went off on my own and tried to find as many OPs as possible by just running the trails and spotting on other teams. When I could communicate, I would get a bearing on landmarks on the hill and just followed the trails until I found the OPs. Anyways, we got four of the five and were satisfied with that. We came in at 8 hours 54 minutes (4:54p.m) 6 minutes under the cutoff. Alot of people stuck around for the awards and cleanup which was nice. The race was slated as 31 total miles. I'm guessing it was 18 on bike, 6 on kayak and another 8 on foot for our team. Ahhh update, I just got word that the actual mileage was: Bike 15 (we did about 18 ), Kayak 11, and 9 on foot. So we covered about 38 miles. All in all it was a great race and we had a lot of fun. I would do another one of Rick's races in a heartbeat I'm going to have to get out to more of the races in AZ as races in So Cal are sorta drying up this last year. Next stop, Barrie's mini-AR in Mission Bay San Diego - Dec-02-06. AR isn't dead, it just smells funny Louis

A tribute to some of...

2006-10-14T00:38:00.000-07:00

the best music ever created for pinballs and video games:

http://www.cgmusic.net/archives.html

I own or have owned about 2/3's of the games listed here.

Listen and enjoy!

My neck, my back, my neck and my back!

2006-10-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

Not much to write about the last couple of weeks. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a whole lot of work. I'm still training, three weeks left before the Desert Rage in San Diego. the 5-6 hour plane ride to and from Ohio on business really tweaked my lower back. When running last Wednesday, the pain was so excruciating that I couldn't climb. Luckily the 2nd half of the run was downhill and flat, so the pain subsided. I rested about 4 days and seem to be okay on the bike. I'm running again tomorrow and possibly Thurs. so we'll see how the back holds up.

Family notes:

Kaleo has started soccer and I'm an assistant coach. Coaching 4 and 5 year olds is a challenge, but I'm decent at it and I like it. They don't keep score at this age (but we scored more goals than the other team did ;). Kaleo's attention span didn't do all that well. Between team pictures, practice, organization of the 1st game and the game itself, it was a long morning. Next week should be better for him, 45 minutes of practice and he will be starting the first quarter. I hope he does well.

Arcade notes:

This Smash TV / Strike Force cabinet has been a bit more of a project than I thought. Let's see; Cabinet $25, Monitor $25, Game Boards $50, Controls $25, Front Glass $50, Back Door $10, spending about 10 hours in restoration work on a crappy JAMMA conversion - Priceless.
At least I'm making use out of a BUNCH of spare parts I had lying around - coin door, coin bucket, speakers, pair of joysticks, switching board, monitor, game CPUs. That oughta clear some junk off my shelves - well.. not ... really.

A little catch up.

2006-09-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

Two weeks post race. I'm still eating like there's no tomorrow. My metabolism is still amped up from the training leading up to and through the race two weeks ago. I'm eating like 5 times a day and not gaining any weight. My sleeping habits have changed as well. I need 7-8 hours or I'm not going to function normally. Maybe it's some work related stress contributing. I can't say it's a bad thing - being able to fall asleep fast, waking fully rested and having the ability to eat like a pig while not gaining any weight.

Oh, the race... It was so bad I did not want write up a race report on it. It was so bad I will never do another 24 hour adventure race. It was so bad I was cussing out the race organizers while hiking some steep sections. The race was basically this: Start off in Yucca Valley towards palm springs and climb up to big bear lake on bike and foot, once up there kayak another 10 miles on the lake. 11 thousand feet in elevation gain, 95 total miles. Lots of UP and Lots of DOWN, the more UP again.

It ended up like this: 30 teams. 15 finished. We were not one of them. The fastest team finished in 19 hours. The bottom of the 15 that finished were done in 30 hours. The rest of the 15 DNF'd. We went about 17 hours before we realized that a couple costly navigational errors kept us from going further. We finished at 11:30 p.m. (was a 6a.m. start) in the cold (40 deg) dark somewhere near Big Bear. We realized our bike light batteries were dying fast and we could not bush-whack descend down some steep cliffs in the dark. So we got on the emergency phone and had our support crew pick us up. Our race was over.

There was a lot of hike-a-bike sections where we had to carry/push our bikes up steep sections. We never made the kayaks. It felt like the 50 or so miles that we did complete was mostly hike-a-bike. I hate hike-a-bike. Bikes are for riding, not for carrying, not for pushing. The course was extremely demanding and our team was in a bit over our heads on this one. The navigational errors sealed our fate. It was too long of a race to be off course because 1) the extra expended energy of climbing the wrong route at altitude. 2) the wasted time being off course and trying to become "un-lost". We spent too much time second guessing the maps and our choice of routes while trying to figure out where the red "You Are Here" arrow was (sarcasm).

I'm sticking to 12 hour and under races from here on out. It's too hard as a family guy to prepare for a race that long and to be gone all weekend.

Next race, Oct 21st Desert Rage in San Diego County somewhere - 12 hours. This time I hope we make it to the kayak section. At least I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life and I can hang for 12 hours.

I thought I was good

2006-09-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik1NDo24mG0

I have a few new tricks to learn.

Next Great Adventure

2006-08-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

So here I am again, wondering what the heck I got myself into. Another adventure race, but this time, it's only 12 teams and it so happens that these are world class teams in this event battling it out for series points/championship in the Explore California series. How the heck did we get in this? Dunno, we registered and we were in. http://www.exploreca.com/

This is supposed to be a real demanding race and I know we will be in the bottom quarter. Our goal is just to finish and not get short-coursed. My guess is somewhere around 80 miles and the terrain is supposed to be long and tough. I've been riding routinely, but my running has a long ways to go with only two weeks left. I'll get some paddling in this week to loosen up the arms and some more running to stress my calves.

I got some ideas on how to make my body last 24 hours a bit better than the last 24 hour race a year ago. I'm going to use trekking poles and try to lighten up my pack a little bit. In addition, we're really going to try to shorten our transition times and always be on the move.

I owe my wife big time on this as it happens on her birthday, but she knows how much racing means to me. I'll make it up to her soon after.

Conciseness

2006-08-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

Why is it that when I post, I seem to ramble on and on for about two or three page lengths, while others seem to get their point across in just 2 or 3 paragraphs?

Okay let's try this: Things that have happened since my last posting

Work:
Got some personnel issues sorta worked out at my job.
Done with about six interviews for a developer in my group
My projects are still looming over me, will I get done with it by Sep 30?

Arcade:
Picked up another Top Tenner Pin: Simpsons Pinball Party from Temecula - nice - I'm happy
Fixed a Big Guns pinball relay issue where the flippers weren't activating and the score
board was going wacky
Put another bike hook up to clear two bikes parked in my arcade aisle. I have six bikes hanging
from my garage ceiling - yikes

Personal:
We went on a weekend RV trip to the beach and I got lots of surfing in
Kaleo got to build sand castles with me and jump waves
Got to take Kaleo to his swimming lessons and practiced some excercises at home
Went to Disneyland on what happened to be "Bats Day" where all the Goth-balls were out in force all weekend. I want to kill myself, yet be at the Happiest Place on Earth - irony at its best

Adventure racing:
Next one is Explore California which is supposed to be in the OC somewhere. Another tough race ahead of us. Teamates will be Scott, Andy and a new person Natalie. I'm guessing it will cover 80 miles of steep terrain in 24 hours.
I've been riding like crazy, now I have to get some running in.

There... concise enough? I think not.

Friday Quote of the Day

2006-08-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

There are 10 types of people in this world:
- those that understand binary,
- and those that don't...

Burnout.

2006-08-07T01:30:00.000-07:00

Man, this last week (let's say Monday to Sunday) had to have been the worse on-call week for my group on record - at least top three. Being primary on the first week of the month was a bitch. I got paged for about 4 days in a row including some 3a.m. calls and some mid-dinner interruptions. Add to that two days of business travel to San Fran, additional responsiblities of a promotion, training the new guy that started on Monday, about 30 miles of riding, mid-week basketball against a bunch of young guys, two broken sprinklers, a leaking radiator, teardowns on three mountain bikes, house cleaning, shopping/furniture purchase and a half day at Disneyland. All the ingredients for mental and physical burnout.

Okay, so the riding and bike fixing are my refuge. Three of my bikes needed love and attention and I needed to give it to them.

My trusty Mangoat had been out of commission for about 2 months now and needed the whole drive train rebuilt. New cogs on the front sprocket and a whole new cassette on the rear. He is almost now ready to be ridden, but I found that the right pedal cage was completely destroyed and have to order another. On a sad note, I lost my favorite computer from that bike, I set it on my truck while working on the bike and I think I drove off with it on the hood...

I've been riding the Mustang lately because the goat was b0rk3n, but I noticed that the shifting was pretty messed up. It needed a simple pulley fixed on the rear derailleur. I found this out the hard way, but I had been riding with a cracked pulley missing a couple teeth for about 4 months now. I remember thrashing the rear derailler when a branch got caught up in the drive train. Mustang is now ready to go.

