Busy, Busy, Busy

Well, it's only Wednesday, and it already feels like it should be Friday. We've been short people at work some of last week and now again this week, so I've been running around trying to keep ahead of all of the jobs that I get to keep doing, and add to them more as we have Jeff leaving us to go get his award for SD Sportscaster of the year. So, I'll be even more busy here the last two days of the week. Today is also the last day of April, which means that the opening to the water sports season is only 23 days away now, I can almost feel it. Double check with me on Friday when its snowing at 38 degrees. Stupid winter.

I'm also hoping the snow does not wipe out the soccer plans for the weekend. I'm supposed to be in Mitchell for 2 days for a large number of games.

Got a chance to watch the play that our class did my senior year of high school last night. It was a good time. Of course, our class did it better, but I thought it was a great job by the group, with several outstanding performances. I caught myself a couple of times quoting along as lines came back to me, but I did enjoy the evening. One disappointment to me though was the use of microphones. When we did it we were quite loud, and didn't use them. It was annoying at times when they would cut out or not get turned on in time, but ohh well. Guess I'm just too much from the old school of less technology (as I type it here on the blog). Anyhow, I'm going to get back to operating my Twins game, and keep my countdown calender going to Memorial Day. I can't wait!

The Weather is confused....and baseball

Ok, it's the last full week of April, and the weather is just going nuts. We might get more snow....Seriously, winter is just making me angry. One cold day, of 38 degrees, and then we warm back up into the 50s. As long as next weekend is better, I might get over it. Next weekend I'll open the soccer reffing season that will be around most of the summer. Also, next weekend we get to see a pro baseball game in Huron. The term "Pro" meaning these guys do actually get paid to play.

Speaking of Pro Baseball, good thing we went to see the game last weekend, and didn't see a game like today's. Liriano has been extremely poor since coming up the majors, and we got to see two young pitchers put together two nice outings last weekend.

During the time, we got to witness foul balls injuring fans. I'd not seen that before at a game, and this time got once in each game we saw. The one on Saturday was in the first inning, when a ball was fouled down into the crowd, and 3 MEN ducked out of the way and the ball smoked an older lady sitting there. Nice work wusses....way to help protect the elderly lady. It was embarrassing for those guys, and it wouldn't have even hurt that long to just stick the hand out and knock the ball down. The second day, you felt bad for the girl this happened to, but still, it was her fault. A high foul pop quite a ways down the first base line and not too far from our section. This 12-14 year old girl decided while her friends were scattering to get out of the way, she was gonna try to catch it. Mission half accomplished. She managed to slow the ball down with her hand enough that it bounced only one row down instead of the 15 rows it would have if she'd have let it hit the cement on the stadium. That ended in several tears and a trip to the EMT station. It wasn't a great weekend for the fans, and please think about the results of trying to barehand one of those foul balls. I'll leave you with one of Boston's finest here and a foul ball moment he'll never live down, ever....Click Here to see the video.(Due to Copyright Material by stupid MLB, this video doesn't get posted very many places.)

Easing the Pain at the Pump....

The past weekend trip to Minneapolis proved to be a fun time. I didn't doubt that it would, but I wasn't looking forward to the money that would be spent in travel. Well, here is how it broke down, and actually wasn't a painful time at all.

I made it my goal to run some tests with renewable fuels, and the efficiency of two things:
1.) Fuel with 30% Ethanol, and
2.) Reduced speeds to conserve fuel.

Background Info:
I drive a 2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer LS 4x4 (very similar to the one in this stock photo here). It has the standard Vortec 4.2 Liter inline 6 cylinder engine.

The Results:
On the way out, I stopped in Clark, SD to put in a 30% blend of ethanol. I love stopping here, and I think I've mentioned before that my vehicle seems to run far better on this blend of fuel than any other. So, I fueled up and set off, with this part of the journey also testing the milage at 55 mph the entire way from Clark, SD to Minneapolis, MN. The journey ended up taking between 1 to 1.5 additional hours because of the reduced speed. When we arrived just outside the Cities, I found that in that distance covered, 220 miles, I had gotten a personal record with the Trailblazer, 24 mpg. My friend Alan, who made the trip with me, did the math for me and figured that opposed to normal mileage calculations of around 20 mpg, this was a savings of about $10.00. We both agreed that this was good, yet the money and the time was not worth the trouble if I could average 20 mpg on the way home at the speed limits. (It should also be noted that the entire way, I was dealing with a light cross wind, which probably did reduce the milage some.)

