Sometimes it’s sad when you think about how much of a rut you are in. The renters moved into the cottage on Friday, so I no longer have a place to go to “get away”. I’m really not “getting away” from anything in particular, but it feeds my addiction for lake living. I think I only spent three or four nights there this summer, but I was there almost every day. I imagine I’ll be like a caged lion for a while, pacing back and forth, thinking I have nothing to do. As soon as I go downstairs I’ll see the piles of stuff I brought from the cottage and, now, need to find a place to put it.

As I look out the window I can see the “over the hill gang” playing golf. It’s a group of men over 50 that play together at nine each morning. I look at the clock and it’s only 8:55. Maybe when you get to be a geezer like me, you figure if you don’t wait around for the clock to hit a certain number, you may get a head start and outrun the grim reaper. I know I said “men over 50” and that makes it sound like a middle aged group, but if I join them I’ll be, by far, the youngest person out there at almost 61.

I sold the Lund fishing boat yesterday. I bought it brand new when Jean and I got married and used it a lot that first couple of years when we were at Algonquin Lake. When Jean made me move into town (correction – when I decided that I was tired of lake living and asked Jean to give up the water and move into town) we didn’t use it nearly as much. It hasn’t been in the water for three years and probably hasn’t been used more than ten times in the last ten years. It was time for it to go, but it’s like losing an old friend. The boat brought lots of good memories.

The final word on the pontoon fiasco is that it now runs. Apparently the guy at the marina overestimated my mechanical abilities when he said an idiot could replace the battery cables. I took the cover off the engine and it looked like a mass of foreign objects. I couldn’t follow the red wire, couldn’t see where the black wire attached, and it looked like you had to take out way too much stuff to get to them. I consulted with ace boat mechanic, Martin, and he told me the best way to make a splice of the broken wire. That I could handle and, after ten minutes, the motor was purring like a kitten. The splice should keep it running so I can get it over to the landing when the marina picks it up.

By now most of you know that Becky is in the hospital. She called Jean in the afternoon yesterday and sounded like she wasn’t well at all. Jean took her to the walk-in-clinic and that started the ball rolling. An ambulance transported her up to the emergency room and, by nine she was in surgery. By eleven she was on her way to recovery. Let’s just say it’s a plumbing issue and you can get the details from Jean. It’s like looking at a fine automobile. I admire the sleek lines and long to take it out for as spin, but when it comes to lifting the hood and looking at the inner workings, I’m not mechanical enough to understand what I’m talking about. We’ll keep her in our thoughts and prayers.

Happy retirement, Paul.

Just (Happy To Be Jean’s Go-fer) Jack

(npi=no pun intended).

Thursday is D-Day. Well, actually it’s C-Day for my third colonoscopy. That means one for every Ironman race I’ve completed. I think I may retire from the long-course scene ‘cuz I’m tired of these humiliating experiences (the race and the scope). It’s bad enough that a doctor is standing behind you with what seems like a 50 foot pole with an umbrella on the end, but opening the umbrella is worse. That crap (npi) they tell you when you have your first one “You won’t have to have another for 6 to 8 years” isn’t true for everyone. It seems like the hip hematoma, the a/c joint separation and the bike wreck of ’03 would have been enough bad luck. And it’s quite expensive when it’s my turn to bring the wine and candles.

Everyone who I have talked to who has had one (me included) says the preparation the night before is worse. Jean had the foresight to get scheduled to work from 4 to 8 tomorrow evening. My preparation starts at 5. By 8 I’ll have an imprint of a toilet seat on my butt that won’t go away for weeks. I would just as soon none of you stopped by at around 7 to see how things are going (npi). If you do please be warned not to blow out any of the scented candles. You’ll be sorry and I’ll be sorrier because I won’t be able to go outside for fresh air.

I’ve told some of you my ills regarding the pontoon boat. I exhausted all the things that the guy at the marina told me to look for, so today I took the next step. All the connections were clean and bright; the fuse was not blown in the engine; the battery was good and fully charged; and the remote was in the neutral position. It was windy and cold today, so I got on my waders, went out to the boat, and crawled on my hands and knees underneath to follow the wires. On my knees trying to shuffle through the weeds that had grown under the boat was bad, but the 10 jillion spiders and spider webs was worse.

