There was a bit of snow on the ground when I woke up this morning.
With my unplanned privacy wall in the way of crawling from the back to the front, I actually have to exit the van now, walk around the front, and hop in the driver’s seat.
Snow coming down. Wind driving it pretty hard sideways.
And me in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. 🙃
I hate dressing for weather. I just want to wear my shorts and t-shirt all the time.
😅
So I drove over to the Walmart parking lot, got out, walked around, and climbed back in Rover.
Originally, I had planned to go back to bed, but it was already 8:30ish, I think? And I was a little too awake. I turned on my phone to get work stuff going, but nothing was coming through.
I don’t even remember what I did. I was in Rover in the main Walmart parking lot until about 11:00. I think I went inside for something, but I don’t remember what.
Oh wait, no, I didn’t go inside I don’t think. I just got out and dumped my trash in one of the trash cans by one of the grocery cart drop off locations.
Then I headed over to the gym, all the while waiting for questions to pop up on JustAnswer, but nothing popping up at all.
I did finish a question that I had started yesterday.
With no blanketing the parking lot and the wind driving it forever sideways, I headed into the gym to enjoy the warmth, get a good workout, and hopefully get some more questions.
I’ve taken to starting my workout with the hydro massage bed.
Mmmmm… 🤤
Nice way to warm up my body before working out. Then I did a 10 minute walk on the treadmill, to help warm myself up a little bit more for my exercises.
Then it was stretching.
I noticed that I’m more careful in my old age. 🙃 I don’t remember doing much warming up or stretching before weight lifting in the old days. 😅
Even though I hadn’t eaten any breakfast, my body was full of energy for some reason. I ended up doing six different exercises today, and I even went back for a second go-round with one of the exercises. I did a planned weight increase with my tricep rope pull down exercise. That’s one of the few exercises that I hadn’t increased at all since starting working out last month.
I also had a surprise increase in my cable fly exercise. I’ve been steadily increasing weight, but today, it just felt really easy, so I ended up increasing the weight by about 22 lbs (11 each side) after just barely increasing it my last go round as well.
🥳
Not sure what was with me today, but I was definitely pumped up.
I finally did some shoulder exercises today. I’ve been slow to get going on those because they required more effort than my other exercises because I’m trying to avoid exercises that put additional pressure on my spine, so today was the first day I made an effort to actually plan some exercise that wouldn’t put extra weight on my spine.
Two shoulder exercises, using the cable machine with the setting lowest to the ground and me on all fours so that I can do the straight raises and side raises without putting weight on my spine.
I was feeling so energized and pumped up and wanting more that I went back to the chest press machine and did some reps there as well.
Nice to be feeling good in that way.
Now if I could just stop eating those darn comfort foods. 😆
Kind of hard to reach the mirror goals if I keep stuffing junk down my gullet.
🙃
Jumped on and did a bunch more cardio, this time on the stair stepper machine. I dropped down to a level 4 on the stair stepper because level 5 was putting me right at my Max vigorous, so level four put me sort of low end vigorous, although it didn’t really feel like I was doing much at all, but apparently my heart rate disagrees.
I mentioned to one of my brothers that it feels kind of like cheating that something that isn’t hard and exhausting is actually doing cardiovascular wonders for me.
It just seems like it should be… harder. 🙃
But if it is indeed working, then I’ll take it!
In the middle of my shower, I got the message from the staff that they were shutting the gym down. It’s a 24-hour, seven day a week gym, but Arkansas isn’t used to big winter storms, and we were in the middle of the beginning of a pretty hefty one.
Stores were closing in addition to the gym, so I quickly finished my shower, dried off, mostly, and headed out to Rover, slightly damp, in what I think was probably about 12° weather at that point.
Headed back over to the Walmart Supercenter where I did a little shopping, buying some super duper soft pajama type pants, some cheap athletic shorts, and a cheap athletic shirt.
I’m wearing those nice little pajama pants to bed right now, and they’re very soft and nice. 😁
From the Walmart supercenter, I headed up to pea ridge, going all the way out to Avoca and then all the way back West because I didn’t want to risk getting stuck on the hill going up into Pea Ridge from rogers.
The roads are pretty terrible, as you can see below. 🙃
Grabbed a couple of cans of beans in the Walmart Neighborhood Market there, while using their bathroom as well.
Hydrated myself pretty well at the gym, and then had my pea protein drink afterward as well. 🙃
Then it was over to the McDonald’s in Pea Ridge to do a little bit of tax work and regular work, only to find out that there internet wasn’t available to customers, only to staff.
