Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Waiting for the weekend

The thing about this car enthusiasm hobby is that you can only kind of do things on the weekends. The workday is where you put in the hours so that you can afford the enthusiasm. But it can be a challenge because for five days out of the week, you’re kind of anxiously looking forward to the other two. And my brain just can’t comprehend forsaking 70% of a week, being unsatisfied.

I can see how some people’s enthusiasm is so great that they make the thing into their career. They cannot fathom only focusing on their passion two days out of the week. Life is too damn sacred to be miserable for any amount of time.

There are tradeoffs, of course. There’s a chance that you will lose the passion if your actual livelihood is dependent on that thing. How enthusiastic can you be about photography when an angry bride is yelling at your face? Or you might have to turn in an end product that isn’t completely satisfactory to your standards. Because you absolutely need a monetary return.

I don’t think the passion pursuers actually factor in the tradeoffs. Their guiding star is that they are so enthusiastic that they must do the thing. No exceptions. Life isn’t worth anything if they are unable to do what they love for every single day of the week. They just kind of naively pray and hope the money issue will figure itself out. Not a leap of faith, but an insatiable will to follow the heart.

Thankfully, or unfortunately, I am not enthusiastic enough about anything to make career-level moves. A boring 9-5 job is exactly what I want and need to fund the few hobbies that gets me out of bed on weekend mornings, instead of wanting to sleep in. That’s good enough for me.

Speak human, and enter

It’s only been a month since I’ve re-added running into my exercise routine, and I’m already seeing good results. Because of the increase in cardio capacity, my resting heart rate in between sets during weight lighting sessions lowered by about 20 BPMs. That is quite significant. It means I don’t have to wait as long for my heart rate to calm down before starting the next set.

It also means cardio is no longer the limiting factor during heavy squats. I don’t have to end a set just because I am out of breath. We can’t deny it: intense cardio is an important part of the regiment. I actually think you might be leaving some all important gains on the table if you forgo it completely. Never skip leg cardio day.

What you cannot skip these days when you visit websites is the bot check before you’re allowed in. It seems everybody wants you to prove you’re an actual human, and not a content-scraping robot feeding the insatiable AI machines housed in massive data centers. Before I can browse an item on eBay, I have to click on all the pictures containing traffic signal lights.

It goes to show how fast Internet speeds have gotten that websites can afford a whole other front door process before loading the webpage. Back in the ancien dial-up days, no one would dare to make a site load any longer than it needs to. In fact, there was a whole cottage industry of optimizers to ensure your website load as quickly as possible. Heck, Google initially won the search game because of speed.

No way those optimizers could have imagined putting up an entire wall in front of a loading webpage, precisely what is en vogue in today’s inter webs. Nowadays, fast-loading is mere table stakes. Thanks to massive bandwidth that a 90s kid, asking their parents to get off the phone so he can get online, can only dream about. Bot checks are only a minor, insect-sized inconvenience not worth thinking about.

All about leverage

Looks like it doesn’t matter that I can deadlift 300 pounds. After a few hours of working on my car, bending and squatting, my lower back is barking like mad all the same. Though I’d be in even worse shape if I hadn’t been exercising the posterior chain at all…

While I do enjoy working on cars, the aftermath is always painful. The skinned knuckles, the bruised fingers, and soiled clothing. All part of the deal, of course. Like callouses on the hands for weightlifters. I can’t fathom being a mechanic for a living. Physical labor is really tough on the body. I’m gladly surprised my father came out of 30 plus years in construction with only some mild nagging joint pain.

These days it’s popular to invoke the trades as an alternative to university. Indeed it is! Having alternative options is a positive. However, the trades are hard to scale. You can only climb into so many HVAC ducts in a given day, or unclog so many toilets. The monetary upside is largely capped. Just about the only multiplier is branching out and being your own boss. Have people under you to climb many more ducts.

Going to college offers a higher ceiling. Knowledge work can continue working even when you’re done inputing. Simply look at the many software engineers making upper-middle class living. Or study to become a white-collar professional. Hours will be long on the outset, but the monetary compensation for careers like lawyers, bankers, and medical is high.

And what that high income allows for is compounding. It’s far easier for a $200,000 dentist to invest in the stock market than a $100,000 plumber. And that bigger initial pie will only grow larger faster. The law of large numbers comes into play.

The word here is leverage. Maximize the size of the output with the set amount of input. A job is a job, and power to those who are doing what they got to do to put a roof over the head and food on the table. However, if there is a choice? I’m thankful I am able to trade knowledge for money, rather than manual labor. The sore hours immediately after working on my car is a good reminder to not take it for granted.

Running down the gains

In order to keep track of the gains, I weight myself every morning, soon as I get out of bed. It’s really easy to tell if I did not eat enough the previous day, because the drop off the next morning can be a few pounds on the scale.

What is also detrimental to poundage is running. I’ve reincorporated this much loathed cardio exercise back in to the regiment for a few weeks now. Without fail, the day after running, the scale is down a few pounds. All of it water weight, surely. But it’s interesting to see nonetheless.

The weird thing is, I feel completely ravenous after running every single time. And I don’t have reservations about eating as much as I want afterwards. But it seems there’s no amount of food to counteract the weight loss, as measured the following morning. Trust me, I am not going easy on the food after I run. Carbs on carbs on carbs.

I can now see why the weight lifters looking to bulk up as quickly as possible elect to skip cardio entirely. N of me to be sure, but cardio seems to be detrimental towards the weight scale continuously increasing. You can work all week to eat more and lift weights, only for one prolonged cardio section to knock you right back down the water spout. So then you have to do it all over again.