Finally, the Ellsworth that I built for my nephew got its due attention. I had built this thing up from scratch only to watch it sit for 3 months because I couldn't get the derailleurs dialed in. I begrudgingly took it in to RockNRoad and spent $20 to get them to get the gears initially lined up. I did an 18 mile test ride up to Beak's and found that the shifting was still off. Turns out, the rear suspension caused some funny tension in the rear shifter line so I had to do some more fine tuning to account for the suspension sag. I think it's dialed in now and ready to be raced.

As you can tell, I prefer to write about my frustrations with riding and fixing bikes, or working on arcade and pinball machines, rather than frustrations of work. There isn't much point to this entry other than, I was feeling a little bit burnt out this week, but was able to finish up feeling pretty good.

Let's hope for calm week next week. At least I won't be primary on-call.

Scout AR report

2006-07-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

Here's my Scout AR report.

Team Quadruped (Nino, Andy and myself) were all set to run a 3 man team for this race. We had been training consistently two months up to the race, but ran into a bit of bad luck and the race hadn't even started. A week before the race Nino tore/strained a calf muscle and Andy caught the flu and couldn't recover in time. Andy and I had to scramble a bit to find people the Thursday before the race. We picked up Scott who had raced with Andy at e-camp. I picked up my 16 year old nephew whom I have paddled and ridden with before, and Cisco who I mountain bike with regularly. Both first timers and we're all set. Thanks to the Scout AR staff who allowed us to make roster and format changes at the last minute check-in.

The Friday night before was the usual scramble of getting gear and transition boxes together, made more difficult by having two last minute first timers on our team, but a trip to Sport Chalet and REI ensured that we met all of our mandatory gear check. 8-9p.m Friday night race meeting for a Saturday 4a.m. start. Yikes, we won't get much sleep. Scott coming from the high desert area, chose to camp at the Flying B ranch. My nephew and I stayed at my house about 6 miles up the road (yes, racing in my back yard) and Cisco stayed at home in Irvine. I think we all averaged about 2 hours of sleep that night. The first set of maps were given that night, but only the 1st Leg was plotted. Basically There were three legs (1 Trek, 2 MTB/ropes, 3 MTB Kayak). We would be given legs 2 and 3 plots after leg 1.

3 a.m. alarm clock and it was a scramble to get the rest of the transition gear and bottles filled as it was anticipated to be HOT HOT HOT. Like 100 degrees in the back canyon. We arrive, unpack the bikes and gear box only to find out that they moved the transition area to people's camp spots. We find our our teamates in the dark, get our gear set and off to the starting line just before the start. Why is it that I always get to the starting line with just a few minutes to spare???
4a.m. Start. We were to get CP1 2 3 4 (any order) on foot where it was steep steep terrain. As anticipated, the race organizers showed some mercy on us and had us trek in the cool morning in the dark. We made our ONLY mistake on our first cp and had hung a right when we shoulda went left at a fork, probably cost us a half an hour and a bit of energy. By the time we got back on track we were in the bottom 1/4. CP2 was a LONG way off at some peak with about 1300 elevation gain in about 3 miles. We were all feeling pretty good at this point and everything had been on trail. The third trek check point was at the bottom of a valley and this is where *our* bush-wacking began. There was no direct way to get to the bottom of the canyon except bush wacking so we started ignoring indirect trail switch backs and cutting through brush and shrubbery. We get to the bottom and aquire the 3rd CP. The fourth trek CP there were two choices. Go around the FAR way (long slow ascent), or bushwack and climb the short, steep direct way. We chose the latter and I think only one or two other teams chose this option. The climb was difficult and steep, but worth the time gain. We seriously shaved an hour off our time because of this. The next cp was back at the transition area, so it was back down the steep slope, some more bush wacking back to the TA. At the announcement table we heard that we that we had gone from 53 place up to 25th!!!! The bushwack was worth it, but I paid for it with a couple of scratched up legs and a bit of cramping from the steep terrrain.

Back at the TA, we had to plot the rest of the course for legs two and three. Along with the ropes course. The ropes were at the end of the bike, so I'll get to that later. The next CP's 5,6,7,8 were on bike and crossed over some of the trekking sections so the terrain was somewhat familiar. Also, Cisco and I had ridden a lot of the MTB course last summer in a MTB race we did last year at flying B, so it proved to be an advantage as we knew where alot of the fire road went. CP9 was bike drop off to get a couple of cps on foot down this ravine. It was steep and reminded my nephew of some Indiana Jones adventure. CP9A was in the middle of that decent and CP9B was the same as CP5 at the base of the ravine. Then it was back up the steep ascent to pick up our bikes again. At this point, it was HOT and people were lined up at the ice bucket to refill. We got back to a flat tire so while two of us changed the tire, the other two were gathering ice and water. It was back on bikes to the TA to do the ropes course. At this point I logged about 10 miles total on the bike.

On the ropes, Scott and I got to do a tyrolian traverse down a zip line strapped to our climbing harness. That was a blast. We had to run back up the hill where we had to guide Nathan and Cisco blind-folded to the rock climbing course. basically we had to guide them verbally up a 40 foot rock face while they were blind folded.
Neither of them made it to the top and we suffered a slight time penalty for not completing the rocks.

Back on the bikes for about 4 mile road ride to Irvine Lake. There were three checkpoints here for a total of about a 3 or 4 mile paddle. Nothing eventuful here other than to say that Sevylor inflatables suck. Nathan and I were able to track pretty straight in our boat, but cisco and scott had a bit of a hard time. Did, I mention that Sevylor inflatable kayaks suck? Back on the bikes back to the TA for the finish. We finished in about 10 hours 45 minutes and somewhere in the top third or top half at least. ScoutAR hasn't posted results yet.

Conclusion:

A demanding 12 hour race. I think temps logged in at 103 deg. I logged about 20 miles on the bike, although short there was certainly a lot of elevation gain. Probably about 10-12 miles on foot. The race coverded about 35 miles total, but they were steep miles. All in all it was a great experience and I was happy to test my limits again. It was also great to see people from other teams I've raced with before. I'm looking forward to next year's race.

I am a Laker fan.

2006-07-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

First off, Adventure Racing notes.... Our team was all set to go for tomorrows race. Than all of a sudden, *BAM* Nino tore up a calf muscle. Damn, I have to call Andy and find another team-mate. I recruited my 16 year old nephew, with whom I've paddled and ridden with before, so we're all set. Andy finds another guy named Scott so we're like a four person team - Great! *BAM* Andy catches the flu yesterday, and we're back down to three. I called Cisco last minute and it looks like he's good to go. We were short on some gear, but I think a quick trip to Sport Chalet or REI and we're all set. I hope they allow us to make all these last minute registration changes today. We'll be up at 3a.m. tonight for the race that start EARLY saturday morning. It's going to be HOT HOT HOT.

Lakers fan? Yes! So I sold my Quantum to an NBA exec of the Lakers who came and picked up the machine last night. He's a great vintage video game enthusiast which caught me off guard when I first got the "Will you sell your Q?" inquiry. He's so lucky in that he gets to go to CAX this weekend while I'll be stuck in the race overheating. Anyways, I got some great Laker's souveneirs from him and a nice photo, ummm what is that an 02' Championship ring?

Yes I got to try it on for size

The next great adventure

2006-06-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

Racing notes:
Okay so I've signed up and recruited two other guys for this race on July 8th. www.scoutar.com
Some preliminary reconaissance from last years race points to this venue being literally in my back yard. Irvine lake and Black Star / Silverado canyon. I hope this will be to our advantage knowing the terrain and altitude gains our mountains have to offer. Anyways, we've started training for this already and the running is just killing my legs. It's going to be friggin hot too. Nino my riding buddy is all amped to do this and he's going to be in really great shape for this race. Andy, who I met at the last race, will also be fast by nature of still being in his 20's.

Arcade notes:
On to the important things... I'm still shopping out this Twilight Zone pinball for a couple weeks now spending lots of money buying parts, upgrades and gadgets that will make this look great and play forever. I'm almost done and I'm looking forward to putting some new high scores on it. On the other hand Alien Poker is starting to bug out on me, but the fixes look easy. I think there are some cracked solder joints causing the displays to behave oddly. There is also an intermittent grounding issue which prevents me from starting a game. I think again another cracked solder joint or loose wire.

I had Ken, my technician over to finish the Jokerz pin and drop off a spare XY vector monitor he'd had for about a year now. Happy to say, ALL my machines are up and running, so that makes about 100% It's taken me 8 years to get to this point and I'm a happy guy. Time to stop fixing and to start playing.

