Costume Chaos

It's that time of year; my company's annual Halloween extravaganza is approaching and many of us employees are scrambling to get our costumes done in time.  I had another ambitious plan for this year; I was going to be a meat grinder, complete with working crank which would push more 'ground meat' out when turned.

Despite once again being an over the top costume, I was excited about the idea.  I brainstormed the plan, bought materials, and dove in.

Much of this thing was going to be paper mache, which I've never used before, but I looked up some tutorials on YouTube and off I went.

The first thing I needed was a central tube for the grinding chamber.  I wanted the end to flare bigger than the inside end so I grabbed a metal trash barrel, wrapped it in chicken wire...

What a pain in the balls this was, cuttin the wire, wrapping each cut piece around its accompanying connection point, tucking all the sharp ends inside so they wouldn't keep jabbing me.

Apparently I did a great job of wrapping it very tightly.  It was so tight, it took me almost half an hour to slide it off of the trash barrel.

After that, I molded another chamber to house the crank, for opposite of the grinding chamber.

Next was to cut some cardboard circles to tuck inside to give the chambers structural integrity...

The circles on the end kept sliding inside the tube so I cut some spacer shims to keep the circles in place.  But the shims kept falling over so I tied them into place with thread (if you open the pic you can see the thread).

Lastly was the center of the costume.  I wanted it to be a bit rounded to give more of a chamber effect, rather than just a straighht tube.  I bought an inflatable exercise ball and then se the tubes against it.

(In this pic, just the smaller tube on top was splayed open to mold it better to the ball, but after I took this pic, I splayed the bottom tube as well, for a muc better fit.

 Next up; the paper mache!  Glue, water, and a bit of salt which apparently keeps the paper from molding.

Ta da  Wait...no "ta da"...it's not done!  When I started to apply the paper, I found that while it stuck great to the ball, it wasn't sticking to the chicken wire at all.  This meant I had to do the middle section first, then I'd have to lay it on its side to apply some paper on its top, let it dry, then roll it a bit, put more paper on the top, let dry, etc.

 And messy?  Man, just look at that tarp.  This stuff was dripping all over the place.  But, I had knocked some of the project out and it was time to let stuff dry.  I turned on the ceiling fan, set up a floor fan to help, and kicked back for a while.

When it was dry (many hours later), I went up and checked it for strength.

And that's when it hit me...

This costume required me to be inside of it to achieve the effect of me being ground up - I was aware of that.  But I'd assumed I'd be able to cut a section out of the ball and have the remainder of it held firmly in place by the paper mache.   But what I found was the ball was still very flexible, meaning that as soon as I cut into it, relieving the internal pressure, the costume would lose all structural integrity.  This meant the costume would flop around on both sides, most likely resulting in the whole thing tearing in half.  Definitly not what I wanted - and with only 5 days left until go-time, I was out of luck.

So I cut/tore/dismantled the entire thing and it all went out in yesterday's trash.

This left me without a costume for what is the biggest event at my work, all year.  But that'd be sacrilege.  I've been competing in the costume contest for almost as long as I've been here.  For weeks, folks have been coming up and asking me what I was going to be (I never tell beforehand), and saying they couldn't wait to see what I came up with for this year.

But I was out of time and to be honest; out of motivation.  I just wasn't feeling it.  I figured what the hell, I'll take a year off and sit this one out.

But then yesterday, as I was washing my hands after using the bathroom, I was hit with inspiration; I'm going to go as a commercial hand soap dispenser.  (Huh?)

That's right; a commercial hand soap dispenser, complete with PURELL (C) labels on it and everything.

Anyone that's daring enough to hold their hands under the dispensing part - which will conveniently be located at my crotch level - will get a handful of cream.  Shaving cream, that is.  I'll be holding a can of it inside the box I'm building.

I may not place in the winning group, but I plan on getting a shitload of laughs.

Maybe I'll try the meat grinder thing again next year.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Just Can't See Getting Any Older

This whole "getting older" thing sucks.  Yeah, it's cliche' to say that and we all know it to be true, but I'll press on with it anyway.

The latest example for me is how it's getting harder and harder to clearly see the roadway at night.  Granted, some of this is due to my sucky low-output, yellow-beam headlight, but most of it is due to my eyesight losing it's youth.  I've been realizing more and more that as I'm rolling along roadways in the darkness, especially when there's traffic coming toward me and their headlights are washing out my own, that I'm riding on pure "blind" faith that there aren't any obstacles in the road.  I can't see the surface to know that it's clear.  And that's bad.

