Something Stupid, definitely not epic

I drive a 1994 Nissan Altima. It has 216k miles on it. It has been a great car, but I have also learned how to fix a lot of things due to it's age. The thing is that I like solving mechanical problems more than I like driving new cars. Full disclosure also requires me to state that I hate debt more than fixing old cars as well. So far this car has been fantastic. We bought it for 6.1k in 1998 and have spent no more than a couple hundred dollars per year fixing it since then. I love it I really do.

So anyway lately it has been stuttering and hesitating in when it is cold in the morning or in the evening. My wife's car had a similar problem a few years ago and it was her spark plugs, so that was the first thing I replaced. It had been about six years since I last did it and spark plugs are cheap and easy to install on this car.

Well that didn't fix the car so next I replaced the fuel filter. This job is a bit messy, well actually it's very clean due to the fact that gasoline is a very good solvent. Getting the filter out of this car only requires the removal of a couple of screws and the loosening of the hose clamps. Then it's man against beast to get those darn hoses off. Cars never have a lot of working room these days so all I could do was hold on to the fuel hoses with my dainty little finger tips and twist the filter with my woman hands.

I am not trying to be offensive to women. There are many women with much stronger hands than I have. Probably a good half of them in fact. The sad truth is that I was born with slender feminine lady like hands fingers and wrists. It's kind of embarrassing to be able to put a man's ring on my thumb and have it fall off, but that's what usually happens when I try on other men's rings just for the fun of it. My hands are no good for separating stuck fuel hoses from their filter. They are quite good for more precise jobs like nose picking though.

Anyway after about 20 minutes of struggling I finally got the filter out. It was dripping gas so I set it on top of a bucket. I installed the new filter and turned on the car. There was gas dripping everywhere, so I turned off the car, depressurized the fuel system and re-set the hose position on the filter. Now everything was set.

I drove the car to a meeting. It worked fine although the problem is not fixed yet. I came home and got my car fixing manual and sat down in the garage to read about what else it could possibly be. Unfortunately I sat down on the bucket that had the old filter on it. I jumped up, but it was too late. My pants immediately soaked through to my bottom with gasoline. The old filter had left a pool of gas on the bucket.

I figured this was not a big deal since I had had my hands covered in gasoline not two hours ago when I was changing the darn thing. So I put a couple of rags on the bucket to soak up the gas and sat back down to read. Only a couple of minutes later I realized again that I had made a poor decision. What I didn't know is that bottom skin is considerably more sensitive than hand skin.

At first I would describe the sensation as a bit uncomfortable. I tried to walk it off, you know stand up and sort of fan my loose pants, try to get it to dry out and evaporate. It seemed like it might work.

It didn't. I realized rather suddenly that my butt felt like it was on fire. I wasn't sure if I should jump in the pool or try to sit on ice cubes. I went in the house where only the two oldest kids were awake and started walking around very quickly looking for a solution. My first thought was diaper rash ointment. I looked in the diaper area, but struck out. Our baby is 3 and only needs a diaper for nighttime, he hasn't had a rash in ages.

Next I went to my running paraphernalia shelf. I found Vaseline and body glide. I knew that one of those might work but I knew this was no ordinary chafing that I'd gotten myself into, so I kept looking.

By now the boys are asking me clarifying questions like, "Your butt is on fire from gasoline?"

"Yes." I replied.

"How did it catch fire?" They asked.

"It's not really on FIRE." I said. "It just feels like it is burning up cause I got gasoline on my Bottom."

"Was the gas from the car?"

"Yes."

"How did it get on you? Is the car leaking gasoline?"

"No. I sat in a puddle of gasoline. Do you know where the Desitin is?"

"No. What would happen if you lit a match by your bottom?"

"Nothing. There's not that much gas, most of it's gone."

"Why is it burning then?"

"It is a stinging burn, like a rash or something."

"Well why did you sit in it?"

"I didn't do it on purpose. I sat in it accidentally, and I didn't think it would hurt because it doesn't hurt to get it on your hands, really."

"Why does it hurt your bottom more than your hands?"

"Because bottoms are more sensitive than hands. That's why we spank bottoms. Instead of hands."

"You spank bottoms because it hurts more?"

"No." Backpeadling. "We spank bottoms with our hands because a bottom is a big soft target and although it hurts, it doesn't do any permanent damage, and it needs to hurt or else it wouldn't work as a deterrant. Right?"

Ignoring my brief treatise on spankings and jumping back to the subject at hand. "Well if you did sit in gas and then lit a match would it catch your bottom on fire?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to do that."

"What if someone poured gas on their pants in the back and then got a match and lit it and put it by the back of their pants?"