Family notes:
Kaleo is growing up fast, the vocabulary is expanding and the expressions are getting pretty damn hilarious. The last two were: "You're driving me crazy dad!" which was either picked up from school or mom. The other was "Stop fooling around!" which I know came from me. He's been a bad boy lately and unbuckling his seatbelt on the school bus. We've tried to reason with him that if he gets up on the bus, he won't get to go swimming after school. So far the last three days, this has NOT worked, but then he has not been able to go swimming either. I hope he'll add two and two and realize this before he mis-behaves on the bus again. For four, he's a smart kid, but very impulsive.

Kaleo SLOW DOWN!!

2006-05-27T21:22:00.001-07:00

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

2006-05-26T22:33:00.000-07:00

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!"

2006-05-21T00:11:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-12T01:01:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

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:

2006-05-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

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

Butterflies

2006-04-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

Well here I am on the eve of another 12 hour race. Tomorrow is a 5 a.m wake up call to check in the boats and get the transition area ready. I hadn't planned on racing this weekend, but got the call for a team last week. I was able to ride a little, run even less and paddling = hah = none. So needless to say, I hope I'm ready. I guess I'm about as ready as I'm going to be. My heart's racing and I doubt I will get much sleep tonight, but it should be fun. I shouldn't feel nervous, but I am. All the gear 's packed and I guess I need to head out the door. I know I'll be wondering in the middle of the race why I'm out there and why I miss my family so much, but I need to challenge myself every so often to make sure I don't get burnt out on being so domestic around the house.

On Dreams and Dreaming

2006-04-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of dreams the last few nights that were quite emotionally stirring. After having woken up from them, It took about 10-20 minutes of lying awake to realize that they were just dreams and and that they were not for real. These dreams had evoked emotions from relationships past that I think are not resolved (nor will they ever be). After falling back to sleep, the strangest thing happened, the dream continued on from where it left off. Usually when I fall back to sleep, the subject changes or I don't dream any longer. The only thing I can attribute this instense dreaming to is the amount of sleep I got over vacation. Eight to Ten hours a night for about four nights in a row. I think I need to go back to my insomnial ways.

Some thoughts on my dreaming the last few years.

I used to have a lot of control over my actions when I dreamt. I used to be able to wake up from within a dream at will, make choices, take action or not. I am no longer a lucid dreamer.

I used to think that dreaming meant that I was getting good rest, that I was in a deep sleep. The more dreaming I do lately, the more emotionally drained I feel when I wake up.

I used to think that dreams really had no meaning, that they were stray brain activity or snippets of memory that would crossover into sleep consciousness at random. Because they have been so emotional the last few times, I am now not so sure.

I still remember my scariest dream from high-school where the evil yellow with black spots cat-woman was chasing me down trying to kill me (or whatever). Although I could care less about cat-woman or marvel comics or any fictional creature, this one was scary. I was physically frozen for about half an hour after I woke up because I was so scared.

For now, I would rather not dream. I'd rather just go to sleep, void, then wake up rested.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on dreaming.

Catching up

2006-04-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

I've been busy with work, but my project is pretty much done - two weeks early. I did this despite cleaning up other people's messes, jury duty, production problems, and my habitual insomnia which leaves me cranky all the time. Vacation in two weeks and counting down...

I did get the side flower banks all re-rocked, dug up, tilled, fertilized and replanted with the help of my nephew. I think the Azaleas, gardenias and camelias will do nicely in the deep shade there. Time will tell. The previous owner of the house decided he wanted a jungle for a yard, and planted all sorts of who-knows-what exotic plants that were a complete mess. In the three years of working at a nursery, I've never encountered these types of alien plantform. Anyway, the gardener dug it all up, and I replanted everything. I'm about 75 pct done with the malibu lights so it should look pretty cool when finished. Maybe a new patio set and BBQ grill will top it all of nicely by the summer.

Riding?? HAHAHA, hardly any. The rain has pretty much screwed any plans we've had to ride the last 2-3 weeks. Next week? More rain, we'll be doing a 20 mile trip up Harding tomorrow, but first a friend's kid's b-day party. Kaleo will enjoy the bounce-house.

Arcade? Nada, just more crap piling up in the garage. I have to clean it up and rid myself of one cabinet before I can proceed again.

As of late, I'm never caught up and I'm always behind on something around the house. Guess I'm glad to be able to take some time to organize my thoughts, put them down on e-paper and updated this blog with an entry.

I started reading again, it helps me fall asleep at night. So instead of getting five hours of sleep, I get six. Hey, its a start.

What's next?

2006-03-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

I missed half the basketball season training for the Counting Coup. 5 games left I guess I'll hang with that. I guess the Castaic race is next on the map in late April. In the mean time I have much needed vacation time schedule in April with the family, I guess the desert will be a good choice.

Life is good.

Counting Coup is done...

2006-03-06T16:37:00.000-08:00

Whew, what can I say?! I got through it.

It had rained all day on Friday and the trails got soaked. The race director sent an e-mail update saying that the race was on because it hadn't rained that much. Either way, I was eager to get the race over with... I went into Saturday raceday feeling really good about myself, nutritioning, about how much rest I was getting and about my overall conditioning. All that was about to change.

Start:
I got up at about 3:50 a.m. when Nick called my cell. Why did my alarm not go off??? ends up I had set it at 4:50 a.m. like a dumbo - 10 minutes before the race!!! I picked up Nick and Nino and we drove to the start line, parked, unpacked, checked in. It was a dark and cold 40 degree a.m. start. It was a very crowded start and I had lost all my riding partners within 1 mile. Now when I say lost, I mean they lost me. I was leading a small pack in the dark and had run into a mud puddle. I asked everyone to go by me while I had to step out. Well, I never caught that pack again.

Blackstar 1/5: The mud on blackstar from what I heard was not as bad as last year, but it was merciless. It took everything I had just to make up to beak's place (about 1/5 the way through) and I was already spent. It was at this point that I started to get real discouraged. It took everything I had to make it through 1/5 the race, how the heck was I going to finish?
All my riding partners were way ahead of me, I must not have prepared right for this.

Main divide 2/5
The next section was the Main Divide road along the top of the Mtns (one of the hardest sections) and it was there that all the self doubt, self questioning, and desire to quit really kicked in.

Here are some comments and questions you make to yourself when you're grinding away. There's really no one to talk when you're feeling miserable and defeated to so, why not talk to yourself ?!

What the am I doing here?
This mud sucks...
Why am I pedalling so hard but not going anywhere?
Never again!
Why I am out in this freezing dark cold, when I could be in a nice warm plush bed with my wife.
I'm out $75 and I'm not going to finish this race.
I can't believe I've ridden two hours and still have at least six to go.
I'm super tired now, I'm going to be super, super, super tired in six hours.
Never Again!
Dammit, why am I feeling cramps so early in this race?
I should have taken 3 advil.
I'm only a quarter way through, how am I going to get the strength to finish the last three?
I wish I would have a mechanical (failure), so I'd have a good excuse to quit
How am I going to face my riding buddies when they've finished this thing and I haven't?
What did I get myself into? What other lame excuse can I come up with so I can quit?
Never Again!.

The Main Divide is a road I thought I had mastered. Lots of steep climbing. I thought I could do it without walking any sections, but as it turns out, I had to walk most of the steep sections to prevent myself from cramping up. From past experience, once my muscles cramp and lock, my race is basically over. Whenever I started feeling muscle twinges, I had to get off the bike and walk... this went on for about an hour (and pretty much the rest of the race). Then sun had risen at this point, and the loneliness of the dark had gone away... I can at least now see where I was going.

Motorway downhill 2.5/5
Aha! at last Motorway downhill to the check point. It was all smooth sailing down here, not many people to pass, not many people passing me. I got down to the check point where I saw Linh and Maureen, it was such an encouraging site. Lots of racers down there refuelling, eating, chatting, and most of all working up the nerve to finish. It was at this point my attitude changed and I was determined to finish this thing and try to hang with Linh and Maureen. I had made the cutoff by about an hour so there were no more time constraints, only the desire to finish.

Maple Springs to Four Corners 2.5,3/5 yes beyond halfway.
This was a tough climb, although not as steep, it was a gradual 8 mile constant grind. I hung with linh and Maureen about 1/3 the way up, then I just told them to take off. I was determined to finish and secretly hoped to catch them on the down hill, but that never materialized. I didn't have to walk much of this, but I did have to pull off a few times to just rest and eat (and make a pit stop). It was pretty uneventful. What surprised me was that I thought I would see a lot more people passing at this point, but there were no more than ten. I guess all the fast folks just blew by at the beginning.

Four Corners to Santiago Peak 4/5.
This is where the altitude and cold kick in, but at this point I knew my race was almost done, as in I'm almost finished. There was a bit more encouragement from other riders, all knowing that we were close to finishing the Counting Coup. I reached the peak where I saw a few folks resting, asked them if the last sharp turn down holy jim was the right one and was on my way.

