Ya Gotta Regatta!! (Or do you?)

The weather this weekend was the big story.  The whole way out it was cold and rainy, and there had been rumblings within the troops about abandoning the plan to go into the water.  Hell, there was talk of not even doing the camping thing, but staying at Mark and Mary's, with their dry roof and warm heat.  I was the last holdout but by Friday mid-day, the torrential rain and cold winds had finally convinced me that we didn't have anything to prove by being wet and freezing.

We did head over to the campground to see the rest of the crew we're friends with and to be honest, the weather had actually settled down for a few hours.  It was still chilly and overcast, but the rain had paused.  Mike and I were seriously talking about coming back in the morning and going in with the rest of the crew (Kevin said he would drive us out if that's what we wanted).

Maybe it was just the beer; mellowing our concerns and giving us a rosy outlook in our minds...

Whatever it was, it was quickly eradicated when the winds suddenly picked up, the thunder, lightning and rain all returned with a vengeance.  We said our hasty goodbyes, wished our brave compatriots luck, and jumped back into the Jeep to head back to the comforts of civilization.

The next morning, the news started arriving; the Regatta had been cancelled!  The water was too high, moving too quickly, and there were undercurrents that were causing all kinds of concern to the organizers, as well as the rescue personnel who would be stationed along the way.

"How can they stop it?" we thought.  It's a public waterway, with too many spots to launch from.  But then more word came in; they were posting cops at all the entry points to prevent any idiots from going in anyway.  Huh.  Ok, I guess that's how they can stop it.

But I guess the adage; "where there's a will, there's a way" won out.  In the early afternoon, word came back from the campsite; I guess the organizers had stepped back, saying that while the official event was cancelled, they weren't able to keep people out of the river all day.  If folks wanted to go in, they did so at their own risk.  So of course; some folks were braving it.

I guess a few small groups of boats gave things a try and wound up completing the entire run in an hour and a half.  Bear in mind this usually takes us about 6 or 7 hours. Granted, that includes lots of stops for eats, beers, and peeing, but still.  6 or 7 hours, compared to 1.5 hours.  That's pretty amazing.

I believe Sped and Myszka were in the second group to give things a try but I'm not sure.  We had a free day on our hands now that we weren't doing the regatta, and we spent it in a fantastic way; Mark finally had some work for us to do.  (I think it's been years since they've actually had any chores that we could help them with so it felt awesome to be paying something back again.)

A large spruce tree had been taken down beside their house and the branch/brush pile was enormous.  We dragged it all out back to the edge of the lawn to be burned at a later date when things dried out.

Well, the "at a later date" plan was quickly scrapped and with some help from Mother Petrol, we soon had two huge bonfires going, despite the rain that was coming down (we had to split the brush pile into two piles because if we'd reassembled things into just one pile again, it would've been a conflagration assured to bring unwanted attention from town personnel.

We kept an eye on the fires until we were confident they'd burned down enough to not be a concern, cleaned up, and headed out and about for the evening.

Overall, it was a successful trip out, even though we didn't wind up doing the river thing.  None of us regretted our decision to abandon the flood camping and ripcurrent regatta, that's for sure!  We got to see so many folks; many of them the regulars we see whenever we're out there, but others which we don't get to see as often as we'd like to, so that was awesome.

Hopefully next year's weather will bring a return to the warmth and sunshine that we've seen there before.  If not...we'll still head out, but we may just leave the kayaks behind.

Tomorrow's weather looks cold, but free of precipitation, then rain for a few days so we're definitely not in the clear yet.  I'm looking forward to riding tomorrow, though.  I need to get some miles on, badly!

Ciao for now...

Kayaking The Arctic

Tomorrow, we depart for this year's Greaet Valley Regatta.  This is my 4th time going and I have to say that it's time for a change.  The first two times (2013 and 2015), the weather was fantastic, the water level was good, and we all had so much fun.

Then there was last year.  With the cold, and the rain.  Friday night it rained off and on for the entire night and then I remember texting back home on Saturday morning that it was 42 degrees out and I was putting shorts on to go into the river.  WTF

The rain held off for some of the time on the water, but not all of it.  But the thing I remember the most was that I froze my absolute nuggets off.  By the time I got to the end of the run, I was shivering to my core.  Unfortunately, I wound up way ahead of everyone again (I have no idea how I can lose a group of 20+ people along the way, but apparently I'm quite good at it).  So, there I was; cold and frozen, no change of clothes, and no ride back to the campsite until the rest of the crew eventually started showing up.  The rain picked back up back at the campsite and it absolutely poured for the rest of the night.

