Everyone bailed again

So, the two friends that I helped with their paperwork? One of them had a shotgun and no idea how to use it. For a while she didn't know where it was, either. She liberated it from the house when took her kids and escaped her abusive ex.

Wisdom

She found it, and we all saw it as a great excuse to go shooting again (part of my helping with paperwork also included taking them out shooting so they could get a good idea of what they liked). Once again, everyone bailed on me. Once again all valid reasons (new job - yes go do the thing. Migraine? Yes, this will make it worse and if you're not having fun then why are you here) So as I was ready to call it, another friend was apparently sent to fill in.

Didn't see that coming. Whatever, he's cool and we don't get to hang out much so off we went. Bro is a crack shot and fun fact: we have the same first name (spelled the same, too)

Literally nothing went the way I expected it to but everything was fun anyway.

Everybody bailed

Two of my friends wanted to get a NYS pistol license, and slicing through the bureaucratic nonsense to help them overcome this direct infringement on their constutionally protected rights is something I'm good at.

(The more the clown show in Albany tries to make it harder, the more motivated I am to help people overcome it)

So the gun show was today, and they were going to go with me. Both of them, separately, cancelled on me. Their reasons were valid, but it still left me flying solo. My brother was also going to go, but he kept texting me all morning about one delay after another - right up until he, too, cancelled.

I am an extrovert, I do things with people. I do not count as people.

I still ran into four people I knew, so that counts.

Mass-aaaaahhhhhge

So I had, previous to even planning my hike this past weekend, booked a massage for this afternoon. I couldn't have timed it better, but this gal flat out asked me wtf I did to my calves. (I book her almost monthly, so she definitely has a frame of reference)

I didn't even realize they were that bad until she got to them.

The kneedful

I did another couple of Adirondak high peaks this weekend. Giant Mountain and Rocky Peak Ridge. It's just up. Up up up up up. That's to be expected, but honestly it felt more like spending five hours on a stair climber than hiking.

That's ok, it's actually why I use the stair climber. Torture myself at the gym so my outdoor escapades are fun. So that wasn't really the problem. No, the problem was going down.

When I first moved out to Buffalo to attend UB, I was the type to skip the elevator and just use the stairs. I still do, but back then I did it a lot, and I discovered an odd problem after a while. My knees hurt when going down the stairs. Conventional wisdom suggests that going up would be the difficult part, but this was not the case. The direction, force, etc, were all conspiring against me for a while. I used the elevator when going down even a single flight of stairs, and after the first semester the problem abated. Never came back, and I continued to use the stairs every time (up and down) until I graduated.

Back in June when I hiked Whiteface, we did it backwards. We drove to the peak, then hiked down, then up to Esther, then back up to Whiteface. From the peak, there's a part where you can either take an elevator back down to the parking area (booo) or take the very rough trail down, which is basically bouldering. It was tiring getting back to the peak, but those rocks going down... they hurt. Wow did my knees hurt. I took it nice and slow, carrying myself on the guardrail until I could walk like a normal person again.

By contrast, when I did Cascade and Porter, my knees ached a little during the last hour. Very different strain.

This past trip, it was a mixture of stair climber and bouldering to get to the peaks. It was beautiful, but going down wasn't a challenge - it was a problem. It was a longer hike, but our plans had us getting back to the car three hours before sunset - so nobody had a flashlight. As soon as the decent started, my knees started. The sharp grade combined with the bouldering parts made it almost excruciating. Our speed was cut to less than a half. We timed ourselves and realized that at that pace we were going to make it back to the car well over an hour after sunset. When bouldering with no lights, that's dangerous. I had exactly one dose of Tylenol which took the edge off, and we managed to get down past the boulders and onto just steep trail before we had to pull out our phones to use as flashlights just to make sure we stayed on the trail. I almost used the trekking poles as crutches, but taking the pressure off helped a lot.

My entire body was overdoing it to keep the pressure off my legs, and I ache all over because of it. Good thing I can sit down at work.

Worse than I thought

So back to my grandfather. He was brought into the hospital last week to have the battery changed on his pacemaker. When he was there, some of us went to the senior living center he was in to collect his things because he wasn't going back. Once he was discharged, he was sent to the new place, which was better furnished.

The bad news is that he's showing signs of heart failure. 

Olden anniversary

Last week would have been my grandparents 69th wedding anniversary, were my late grandmother still alive. She passed on back in 2002, so it's been a minute. We talked to my grandfather today, and well, some days his cognitive decline is more apparent than others. I'm not sure he realized it.

He's not been well. It started about two years ago when he wrecked his car, but had no knowledge of it. Later we found him collapsed on the floor. From there, he hasn't been able to live independently. He's been in two full time care facilities, and he needs to be moved to a new one. Not for any reason than the level of care he needs is beyond what the current place is allowed to give.

I'm trying to be optimistic, but it's hard to think that the sharp minded man he once was isn't coming back.

The unregistered mistake

I got a new car a few months ago to replace the one that rotted out from under me.

I hate making car payments.

Let me skip to the part where I'm complaining. My insurance agent fat fingered something, because even though they insisted my car was fully insured with zero gaps, the DMV sent me a nasty letter saying I needed to explain the 29 day lapse in insurance. And if I couldn't explain it, the vehicle registration would be suspended for the same amount of time.

I had to log into the DMV and submit my own proof, but the insurance agent had to do the same. It never happened. I got a further two letters in the mail while I was on vacation, so of course I didn't see them until I got back. Suddenly my cars registration was suspended.

There are too many plate scanners, even attached to cop cars, to risk 30 days in jail and my car being impounded. So there I was unable to drive my own car, that never had any issues, because someone at my insurance agent was, frankly, lazy and/or malicious.

It took some rather aggressive communication with my insurance agents office before the issue was settled. You can always tell they're afraid of me when they send their final email at 5:01 and hit the door running.

The issue is settled, but not after much inconvenience on my part. Meanwhile, they're being replaced. I never changed agents when we left Buffalo, always doing things online anyway. But the absolute slack on their part would never have happened if I could have angrily walked into their office and not left until the issue was settled. Honestly, they were using the distance to their advantage.