That… Didn’t seem quite right, but what else was I going to do? The Wendy’s was closed for the weather, and McDonald’s was nice and warm, so I did what I could on my cell phone, which wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
They closed their doors at 7:00, the eating area that is, and so I headed back over to the Pea Ridge Neighborhood Market where I again use the bathroom, bought some frozen fruit, some frozen spinach, and some more beans in preparation for my blender which, hopefully, will be delivered to Haven Hill despite the snow.
That’s pretty doubtful, though.
Maybe I can arrange to pick it up at a different location.
I’ll have to check into that.
From there, I headed over to Haven Hill proper, parking my van by Jim’s shop, digging out an extra blanket for the crazy cold, giving me 4.5 blankets to bivouac underneath. 🛌
Then I set out with my jump boxes to my skid steer and my mini excavator, first hoping to use my skid steer to do a little plowing for The Hill family, but I couldn’t get it started in the super duper cold.
My main concern for my skid steer and my excavator was the temperature possibly getting so low that it would freeze the old coolant solid. I don’t know how old the coolant is in those machines, and over time, it loses its effectiveness, and supposedly, it can freeze it higher temperatures.
I don’t really want to deal with equipment that blows an engine because of the cold, so I tried to find a way to drain the coolant out of both of the machines.
I wasn’t successful in the skid steer because the coolant hoses actually go up from the engine. The radiator is actually probably about a foot or so higher than the engine itself.
Not normal when compared to cars.
So there wasn’t really anything I could do there.
So I put on my winter clothing, or better said my waterproof windproof clothing that my mom gave me for my birthday and Christmas before I went to New Zealand.
I put a couple of layers on underneath those outer wear jackets, was grateful to have my mittens handy, put on a winter hat, and I was roasty toasty, despite the strong winds, the driving snow, and only wearing tennis shoes through the snow drifts.
I failed to get the excavator started as well, the keyhole full of ice and unable to even turn the key. Fortunately, I was able to access the bottom of the radiator which was about halfway up the engine, so I drained out all the coolant that I was able to, Winter wind gusting, 12° outside, or so, but me nice and roasty toasty, except for my thumb which was a little cold in my face which was a little cold.
It’s amazing how much less uncomfortable the cold is when I’m prepared for it with the proper clothing. 😅
🙃
When I got myself all the way back up the hill from the lower field, having gone to check out the creek in all the snow as well just for fun, I moved Rover because it was underneath some large old oak trees with some dead branches on them that I wasn’t too fond of having fall on top of my van during the night from the weight of the snow and ice.
Gratefully, I didn’t get stuck driving through the grassy area that was covered in probably for or 5 in of snow.
Don’t know if I’ll be able to get out, but will tackle that tomorrow. 😅
Noticed that Jim’s truck didn’t have its wipers pulled up, so I dug into the snow, which I think might have had a windshield drift maybe 8 or 10 in deep, grabbed his wipers, and pulled them out so they wouldn’t ice over to his windshield.
I headed back over to the skid steer to at least verify that the coolant that was in it was liquid and not slushy or solid, and it indeed was liquid, gratefully.
I’ve been here in Rover bivouac underneath my several layers of blankets, enjoying the cold on my face when I periodically poke my head out because the air gets stuffy underneath after a little while.
Ate some dinner. Watch the rest of the BYU basketball game where they absolutely torched Kansas. Started looking up plane ticket prices because my friend John is interested in going to Suriname. Ticket prices directly into Suriname are pretty darn expensive, so I’ve been looking for creative ways of getting there that aren’t as expensive.
The cheapest way in is to fly to Guyana and head over from there, but Guyana is a really dangerous place, with robbery and kidnapping and murdering whatever else being fairly common, I believe.
😅
John’s a big strong guy. Maybe he’d be a deterrent. 🙃
But I’ve also been looking at maybe spending a week in Panama or a week in Puerto Rico or a week in Curaçao before spending a week in Suriname.
It would be about the same price to do Panama or Puerto Rico as it would be to fly to Guyana and then to fly from Guyana to Suriname.
And it would just be a couple hundred dollars more to go to Curaçao for a week before going to Suriname.
We’ll see. We haven’t done a trip together since 2021? So it’s about time. 🙃
And I think he’s getting ready to retire, so it’s a good time to travel.
Seeing him getting ready to do a full retirement soon… Gosh, maybe I should have gone military. 😅
Anyway, that’s been the day today. So far, I think we’re down to maybe 8 degrees outside, and I’m roasty toasty in my little bivouac.
😊
Love and hugs.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 