Upper/Lower Holy Jim 5/5.
This was the best part of my ride. At last! No more climbing all down hill. But... I had never ridden upper HJ before and there were sections that needed to be hiked down. There was some seriously beautiful terrain here and I wished that this section lasted longer even though it was sketch and dangerous. I didn't want to take chances being as tired as I was so I just climbed down some sections. Lower HJ was great too, there was no one to pass and no one to pass me. Last 4 miles down hardpack road and the race was done:

Finish:
cross the finish line at approx 8hours 45minutes I think, I was too tired to notice. A lot of my group had finished while 2 others were still on the course. If you hung with me this far, the rest is boring, had McDonalds for dinner where I just grinded 2 burgers, fries and went to sleep.

Retrospect:
I doubt I will do this race again. Maybe I will, but definitely not if it rains again. This race has taken a lot of out family time and I'm not sure I can make the same sacrifices again. Besides, I can ride the course anytime for free, at my own leisure. I dunno, its my competitive nature that got me into this mess to begin with, and having just turned 36 (I'm as good physically as I'm ever going to get), I need to just let these things go.

I will post some pictures when I get them. Thanks to everyone for all the encouragement and to my family who were able to put up with me these last three months.

L.

Lots going on...

2006-02-23T16:32:00.000-08:00

Training notes:

This weekend we were supposed to do the whole Counting Coup course, but of course the rain and MUD over the weekend changed all that. Black star was literally unrideable with the tires we had on. Nino and I had to turn around after about 8 miles, while Nick made it all the way through. Undeterred, I went and grabbed my kid for a tow ride on pavement and I got some extra mileage in. I'm sick again, with a slight cold, but I'm still able to train. Tuesday night all three of us made it up to Old Camp with personal best times of about 2 hours and 10 minutes. Mind you, this ride is normally a half day outting when you're screwing around and taking lots of breaks. I started cramping in my calves, but was able to push hard regardless. I'm paying for it today as I'm a little tight and a bit nervous about our Blackstar ride tonight. The 40 degree cold doesn't help either.

I can't say enough about how tough Kaleo is. I think Courage best describes what happened on Sunday right after the mud ride. I decided to let Kaleo go on his own unhitched for the mostly slightly downhill ride. I figured he'd mastered his brakes enough to slow down going down the embankments. (which are basically underpasses that go below a few cross streets). Along this bike path is a steadily flowing stream in a wash with no gaurd rail. About a foot deep and 10 feet wide with a lot of water flowing from the recent rain). While going down one of the these embankment sections Kaleo basically froze up and forgot how to use his brakes. And watching what happened next is enough to make any parent gasp in fear for their kid's life. He basically went down the 20 yard embankment, went straight off the path and plunged his bike into the stream. He then flew over the bars head first and landed in a dive-like position in the stream flowing over cement. I felt helpless as I watched, but then I realized I had to fetch him out before he floated down. We fortunate that his hands took the brunt of the fall and that he did not land awkwardly on his head or face. I think his helmet saved some injury to his forehead (again). A few tears from the shock mostly.

He was soaked and cold after that. The temp was about 65-70 degrees so there was no way he was going to dry off quickly, so we had to stop at a nearby park to take his wet clothes off and let them dry in the sunlight. At this point I thought our ride was over. I would have to call the wife to come pick us and the bikes up. I think Kaleo realized this too. As soon as I sat down on a bench next to him he said "No go home". "What?". He replied "No go home!" "Are you sure?" I asked. "NO GO HOME!!!" nearly to the tone of begging and pleading to continue on.

Anyways his closed dried enough so that we could finish the ride and we did.

The crash was no joke, especially for a four year old. I think it was enough to make any child weary of ever getting on a bike again. As I've told my friends at work, this kid has no fear.

I'm hoping next time he'll remember what happened and won't end up like a deer in the headlights again when going fast.

Four Things:

2006-02-17T17:57:00.000-08:00

Four Things

Tammy tagged me. So I'm on the hook:

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. Plant Nursery Worker (Thanks Yoshi and family!)
2. Stock Room Clerk (yes, filling fax machines)
3. Programmer/Analyst
4. Video Rental Clerk

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. Shawshank Redemption
2. Matrix
3. LOTR trilogy
4. Master and Commander

Four places I’ve lived:

1. Aliso Viejo, CA
2. Diamond Bar, CA
3. Whittier, CA
4. San Bernardino, CA

Four TV shows I love:

1. Law and Order: SVU
2. SNL
3. Everybody Loves Raymond
4. ESPN Sports Center 11pm.

Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I’ve never watched a single minute of:

1. Lost
2. Navy Seals NCS
3. Survivor
4. CSI: Miami

Four places I’ve vacationed:

1. Sedona, AZ
2. Kauai
3. Bankok, Thailand
4. Moscow, Russia

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Sashime
2. Carne' Asada Burritos
3. Chicken Katsu
4. Spaghetti and Meatballs

Four sites I visit daily:

1. eBay
2. Google newsgroups
3. CNNFN.com
4. Yahoofinance

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Riding my Mountain Bike
2. Playing video games and pinball
3. With my family
4. Tinkering in my garage

Bex, you are tagged.

Training notes...

2006-01-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

Lots of things over the last weekend. The wife went to Vega$ over the weekend so it was just me and the kid. I took him out to whiting where we rode about 12 or so miles (my cyclo-computer is broke). We hit Chuck E. Cheeses afterwards and wrapped up our weekend.

Training notes:

Tomorrow night will be blackstar again with ODC group. I want to try and knock this out in two hours.

Arcade notes:

I traded the Judge Dredd pinball for a Robotron and an Amplifone monitor. I think I got the shorter end of the deal, but I've lost love for the JD and My Precious needs a place to go in the garage-cade. The Robotron was one of the key last pieces of my collection and I'm real close to finally being done. Its my only Williams game, but I'll put the Joust/Defender/Stargate multi-kit in it, fix the bottom leg levelers and the collection will be 99% complete. It's nice to be able to be totally done with this, it's been an 8 year Journey to have the dreamcade done. Been through about 100 machines before I figured out what I like and don't like and what I have space/time for and not. I can now be very picky and just trade a game in/out as I get bored of it. Pretty much everything works. Now for some better arcade decor/interior design....

My Precious... Has arrived.

2006-01-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

After a year and half of waiting for the right machine, at the right location, at the right time, at the right price, the planets aligned and I was able to get a Home Use Only Lord of the Rings pinball machine.

It was about 3/4 the price of a brand new one, so I basically had to wait a while until people got bored of their brand new out of the box machines. (This one belongs to my friend Justin from NaughtyDog) which he got at the end of 2004 straight from a distributor.

Anyway, my machine is a 1st run, Stern had 5 runs of these with about 4000 machines total produced. This is a longer run than The Simpsons Pinball Party which had about 3 or 4 runs since 2002. I had some doubts about owning a Stern and it's quality at first, but the ruleset is deep and the action is very intense. I think this one's a keeper, but I doubt I will own another Stern unless it is a Simpsons, or if Pirates of the Carribean is a smash hit when Stern releases it in the summer.

Plumbing sucks, I broke the kitchen faucet somehow and had to drop 150 on a new fixture, not to mention 4 hours on my back trying to get the damn thing installed without leaks.

I just got back from New Jersey from a conference with Lucent Technologies and it was fricken cold there. about 30-40 degrees. Something of note, the houses there have some very large property as compared to the postage stamp sized properties we have in Ca. I don't think I could deal with the cold for a whole season.

I need to get back on the bike.

More Training notes

2006-01-19T22:38:00.000-08:00

The day after our Santiago Peak ride, I decided to take my nephew and son riding around Fullerton loop. Fullerton's a pretty quick 11 mile loop and we knocked it out pretty quickly despite the fact that I was towing my son on with our trail gator (tag-a-long). He's getting heavy, I think his 45 (or so) lbs, plus the 10 lbs tow bar, and his 20 lbs SOLID LEAD Specialized Hot Rock got the best of me.

Speaking of competitive nature, some dude on a Santa Cruz passed us up all hot and heavy (and rude-like) towards the end of our ride. So for the hell of it, I decided to stick with him with my son in tow. He couldn't shake us and kept looking over his shoulder as if to tell me to F off. After about a mile into it, he still couldn't drop me and my son. The route split and I decided to wait for my nephew and NOT take the muddy route. I could tell Mr. Santa Cruz was irritated because he kept glaring back at me, so a job well done. Mind you, I wasn't tailgaiting, but was just far enough back so he knew we were there. We headed back to the cars and our Sunday was over.

Monday, work
Tuesday, more work
Wednesday, geez another day of work.

