It’s Friday! Well, the girlfriend is off to Arizona for the weekend to visit her son. He’s been living in Tempe for a few years now and seems to be loving it. Meanwhile, here on the home front, I’m predicting a weekend filled with loud music, periods of excessive gaming, horror movie marathons, and an irresponsible amount of junk food—heavy on the pizza.

I had MRIs done on both shoulders last week, and the results confirmed partial tendon tears in both rotator cuffs. Oddly enough, even though the tears are about the same on each side, my left shoulder is giving me way more trouble while the right feels mostly fine. The doctor isn’t recommending surgery at this point, so the plan was to try a cortisone shot in the left shoulder to calm the inflammation and ease the pain. I got the shot a few days ago, and it’s already helping. For now, the plan is to just let it ride and see how things go.

Today’s post features a small gallery of vehicles courtesy of Brian, a reader who attended the twice-a-year tractor show near Werley’s Corner, Pennsylvania. Along with the cars and tractors, the event had a country store, a museum, antique farm equipment, food vendors, and even pedal tractor pulls for the kids. Big thanks to Brian for sharing his photos from the show—enjoy the pics, along with the double babes and double jokes!

-keep

Keep, Been a while since I sent you something, today I went to the twice annual tractor event a few miles down the road from me at the town of Werley’s Corner. It’s a rural area and guys bring their tractors in twice a year and there is a country store, museum, old cars, farm equipment, food, kids tractor pulls in a peddle tractor. Over 100 people there when I visited today with good weather, as yesterday was a rain out, but everything was polished up again.

Brian

It’s Thursday. One of my readers is heading to New River near Fayetteville this weekend for a whitewater rafting trip and asked me to put in a good word for warm weather. Normally I’d be happy to help—but Mother Nature and I have a long, complicated history. She seems to treat my weather requests like spam email and routinely sends me cold, miserable conditions out of pure spite.

So this time, I’m changing strategies. Instead of asking for sunshine and perfect rafting weather, I’m officially requesting freezing rain, gale-force winds, and just enough gloom to drown out any possibility of a good time. A little reverse psychology never hurt anyone, right? We’ll see if Mother Nature falls for it.

Or… there’s the possibility that she sees right through my ruse and doubles down on her ongoing campaign against me. Oh shit.

-keep

Keep, I have been a fan of yours from the beginnings with dial up Internet connections. I read your comment about the weather warming up. I would appreciate it if you would say a few words of encouragement to the weatherman that we get warmer weather during this next week and weekend. I have plans to Whitewater raft down the New River in Fayetteville, West Virginia on Saturday, May 2. The current weather forecast for Fayetteville is 75% chance of rain with a high of 50°. What a way to start off a summer of fun in the water I would just like to see the weather cooperate a little more. This will be my fifth time Whitewater rafting. I love the water, so this is very enjoyable for me.

Anonymous

This is the famous new river bridge. It stands 878 feet above the river below.

It’s Wednesday. Quick, Robin! To the Batmobile! A while back I picked up the LEGO 1966 Batmobile and said I’d share updates as I worked on it—so here we are! I finally started the build the other day and have made some solid progress on the frame. At the moment it doesn’t look like much since the floorboards hide a lot of the structure underneath, but trust me… there’s a ridiculous number of pieces packed into what you’re seeing. I’ll keep posting photos as the build moves along.

This is only my second LEGO build. My first was the LEGO Mandalorian N-1 Starfighter, which had fewer pieces than the Batmobile but was still a blast to put together. And because apparently I’ve developed an expensive new hobby, I already have my third set waiting in the wings—the LEGO Ford Model T. I’m already looking forward to diving into that one as soon as the Batmobile is finished.

-keep