So, after the weekend in the Cities, it was time to return home. Alan had done some driving around Minneapolis, so he had put an additional 160 miles on, and had gotten an impressive 19.5 mpg driving in the city. Alan also decided to attempt to be a blender pump himself when refueling, and screwed up (or in his version of the story "enhanced") the ratio, so we ended up having closer to 40+% ethanol blend instead. He did not tell me this however until we were about half way home, and it was evident that no warning lights or problems were going to occur, so I had no basis for being upset. On the journey home, we abided by speed limits (or close to, as I was somewhat anxious to just get home) and found that milage from Minneapolis, MN to Clark, SD was higher than I expected: 21.5 mpg. I was quite impressed by this, and was fighting a much stiffer cross wind than on the way out, and I was very pleased by the results.

Conclusion:
Overall, we ended up on the entire trip of approximately 770 miles, we got 23.5 miles per gallon average. Anytime the milage climbs over the 20 mpg mark, I'm happy, so I was extremely happy. I was extremely impressed with the higher blends of ethanol, and will be continuing to use them and maybe even blend them myself if need be in the future. But, I personally also concluded that the milages saved going 55mph is not worth the savings of $10 over 250 miles and 5.5 hours.

Disclaimer:
This is not a scientific test, and all conclusions are my personal conclusions.

Yesterday's Post

Well, they've done it again. Yesterday's post and the picture (mainly the picture) are the main focus here as gas has hit possibly the all time high here in Huron. $3.39 for the 10% Ethanol, and $3.46 for Unleaded. When will it all stop. I get a kick out of the government too, as they believe that sending us $600 is going to stimulate the economy and get us out of a recession. Well, sorry, that's not even gonna come close. In my opinion, keep the $600 and get the price of gas down $1.50 and you'll see a stronger economy again. My concern is that diesel has now risen well above $4.00 a gallon, and soon the truckers are going to have had enough and will shut the engine's down, and that will be the end. Once they strike, we will all suffer and pay premium prices for everything we need to survive. Unless things change, I fear that day is not far away....

Well, this weekend I'm still going to take my trip though, and we might be testing the Jimmy Carter Theory. It might take far longer to travel the distance, but with a 30% Ethanol blend, at 55mph (which will indeed make for a long trip) we will see what kind of milage I can come up with. I'm putting my money on 22mpg with my suv. I'm hoping for a bit better, but we shall see.

Politics....and my favorite topic: FOOD

At work, we've been having some politically based discussions, and a lot of it has to do with the economy and how energy prices are really what's driving spending down. I think this sign really sums it up.


But it will not ruin my weekend, which by the sounds of it now, will include a trip to the Cities through Watertown, which means I will get to try my cousin's BBQ resturant. Lone Pine BBQ which is over near Wal-mart and the interstate is a great place, make sure to give it a try next time you're in Watertown.

Bring it on spring...

The other night, my computer took a picture of me preparing for spring to come. The good news is winter was not too mean to me, and all my "summer apparel" fit me quite well. Today it was 75 degrees, and that is just great. Not long now, in fact, only 5 weeks until the Memorial Day season opening of the water sports season. Plus to show the greatness of the season, this weekend I'll be going out to watch some baseball in the Twin Cities. Should be a good little get away for a weekend. Someone mentioned to me the other day that I should think about bringing in another recipe for more Cooking with T-Dub. So, we might have to some checking into that.

Thinking....a strong suit?

So, today was much more like April then Thursday was, and it's only looking up. 75 degrees on Tuesday? Well, that means time to get the watercraft ready to hit the waters again. Well, that will come in time. I couldn't really bring myself to work on it today, with some snow on the ground. It's day will come in a couple of weeks. Hopefully around the 1st of May will be time to get the jetski ready to roll. Today instead was maintenance to the vehicle. Next weekend, it will make a quick trip to the Twin Cities, where I will be on a mini-vacation to watch some Twins games.