Ok, ok...well, the first two years were fantastic, I guess we were due for one bad one.  Next year (this year) will be back to beautiful weather, right?

Wrong.  If you can believe it, the weather for this weekend looks identical to last year's.  Rain and low 40's for Friday and Saturday.  Sunday looks different, but not in a good way; rain and snow.  (Actually, that's an improvement.  A few days ago, the % of rain was 100% for Saturday.  Now it's dropped all the way down to...70%.  Fingers crossed that in two more days, it'll have dropped to below 50%.)

So stay tuned, and wish us luck.  We're bringing kayaks, but by the sounds of it; we should be bringing an Ark...

NH Repairs, Part II

I managed to get out of work a little early and hit the road on Friday.  Any hopes of beating the traffic rush were soon dashed as my speed was slowed more and more until I was doing the stop and go thing, trying to switch lanes and gain an advantage, only to see the lane I’d just been in, start moving.  Bleah.

I stopped off for food supplies and then knocked off the last stretch of the ride up.  I got the perishables put away, strapped on (!!) my plastering stilts and got to work on pulling the old wood off of the garage.

Man, there was an awful lot of rot up in there.  There were sections where the wood was literally held in place by the paint because as soon as I started to pull it apart, it disintegrated to powder in my hands.  Apparently when this was built, whoever did the construction never sealed on top of the trim, allowing the water to just soak right on in whenever it rained.  And soft wet wood is always a welcome habitat for insects, so there’d been any number of tiny tenants over the years.

McCarthy and Michael arrived before too long and they helped remove the rest of the trim and expose the header.  And that is when we found our first surprise; the header had no jacks on either end.  Well, one end ran through the frame and to the corner of the building, but the other end just went to the end of the opening.  And then we found surprise number 2; that end of the header was held in place by two nails.  Yep; one entire side of the garage door header had no jack and only two nails holding it in place.  It’s a wonder the doorway hadn’t collapsed or even started sinking, for that matter.

Anyway, it was getting dark so we put the tools inside, closed things up and headed in for the evening.

The next morning, it was a bunch of measurements, some cutting and fastening using leftover stock from last weekend, then off to Home Depot for a materials run.  The GPS took us a different route so I was excited that maybe a new HD had been built recently.  Maybe we weren’t facing a (minimum) 3 hour trip (there, buy, come back) to get materials.  But no, the one it brought us to was just as far as the other one, just in another direction.  Damn.

When we finally got back to the house, Steph and Alli had arrived and were hanging out on the deck enjoying the scenery.

We got the materials unloaded; the equipment set up, and got to work.  Things moved along pretty well and by the end of the day, we had both the rough-in, and the finish trim, buttoned up.  Tools were put inside, debris was cleaned up, and things looked good.

It’d been a long day so dinner was under way long after the sun had set.  Michael (Sr) had brought up an entire ribeye and then cut it into giant steaks, which he then threw on the grille.  Potatoes and some veggies were also cooked up, but I just focused on the steak.  Man-oh-man, talk about delicious.  My mouth is watering a bit right now, just remembering it.

Michael had one small snafu while grilling, though.  The steaks had caught fire so he ran out to squelch the flames and wound up getting a little too close.  Fortunately for him; he hadn’t done his annual head and beard shaving yet, so while the house did smell like burned hair, at least it had afforded him some protection from the flames.

There wasn’t much left in the evening but we passed the time with some libations and laughter.  It was a great way to wind down the day.

Sunday morning came too soon, and my head was feeling the impacts of drinking a bottle of wine along with the beers.  Oh well, sometimes we need reminders of what hurts, right?

We got the tools loaded up into McCarthy’s truck and I bade my farewells.  I had some things at home to take care of so I hit the road a bit before they did.

I need to make one more trip up there to get last minute essentials taken care of, but that will entail another multi-hour trip to Walmart, most likely.  I’ll try and pick up as much stuff as I can ahead of time and then see if I missed anything.

McCarthy said he wants to head up with me again but I don’t know that the poor guy can put his schedule off any more than he already has for me.  I’ll let him know when I’m going up, so we’ll see.

