Teens, Tennis and Texas Hold 'em

Today marks the one week anniversary of no bad news in the family, which is quite remarkable for us. I don't remember when a whole week went by without one of the kids failing to think before they did something stupid. Sad but true. This week was very different. Maybe it was the one month span since they got out of school for the summer. Maybe they are bored and need attention. It is just shocking that after so many years that they actually want to hang out with their parents. For example now in the evenings my middle son always wants to play cards with out fake poker chips. He has been watching TV where they show world class poker players. They typically play Texas Hold 'em, which is a new game for me, but very easy to learn. In just a week my son has learned how to maintain a poker face, whereas at the start you could obviously tell when he had a good hand as he got excited about it. The nice thing about playing cards is that you talk about life in general since it is not that mentally challenging. The other event I have already mentioned in previous postings, where my oldest and youngest son want to play tennis with me as soon as I get home.

I remember when I was a young teenager and found tennis the greatest thing ever. We would play every day after school for a couple of hours. We rotated which courts we played on just to keep life exciting but normally which ever one we could find that was free. I took tennis quite seriously until I was a sophomore in high school and ended up breaking my right wrist right at the start of tennis season. I wish I could say it was from diving for a tennis ball on match point or some other brave event. However, it actually happened in our high school gym when it was raining outside and we were practicing tennis indoors in the gym. I was only 5'7" and a couple people told me there was no way I could even touch the basketball rim, so of course I had to show them. I took a tennis ball in my hand and ran from half court and dunked the tennis ball to everyone's amazement. The only problem was on my way down I got my hand caught in the basketball net and lost my balance and fell back on my arm. That ended my tennis career. I kind of fell out of sports in general and started a bad life on the wild side. It was not until I got married that I took up the sport again as my wife and I played a couple of hours every day until our oldest son was born. In between high school and my marriage, I grew 6" my freshman year in college so took up basketball which was originally my favorite sport. I lost interest in basketball in high school since I was took short for the team. Even though clearly I was never professional quality at any sport, I certainly enjoyed playing team sports regularly until I turned 40 and decided to retire while I was completely healthy.

The one thing I have done consistently since the seventh grade is run. I ran on the high school cross county team and was the youngest person to ever get a varsity letter at our school as I was a ninth grader. I loved to run on county dirt roads typically 8-10 miles a day. Back then it was important how quickly I ran each mile. I ran to keep in great condition for basketball and tennis. Now I am still running 30 years later as I enjoy it, but don't even care how long it takes me to run each mile. My only goal now is to be running when I turn 50 years old.

NC state parking

Last Sunday I managed to get the boys up out of bed at 9am and we were on the road by 10pm heading west on I-40. The goal was to spend the day in Hanging Rock State Park. I have wanted to go there ever since we first moved to NC many years ago. I read about it in the local newspaper in a Sunday morning newspaper travel special. For some reason we never made it there until now. I decided I needed a special event on the day before I turned 50 years old. Two months ago we were close to making it as we went to Stone Mountain State Park with hopes in also making it to Hanging Rock but that did not happen. After five hours hiking in Stone Mountain we just did not have the energy to go to Hanging Rock even though it was only 30 minutes away.

This time we had my son's GPS to help guide us to the state park. The route was not obvious at all and not the way I would have picked. I had driven on Highway 52 a couple of times which goes right by Pilot Mountain State Park and I saw signs for Hanging Rock right next to it. I was kind of surprised at the circuitous route the GPS suggested. It took us right to the main gate which was quite far from Highway 52. In fact we never saw Pilot Mountain while up on the Hanging Rock so it was much farther than I thought. We even spoke of going to Pilot Mountain afterwards and saw a glimpse of it as we drove a different way out of the park.



It was worth every minute of the 3 hour drive to get there as I enjoying climbing up the steep trail to the Hanging Rock. We also followed the park map and visited all of the waterfalls on the park grounds. We hiked around five miles all together. The weather was absolutely perfect for such a day's activities. I took along our digital camera as I have become quite addicted to since I used it so freely in India. As long as it is set to "auto" I am good. While in India because I took it in and out of my backpack frequently, I found the dial was often changed to some other setting which ended up taking a horrible photo. I do not pretend to be a photographer, but that "auto" setting was made for me. We were all pleasantly surprised to find many photographic moments around the waterfalls, which was an added bonus.