Wednesday night Nino and decided to do Black Star Canyon to the Soccer Ball (dopler radar above beak's place). We hauled ass despite the fact Nino didn't feel so hot, but I was pushing the pace. It was pretty dark and desolate out there, not a single soul, no lights, cloud covered the moon, but the trail was pleasant. Nino came across some fresh Mountain Lion road kill, I seemed to have missed it because I was talking too much. Anyways, we knocked 15 minutes off our previous time point to point so it was a good improvement.

This Saturday, we will be doing the full black star / motorway loop. And then up Maple Springs to the main divide. this is the hardest 2/3's of the vision quest so it will be a good test. 6 weeks left to train....

Santiago Peak - we killed it!

2006-01-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

Weather forecast this morning was supposed to be 50% chance of rain. So there was a decent chance ride wasn't going to happen. In fact, the ODC (outdoorsclub riding group) cancelled their ride in the morning. Nino and I didn't fret too much about it, the only thing that was going to stop us this morning was 1) snow or 2) 5 inches of rain. 6:30 a.m. Alarm goes off, not a cloud in sight. These weather people are just so good at their job . We were on the trail by about 7:20, it was long haul, but very clear and beautiful. 13 miles up and then 13 miles down without much undulation. We got to the peak in under three hours. In fact, on the way back down, there was only a single 1/4 mile section where there was any climbing left. Elevation gain was about approx 4500 ft. The peak was about 5700 ft, a whole mile up. I must say that as we got to the top, the air got pretty darn thin. Clouds started coming in quickly as we peaked and the rain came down as we descended. Overall, it was a very cold cold cold ride. Santiago Peak View from Modjeska Peak.

This is the first time I've felt good about my conditioning in three months.

Back in the saddle...

2006-01-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

So I'm finally well enough and not embarassed enough (from the lack of training) to start posting again. Actually it was quite busy during the holidays so I wasn't able to organize my thoughts very well. I've still got some post nasal drip which is leading to some coughing but I'm about 90-95% where I should be. I've been on the bike again logging hard climbing miles of about 30-50 miles a week and my lung are getting to where they should be. I'm still not able to attack certain sections of climbs, but I'm getting through it. I'm also dropping weight again, but its tough to keep it off. I'll see if I can get below 195 in the next 8 weeks. Heh, I haven't seen 195 in about 12 years.

Tomorrow we'll be going up maple springs to Santiago peak up by the Radio Station and back down again. It'll be a long slow grind up there, but I'm looking forward to it.

yes, I'm still sick

2005-12-14T14:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, going on 6 weeks now.
Yes, I went to the doctor.
Yes, it was sinusitis.
Yes, I took anti-biotics.
Yes, I layed off the excercise (twice for two weeks)
Yes, I feel only a little bit better.
Yes, I'm sick of being sick.
Yes, I know my coughing annoys you.

Nov 1st was when I came down with this and it's slowly going away. Hopfully I'll get to ride by tomorrow night, but the cold and damp air makes breathing a bitch. I'm about 85% and the anti-biotics really messed up my system. Perhaps, 6 hours avg a night of sleep isn't cutting it, but there's too much to do when I get home at night.

Seems like everyone is catching this from their kids.

ZVG is mostly done!!!

2005-11-27T22:24:00.000-08:00

Well a year plus, since I bought the ZVG, and have slowly acquired all the parts,getting the monitor working, I finally got this thing up and running. A quick pic is here

Quick Question on the VM_MENU: Anyone know how to get out of the mfg's menu once you've selected one? Example, Once I select Atari, I don't know how to get back out to select sega games...

My configuration:400 mhz Pentium 3, Soundblaster 16, 320 x 200 seems to work w/o flicker
Win 98 (startup in DOS mode) using the provided DOS/VMAME programs
Wells 6100 Gravitar Cabinet using a Gravitar control Panel - J-Pac interface

I will add a tempest spinner using the optic-pac later

Menu System is Ian Boffins Vector MAME.

Some things left to do:
I plan on using the Atari speakers so I'll be running an automobile audio amp from the sound card.
I plan on using a tempest spinner on the gravitar control panel. It seems to have enough space to the right side to add one.

To power both of the above, I'll be adding a switcher to provide the +12 for the audio amp and +5 for the trackball. Later, I'll figure out the lighted LED start buttons.

I don't plan on adding joysticks, trackball, or flight yoke (I already have
those dedicated atari games), my whole sole purpose in the ZVG was to add sega and cinematronics games whose cabs (and monitors) I don't care to own.

Anyone else run a VGA monitor concurrently (like on the side or on top of the cabinet, in case you somehow get stuck or exit out the the menu? I find it'seasy to inadvertently exit to the prompt when you hit p1/p2 to get out ofgames.

The goal would be to get this running "self contained" It would be nice not to have to rely on a keyboard and VGA monitor.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-24T13:01:00.000-08:00

Things I'm thankful for:

My Family
Great Job
Good Friends
Fun Hobbies

Speaking of hobbies, I got to split from work early yesterday and did some more work on T2 up until this morning. I put some new profanity ROMs on it, and noticed that the general illumination lights were all wacky or not working even in test mode. Typical burnt GI connector issues (had to replace the header connectors and pins), a bad fuse that tested good, and the schematics were printed with errors on it. sheesh. GI work shouldn't take 3-4 hours to figure out and fix, but all is good now and T2 works 100% and cusses - "F U A-hole" - haaha.

We're heading over to the aunt's house for some major gorging, I hope they have sushi there, because that's how I like it when my Japanese family does holidays.

still sick. and on being old(er)

2005-11-23T13:46:00.000-08:00

Boy this sucks, still having a nagging dry cough, but the weakness and general feeling of being tired all the time is gone.

I had a free night last night and decided to opt out of a single speed ride at Fullerton loop. I decided not to push it with this cough and all so I decided to head over to Etnies skatepark and get an hour or so in.

Boy did I feel old and out of place. The kids nowadays are just sick with all their moves. I think I was the only guy with shorts on. Back in the day, skating in jeans was unheard of. Every kid out there had long pant or jeans on with their pads underneath. I find pants very inhibitive - especially for all the awesome moves/trick that I didn't do - haw.... Anyways after about 20 minutes of carving a few lines, I found myself on the sideline just watching... not wanting to attempt anything because I didn't want to fall and look like a tool. Like an old tool at that.

I need to find times when the park is empty I can look like a tool by myself.

Anyways the rest of the night was spent working on a Terminator 2 pinball. My ROM burner is up and running again, so I had programmed the "Profanity" ROMs now the machine says "F U A$$hole" during the random database awards. Also fixed a trough switch that was causing an drained ball to not register.

Kaleo Turned 4 and his birthday party is coming up. The wife and I find it easier to have a party somewhere else rather than at our messy house.

Whooping Cough.

2005-11-11T15:59:00.000-08:00

I got what I thought was a cold/flu, but it turns out I most likely had the case of the "whooping cough" medically know as pertussis. I won't begin to tell you how much this sucks, because it just lingers on and on and I've had the dry hacking cough for almost three weeks now. It occured two weeks before the 6 hours of OC race last weekend and my whole family was affected.

I mostly got over the phleghm, congestion well enough to race, but it took it's toll on me. I ended up finishing only three hard, miserable laps, not to mention having bad mechanical failures and 3 crashes on my first lap that nearly did me in. Did I mention thigh cramps???, My goodness, my legs locked up on the third lap and I was basically paralyzed in the middle of the trail unable to move out of the way. Needless to say, I was not ready for this race, but I'm glad I finished it and am ready to do more "relaxing" riding over the winter.

I recall the last time I had really bad cough in 1995, so bad and persistent that I could not sleep or function at all. So bad and persistent that it caused head-aches. It lasted three days and by then I seriously wanted to die. It's weird in that I don't recall ever being sick like this in my teens. Now, it's like clockwork. Fall and Winter? Yes, expect to catch at least 3 colds and 1 bout with the flu.

So here I am...

2005-10-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

relaxing down in San Diego. 10:30 p.m. and I have remote internet access with my EVDO card which provides broadband speed through wireless on my laptop. Technology is great. I must admit though, I'm a bit of an internet junkie, not being able to stay away from the keyboard while on vacation... The RV has been a good excuse to get out the house, so I'm glad we bought it a couple years ago, but gas is horrible and we've inclined to go on shorter outings nearby. Imagine what it costs to fill a 45 gallon tank on a vehicle that gets less than 10 mpg. Can you say Hybrid R.V.??? Oh well it beats a $250 a night room in some posh hotel with "who knows what" has been in/on the sheets.

Anyways, work is winding down, we have a retail freeze going in on the 15th so it will be no more rushed releases until after January. I will get to take my time on projects and perhaps get some training and vacation around the house in this fall/winter. It gives me a bit more time to do the major things needed around the house, and perhaps to finish my gameroom.

On Collecting - Avoiding hobby burn out

2005-10-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

I've been collecting about 8 years now and ever since I started, I was always behind. Behind in terms of:

Never having all the games I've ever wanted
Never finishing projects I've started
Never having enough room in the garage to work
Hoarding too many parts and cabinets that I would never get around to using
Buying games I didn't need, because they were "good deals" and too hard to pass up.