I need to see about upgrading my headlight situation, and I'm hoping there's something out there that's a better option than that +$300 light which I returned a few months ago.

Oh well, moving on...

I really need to get my bike in for its service, I think I'm about 500 or  600 miles over, and have another run going on this weekend so that will wipe out the option of bringing it in then.  I'm kicking around the idea of bringing it in tomorrow at lunch and then hopefully picking it back up on Thursday at lunch.  The problem with that is it'll take me at least an hour to get there, let alone the time needed to drop it off/pick it up, and then the hour ride back.  How do I explain my extended lunch periods?  I'm not sure but I'll try to think of something.  (They offer a free bike loaner for 24 hours, so that would cover me getting back to work and then home and then back to the dealership.)

Lastly, it's that time here at work; Halloween.  Folks keep asking me if I'm all set with my costume yet.  Nope, I'm not.  In fact, I haven't even thought of anything yet - I just feel burned out.  I need to get my head right, though, and think of something fast.  The party/contest is 10 days away...

Maybe I should go as the Invisible Man...and just not come in...

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

I'm waiting on one answer from an exec and then I'll be able to hand off my budget plan.  That'll mean an end (hopefully) to the long hours and working on weekends.  Sweet!

So what do I have in store for this weekend to celebrate not having to work?  Not a thing!  I tried making an appt to bring my bike in to Boston Harley this weekend to have the 35k service done but they have an event tomorrow and a huge run going on, on Sunday, so they're pretty tied up.  No to say they couldn't do the service, but they probably couldn't get it done within 24 hours, and that's where the problem comes in.  My "priority" service plan alots me a free rental bike for 24 hours, so I ordinarily would be able to drop the bike off tomorrow, take the rental home, then go back in on Sunday, return the rental, bring my bike home.  I will try again for next weekend.

The weather looks like it might be halfway decent so I'm going to see about taking the new bike out - the mountain bike, that is.  Having weighed myself in the gym the other day and finding that not only have I regained all the weight I lost in the Spring, I'm even heavier than I was, originally.  So burning off some calories via pedaling won't hurt me a bit.

I'll probably take the real bike out some as well, even though I'm 300+ miles over the service interval.  It's all synthetic fluids, though, so I imagine it'll be fine.

Not much else is going on.  Kinda looking forward to having a drink when I get home; a luxury I haven't afforded myself in some time, due to the long hours and fried brain cells of late.

I'll try and find something fun and exciting to do this weekend and bore you with the details about it on Monday.  Have a great weekend.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Bentley's 2016

The weather was calling for absolute ass (heavy rain) but to hell with it.  My work schedule was about to drop into overdrive and I needed one last getaway before the suck set in.

Loaded up and ready for departure…

We arrived dry, if not a tad chilly, and got camp set up.  Two tents with one tarp to share, above them.

 

At least it would give us decent protection should the elements turn against us.  And it also provided protection from the acorns.  Yes; the acorns!  These things were rifling down through the leaves with what seemed like way, WAY too much force than they should have had, just from detaching from a branch.  They were slicing through the foliage and hitting the ground with loud “Whump!” sounds.  I looked around, expecting to see squirrels hurling them at us, but couldn’t make anything out in the thick canopy above us. 

(The tarp worked well enough to keep the insides of the tents dry, but it rained so hard, there was a ton of mud splatter all over the tents.  When I got home, I had to hose everything off.) 

We  needed some lunch and found this place.

 

BYOB?  Damn.  But the food was so good we came back here on Saturday (even though my omelet with salsa arrived as an omelet with a side order of sausage). 

Off to the beach!

The rain hadn’t hit yet but you could see it was coming…

 

Yes, there’s a reason I posted a pic of this sign.  You’ll know it when you see it.

 

This crab had a bad day…

 

We found lots of these poor dead crabs over the course of the weekend.  I’m not sure how the seagulls are able to finagle these things onto their backs – some of them were good sized.  But finagle them they did, and then dissected, disemboweled and digested them. 

Here’s a lineup of the villains, waiting for their next victim…

 

For some reason, I was struck with a need to stack some rocks, so I did…

 

From there it was off to a brewery to check out their products.  And just for us; special parking out back with the rest of the trash…

 

I really liked these mini windows in the converted factory building we were parked up against.

 

Ta da!  Beer, courtesy of Banded Horn Brewery!

 

It was the only stout they offered and was an Imperial.  Oh, and it was very sweet (as expected) and I didn’t really care for it.  They did have a nice back deck to hang out on.  Very industrial setting, as you can see in the background. 