Ok, most will laugh when I say I do enjoy occasional challenging puzzles. I do enjoy doing sudoku puzzles, especially when on a camping trip when I'm not out on the lake. Or, one that I was re-aquatinted to recently was the Cracker Barrel's golf tee game. I'm sure you've played, where you have to jump the golf tees, removing the one that was jumped, and end up with only one left. The waitress the day I got mine said I was starting it wrong, and I didn't believe that I was actually starting wrong. My dad said that you should be able to do it with any open hole to start.

So that made me set out on a mission, I wanted to know if it really was possible for any of them to be open, and to be able to beat the board and tees with any open slot, I wanted to find it. So, when you look at the puzzle, the first thing I deducted that I would have to play with only the four open slots show here. This would represent any of the possible starting points. I was successful in about 5 days with defeating it with all the open slots. I showed the waitress what was what on that one, that I wasn't starting it wrong, I just couldn't figure it out on that particular day.

Weather is really making me mad....

Don't know why we call this season spring, because it has exactly ZERO spring like qualities. I think we're going to have more snow in the past 3 weeks here then we had all winter. That is irritating. Winter is over, so it needs to just give up now. It's lost the battle, and it will not prevail. But it still has to make us miserable for a while. I don't know about you, but because of this little attitude it has, winter is sure not going to get my vote for "favorite season" for 2008. I'm really getting irritated, if you can't already tell.

Soccer season was supposed to start on Saturday. Somehow, the prospect of a foot of snow leaves doubts in my mind that we are gonna have that. And that reminds me a story. I believe it was my junior year, and we went out to Custer to play a two game set out there. And we played out game at night, which was always cool, on a Friday. So, we went back into the gym, where we were staying that night, and we went to sleep. I got up the next morning, and was going to go check on the weather to see what the conditions were going to be like for our 10am start. I open the gym door that lead out side, and was promptly smacked in the face by a cold blast of wind, and 9 inches of snow lay on the ground. That was it, we were done. I yelled in dismay, which brought the rest of the players out. We were all in 100% agreement. Pack up, cut our losses, and go home! "You can't come all the way out here and only play in one game..." That was the response we were given from the Custer people, and we didn't like the way this was going. They got a guy with a shovel, scooped off the lines on the field, and they forced us to play. We were not happy one bit. We were a team built on speed and long rolling passes. Well, as you can imagine, snow did not allow much for rolling. By far, it was THE WORST SOCCER GAME I ever played in. It was pathetic. We were cold, pissed off we had to play, and we got beat, because we couldn't dribble the ball. I still hate snow to this day, especially when it gets into and screws up soccer season.

Spring....and bowling

Someone told me tonight that Ravine Lake had open water on it, and my response was, "That doesn't matter, that water would be terribly cold." This weekend is supposed to be cold again too. After 63 today, 36 on Sunday is not gonna sit very well at all. But, I can't do much about that.

This story dates back a while to when Grandpa Pete came here from Kentucky. He was here for Christmas, and not that long ago had to come back to SD for a funeral. Well, both times we got to talking about being in a bowling league. We had several similarites. We both had averages around 135, although his was a few pins higher than mine. We'd both recently bowled games over 160. It was kind of fun to tell stories about wild pin pickups, and an interesting connection for the nearly 50 years of age difference. The big difference is he is a better bowler by average and he has his own ball.

Then, a week ago last night, I set a new high for myself. I bowled a personal best ever 192. Sad I could have had over 200, but on the first ball of the tenth frame, the TW bowler we all know and love came calling and I knocked down only 1 pin on a spare. That cost me the 200 game. But, I picked up the 9 pin spare, and went on to get 7 more pins the last ball and got my 192, which is almost 60 pins over my average.

Molly 1.0

So, 2 days after the birthday for Molly, now we look back on the year that was. The first time out was great, even though I was limited to only 37 mph. But, then, after the 10 painful hours, out she was, uninhibited, the first time I got to open her up, Tom, standing on his doc told me to light it up, he wanted to se her go. So, I got turned, and almost threw myself right off the back giving her the gas. I was used to the 2 stroke engine, which hesitated at first, but this one, not so. It's blink and 53mph. Top speed reached so far, 71 mph, on Lake Byron at the end of the season. She pulls great, and really doesn't have any great stories so far, but I'm sure there will be. Soon, she'll get her birthday wash, polish, and waxing. It's not gonna be long now....