I think these factors and more could lead to a sense of being overwhelmed and hobby burn-out. I've seen quite a few collectors for the reasons above just up and sell everything and get completely out.

Well, I finally sold off my last excess machine last weekend and my aisles are clear for me to work and play my machines. It is a huge relief, and I'm actually invigorated to finish a couple of projects that now I'll have a chance to finish.

I'm in no means an expert on the subject of burn-out, but here are a few things that helped (eBay can be an addiction). I actually reached the "Magic Number" of games twice before, but it didn't last because there was always another good deal that came up

A hobby is what it is - a hobby, not an investment.

If you don't need it or not going to use it, don't buy it even it's a good deal. Remember, you're in it not for investment.

If it's on your shelf and you're not going to use it, sell it. Nothing worse than having an expensive part on a shelf waiting to depreciate in value or be broken.

Throw out Junk!!! coin doors, drilled out CP's, New Game marquees. Stuff that has nickel and dime value really isn't worth your time pawning off on ebay. Well maybe some of it is, but do it or get rid of it. Spring Cleaning applies here. Believe me when I say it's nice to get the junk out.

Figure out what it's going to take to get you to that "Magic Number" of games Write down a list of what you want and have and figure out if it's going to fit in your room. You may then come to the hard realization that you can't have everything. You will have to sacrifice keeping some wanted games around for the sake of time and space.

Resist the urge to buy everything someone else wants. Yes I'll admit it, I got caught up in the hype of some games, paid a lot of money for them, only to realize it wasn't that fun and selling at a loss.

There was a time where I had nearly 50 cabinets, 1/2 of which were non working, a couple hundred PCBs. The reality is that I would just never get around to fixing all of them or have them fit in my garage. It took me three years to sell off excess and get down to about 28 machines, and only PCB's that I keep around for back-up and spares.

As I said, it is a HUGE relief knowing that there is a pot of gold at the end of all this. I'm that much closer to my 80's game room being done.

slacker

2005-10-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't touched my bike in over a week. I don't know why either, I just don't have any desire to ride right now, but someone posted a ride for Thursday and I'm pushing myself to go.
Basketball starts tonight - for me anyways, I'll be coming in mid season and most likely off the bench. I need some excercise. I never thought I'd play again, but what the hey.

Stupid Lube place conned me out of $400 for some much needed work on my neglected truck, Property

Tax and Homeowners insurance due to the tune of $5k.

We have termites, exterminators to the cost of $800.

Home Depot for some much needed maintenance around the house $200.

Joy of being an adult with responsibilities, priceless.

I did it.

2005-09-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

I arrived at Hurkey Creek on Friday night knowing exactly what I had to do to not be stressed out for Saturday. I had way too much gear, but I wanted to be comfortable this year while off the racecourse. Last year, I found myself too cold, too wet and too tired. The list of these four things made all the difference in the world in the amount of rest I got between laps. 1) Earplugs - no more damn voice and generator noise from the surrounding camps. 2) Air Mattress - essential for getting a good nights rest. 3). Extra riding gear, no more putting on wet clothes and helmet at 2a.m. at 40 degrees. 4) Electric blanket got the chill out of my bones after the night laps in my tent. I also brought my disc-man and listened to some Floyd (momentary lapse of reason) which really relaxed me. By the time Saturday came around I was ready to do my laps.

Pics of the team here: Cisco, Me, Maureen, Nino

Lap 1 at around 1p.m. was extremely tough as it got kinda warm, and I felt like I was hyperventilating almost the whole lap. I felt that I wasn't in rhythm and my breathing suffered miserably. It was a horrible feeling and perhaps I was pushing too hard, but I got through it with my fastest time ever on the course 1:08

Lap 2 started at 6:30p.m. as a day lap and finished in the dark. It was also a tough lap, but a little bit easier. I turned my HID lights on and felt like I was flying through the downhills, I thought my time would improve, but it did not. 1:10

Lap 3 was a total night lap in the cold dark 1 a.m. hour. I made a few mistakes that cost me some time. After the first climb, I was a bit delusional and totally missed the trail marker because they had opened a gate that wasn't there before. I had almost ended up on the 74 hwy back down to Hemet! I got on the brakes immediately and ended up ripping my pearl izumi's right across the knee. The other mistakes were a couple of near miss crashes and a couple of walked sections I actually should have ridden. This lap felt good, breathing was good, rhythm was good, I felt in the zone, but my time was a bit slower due to muscle fatigue and my mistakes. There were some points in this ride where I was coming up with excuses not to do my 4th lap - yes I felt like quitting. But the mileage markers they put out this year were a big encouragement. Mile 3 mark: okay, I'm done with the big hard climb 1/3 the way done. Mile 5" OKAY! I'm halfway done and finished with the seconnd big climb, Mile 7: YES, I'm more than 2/3's done!! no more climbing!! Mile 9, Okay 1 more mile to go. Time was 1:19

Lap 4 started at 8a.m, it was still about 55 degrees, but I elected to wear shorts, long sleaves and warm it up on the course. I was amped for this lap because I knew it was my last. This lap felt good and clocked in at 1:14.

Now these times were 100% better than last year's race where I was all over the board with inexperience, and worse conditioning. Last year was like 1:15, 1:25 1:34, 1:28. Plus, this year I was with a much faster team that included co-ed females so there was a lot more pressure to perform. Anways, I got my ass kicked by Maureen the team captain, she put in better times in 3 of the 4 laps. Louis eats a piece humble pie.

As a team we missed the podium by about an hour and a lap, so we were actually in the thick of things, and doing a lot better than a bunch of the all male teams. In the end we were all happy with our performances and looking forward to doing it again next year. harrrr.... Next year, I may just only volunteer and be the camp mechanic, racing's too tough on my schedule and my body.

6 hours of Orange County coming up in early November.... hmmmmmmm....more self inflicted torture!!!!

I am ready !

2005-09-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a busy three weeks. I've been slacking on this blog by posting links to other sites as a distraction to you (Were you distracted?! :)

As a follow-up my last real post: http://lousarcade.blogspot.com/2005/08/another-relaxing-weekend.html
It has been non-stop. I'll keep this post brief (well try to anyways);
I've been riding about 3 times a week, while at work we had a few major releases of code - so its been very hectic both on and off work. On top of that, my parents were in town for a week from Hawaii, during which my sister-in-law and her dog dropped in (for a wedding) for a couple nights stay as well. The house has been a zoo and the wonderful wife has been doing a great job of keeping it all together. Kaleo has also started special-ed pre-school for three year olds, so it's taken some burden off her with him being gone. The bus has been a great experience for him and he's excited to go off to school.

I've been so busy that I've had to micro-manage my time even at Disneyland. Sunday went like this: Kaleo and I were at Disneyland real fast yesterday (Sunday) From like 10:30 to about 12:30. We packed a lot into two hours...

As soon as we ran in from the parking lot, to the tram, through the gates:
We jumped on the horse carriage to the castle
Got a fast pass to Buzzlightyear
Hopped on Star Tours, (he's finally tall enough to ride it and had a blast)
Did Buzz light year (scored 66k)
Ate lunch at Tomorrowland
Did It's a Small World (without falling asleep)
Did the Teacups (without puking my guts out)
Jumped on the antique fire truck back to the entrance/exit
and we were gone, I think we set a DL record for the number of rides in two hours.

Another example of hecticness, the Saturday before that my parents left, I negotiated ride time with my wife to let me go up to Hurkey Creek in Idyllwild for some ride time with the team. I hadn't planned on going up there, but it worked out. Basically, once Clarice gave me the porch pass to go (at 4p.m.), I packed my camp gear, tent, bike, lights, warm clothing, fluid, food and was gone within an hour. A 2 hour drive up to the mountains, rode and camped some 25 miles and then I was back down the hill again by 11 a.m. on Sunday.

Anyways, I clocked a 1:10 lap time on my second lap which is way faster than any of my laps in previous races.

Tuesday was a road ride with Kaleo in tow, Thursday was a night group ride at Turnbull Canyon, Yesterday we did Maple Springs which is about 14 miles with a heckuva lot of climbing about 2000' elavation gain. Some of the riders turned back around at the look-out, but there was some great single track they missed out on.

Anyways, I am feeling very confident about my conditioning. My legs are strong and my lungs are fit. I am ready for Saturday's race. Tuesday and Wednesday will be my last workout. It's going to be < 40 degrees at Hurkey Creek during the night laps and I'm not looking forward to that. The co-ed division looks competitive, but we're all doing it for fun.

L.

I can't believe my eyes!

2005-09-13T23:33:00.001-07:00

http://www.echalk.co.uk/amusements/OpticalIllusions/colourPerception/colourPerception.html

I must try this!