I thought these star-shaped anchor plates were pretty cool…

 

As was the decrepit area below…

 

We only stuck around for one beer and had decided to head off to the one to check them out, when we happened to spot…

 

That’s right; a distillery, right next door to the brewery!  Unfortunately, they didn’t open for another 20 minutes, but since the next brewery (Publik House) was only 0.2 miles away, we figured 20 mintues was plenty of time to head over, try a beer or two, then come back.  As it turns out, we stayed for a couple beers then decided to head back toward Bentley’s and the party waiting therein.

But…there was still a bit of daylight left in the sky so we decided to hit the shoreline one more time.  The tide was on its way back in but hadn’t reached my stack of rocks yet.  The stack of rocks that’s right over…what the...?  They’re not there…?  Walking over to the spot, I found that someone had actually destacked my rocks.  They hadn’t been knocked over because they were all in a pile at the base of the boulder I’d stacked them on.  Who does that?  So I figured I might as well restack and go even a little higher this time…

 

From there it was off to Bentley’s for the evening.  The weather outside was cold and drizzly so most folks were hanging out inside, and that’s where we hung our hats for the evening.  It was raining pretty well by the time we turned in, and I could hear the rain coming down in buckets over the course of the evening.

The next morning, it was still raining pretty well.  Not quite as hard as it had been overnight, but still enough to dampen my spirits (which is probably why I didn’t take any pics from Saturday).  We showered and headed off to Mike’s Diner again for breakfast.  When that was done, we walked back outside to find it was raining pretty good again, and we still didn’t have a plan for the day.  Looking at the weather on our phones, it looked like it was going to be ass all day. What to do?  Well, inland looked like it was missing the rain so we opted to point our tires westward, and head toward the house in Wolfeboro.

 

As it turns out, we found some decent roads; great scenery but the road surfaces weren’t always that great.  We hung out at the house for a bit, I napped, Greg watched some tv.  Checking the weather again, it looked like things would calm down in the amount of time it would take us to get back, so we headed back eastward.

 

After getting almost all the way back and finding the rain had become just an irritating drizzle, I suggested we head back to the shoreline one more time while there was a bit of daylight left.  So off we went.  No sooner had we ridden about a half-mile past Bentley’s, than the drizzle turned to full-fledged rain again.  We continued on to the shore, did some walking around, I tried stacking some rocks again but gave up since they weren’t cooperating.  (Oh, my second stack of rocks was left alone for the tide to knock over, as the stones were scattered all about, on the far side of the boulder I’d stacked them on.)  We saved a small crab who was stuck out of water (found a nice tidal pool with lots of hiding spaces for him), looked for some more flat stones for Patty, and called it a day.

 

We arrived back to camp, got showered and cleaned up...so of course  the rain started coming down in buckets again.  What the hell.  Since all we had was our two small tents and no standing room between them, there was no place to hang out, so there was nothing to do but head up to the bar as quickly as we could before getting thoroughly soaked again.

 

The rain kept coming down so folks who would ordinarily be all spread out outside were instead; all crammed inside.  We lucked out in that a couple got up from the bar shortly after we arrived so we parked our asses and took in the sights for the night.  One of the best sights was the barmaid who kept leaning over the beer cooler in front of us.  No complaints there!

When the night was running late we headed back – and it was raining even harder now.  All through the night, it seemed to rain harder and harder and each time I woke up (my back and neck are becoming less and less agreeable to sleeping on the ground), I could hear the droplets pounding the tents and the tarp.  At least the sound was loud enough to drown out the acorns which were still hammering down, too.

The next morning, the rain had let a smidge.  We cleared camp as quickly as we could and hit the road.  Fortunately the rain clouds thinned a bit and we pretty much had just a very thick mist/drizzle for most of the ride home.

It felt so good to roll in to my driveway; thank God, I was done with riding in the rain for the weekend.  Tenting gear was hosed off, laundry was set into motion, and then it was my turn; a nice hot shower to warm the body back up.

A quick run to the food store for supplies, then it was back to make strombolies for Bill and Zach who came over to watch the Pats game with me.  (No need to go into any detail on that, it was painful enough to watch just the one time.)

Greg and I talked it over quite a bit and have come to a unanimous decision; from here on, trips to Bentley’s will entail renting a room.  My first year here, the temps dipped into the 20’s – not excellent for sleeping outside.  On top of that with all the rain this year, it just makes sense to go with a room.  Less to pack on the bike, less to worry about in terms of the weather.  Which of course means the weather will probably be dry and in the 80’s next year, but if that’s how it turns out, it’ll be worth it.

There you have it; Bentley’s 2016.

Ride Hard, Take Chances