As I had expected, some muskrats had build a sleeping bed of grass and mud right over the cables that go from the engine to the control box. I shook all the cables and looked at them as well as I could, and I didn’t see any breaks. I was a bit discouraged and was standing at the stern by the motor, when I saw the positive cable that goes from the battery to the motor, in the pan below the motor, submerged in a half inch or so of water. The spot where it touched the pan had some green crud on it and, bingo, a light went on. Green crud on wires means oxidized copper (anybody knows that from 8th grade science class) so I reached down and pulled the wire up. I ran my finger along the cable covering and it had worn through to the wire. That’s where the break is and, if I replace the wiring harness, it should work.

I went to the marina and picked up a set of cables (for a Mercury engine and I have a Honda) to the tune of $58.00 plus tax and will try to replace them tomorrow. I asked the guy if an idiot could change the wires and he said yes. We’ll see! I’m not very mechanical, but I should be able to disconnect the old black cable (negative) and hook up the new black cable and the same with the red cable (positive). If it baffles me I may cry for help from any of you who are more mechanically inclined than me. I’ll trade help for beer.

Which reminds me, I bottled the first batch of the Fat Tire Amber Ale Sunday and today I transferred the second batch to the secondary fermenter. I’ll cold condition it for a couple of weeks and bottle it around the end of the month. Mountain Bike Sam has some wine that’s about ready, Pike’s Peak Pat has some homemade wine too, and I’ll have way more beer than I’ll ever drink. I’ve talked with Jean and Sam and will talk with Pat about having a Trilanders wine and beer tasting get together around the holidays. The beer will be at its best around my birthday, so we’ll see what works for everybody.

Better go (npi).

Just (Not Looking Forward To The Next Two Days) Jack

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to brew a clone of Fat Tire Amber Ale. It was developed by Jeff Lebesch who melded his love for quality Belgian beers with his love for mountain biking. I don’t know if I reported any of the details after the brew but it didn’t come out exactly the way I thought it would. The recipes normally give a range of what the specific gravity of the wort (unfermented beer) should be after the boil but before fermentation. It showed an expected gravity (the O.G.) of between 1.048 and 1.050. I followed the recipe exactly and mine came out to be 1.042. It’s not all that much lower but it can have an effect on the alcohol content and the fullness of flavor.

I consulted with Matt, my mentor, and we discussed all the possibilities for why it turned out the way it did. I decided this last Friday to brew another batch using the same ingredients but using more pounds of grain. I entered the original recipe in ProMash which is a beer brewing software that does all the math for you. I changed the batch size to 5.5 gallons, reduced the mash efficiency to 64% (from my last batch) and I added enough grain quantity to get the estimated O.G. to 1.050. I OVERADJUSTED! On this last batch I went to Bells in Kalamazoo, bought the grain, and crushed it myself using the hand mill they supplied. I did change the process of the sparging of the mash, but everything else remained the same other than the quantity of grain. I ended up with an O.G. of 1.064. That will change the estimated alcohol level from an estimated 4.33% abv (alcohol by volume) to an estimated 6.87% abv. I guess bartenders have to drink their own mistakes so wish me luck.

I hate to rat on good friends but I know who caused the recent storms and heavy rains that have flooded areas all over the country. I hate to kick a guy when he’s down but it’s Bill Bradley! It’s a little complicated so try to follow along. I’ve written many times about the fact that I’ve become a triathlon race weather pox. No matter what race I enter, the weather will be bad. Either way…hotter and more humid than normal or cold and rainy. It’s my lot in life so I have to live with it. After my bike wreck of 2003 and the attendant brain injuries, my friends have taken turns watching me to make sure I don’t do anything weird or detrimental to society.

All summer without any rain made Crooked Lake drop about 8 inches and the first section of my dock was over dry land. My pontoon boat was on shore half the time and it took all my strength and body mass (no comments, please) to move it enough to go for a boat ride. I asked Bill to help me move it out one section. It was Bill’s turn to keep an eye on me and he agreed to help me anyway, knowing full well that when I moved the dock it would start raining, and it did. Now you have to wade in water for five feet just to get out to the dock. And look at all the people who are now homeless from the floods.