2005-09-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

I've done a 4 x 4, but this is ridiculous.

I must try... must... try... must....

http://www.collegehumor.com/pictures/91149/

This is the funniest shizzat I've read in a long time

2005-08-31T16:15:00.000-07:00

http://whyihatemyhusband.blogspot.com/

Another "Relaxing" Weekend

2005-08-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

So apparently I'm trying to live the life of about 2.5 people. 1. Family Man 2. Avid Athlete 2.5 Everything else. Last weekend was to be spent doing the following: Palm Springs with the family, Camp and pre-ride the race course with my ODC teamates in Idyllwild, Attend my company swimming party , Attend a company picnic for my wife's work. Yes, about 600 miles of driving in one weekend.

So it began with Thursday night drive to palm springs, where we had a late check-in at the time-share. Friday was spent by the pool/waterslide relaxing (as much as you can with an over-active 3 year old)and dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. On Saturday, we hit the Cabazon outlets and headed straight to Yorba Linda for my work party gig. This is not a water park, it is Harold's back yard...

http://lousarcade.com/emptythepool1.jpg saul & I try to empty the pool w/ double cannonball, notice Kaleo trying to get out of the way!!!
http://lousarcade.com/emptythepool2.jp g Kids at play on the waterfall
http://lousarcade.com/emptythepool3.jpg Slide, cave, wading pool above. I want...

From That Saturday afternoon, I drove back up to Idyllwild/Mountain Center to Hurkey Creek Park. Setup my tent, rode five miles, ate dinner, rode a ten mile night lap, sleep, got up at 6 a.m. (Sunday) and rode the ten mile morning lap.

Hurkey Creek went like this:
http://lousarcade.com/hurkey1.jpg
http://lousarcade.com/hurkey2.jpg
http://lousarcade.com/hurkey3.jpg
http://lousarcade.com/hurkey4.jpg
http://lousarcade.com/hurkey5.jpg

At about 10 a.m. I drove back down the hill back home, jumped in the shower and went to the wife's company picnic in Fountain Valley. Small shopping at REI and supergo afterwards, some unpacking and the weekend was finally done.

I've got some work to do on my riding at altitude so I've got to get a bunch more miles in for the next 3 weeks.

Old Camp, well almost...

2005-08-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

prologue: Last night I took my 3 year old hiking up Santiago. When at the trail head there were a bunch of ambulances and firetrucks. By the time we got our gear ready and on the trail, the trucks were gone. Skip ahead about 3 miles about an hour later and a rider was coming down with another bike strapped to his back. "Where's the owner of that bike?" I asked. "Oh he was airlifted off in a helicopter and I'm on the way to meet him at the hospital".

Tonight's ride was supposed to be a loop around whiting, then santiago truck trail then down the luge for 13 miles. We ended up changing the trip on the fly and decided to go all the way up the truck trail to old camp. I am a really slow starter, I felt I was pacing back behind Maureen and Cisco tonight, but about 6 miles in, I started feeling stronger and led the rest of the way. It got dark at about 8p.m. switch on the Niterider HID's and we were good to go. We got up to the flat above old camp (1/2 a mile short) and decided to turn around for some good downhill. Back down the luge and the tally was 16.5 miles total. I already know Cisco is fast, but I'm afraid come 24 hours of Adrenalin next month Maureen's going to post faster times than me!!! Lightweight riders have such an advantage over us clydesdales. Anyways, I felt better about my conditioning tonight. Least of all no one got hurt, or ran into any mechanical problems.

We're meeting at the race course this weekend up in Idyllwild to get a few laps in with a bunch of other folks that ride in the group. camping should be a hoot.

lots of excercise, no lost weight...

2005-08-21T21:04:00.000-07:00

I don't get it. The harder I work out the more weight I'm gaining. Yeah yeah, someone told me to knock off the protein. 3 days of hard riding, 3 lbs gained, some attributed to gatorade water retention. I need to get to my racing weight in 4 weeks and it seems impossible. My eating habits are the same. I'll see where I am a week from now...

Not much else going on, I got to surf san-o state beach over the weekend with some camping. It was a good relaxing time. I'm finally back to where I was as far as catching waves go, I like it when things come to me like second nature, never skipped a beat during my long lay-off.

Next Week: I'm going to try and ride at least twice this week. Busy week at work with a release going in and the I'm off to Palm Springs for some more R and R.

Quiet Weekends and Board Sports don't mix.

2005-08-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

So, I'm planning on an almost perfectly quiet weekend of TV and rest. When oldest nephew calls up on Friday and says "Let's go surfing tomorrow!". I say to myself, "ah, why not??" So we decide to meet at 7a.m. at the usual spot at Bolsa Chica. Check the surf report and great, 1-3 feet, nice and easy, but red tide and jellyfish out. I thought to myself, it should be easy on my arms...

It's been about two months since my last time in the water and seriously about one year before that... and I'm wondering how foreign a surfboard is going to feel under my feet. So I'm excited and nervous to go that I only got 2 or 3 hours of sleep the night before the alarm went of at 6:00 a.m. The anxiety I felt while tossing and turning is like drinking 2 cups of coffee 1 hour before you're desperately trying to get some decent sleep. The insomnia compounds itself by the worry about whether or not you're going to be able to fall asleep or get enough sleep or fall asleep or feel tired in the morning or being rested toss and turn more fleeting thoughts...will I get enough rest, can I fall asleep, toss and turn some more... you get the picture.

Wake up, drive, in the water by 7a.m. Caught some decent waves, lungs worked great - arms got a bit tired early on and felt like jelly, but I worked through it. I ended up being in the water 2 hours catching what I wanted when I wanted and felt so comfortable that I was able to walk the board up and back with a bit of confidence. I also got my two youngest nephews up and standing on my 10 footer so it was a rush for them as well as me. It ended up being a big family affair with 3 uncles and 6 cousins showing up. I finished up with a fat breakfast at woody's, a 2 hour nap and some housecleaning that night.

Okay, so to add to my "quiet" weekend, my brother in law calls up in the evening and says, let's take the kids to the wild animal park tomorrow - Sunday. They also said they wanted to check out Etnies skateboard park afterwards. I said what the heck, I haven't skated in 5 years so why not?!?

The animal park was so just okay so I won't get into that other than I fell asleep on the tram tour and that captive Gorilla's live a good life. We were back by 5p.m.

The skateboard park was much more fun that evening. I picked up some new pads and broke out the old Tony Hawk Birdhouse stick. Busted out with my two youngest nephews who skated quite well for their age, but hey need to learn a few things including the ability to not get run over by the bigger kids. I was able to carve a few good lines and never really slammed myself into the hard concrete which was positive.

Now I'm seriously thinking of skating a bit more, but perhaps when the park is empty so I can try some bigger moves without crashing and looking like an a$$ in front of a bunch of kids... Finished up the evening with BBQ.

Afterthought: Boy I really miss surfing and skating, two things I've spent a lot of time doing - Skateboarding as a teen, and surfing all the time in my 20's. I'm going to dedicate some time doing those things a bit more although I'll never reach that same level of performance with skating. Kid's today are just insane (and according today's lingo "pull off some sick moves") and my body (at my age and weight) just can't take that level of abuse anymore.

Anyways that was my quiet weekend.

Training Ride

2005-08-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

So we're prepping for the next 24 hours of Adrenalin and our night ride went like this:

It was a tough and demanding ride on both Cisco and me. We weren't fresh. The problem was we rode hard the night before and I had a bit of cramping in my left calf so I was fighting that all evening. Cisco is really fast so I think I went a lot harder trying to keep up.

Cisco was riding fast until he wrecked in the dark on that steep loose section just before the luge. He got some bad cuts, a sprained thumb and a bruised ego. Light broke pretty good, too I'll have to re-engineer the mounting on that, time to go with hose clamps I guess...

I went down on the luge twice. The first crash, my bike ended partway down a cliff, I was able to step off without going with the bike. The second, I slammed pretty hard when my front wheel went down a rut hole, crossed up and I ended up over the bars then landed on my side and head. It happened so fast that there was nothing I could do. See a hole, next thing I knew I was on my head.

Anyways we were going a bit harder and faster than we should have. But we had fun. Definitely an advanced ride and we covered about 14 miles.

This ride can be started earlier like at 6:00 and still finish in the dark. It's getting darker earlier. I'm going to take a break and not ride til at least Sunday probably. Back to back rides - my legs just don't do that well.

Nephew called and wants to go surfing on Saturday morning, it'll be a good break from the lower body work out.

DEVO rocked it !!!

2005-08-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

House of Blues Anaheim at Downtown Disney. Sold out show. No opening band.

Doors opened at 8pm. We got inside by about 8:30. Standing room only. Had to have been 1200+ folks inside. Ventilation sucked, and very cozy. Hot and stuffy and after an hour+ of waiting, (start time was at 9:30p.m) peeps got a bit impatient. they got started at about 9:50.
The show started with an opening video staring General Boy with "a message". was great!!!