"Well they catch fire, and burn themselves. Does mom keep the Desitin with the other skin medicines?"

"I don't know. But what if someone did do that, would they have to go to the hospital?"

"Yes, they would end up with severe burns and probably lose much of the skin on their back side. It would be very painful and sad and bad. But I don't have that problem. Oh here it is. My butt is on fire." Applying the Desitin, "Ahh, I hope this helps. Boys, never ever sit in a puddle of gasoline. Aahh. Move over I need to wash my hands."

The moral of the story is that gasoline is a solvent and should be washed off sensitive parts of the skin as soon as possible. I really only got relief after I showered, which was about 20 minutes after the Desitin.

Definitely Stupid.

Christmas Parade

It's been a while, but I never promised that this would be a regular thing...

My family and I recently took a little trip. We are fans of a little town here is Arizona called Prescott. It is located about an hour and half North and West of Phoenix. More north than west I think. Prescott is also at an elevation of about 5000+ ft, so it's weather is quite different than the weather we get here at the lower elevations of the Southwestern United States. That's a lot of capital letters, and I don't know if I got them all right, but I'm going to keep going.

Anyway, we are fans. Prescott has several annual parades. We have gone to the Fourth of July Parade for three years running, and we love it. It is great to get out of the heat of Tucson and go up into the mountains with the pine trees, and the cool days and cooler nights. My father has a little and fairly rustic cabin there. It isn't one of these super fancy deals, but it's got running water and electricity, and satellite TV, which I don't like very much, but that's a subject for some other blog. The point is that it's nice.

We go to the parade, it's very patriotic, and pro America, and we really love it. Then we go hiking and crawdad fishing, and we play in the forest and at the park. At the end we watch the fireworks then we go back to Tucson when we feel like it. We like it so much that this year we decided to try the Christmas day parade.

We did some research and found out from my sister that it's awesome. It's a fun little parade then they light the town square with Christmas lights, then they have a little museum of living history that does some traditional Christmas stuff. We even found out that there is a big Ginger bread house display/contest at a conference center there that we could go look at. We were really excited about this, and looked forward to it for a long time.

My wife as usual did the lions share of the packing and preparation. My only part really was loading the car, and making sure it worked, and doing whatever else she asked me to specifically do, but really she is the magic behind pretty much all of our vacations. We couldn't leave the night before the parade, but figured that was OK since it didn't start till 1:00 p.m. So we got up around 6:00 and started driving the 3.5 hours to get there well in time to see the sights. All in all it was uneventful until we got about 2o miles from our destination, then it started to become what I'll call a bit epic.

In most parts of Arizona it does not snow. Because of this most cars in Arizona are not prepared to drive in snowy conditions. Also because of the lack of consistent snow in the higher up parts of Arizona most cities where it does occasionally snow have limited snow clearing abilities. I say this because at about 20 miles away from Prescott, it started snowing.

This was not that big yet because the snow was not really sticking. But we were traveling up hill. By the time we go to presort the snow was sticking, but it wasn't too thick yet, so we were able to successfully park the car and start bundling up the kids.

One of my kids, not pictured immediately started walking around in his regular shoes in the snow after we parked. Thirty Minutes later he was complaining about his feet being wet, and we did not have a back up pair. He spent most of the parade inside a store called Edelweiss.

The rest of us placed our folding chairs close together and our umbrellas over our heads facing the wind and settled in for the long haul.

It was cold and it was getting colder. It started snowing a lot. At first it was the kind of snow that makes little tiny balls and sort of rolls all over the ground and off clothes, but it also falls pretty fast. This was fine except when the umbrella shakes at the wrong time and your clothes get covered in snow. Later this snow turned into the light flaky kind that drifts slowly to the ground.

The parade was fabulous. There were 87 entries. I kept trying to get kids to throw snowballs at me from the floats, but this only worked once. I was amazed at marching bands. I have to believe that that band from Tucson had a couple of casualties. Usually it's the flutes or the clarinets. For some reason they are always the first to tap out. It's never the Tubas. There must be something exhausting about holding a small instrument in your hands.

I was also glad to see that the historical recreation societies were dressed warmly. There was one float in the summer and in this parade that I call the slutty old ladies float. Thankfully they were not like the Polar bear swimmers.

After about 60 parade entries I couldn't feel my toes. This reminded me of the Grand Canyon as many things do these days. I had major blisters on that day, and the sensation of being aware of my toes was a nice reminder. I decided to get up and start running up and down the street. Luckily there were only about 20 spectators so no body got too upset about my high stepping.

Lila also ran with me which was cute until I stopped and turned around only to run right into her and almost fall down myself. I am sure I will miss those moments.