I usually don’t comment on politics but this past week has been a field day for the media. I told a couple of people Friday night, before the wine set in, that I try my best to avoid public bathrooms to do “number two”, but the few times that I have, my foot hasn’t come anywhere near the guy’s foot in the next stall. And I wouldn’t reach down to pick up a piece of paper (that’s the senators’ story) with my worst enemy’s hand let alone my own left hand. And if I was picking up something I thought was that important, I wouldn’t wave to the guy in the next stall under the partition. With that story and Michael Vick claiming that he didn’t actually kill the dogs that didn’t do well in the dog fights he didn’t promote but he was there when others did, I get upset. If people are going to do those kinds of things they need to take responsibility for their own actions and pay the price. People are so quick to blame someone else for their own bad actions. It makes me sick!

Better get out to the lake and rake some weeds.

Just (Glad I Take Responsibility Like A Man) Jack

I’m not sure whether I believe it or not when people say age is a state of mind. When I look at how hard it is to roll out of bed in the morning with nothing hurting, I know I’m getting old. When I look at how much slower I am at almost everything than I was just a few years ago, I know I’m getting old. When I look at how long it takes to recover from a five mile run, or a forty mile bike, or a two mile swim, I know I’m getting old. Don’t get me wrong! I know there are a whole lot of people younger than me that can’t do a five minute run, or a forty minute bike, or a two-laps-in-the-pool swim, so at least I’m ahead of all of them.

I wrote last week about driving “the girls” down to Three Rivers and looking up places where I used to live and go to school and how it made me take a trip down memory lane. So Monday I drove up to “the cottage” at Bass Lake near Traverse City to see my mother and my Aunt Juanita (we called her Aunt Neat). My grandfather built it in 1950 when I was three so it’s been in the family all my life and we spent every summer vacation there as I was growing up. I helped do a couple of things that were too heavy or too awkward for Mom and Aunt Neat to do and then I took another journey into the past. I remembered all the good times we had there and every story I told was a story of not just me, but family activities. I didn’t feel like I was six years old again, but I did feel a lot younger than sixty and that must be what people mean when they say age is a state of mind.

I know I’m not supposed to reveal other peoples’ ages, but if you know I’m sixty, you know my mother must be older than that, so I’ll tell you that Mom is 82 and Aunt Neat is 78 (sorry Mom…don’t tell Neat I gave away the secret). Both are in excellent health but certainly not spring chickens. I listened to them both tell stories about when they were growing up in Owosso. They talked like it was yesterday and they were still teenagers. They talked about their sisters and their friends and what they did after school. If I had closed my eyes I would have thought they were both still sixteen and their sisters and parents were still here with them. So then I believed, even if only for a day or two, that you’re only as old as you think you are.

Many of you know by now that Thursday was quite exciting around here. We were watching the evening news when they said that Hastings was going to have a severe thunderstorm around six-thirty. The wind was very strong and was swirling here at the condo so Jean made a bee-line for downstairs. I was looking out the window when I saw what I thought was a large limb falling. I realized that a whole tree was going down and, luckily, it fell toward the golf course.

It was a huge oak tree and the very large one next to it has quite a crack at the base and will probably have to be cut soon. There are several “widow-makers” (broken branches hanging from the tree that’s left) that need to be taken care of before it will be safe to walk around out there. At the end of the cul-de-sac in front of the condo another two trees bit the dust, missing the cart shed at the Country Club by inches. With all the bad luck we’ve had in selling the Green Street house and the cottage, we were lucky that the trees fell the other way and not on the three seasons room. The cottage and the house on Green Street had no damage at all. The power was out at the cottage for four days and all I lost was three small bags of frozen vegetables, a half a jar of mayo, and eight eggs. Small price to pay compared to the people who were in the path of the tornado over by Potterville.

Glad for Nancy and Bill that all went well and the recovery train is on the tracks.

Just (Happy To Have Dodged Another Bullet) Jack

It speaks to the fact that I have no life when I volunteer to drive Jean and Becky to a Triathlon in Three Rivers on a Saturday morning at 5 AM when I could be doing so many other things. Kim and Diane rode with Judy and a few more “ladies” from Hastings were there. I know I got estrogenated (that’s an often-used word in the “Real Man’s Survival Handbook”), but when you look at the ages of the group, I’m sure it’s a mild case and I should recover fully with no lasting effects.