I won't go into the play list (spoiler), but they surprised me with a few songs I haven't heard them play in other concerts. No new material - just a few from Duty Now, FoC, Nutra and of course AWNM. There might have been one from ONID, but it's late now and my brain is as fried as my voice. I overheard that Freeze was the drummer this night, I was on the side
and drummer out of view so I couldn't see who it was.

Everyone there had a great time despite the hot stuffy conditions. Mark's voice sounds as good as ever. Hate to say it but the spud boys are aging gracefully so get to see them as soon as you can.

I met some great kids that flew from Calgary down to Anaheim specifically for this concert, and we were able to get a pic with Gerry before the show.

http://www.lousarcade.com/devo1.jpg

wrapped up another b-ball season

2005-08-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

what another ending to a miserable season. 5w -5L It has been hard to keep a consistent roster of 7 committed players. We should have gone to the playoffs this season, but there were those 2 games that we "shoulda" won. I think this is my last season for now, the youngsters in the league are better-stronger-faster. And I've lost about 3/4 of step at my age and weight.

I'm going to concentrate on mtn bike races this fall and get some night riding in. This week. Pringles rule.

The kid is amazing

2005-08-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

So I'm getting Kaleo hooked on stuff that I dig, this time it's trail running and trekking. I took him to whiting ranch for a 3 mile up and back last week and he just had a blast. He enjoys the up and down terrain, which is surprising. What keeps him motivated to run up the ups, is that he knows that there will be a fast descent going down. While running down, he ate dirt a few times going too fast, but he's got the hang and knows how to avoid the dreaded poison oak when I ask him to. He especially enjoys the creek crossings and the rock hopping.

http://lousarcade.com/kaleo/kaleotrail1.jpg
http://lousarcade.com/kaleo/kaleotrail2.jpg

24 hours of adrenalin coming up, I guess that's why I've sub-consciously been riding a heck of a lot more than normal. I got on a team with ODC and hopefully we can fill the roster. There's about another 7 weeks to train.

DEVO this week at the HOB, I'm taking half the day off to have a nice dinner with the Mrs. and to have a great time there. Should be a blast.

long time since the last update

2005-07-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

Damn, I've been riding alot lately. I had a crappy ride last Thurdsay (lack of sleep) and decided to make up for it and ride hard on a single speed today. It was a blast!!! I had to stand up and hammer quite a bit, but Aliso Woods is the perfect trail for single speeds. I don't think I'll ever ride another geared by there again.

Pinball notes: I got the garage arranged (again), not quite happy with the layout, but it will do for the number of machines I have. I've made a lot of progress restoring them, but there's never enough hours in the day.

I'll try and do a bit better updating my blog, I wonder how many other peeps are all hot on it for 2 months then neglect blogging...

Busy two weeks.

2005-02-17T00:03:00.000-08:00

Work has gotten real busy the last couple weeks, new year new projects more business. I haven't had a chance to work our really because of all the rain. Did buy some Disneyland passes and spent the last couple of weekends there with the family. Good to get out of the house and let the kid wear himself out.

Training notes, NONE, two weeks of nothing and I feel like crap. Basketball has been okay though, but it's only once a week. I gotta get back on the bike this weekend.

Arcade notes: LOTS - Went to Superauctions to check out video game and pinball stuff. Not a whole lot of interest in the video games there. There was a sinistar there, and it went cheap, but it was early in the auction and I was interested in other things there. The pinballs went pretty high, add 20% commission and taxes, and the prices are even higher. Pretty much wasted half a day and came home with nothing (which is good - money not spent is money saved).

I picked up a Jurassic Park: Lost World pin this week on ebay and must say that sega makes so/so pins. The quality of the mechanics feels solid, but the artwork is not so great. I'll keep it around, add a few dinosaur toys onto it and maybe it'll look and play a bit better when I'm done tuning it. Should be good for my nephews and kids. The shaker motor effect is quite good though.

More pinball notes, cleaned up the judge dredd and worked on some opto issue in the ball trough. Finally, no test errors on it and it seems to play pretty good. Fish Tales was also worked on doing some drop target fixing, plastic protectors and some other things. Right now seems like a lot of little maintenance type things on all the pins.

That's about it for now. I must really get on my bike.

projects - just do em'

2005-01-30T01:59:00.000-08:00

Arcade notes: about 90% finished shopping out this Demolition Man today. Last thing to do is a flipper adjustment. Literally replaced 20+ bulbs in this thing, fixed 2 messed up lamp sockets, a couple of new sling plastics and clear washer protectors in a few spots and some general cleanup and waxing. I had to remove a few ramps to get some hard to reach bulbs. All in all it looks really good when lit up, I couldn't believe that 20 bulbs were out!

Training notes: Going up to old camp tomorrow (egh.. actually today) at 8a.m. time to get some shut eye. We'll try to do it in 3-4 hours.

Spend some time with family after I get back.

boring week...

2005-01-24T21:49:00.000-08:00

Training notes:

Nice weather, went for a fast solo 9 miler yesterday. It was good to be out on a nice day. Starting to drop weight again, which is good. Basketball season has started for us and we won our first game last week. Looks like we have a good roster this season so hopefully we'll make it to the playoffs and farther.

Home notes:
Termites suck, had to redo a rotted, eaten, infested window frame yesterday, I hope I got them all. House is a mess, time to clean clean clean.

Arcade notes:
Not much, just getting up the itch to redoing all the legs on all the machines. some $80 lighting rust remover ordered, some spare legs, and i still have to order new pinball feet. Going to be a big undertaking, but much needed for all my leg rusted games. Other than that everything pretty much works. I ditched my Marble Madness game so I'm +$500 and got a little much needed space back. Two cabs to go and I'll be able to lay all my pins again.

twice around

2005-01-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

So a bit bummed about yesterday missing the AR mini training run. This morning, I checked my email and lo and behold there's a ride up Santiago Truck trail and the guys I normally ride with want to do it twice. So we did it. The first loop was kinda dry and hot, the luge was surprisingly in good shape with a few mud pits to get through, but all in all I had fun. The 2nd loop we met up with ODC.org group and that was fun as well. A very hard work out about 16 miles total, lots of climbing. I ran out of water, but luckily I did not get any dehydration headaches (which are the worst). I was pretty satisfied having had only an avg of 4 hours of sleep the last 2 nights. Downed two burgers when I got home - am a very happy guy right now.

Finished the whirlwind kickout hole protectors, this thing is almost done, I'm waiting to get a score display and plastic speaker panel off ebay to finish this thing off once and for all. I may do a diode/resistor mode to help clear up some of the very minor display glitches. But this thing's finally playable and working real well.

wasn't meant to be.

2005-01-15T22:35:00.000-08:00

We were supposed to do mini AR training in San Diego today. It wasn't meant to be. Mauricio called me up last night and had to cancel because of some work issues, I was a bit bummed, but undeterred and I thought I 'd go solo or pick up a beginner that had posted wanting to get on a team. Last night I tried to get all my gear ready and brush up on UTM plotting. It was a nightmare, I just wasn't prepared and i got to bed at like 2:00 a.m. - Strike one. I was able to get a hold of a beginner guy and after some conversation thought i'd take him on and show him the ropes. Turns out, he wasn't in that great of shape and may have been out of his element, but we decided to go forward anyways. Strike 1.5, This morning, I got all my gear ready, beautiful day, but again was running slight late and pressed for for time, strike 2. I get near the 5 fwy and it is jammed pack parking lot. listening to the radio a truck had dumped it's load and it would have been another hour to get through it. strike 3. I called the guy I was supposed to team up with and had to cancel. There was no way to get to San Diego on time and prep. If it wasn't meant to be... I went home and took a nap and got rid of a nasty headache, the last 12 hours wasn't all that fun...

Woke up from a nap, and finished Dracula. Putting some proto-type plastics on, and a hole guard, kinda of a pain, but it worked out well. I've got some ideas on how to approach the whirlwind guards so i'm well on my way. Tomorrow is some time at the park with my son, and maybe some more pinball work.

Rain Rain Rain Sunny

2005-01-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

Haven't ridden or excercised in about a week because of the rain. That's not a real excuse, but this AR training session in San Diego is this Saturday. I'll try and get a run in tonight. and maybe Thursday. I don't want to be doggin it.

Finally got to see some video footage of the Tsunami. As a surfer, I was thinking there was someway people could survive that, but looking at the amount of water, churn and debris - people were getting tossed. That was a huge amount of brown foamball at least the Thailand one was 20 feet high and coming in real fast, those poor folks on the beach never had a chance.

Finished LOTR ROFTK on PS2, nothing to do but play games when it's raining. Trying to sell some games to get space back, hopefully it goes well on this Marble Madness sale today.