Pics!

That's some serious rot in there...

I hve no idea what got in there...

...but it was big...

 Surprise!  Your header has a huge gap in the middle, no jack under the end, and is held in place by only two nails.

All better; solid 3-beam with a spacer, and jacked under both ends.  Nice and solid now.

McCarthy, installing the finish board to replace what was rotted.

Father and Son, working hard (while I'm messing aroud with my phone taking pics).

Rough is all done...

 

Finished!  (Ok, it needs a bit of paint.)

Brontosaurus rib eyes!

A slightly well done McCarthy...

 Sunday morning stroll down to the water...

And there you have it.

Maybe next post I'll actually have something bike-related for you...

Happy Monday

NH Repairs

Last weekend, me, McCarthy, Bill, Nelly and Storm went up to the house in NH to fix the stairs which a nighbor's tree had destroyed when it fell over the winter.

McCarthy, Bill and me rode up on Friday morning full of ambition and drive.  We stopped at the food store along the way for supplies and made decent time in getting to the house.

During the inspection process (to see exactly what we were facing), we found some other things which needed attention, including a small set of stairs for the garage, as well as a new entry porch to the house.  Both of these things needed to be completely demo'd and replaced.  On top of that, there were a couple of other items that needed attention, too; removing an old AC unit and replacing the wooden panel that was in the window with it, as well as tightening up the deck on the lake side to make it more sturdy.

The weather wasn't doing us any favors (cold and rain) but we managed to clear the tree as well as demo the parts of the stairs that needed to be removed.  From there it was a parts and supplies run to Home Depot...which is an hour away...

On our way back, we stopped at Hawg's Pen for a late lunch (it was about 3 by now), and that wound up setting the pace for the rest of the day.  We left there, headed to the house and got things unloaded as best we could.  It was getting dark, and was still rainy and cold, so we opted to hang inside for the night (Nelly and Storm arrived about 10).

The next morning the rain had slowed to a steady misty/drizzle and the temps were still pretty chilly.  It took us until early afternoon to finish the stairs - something that I'd thought we'd be able to knock out in a couple of hours.  Humping the materials up and down the stairs didn't do anything for my mood - I was farkin' miserable.   How the hell do people work in this kind of weather?!?

From there it was on to the other projects, a couple more supply runs to Home Depot by Bill and Storm while the rest of us kept at things.

We put in a good solid day's work on Saturday and got a lot accomplished.  I'd honestly thought (hoped) that we'd have had everything done by end of day, but we still had to finish up the garage stairs and the entry porch to the house.

Saturday night was much tamer.  We were pretty beat and just hung in, watching a couple of movies.  Before long, most heads were drooping and it was time for our respective beds.

Sunday brought chilly temps again but no rain or drizzle, which was welcome.  The sun had actually broken out as we were cleaning up the night before, and was soon greeting us again this day.  By late morning, the last screws were set, and the tools began being put away.

Inside, we did a decent clean on the place, got the laundry and dishes done and hit the road.  It'd been a long weekend, we were ready for home.

The cold and wet led me to come down with a cold which I've been fighting all week, but I'm finally feeling better...just in time to head back up there this weekend.  I'm heading up from work in about a half hour, McCarthy and Michael will be heading up when they're done with work, and then Steph and Ally will be coming up tomorrow.

The focus will be to pull off the front fascia on the garage above the door.  When we arrived last week, we saw that it was rotted, so that has to get opened up so we can see what kind of mess awaits us there.  Fingers crossed that it's nothing serious, as that's the main support beam for the front of the garage.

No real miles on the bike lately, but not for lack of want.  Hopefully next week - although now that I think of it, I've got Thursday and Friday off for the Olean Regatta.  So it appears the mileage will remain low for a while.

"Pics or it didn't happen", right?  So here you go...

Staircase fixed...

I know, right?  It doesn't look like there was that much to do, but believe me, it took hours an hours.

New stairs for the garage.

New entry porch.

AC and panel removed, new window in its place.

Some carriage bolts, some spacers, and that railing won't budge again.

The best for last; McCarthy in his Sunday best, cooking breakfast for us ungrateful slobs.

That's it for now, Happy Friday.

Annual Marathon Monday / Red Sox Outing

I had Monday off for our annual Marathon Monday / Sox game extravaganza.  We were in line at Game On (Boston bar) @ 7:45, and seated with a frosty in-hand at 8:06.  Not a bad way to start the day.  (We took the train in, so no driving!)