Actually, I had a good time and it may have stimulated my desire to get back into training and racing. My training is still on hold due to equipment failures, but the parts have been refurbished and should be as good as new in a month or so. I still say that standing around watching a race is almost as tiring as doing one. OK, OK! I exaggerate, but it is a bit grueling. It’s also hard to watch everyone else eat after the race and not steal some of the food. I’ve done too many races where I didn’t have a good day, finished late, and, by the time I got to the chow line all the food was gone. Since I didn’t pay for the race yesterday, I don’t think it’s fair for me to take the food. I know they throw a lot away, but I don’t want to eat the last of something that was in the mind of the last racer to finish and that’s what kept them going.

I lived from the time I was 5 until I was 11 at Center Park (a wide spot in the road with a church and nothing else), about 10 miles from the race site at Corey Lake. We met at a restaurant in Schoolcraft for an after-race-meal, but not before I drove past where I used to live and took a short trip down memory lane. The house burned down and another one is in its place, but I recognized the place immediately. The one-room school is gone from the corner about two city blocks away. It was bordered on two sides by Osage Orange trees, but now it’s a corn field. As I look back at the times we played eenie-eye-over, red light-green light, softball, football and tag in that schoolyard I’m reminded of a quieter, more serene lifestyle. Going to town was a really big deal and we didn’t eat in restaurants very often. When we did, I heard my first music from a juke-box (Blueberry Hill). My only exposure to drugs was taking the polio vaccine in a lump of sugar. When I hear today about young children growing up in homes with “meth labs”, I thank God I had the parents I did.

I showed the cottage Wednesday, a guy stopped by Friday asking about it while I was in the middle of brewing Fat Tire Amber Ale, and it will probably be shown to someone else tomorrow at around 10 AM. I don’t know why the mild flurry of activity but I’m not getting worked up about it. I still plan to pull it off the market and rent it out for a year or two if nothing happens by September 1st.

Just (Thinking About Nancy and Bill On Wednesday) Jack

This past Monday I had to drop something off at Pennock Hospital (no, not my dignity…that happens September 13th at 11:30 AM) and I found a parking place near the Health and Wellness Center across the parking lot from where I was going. The car next to me was an older Jeep Cherokee with the hood up. From the driver’s side of that car came a large woman carrying a baseball bat. I wondered what she had in mind. She stopped next to my car, turned to her Jeep and started whacking the exterior fender. That area was full of dents so it wasn’t the first time it had happened. She walked back around the car, hopped in (more like slid in),  turned the key and the car started. I looked under the hood as I got out and walked by and saw a couple of things cobbled together with duct tape (aka Georgia Chrome) and they were fastened to the inside of the fender that had just taken the beating. I used to know a lot about cars when I was young, but nowadays there is so much crap under the hood I don’t know what is what. So now I’m curious if you need a wooden bat like I saw the girl use or if an aluminum bat would be even better. The next time I take my car in for a tune up, I’ll ask.

On the way back to Hastings from the cottage the other day, I was behind a woman in a car with a handicapped license plate. She was driving slowly down the hills (around 40 m.p.h.) and would get back up to 55 m.p.h. on the uphills and on the only straight areas where I could have passed. I knew I was in for an interesting ride so I settled in and relaxed. It was then that I saw her cross the center line a couple of times and turn the turn signal on where there was no cross road. I looked closer and a small dog was hanging out the driver’s side window. I’m guessing the dog’s antics running back and forth across her lap was causing the car to swerve and the dog must have unintentionally turned on the turn signal. I like dogs, and I know they are smarter than many of the drivers I’ve seen in the past, but THEY DON’T HAVE HANDS…PEOPLE SHOULD NOT LET THEM DRIVE. And besides…this one was a small “toy” dog so I’m sure his feet could not reach the pedals.