These are the photos from that trip:

http://50yearadventure.com/HangingRockStatePark/

Remembering in Tears

So it is Christmas and time for me to reminisce about Christmas' past as this is my 48^th Christmas. The up and coming year will be a year to remember enduring feats. My sister is turning 50; I will be married 25 years; two sons will be out of the home (hopefully) and other personal landmarks.

Last night I watched It's a Wonderful Life on TV with my wife. I think I had seen it when I was a just a young whipper snapper, as a couple of parts seemed familiar. Watching that movie made me become nostalgic as we just gotten back from eating at Olive Garden for my son's 17^th birthday, when I turned on the TV. My son told me twice during the evening how much he liked that movie. They just don't make them like that any more - I am talking about both my son and the movie!

This has been an emotional couple of weeks for me. It started off last weekend when I rented an Indian movie called BLACK, which I had watched on the plane to India in February of this year. I cried like a baby on the plane and was hoping no one was watching this American man with tears running down his face. India has a way of invoking a broad range of emotions in anyone. I must say that in the privacy of our bedroom, the tears on the plane were nothing compared to my uncontrollable sobing. I tried to turn over so my wife would not see a grown man cry. It amazes me that a movie can invoke such emotions. In this case, the subject matter helps as the movie is an Indian version of the life of Helen Keller. I remember hearing about her when I was a boy. Reading her story now reminds me how little I do with what GOD has given me and how she overcame such huge obstacles.

The next crying event of this week was a CD my wife gave me to listen to in my car driving to work. I thought it was going to be something to stimulate me to think and to challenge me to be a better person. It turns out my wife wanted to embarrass me in public as I was crying huge tears in my car! Just a newer case of someone doing amazing things with their life as David Ring has Cerebral Palsy and yet he did not just give up, he travels all over the USA as a motivational speaker. He motivated me to cry that is for sure. Such an amazing story of how someone can take the little GOD gave them and use it for great good. The CD I was listening to is available on-line at Focus on the Family as a 3 part series called "Victorious Living".

Lastly, a good friend of mine, sent me a YouTube video of Evel Knievel speaking at Robert Schuller's church. I remember when I was a young kid how I marvelled at Evel Knievel's daring antics. A couple of years ago we saw his son at the NC State fair jump a bunch of vehicles just as his father had done many years before. I had anyways heard Evel Knievel liked to live life in the fast lane or cars and women. It warmed my heart to hear that in his last moments of life on this earth he wanted to follow in his Creator's footsteps. I was even more amazed at the comments in this YouTube video as they are people that really take offense to spiritual things. Reminds me of how I used to be many years ago, but that will have to wait for another day.

not the week we planned

This weekend we had a great plan all setup. My mother was supposed to come from Arizona for my sister's 50^th birthday. We were going to drive up to the motherland, beautiful Virginia, for a getaway weekend. Sometimes you just cannot plan for the chain of events that occur.

Last weekend I took our van to get the oil changed and in anticipation of the big weekend I wanted to be all set. I told the Meineke man that I had seen stains on the driveway and to make sure the leaks did not come from our van. When I checked back in with him after an hour, he showed me how the radiator had a crack in it. I asked for a quote on the work and he said $850. That was odd to me since a couple of years ago I had the radiator fixed in my son's car for $400. I immediately went to a good friend who has his own car mechanic shop and asked him to check it for me. He told me I was the first person to complain about the high price at Meineke and he would find out the cost and get back with me on Monday. Sure enough, he quoted a little over $400. Since I was taking off from work on Friday, we scheduled that day for van radiator overhaul knowing I would be all set for the weekend trip to Virginia. One other odd thing about radiators... In the good old days you could fix radiators by pouring a solution into them and it would clog the small leaks in no time. These days of advanced technology, radiators are plastic, which means if the crack you have to replace them. When you get a crack the cold to hot temperature changes make them fail even faster. Sounds like progress to me. Except for the fact that plastic is lighter, but then again our van gets 14 miles/gallon, so I am not sure that lighter radiator is helping.