Eventually the parade ended, and the snow picked up. Prescott is hilly and on the walk back to our car we saw many vehicles having serious trouble getting anywhere. I am not sure if it is the tires or the drivers or the lack of plows. My guess is that it's a combination of all of it, but the roads were dangerous that day my friend.

We tried to go on a road that would lead to my dad's cabin, which was farther up the mountain, but we couldn't get up the small hill. I had to do a Rockford Files type sliding turn to go from reverse to forward just to get back to somewhere flat. We aborted the cabin mission and decided to head toward home.

We were able to stop at the convention center. We kept hoping that it would clear up, but it never did. The convention center had a dedicated plow driving up and down their long driveway so there was no trouble getting there. But getting anywhere else was dicey. Our van kept sliding whenever there was any acceleration in any direction. Turning, Going, Stopping, it was all CRAZY. The traffic in Prescott is crazy as well. We were going down the mountain, but the cars coming up were having an even tougher time. Many many cars were off the road, and there were many times that I was at the mercy of physics. My Car was going to keep going till it stopped and there was nothing I could do about it. I was along for the ride. Luckily we didn't hit anything.

Why is it that I turn the radio down when driving gets stressful?

The Ginger Bread houses were cool, but the old guys with the trains in a circle on a table were cooler. Jack's head is about table height right now and he was drawn to the trains like a moth to the flame. He did not want to leave and cried when we finally tore him away.

The hour and a half back to Phoenix took 3 hours. We went to see the lights at the Mesa Arizona Mormon temple. It was fun and beautiful. Then we went to my dad's house in Chandler. all in all we spent about 7 hours in the car that day. We got to play in the snow and then remember what it is like to drive in the snow, and be glad we live where we live. I'm telling you the summers in Tucson aren't that bad.

It was a fun day, and this is a wordy post. I'm still trying to figure out how to be less verbose. Here's a video or 2

Trenching with a shovel

The deal has always been that after the Grand Canyon I am not allowed to do anything epic until the yard has been landscaped. I agreed to this because I value my marital happiness. It was interesting that after the Grand Canyon run, actually leading up to the run I didn't feel like doing anything. I was burned out, period. All I wanted to do was sleep. But then that is also how I felt when I was hiking out of that cursed hole.

Since then I have decided to start landscaping the yard. My yard is a little on the intimidating side. We have a small house on 4 acres and there are dying plants everywhere. The previous owners planted about 80 oleander in a 300 foot long row around our yard, and they had mature eucalyptus trees, and a couple of pine trees on the south side of the house.

Since we moved in Two Pine trees have died and 1 of the huge eucalyptus succumbed to extreme dehydration.

The fact is that if you have small children and you don't have an automatic watering system in for plants and you live in the south west, your plants will die. So that's what is happening here. It's sad really, but the truth is that I have enjoyed running two marathons and running through the grand canyon, and riding hundreds of miles on my bike with my kids more than I like having mature trees. And to be fair, my wife and kids also could have watered them, but they were doing something else instead.

Anyway I decided to start landscaping. Really what I should have started with was buying a tractor, but I didn't. I don't have the money for that so I got a shovel and went to work. I wanted to start doing the watering system, but I haven't figured out what exactly I need to buy yet, so I bought pipe to put in a trench to move the water overflow for rain gutters and the washing machine from the middle of our yard to outside the yard.

This requires a trench about 100 feet long and I figure about 9 or 10 inches wide. Not a small trench for a back yard, and I dug it by hand. I know many people who think that is stupid. I think it is epic. The truth is that I like digging trenches. It feels like I am doing something painful and creative at the same time. For all the problems in my head that I deal with on a daily basis, I really find clarity when I am physically exhausted. My lower back is starting t adjust because I have been abusing it on a regular basis. The only problem is going to be what to do when the trenching is done. Actually I'm not too worried because there are hundreds more feet to trench still.

I think it will be nice when it is done, but that will be a while. Perhaps at least I'll be able to get enough done that I can go to the Grand Canyon again sometime soon.

Here's a video of the trench.

r2r2r4m

So some of my friends and I decided to go to the Grand Canyon and hike across it and back. Before we went I was sitting at work wondering how much elevation gain there was and so I typed "rim2rim2rim elevation" in google and blog came up that had the information I was looking for. After the fact I went to the blog and posted a comment

"I just hiked that a couple of weeks ago. It took 21 hours walking. If you run It will be faster. Good luck."

The blog owner is a girl named Jen in Virgina Beach. Actually I am not sure where that is, but I know it's flat. Anyway she responded to my post and since then I have been thinking about starting a blog. As with most things I start this one will probably not last, but we'll see. Here is the email exchange with Jen, which I think pretty much sums up my experience.