I can visualize another problem. You’ve had a couple of drinks, so you let the dog drive while you ride in the passenger’s seat eating combos and drinking wine disguised as Gatorade in a sports bottle. All of a sudden you drop a combo on the floor of the car and, within a millisecond, the dog is down there eating it. WHO’S DRIVING THE CAR? Dogs just don’t have the necessary concentration skills and their driving should be against the law. Sorry Becky. Please don’t send the ASPCA to my house.

My Ironman race “weather pox” history has blended into the Sunday runs. The last time we ran from the lake it was really, really hot and really, really humid. We ran from the condo this morning and it was really, really humid and uncomfortably warm. I sent out an e-mail saying that the run was at our place but we would only have bread and water. People felt sorry for us and brought all kinds of good food. That was great and thanks to all who made the effort, but it set my “weight loss plan” back a few days.

Rocky, Jean’s youngest, and Sara, my middle child, are home for their 10th high school class reunion. Not counting the ride home from the airport, we’ve seen Rocky for about an hour and Sara for about the same amount. Actually, we’re happy that they’re out having fun with their friends and we haven’t gotten any calls from the police department, so they must be being good. But, wallflowers they ain’t! Of course, when Rocky got home, “Mom” thought he looked undernourished so she bought him a banana cream pie. He’s had one piece and I’ve had two. Another blow to the “Just Jack Patented Diet Plan”. Where’s Kirstie Allie when you need her.

I just got the ingredients to brew Fat Tire Amber Ale, a beer brewed by the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado. Fat Tire is their flagship brew so I thought I would see how we like it. It may become the signature beer of the Trilanders.

Just (No Weight Loss Yet But No Gain Either) Jack

While we were at the Dimond cottage at Torch Lake last weekend for the Mini Tri Camp, I saw something attached to a tree just off the front deck and I didn’t know what it was. You know me well enough to know that I couldn’t just let it go, and I believe you can find anything on the internet. So I went to an “all experts” website, selected a category and a person who should know what it was and asked the question:

“I was at a friend’s cottage in the northern part of Michigan. Attached to a birch tree was a hand carved piece of wood in the shape of a “T”. The base was about two inches long and was about as big around as a pencil. It was flat on one side and was tacked to the tree with a wedge at the bottom to make it perfectly vertical. The “stem” of the T was round, started out about the diameter of a small nail and tapered to a point. This piece was about 15 inches long. It was quite supple and I noticed in the morning the tip end was about 3 inched below horizontal. In the afternoon it was about 1/2 inch above horizontal. What is it?”

The answer came back: “This is what’s known as a “weather stick”  popular in the new england region of the U.S.    simple to make, cheap to buy.  easily found if doing a search.  try this link for lots more info and the science of it.  thanks for the question.”
http://www.new-potato.com/wstick/Science/science.html . Now we can all sleep better tonight.

Thursday evening I was talking to some friends who were about to leave for a couple of months for their place in Montana. Since the cottage at Crooked Lake hasn’t sold, I’ve thought seriously about taking it off the market and renting it year round for a year or two until the housing climate gets better.  They have rented their place at Gull Lake for 17 years from September 1 to June 1 and have only had one bad experience. You know my luck in the past, so my one in 17 years bad experience would probably happen the first year. Anyway, they were telling me of all the ways they had offered it for rent and suggested I go to Craig’s List and look at the listings so I did.

I was looking through the listings of “wanted to rent” for Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. I just happened on the following one in the Grand Rapids listings:   $100 Need One Bedroom For Me And My Mistress-Afternoons   My mistress and I would like to rent a bedroom of someone’s home for $100/month. We only need a place in the afternoons, and an occasional overnight. Would prefer a discreet, upscale house with a proximity to downtown GR and northwards.

I figured this must be a joke, but the more I thought about it, I’m thinking it may be real. Just when I thought no one would ever reply to this ad, we talked about it Friday night and Becky thought it would be a good way to make a few bucks. She seemed genuinely disappointed when I said the person wanted downtown Grand Rapids and north. I thought it would be a lot of work to wash the sheets every day and she said they could wash their own. Besides, she continued, they would probably only use it every couple of weeks. I answered that if they were only going to use it every couple of weeks, why would he want a mistress. We could see that the conversation was headed South so we dropped it at that.

