Training Log Archive: Charlie

Event: WCOC - Stratton Brook SP
 

short ride with Charles Jr, trying out his new bike. Jan gave him a rather nice used Cannondale mt bike that had been hanging around my basement since she had loaned it to Erik last year.

"Hounds" course at Stratton Brook, shepherding my neighbor Chris around in his first attempt at O. He did really well, an attentive student. Bumming that I forgot my FR, but mightily distracted trying to get Charles Jr on the road so I could leave to orienteer.

"Fox" course, solo. Not bad, but not much zip in the legs. Chris also ran it solo, in about 21 minutes, with one mispunch. Pretty good for a neophyte.

Score-o, with red-green alternation, which made it more difficult. Kept having to look back to see what color I had done last, for example. Also getting tired and back, hamstring and R foot all really sore.

picked up 8 of the controls, mostly walking, really tired.

A very nice and unaccustomed visit from J-J, culminating in dinner out and seeing the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at Cinema City with Rhonda in Hartford. We were all quite pleased and satisfied with the show. It was quite a tattoo, BTW.

C • Golden? 2

Fox - Splits

Hounds - Splits

Lots of yard work today, as Good Friday seems to have closed the offices of most of my clients. Worked on a new trail for a bit, flagging and then laurel wrangling for about an hour. Pruned five seriously overgrown blueberry bushes, and then took some limbs off a sugar maple and a flowering cherry with my pole pruner. The sugar maple was shading out a daffodil patch Rhonda likes, and the flowering cherry had some seriously broken branches I had been meaning to clean up for a while. Then I got the chainsaw out for a while and cleared some more broken stuff and chopped up the limbs I had taken out earlier.

C • And what did you do after b... 2

Rhonda scheduled a special introductory class for Chris, who seemed to have a pretty good time, but finding it challenging.

Brush mower repair - put it together. Not trivial, as some of the pieces are heavy. It took about an hour and a half to get it all assembled again, and it works beautifully.

Brush mower repair. The place where the housing for the drive shaft for the blade attaches to the deck broke at the weld last summer, and I put off fixing it because I didn't want the down time and it still more or less worked, and because a new part cost $170. A couple of days ago Zack and I dismantled it, which was a pretty involved process, finding out that the only thing that had been holding the deck on was the blade. I took the housing to a welder on Monday and dropped it off while I took Zack back to school in Litchfield. After welding the top side of where the housing attaches to the flange that bolts to the deck, he called me to ask how big the opening in the deck was. Not something I knew off the top of my head, but I had a vision of it being somewhat larger than the housing. He wanted to weld the underside, too and I told him to go ahead.

Got back to his shop and watched him finish up, putting a nice thick bead around the underside of the flange. Then ensued a little dance about paying him. "How much do I owe you?" "Well, I told you half an hour, but it was more than half an hour. Less than an hour, but more than half an hour. I thought it would be half an hour, but it was more. Less than an hour, though." And this went on for a few iterations before I tried to move it along by asking how much he charges an hour, which elicited the response: $85. "So, how much do I owe you then?" More discussion about the half hour and the hour, and he seems a bit hung up, and finally says, make me an offer. So I offer him $50 and he counters at $60 and cheerfully accepts my 3 20s.

Now I am his new best friend and he proceeds to tell me a lengthy story about the car he had in high school (a tricked out VW), and the guy who had made him the oversized rims for it). That story runs its course, and I am standing in the rain and pretty desperate to leave, so he segues into telling me about "she" and he nods to the office where there is a woman who was sitting around and playing solitaire on a computer, "She likes to watch Lifetime on TV, but she turns it on and then I go in and watch it, and it's not just for women." All of this with several iterations. Then he says he watches movies on it, too, and the have Uma Thurman (and he lights up pretty visibly at this thought), and he tells me about some movies graced by the lovely Uma, but finally I am able to break away.

Get home to find that the weld on the bottom is not going to fit through the hole, so today I attacked it with my 4" disk grinder and cut it down to size. Took about an hour, not wanting to go too fast and get things overheated, and checking several times to see how close I was getting to making it fit. Then primed it and painted it orange, ready to re-assemble. It will be ready before I need it.

with Rhonda and Chris, including a long simulated increasing pitch hill climb

miscellaneous exercises with Chris, along with two new ones (for me). glute ham raises from a kneeling position with feet fixed, resisting forward until losing it and recovering from the floor with a hand push, and reverse back extensions.

Rhonda's morning class

with Rhonda and Chris. Pretty vigorous

with Chris, usual exercises, plus a few sets of thrusters at increasing weights. Kept it short, because I could feel them in my upper legs.

Yellow and White courses for 5 Ponds, moving a few controls, setting out a few extra.

Part of red course, moving a few controls, checking a few things out.