From Jen:

Hi Jimmy,

Thanks for the heads up! I think we're going to try and take in the
scenery too.... run but stop and smell the roses kind of thing ;) How
was the trip?! Do you do stuff like that often?

Jen

My Reply...

Jen,

The trip was Epic. I don't do stuff like this often. That is the
farthest I've ever gone in one day. My brother and I ran the Sedona
marathon earlier this year in 4:30, so we aren't fast, but while we
were training with a couple of other friends, we would often discuss
Born to Run. During one of the discussions one of our friends Matt
said we should do the r2r2r. He had hiked r2r before and in the period
of confusion that often comes with reading that book he thought it was
a good idea to go r2r2r. Admittedly I agreed with him. I said "It
would be Epic!" We all made the agreement that if Matt wanted to do it
we would be with him. We would do it "For Matt!"

That was our motto.

We trained by continuing to run a few times during the week, and on
the weekends we alternated between doing Wasson Peak trail (5 miles up
about 2kft elevation change) and Wrightson peak (5 miles up and about
4.5kft elevation change). We even did wrightson peak 2 times in a row
on a couple of different occasions. We would hile up and run down. We
thought we were ready.

One of my friends training with us, Todd, ran the Sedona marathon in
3:25 ( I give that information because it becomes some what important
later). Anyway Todd and I work with a lady named Julie Arter, and we
asked her about r2r2r. She has run int 22 times, once she did it in 10
hours, or less I think. Anyway Julie had us thinking it would take
around 15-18 hours. We were excited and nervous, but talking to Julie
was very comforting. She made it sound like it would be great.

The run itself was... well it was more of a walk. We left at 3:00 in
the morning, and did the bright angel trail. We were going to run
down, but ended up walking till it got light. Another of the group
which had grown to 8 by now kept falling down when we ran, so we
slowed it down for him. We jogged the flat parts when it was light
then started the trek up. It was a lot harder than I thought it would
be.

We did take a lot of pictures. We also stopped and talked to a lot of
people. My brother was telling people Matt was a cancer survivor so
that's why we were doing it. People ate it up, and it is technically
true, although not in the sense that people think of when you say you
are doing something for a cancer survivor. Anyway our group slowed
down considerably on the way up to the north rim. Once we got there we
ate a huge lunch and rested for and hour and a half.

We felt great after that. Except for the guy who was falling down that
morning. His IT band was hurting like crazy. He could have bailed out,
but he wanted to finish, so my brother and I walked 23.5 back with him
up bright angel, and Todd and Matt ran on ahead.

The Canyon is beautiful. I mean really amazing. The trail is well
marked, and there is lots of water. It was really fun until the last 4
or 5 miles. Actually for me it wasn't that fun walking with the hurt
guy when I wanted to run, but by the last 4 or 5 miles, I was glad he
was hurt, because I didn't feel like running. The hike out was never
ending. I wanted to lay down and go to sleep, but the others didn't so
we kept walking.

I didn't get to see the south rim in the daylight, which is a little
dissappointing. The south rim to me is a small patch of light on the
ground a few feet ahead of my feet. The last 1.5 miles I hated the
Grand Canyon. It was the main thing I didn't like about Arizona. I
wanted to fill it in like a land fill. I sat down and went on a
tirade. I swore that this was the stupidest thing I'd ever done in my
entire life. I also swore that I would never do it again, and I
promised to believe my wife when she said that something was a bad
idea, all along she said I was crazy. I think she was being nice not
to use the word stupid because that's the conclusion I came to.

In fact everyone except for Todd, said that it was a dumb idea at the
end of the hike. Even Matt was apologizing to all of us for organizing
the trip. Everyone but Todd did not want to be there at the end.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks later. My feet are still healing
from the epic blisters I have, But I want to do it again. Todd and I
often discuss how we would do it differently.

I would run more in training. I would also bring better socks. I would
try to do it so that I could see the south rim during daylight.
Otherwise, it was awesome. It was also terrible. On one hand I think
we should fill it in, on the other hand I am probably going to do it
again.

Todd wants to do it in april. I have some home improvement projects to
do first, so probably not, but maybe you'll see him that weekend. We
saw one other group doing r2r2r, 3 girls and an older gentleman. It
was kind of cool to see other insane people on the smae day. Actually
there was more than just them doing r2r2r.

You are going to have a memorable experience. Sorry for being verbose.
I do that with email sometimes.
Maybe I should have posted this on your blog.

Good Luck again,

-Jimmy

Full disclosure also requires that I upload a video of me sitting down in the parking lot on the south rim waiting to be picked up after finishing the hike.