Just (Learned A Bunch Of New Things This Week) Jack

It’s taken a couple of days to recover from the frenzied pace of the second annual “Mini Tri Camp” at Torch Lake. Again Diane and Mike were gracious enough to open up the “cottage” to several of us for triathlon training. Many of us came up separately so we had to stay up late and make sure everyone got in safely. I’d say we huddled around the campfire, but actually we sat in lounge chairs on the deck, drank some wine, and told lots of stories.

I expected everyone to get up bright and early and be in the water swimming by 7 AM. Not so! We didn’t get up until a quarter to eight and we sat around drinking coffee until someone finally suggested we may want to swim before the wind started. We straggled into the water at around nine and didn’t swim very hard nor very far. We straggled out of the water the same way we went in and it was on to “the bike”. Triathletes know that the transition from swim to bike is important and you do it as fast as you can…sort of like controlled chaos. I figured the rest of the group would practice the transition, which we all refer to as T-1, and I would watch since I’m still not biking. After a while I did point out to the group that “T-1” was approaching 45 minutes so, apparently, that part of training wasn’t in the camp plans.

I kind of expected everyone to ride the 45 miles around the lake and go for a 20 or 30 minute transition run afterwards. Again, not so. Three people rode around the lake. A few people rode down to Alden where they were celebrating Alden Days. They didn’t turn right around and come back, so I’m guessing they stopped and perused the vendor tents. Another group rode to Central Lake (around six miles away) and shopped until the credit card started to melt and rode back happy but poorer. I think only one or two people did the transition run. The rest filtered in, went back down to the lake, and rested in the sun. Transition from bike to run, also known as T-2, also failed to make the camp syllabus, so I guess T-2 practice is now going on 5 days.

We did get out and run on Sunday morning and followed it up with a cool off in the lake. A couple of people swam at least some distance while others, including me, washed off the sweat in the lake and rested from the long run in the easy chairs. Between the naps and laying in the sun, everyone made a full recovery and no one was injured.

On the way home, about a mile North of the first Cadillac exit, we saw a bear standing by a fence near the expressway. Yes, we actually did see a bear and alcohol was not involved in the sighting. I’ve driven Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula for several years and I can count the wild bears I’ve seen from the car on one hand. Now I’ll have to grow a sixth finger if I ever want to say that again. So now when you ask someone a question with an obvious answer and they say “Is the Pope Catholic?” or “Does a bear @&$* in the woods?”, you can say “Not always!”. Well, I guess the Pope is always Catholic, but you know what I mean.

Just (Finally Rested Up From Tri Camp) Jack

You probably already know that I’ve been playing golf the past few weeks after three years of not playing at all and three or four years before that of playing two or three times on our Upper Peninsula trip. I played ten rounds through Tuesday although the Country Club computer only had me for nine scores. The member-guest tournament was this past weekend and I played 18 holes Friday, 27 holes on Saturday and 18 holes on Sunday so I’m all golfed out. I’ve gotten the bug to start playing again, so I’ll continue throughout the rest of this season and will decide whether or not to join the Country Club for next year this winter.

I played with Robert, my step-son, as my guest. He’s a -0- handicap and I’m a 22, so we played in a flight where most of the guys were around 10 handicappers. Most of them were good, steady golfers and then there was me. I had thought before the weekend started that I would be intimidated by better opponents, but I wasn’t. On Friday we played with a couple of Robert’s friends and they all played a game I haven’t seen before. When you watch golf on television and see professionals that hit the ball 300 yards or more, you think it must be an exaggeration, but these guys did the same thing. If I really got a hold of the ball, my drives would go slightly less than 200 yards, so I was always the first to hit my second shot. I’ll spare you the shot-by-shot description of all 63 holes but suffice it to say, I proved my 22 handicap was earned with some really bad shots. We had lots of fun and I saw people I hadn’t seen or talked to in years, so it was a success.

While I was gone from the lake for three days, a mole moved in and had a blast in the side yard. It’s been so dry out there I couldn’t imagine there were any worms or grubs near the surface but the tunnels were everywhere. I’d make my standard summer comment like “this means war”, but the moles keep winning the battles, so I give up. Well, not entirely. I’ll still set the traps and spray with all the “sure fired mole chasers” you can buy on the market that never work. Apparently my neighbors have the stuff that does work and you know they won’t tell me ‘cuz they don’t want me chasing the critters back into their yards. When it comes to moles, neighbors aren’t always neighborly.