The obvious solution is to eat (even) more. I love food as much as the next person, but there is a limit to how much food to consume before it becomes a tiring chore. We’ve all, at one point or another, have eaten so much that the digestion process afterwards render us immobile. Imagine that feeling, but all the time. No thank you. I’ll keep to my snail’s pace bulking.

Old man enthusiast

In my early 20s of car enthusiasm, the prime thing to do to a car is to lower it. The wheel gaps from the factory always seem to be a tad high. Of course then the first modification item I bought for my purely pedestrian Toyota Corolla was a set of lowering springs.

In my now late 30s of car enthusiasm, I have no desire to do the same to my current Golf GTI. Yes, the wheel gaps are rather enormous on it too. But with experience comes wisdom, and what starts at lowering springs can quickly spiral into many unintended consequences.

So let’s say the car is lowered. Job done, right? Well now the wheels look kind of sunken into the body. You can remedy this by either putting on wheel spacers to punch out the wheels a bit, or go the full route and buy an entirely new set of wheels with a lower offset specification. That’s money you didn’t intend on spending, but soon as you put on lowering springs, you’re already in quick sand.

Lower offset wheels creates a new problem: rock chips. The wheels sticking further out means less of the existing fender work can protect the debris being constantly flung. The car’s lower rear quarter panel gets pummeled. You can either live with stone chips, or put paint protection film onto the quarters. Ah yes, more money to spend.

A lowered car naturally means the bottom of the bumper is closer to the ground. Poorly graded driveways are now the worst enemies. Leaving a gas station onto the road is an exercise of angular contortion to avoid scraping the front. Meanwhile, that normal person in a stilted SUV simply drive straight without a care.

These days I want my cars to work without any fuss. Driving should not be stressful! Limiting NVH - noise, vibration, and harshness - matters greatly to me, as if I’m a boomer retired grandfather. The GTI rides relatively superbly from the factory, with an excellently insulated cabin space. The last thing I want to do is to begin ruining that by installing shorter springs and stiffer suspension components, purely for looks.

Don't forget your dip stick!

It’s been awhile since I’ve owned a car that I actually have to check the oil levels on periodically. Turbocharged engines - like the one in my Golf GTI - can develop an oil consumption habit. That’s just the nature of forcing in more than base atmospheric pressure into the combustion chamber. So it’s important to keep track so that the engine isn’t starved of oil. You kind of don’t want to wait for the low oil level warning light to come on.

Unless of course you have a late model BMW. My previous BMW M2 has a turbocharged engine, but no physical dip stick. The method to measure the oil level is through the infotainment menu, which nobody does, and I certainly didn’t. How would you know your BMW turbo engine is in good health vis a vis motor oil? The low level light never comes on in between changes. And thankfully on my M2 it never did over the five years of ownership.

The Golf has a physical dipstick, so I’ve been checking oil levels at every refueling stop. But there’s a problem. In order to get an accurate reading, the ground has to be level. Unfortunately, there is no standard that mandates gas stations to be graded flat. Depending on which way the floor is slanted, the reading could falsely swing optimistic or pessimistic. If you’re a psychopath like me, then you’re seeking out gas stations with as level a spot as possible.

Normal people don’t do this. Heck, normal drivers hardly check the oil. The warning light is the call to action. Modern engines have absurdly long oil change intervals, too. The BMW M2 calls for every 10,000 miles, or one year. Actual mechanics would advise around 5,000 mile intervals for turbocharged engines. Perhaps it’s a testament to how excellent engine and oil technology have become that we don’t hear much about adverse oil consumption and subsequent failed motors (outside of Hyundai’s GDI).

Unfortunately, the EA888 engine in the GTI can be bit of an oil drinker, so I’m going to keep tabs on it like a hawk. I can remember doing the same with a Subaru WRX STI, carrying a quart jug of motor oil at the ready. That’s car life.

Monk mode running

So you’re all psyched up to go on this run. You’re in the car and heading to the running spot. But then you realize you forgot your earphones. What? Running without any tunes - are you crazy? So what do you do? Of course make that u-turn towards home to get the AirPods.

Unless you’re a psychopath like me. For me it’s more important to not waste time detouring home. Just how mentally soft am I if I can’t even go on a 40 minute run without any musical assistance. Lifting weights, I can understand. Sometimes those personal bests are easier to hit with something inspirational in the ear to provide that extra little mental pump. Running, however, it’s one feet in front of the other. Look at it as a bit of digital detox.

I’m slightly sad that I am unable to work on the Golf GTI this weekend. The problem? Parts that are in shipping haven’t yet arrived. The second worst thing for a DIY car enthusiast to see is parts taking a long time to ship. The first worst thing is the part is no longer available. Some enthusiasts dream of a big garage full of variety. I dream of a humble garage, housed with enough spare parts to build a whole other car. Never have to wait for delivery!

One important thing for the DIY wrench head is to have another car at the ready. (Or, like me, don’t have a vehicular commute.) (Two cars - in this economy? Right to privilege jail, right away.) That way you are not under the can-be-severe time restriction of a weekend. Snapping a brake caliper bolt for which a replacement won’t arrive until next week isn’t disastrous at all because you don’t need to use the car you’re working on come Monday.

Unless you’re a psychopath like me who loathes open loops. Yes, I don’t need to drive to work, but that unfinished job is going to haunt my sleep until it is done.