On Tuesday night my mother called and said she saw the forecast for ice and snow and extremely low temperatures and cancelled her flight. Which was pretty disappointing, but she had a cold recently and was afraid the cold might trigger more sickness. Our well intended plans were starting to fall apart.

On Wednesday our dishwasher stopped working. We had this same thing happen a couple of years ago and when I tried to find someone to fix it, they all told me to forget it as the dishwashers are self contained and it was cheaper to buy a new one that fix an existing one. And guess what? The dishwasher is plastic! Two plastic failures in the same week. We let the completely full dishwasher sit, until Friday. I took off the water line to check to make sure the water was flowing, which it was, so it was indeed the motor inside the plastic housing. I turned off the hot water shutoff value and sat down to read the newspaper. My daughter came down to cook her morning eggs and yelled to me to come over as water was flowing on the kitchen floor. I opened the cabinets under the sink and saw a lake had formed, which I cleaned up quickly. I thought that was odd, but checked the hot water line and it was indeed off. I left the find a new water hose, just in case the one had a leak in it. The odd thing was the length from the hot water line to the dishwasher was 10 feet. They only make dishwasher cords in 4 and 6 foot lengths. It took 4 stores to find the connections I needed to get it to work with a 10 foot ice maker cord. When I got back my daughter again told me a flood was happening in the kitchen. I checked the hot water shutoff value again and this time being wiser, I turned on the sink faucet cold water and saw water pouring out of the hot water dishwasher connection, which was plastic of course, connected to a PVC plastic water line. The custom builder who built our house liked to make sure everything was custom built!

On Saturday morning we picked up our fixed van for the bargain price of $420 and thanks to our corrupt Meineke shop, my friend had made some money. Since snow and ice were in the weather forecast we put off our trip to Virginia for one more day. Now that we had a van we could go find a new dishwasher. My wife and I checked every store we could find as we typically like to buy scratch-n-dent or discontinued high ticket items. We found a high end model normally selling for $498 which was marked down to $298, which was cheaper than almost any other one we could find. We brought it home and when I tried to install it I found that the connectors I got the day before were not right. Off to my favorite home improvement store as there was a plumber who worked there who had always helped me in the past. He fixed me up and by 8:30pm last night I had the dishwasher working. The place we bought it said the really high end dishwashers are stainless steel and are very quiet, we chose the quiet plastic model because of cost!

This morning we woke up to my daughter vomiting, which she has continued for 3 hours. Sounds like that seals our Virginia plans. What sounded like such a good idea has not worked out and we are $750 poorer as well. What a week!

home repairs

One of the nice things about having a home is that you have a yard and some land that you can call yours, or in our case we like to think it is ours but actually the bank owns it for us. One the other side is it means you have extra headaches when things break down.

Last weekend our upstairs A/C broke as the water pipe got clogged and when that happens an automatic switch turns off the A/C, which is a good thing as you don't want water running through your ceiling. I called my favorite repair man at Bar-Co mechanical, who happens to be a close friend who I can trust with my $200 that I handed over to him. While we were amusing ourselves at King's Dominion, he fixed our A/C for us so the house was back to the normal coolness when we returned. It always seems like something is in need of repair.

For the last three weeks we have done without a clothes dryer. The button to turn on the dryer did nothing at all. I searched on-line for a timer as that was the indication a bunch of self-repair web sites noted could be the problem. I bought a timer as I could not locate one locally. We waited for it to come and last weekend while we were away, my eldest son took it upon himself to try to install the new timer. When we got home, although we were glad to find a cool house, my bubble quickly burst when he told me he could not get the dryer back together. I was pretty angry as we had waited two weeks already for the timer and now it looked like I would have to call the local appliance repair man. After putting the dryer back together as best I could, I finally gave up and called M&H Appliance. They came out at the first of the week and told me the motor had failed and we had put the timer together correctly. At least we had one thing going for us. I then tried to locate a motor for our dryer. I called Maytag to find the part number, but they would not give it to me, even though I had just the week before called them to get the part number for the timer! I called a local parts distributer, who gladly gave me the part number even though I did not buy it from them. I searched the web and found a new one for $75, whereas from Maytag or locally the same part was $150. The motor arrived yesterday and was waiting for me as my wife announced when I got home. I think she was tired of taking the laundry to the nearby laundry mat every day! I called the man who had come to our house from M&H and he told me how to take the dryer apart to get to the motor, which was nice of him as I had paid him $50 to diagnose the problem, but this was free advice. After a couple of hours, a couple trips to Home Depot and my daughters help for a couple of hours, we got it back together and working by 8:30pm. I already have the next problem waiting for me.