I still haven’t trapped the woodchuck that has set up camp in our decorative rock garden. He has always been bold, but since I set the trap with apples, we haven’t seen him around. A part of me is hoping he got hit by a car and won’t be back, but the animal lover side of me hopes he just doesn’t like us as much as the neighbors and now I can be the one who isn’t neighborly. Maybe the reason he left so suddenly is that a raccoon died in the trap while I was in Florida two winters ago and was less than fresh by the time I got home. The smell of death can be a good deterrent. Hey! If I trap a mole and just leave it in the ground, maybe the others will move out. Wait a minute! That will make the yard stink and maybe that isn’t a good way to try and sell a house. Never mind!

Just (Not A Threat To Tiger Woods) Jack

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, watching other people do a race is hard work. Bill, Larry, Brenda and I went down to Muncie to watch Brian, Diane, Corrine and Tom do the Muncie Endurathon, a half-ironman triathlon. It’s a six hour race for me, or longer if I have trouble on the run, but, naturally, they all finished it in less than six. I’m amazed at how fit all of the athletes are and I’m still surprised to see people in their fifties, sixties and seventies still doing these races. We knew the capabilities of our buddies, so we were always in the right place at the right time when they came through transition or the finish line.

The tiring part about it is that you see someone and chit-chat for a while before the race, but once they have left on the swim, it’s 30 to 45 minutes before you see them again. Then it’s just for a few seconds and they are off on the bike for two to three hours. Again it’s just for a few seconds and they are off on the run for another hour and a half to two hours. We guessed their finish times within five minutes for each of them so it’s not like we had to hold a late night vigil, waiting for them to finish just before the truck that’s picking up the race cones like people have to do for my races. I was carrying Diane’s bicycle pump for quite some time and Bill and Larry wanted me to let them carry it or take it to the car, but I was trying to build up my arms so I refused.

As we watched the racers come out of the swim, it was interesting to watch the differences in style. Some would leave the water and be “trucking right along” headed for T1 (transition from swim to bike) and others would be walking. We saw many staggering just a bit, either from water in the ears affecting their balance, or the lack of oxygen in their legs since the body sends much of it to the arms that are doing all the work. We saw a lot of people in wetsuits, but quite a few without. Some of those people had just a swim suit on while others had their triathlon race suit on. A few people had “skin suits” which are tight fitting suits that let them glide through the water. One guy had a “skin suit” on that I still think was his real skin that had just been painted. To say that it was revealing was the understatement of the year. Brenda commented several times about what a good job the Mohel had done at the young man’s Bris (if you’re not Jewish, look it up).

Congratulations to the racers. Tom got a second in his age group, Brian got a second in his division, Corrine was fourth in her age group and Diane was fifth in her age group. My title as “King of The Mediocre Athletes” is safe for another year.

The Sunday run was at Judy’s yesterday and lots of people showed up. Judy pestered Kevin for so long that he gave in and came to walk with her. I did my usual six miler, but I misjudged the route and ended up in front of Judy’s at 5.36 miles. Of course I couldn’t stop there so I ran back and forth in the neighborhood until 6.00 registered on my Garmin. The neighbors must have thought I was nuts but, of course, if they knew me they would be sure I was nuts. The X-rays from a month ago showed a fair amount of thinning in the hip cartilage so I’m guessing my long run days are limited. I think it will be a good idea to lose some weight to take some of the pressure off, so I’m now on my 89th diet (lifetime, not this year). By tomorrow Bill and Larry will be selling chances to see who can predict how long this one will last. If you want to wager, you better sign up soon ‘cuz the early times go quickly.

The Green Street house and the cottage still haven’t sold. Every time I think it doesn’t matter whether they do or not, I get an insurance bill or a property tax notice and I change my mind. I was going to bring in the three bags of lake weeds to town yesterday, but when I tried to pick up two of the bags, I noticed that the bottom had rotted through, so I’m heading out to “rebag”. Anyone want to rent a nice house or a cottage for a year?

Just (Rested Up From The Hard Job Of Watching) Jack