We stayed there for a few hours then headed off to the Sox game.  They were playing some team from some other city (big baseball fan here), and wound up winning, so that was a good outing.  Got to see a young kid a few rows in front of us catch a ground-rule double (it bounced out of play and into the stands, basically right to the kid).  He was pretty stoked as everyone around him kept congratulating him.

The forecast was about as optimal as it could be - well...for us at least.  The runners weren't too crazy about the mid-70's and beaming sunshine, but we loved it.  Sitting in the stands, watching these grown men getting paid millions of dollars to run around and play a childhood game.  Do I sound jealous?  Because I'm jealous!

From there it was off to the new Tilted Kilt Boston.  I'd heard of this chain many times; supposedly a slightly better version of Hooters, as the descriptions went.  Well...we were completely unimpressed.  Service was terrible, food was so-so, and the sights weren't impressive at all.  Am I bashing the ladies?  Not at all, because I know for a fact that I'm no prize.  But when an establishment bills itself has having a certain type of workforce, I think that should be lived up to.  Even the girls who were with us said they were unimpressed.  (See?  We're not complete pigs, we had girls with us!).

From there it was back to the train station for the long, relaxing ride home...

...and the knowledge that we had to be at work all-too-soon.  Nelly had it the worst; he had to be up at 3:30.  I was lucky - I shut my alarm off, skipped the gym, and was able to delay my arrival until 7:30.  Ahhhh, bed.  I love it.

I need to hit the lottery so that every Monday can be like that one.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Return of the Assless [sic] Chaps

I was doing some closet cleaning a few months ago and stumbled upon my old set of chaps.  I wore these things for years and years, spanning from the Shovelhead, all the way up to the Electra Glide (when I finally broke down and bought riding pants).  During that time, I'd had the chaps resized twice because I was doing the powerlifting thing and my legs kept getting bigger.  (I remember the guy at Walter Dyer even commenting that I was going to need my own cow at the rate I was going.)

Anyway, once I stopped powerlifting, I lost a lot of the size so the chaps got loose on me...then I went to the riding pants thing, so I tucked the chaps away....for ages.

Well, this morning as I was getting dressed for the ride in, I was going to go with the usual plan; sweats under the jeans for the ride in (it's 50 out now, but gonna be 75+ on the ride home), but then it hit me...

I should give the chaps a try!  Yeah!  Let's see how they fit!

Well, the waist was disappointing because I wasn't able to draw it as tight as I used to.  And the legs?  Yeah, they fit just fine.  But I haven't been doing any powerlifting so that must mean all the beers and burgers are stacking up just nicely.

And the snaps on the bottom of the legs?  I'd forgotten that 5 out of the total 6 were broken.  So there I was this morning, riding in and right leg bottom (one working snap, at the bottom, thankfully) was holding on for deal life, while the left leg bottom (no working snaps) was flapping in the breeze, slowly causing the zipper to work it's way upward.  By the time I got to work, the thing was unzipped almost to my knee.  (shrug)  They worked well enough to keep my comfy for the ride in.

Maybe it's time I broke down and got myself a new pair of chaps.

The assless kind, of course.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Has Spring Sprung?

They say April showers bring May flowers, and at the rate we've been gettting rain, May is going to have some serious bloomage going on.  But hey, at least it's not snow.

Tomorrow looks to be overcast and then back to the rain, possibly right through the weekend.  So we have that going forus.  :-\

The only other thing I've got for ya is my trusty riding pants suffered a severe blowout on Sunday; one of the leg zippers kept hanging up for no reason that I could discern.  Then the zipped part suddenly pulled apart so I gave up, threw them in the corner, and went with my backup set.  I've owned the backup set for probably three years but have never worn them.  Well...they suck.  The materials they're made of don't allow for an easy donning or doffing, the zippers are tiny, and the waist is not a good design.  (But aside from all of that, they're wonderful.)

I tried working on the old pair last night but then the zipper revealed why it wasn't working correctly; it had split on one side.  When I started futzing around with it, the thing just let go and split apart completely.  So now it looks like I'm stuck with the new pair.

At least until I get fed up and buy another set, anyway.

So...yeah.  Still not much going on but I felt the need to put something up here.

Happy Tuesday