As I crawled under the house to check on the dryer exhaust vent I saw water standing under the house. I wanted to finish the dryer so continued on that task, but after we were done I went back under the house. The downstairs A/C is leaking under the house, so I have to call Bar-Co back today and tell them I have a new emergency for them to take care for me.

Such things remind me of other long term problems we have suffered as home buyers:

1) When hurricane Fran hit this area in 1996, we lost our power for one week. That was not much fun as it was in the first week of September and it was pretty hot at the time. There was nothing we could do except wait for the power company to fix the electricity. After a week of being hot, we went to Greensboro for a night to get a good night's sleep in A/C.

2) We bought a new refrigerator when we switched to a larger house and then it failed within a couple of months. We called for a replacement and it took two weeks to get another one. We used a large cooler packed with ice instead of a refrigerator. They did give us $100 to buy a small refrigerator but that can only hold so much as it was the size most college dorm students use.

3) During the last drought in NC our large-bore shallow water well went dry. That was a pretty big deal, so I called a well driller and forked out $4500 to drill a 400 foot deep well. It only took a couple of days for him to complete the work.

4) Our heat pumps went bad in that same house and since they were 25 years old, there was no hope in repairing them. That little inconvenience cost me almost $10,000 as the whole heat and A/C systems for upstairs and downstairs had to be replaced. Although done quickly the lost of that much money hurt.

There are many, many more house repairs over the years, but those are all of the major ones I can think of that had a lasting impression on the family and myself.

fight over the backyard

I have been in a fight over who owns the yard behind our house for the last month. Two weeks ago, I lost the battle for that day. Yesterday I returned to the battle field as I want to win the war. Vines have been trying to kill my tress, but yesterday I taught them that I am in it for the long haul. Two weeks ago as I was moving the vines I had removed from some of the trees to a brush pile, I tripped on a stump, which I think was trying to get me back for hurting it's brethren. The farmer who originally owned the land, deposited a pile of glass and metal right where I fell and that is why I think the stump tried to get me. I cut my arm pretty bad and had to rush to the local Fuquay Urgent Care, where I was seen by a great doctor who gave me 14 stitches. I had a "nice" tetanus shot, which will keep me out of harms way in the battle zone for the next 10 years.

I have three different vines trying to kill my trees. The most hasty of all is the green briers. I have seen this enemy before growing up in Virginia. The bright green stems and the long yellowish thorns give them away. They really climb up a tree and they once they reach the top, the grow leaves and have no thorns. The second enemy is wild grapevine. It does not have thorns, but it makes up for it in the shear volume of vines it grows from one root. Once they reach the top of brushes or small trees they pretty much choke the poor neighbor to death. I actually have found a couple of grapevines 2" in diameter, which reach to the top of 100' trees. The last one I have been fighting is a hard enemy to conquer, it is Carolina jasmine. It looks so pretty this time of year with its yellow flower, but it really puts the choke hold on small bushes. It wraps itself around the trunk and a strangle hold. It you try to pull it off, then it will either break off or snap the tree or brush. I have one 50' tree that it crawled all the way up and made a cork screw bite into the tree half way up. It made sure if it ever died in battle it would leave a mark to be remembered.

For now I have 1/3 of the area cleared of vines and it is looking very nice. In other areas I am not going to clear I have wild raspberries and blackberries, so I am forced to leave the nasty vines alone to I can have the berries from the good vines. I also a have a couple of poison ivy vines, but I have to leave those alone as I am highly allergic to them, but that is another story...