Feelin' Hot Hot Hot

Our water heater was running out of hot water after about 15mins.  It's fine for me.  I never take anything more than 5-10mins.  But these other two people in the house like to take either a long bath or a long hot shower.

So I ended up getting a new water heater from Lowe's on sale and replaced it just a few days ago.  There were no leaks from our existing one.  But it just couldn't keep up with demand any longer and there's only 3 of us.  If you do laundry or wash dishes, or both.  Well you won't have any hot water for a shower never mind a bath.

Our old one was installed in 1996.  And it just wasn't able to provide the same amount of hot water as before.  It's declined quite a bit in the last few years.  I probably should have replaced it when I got the furnace done.  Not sure why I didn't.

This new one is awesome.  We can now take long hot showers or baths.  It used to be that the last person to use the shower would have about enough time to soap up with some warm water but after that it was a chilly rinse off.

I initially had the temp on the controls at B but that was too hot. I lowered it to A, and even that was too hot.  So it's now down to just HOT.  Which is the lowest temp setting and that's hot.

HOT is supposed to be 120 deg F.  So I had to adjust the temp setting on the shower controls upstairs because the water was so hot coming out of the tap.

It's all good now.  New bath and lots of hot water.

ParaPan 2015

These athletes are inspiring.  I wished I had seen the earlier race because I had heard that was really something to see.  Apparently there's different categories depending on the disability, but the way these athletes were riding you'd be hard pressed to call them disabled.  It was something to watch live.

I'm glad we were there to cheer them on.
I wished there were more spectators there to cheer them on.  So we tried to make up for it by cheering on every nation!

We were down just between Bloor St and Olympus Ave.  About 3/4's of the way up that hill.

The 1 legged Peruvian was in the lead of this pack.  Man was he giving it 200%.  I also noticed that there were women mixed in with this group.  So this is where I was confused when I tried to understand who was racing today.  It was categories instead of Mens and Womens.

It didn't matter.  It was impressive anyways.




Photos: ParaPan Am 2015 Road Race

Lou's Loop & Sean's Way

I got this action cam and it isn't a GoPro Hero but it's a cheaper alternative.  I wasn't sure about spending the amount for a Hero 3+ or 4 Black.  Because these action cams are in the 500-600 range and that's just for the camera.  No memory card, no extra battery packs, mounts, etc.

The Gadgeteer SJ4000 review
Techmoan SJCAM SJ4000 review

I had done some research and this SJ4000 from SJCAM kept coming up. It's from China, so that's already strike one.  But the reviews from folks in UK and the Gadgeteer all gave it some really good reviews.  For one it's affordable.  It may not have the cachet of GoPro which basically pioneered Action Cam market, but hey did achieves the same end result.  I'm not a pro.  It's more for fun and this does the same thing for less.  I'm just hoping it lasts.

And all the GoPro mounts are compatible. But they are so expensive so I found all these cheaper alternatives and saved a ton.  For $200, I got a couple of helmet mounts, straps, selfie stick, floatie, suction cup mount, chest mount, head mount and 32GB SDHC card.  That's a third of the cost of a Hero 4 Silver without card or the mounts.

There is one difference to note between the HERO and the SJ4000. The SJ4000 outputs .MOV files where as the HERO outputs .MP4 files.  What's the diff?  Well .MOV files are an Apple standard.  MP4 are an industry standard.  But the files are basically the same.  And they are both editable in the GoPro Studio app.

But what the heck. I gave it a go.  And it's been so far surprisingly good.
This vid is the Lou's Loop run down from the top and a off shoot into Sean's way.  I even crashed and the camera was ok.  So hey it took a beating.  I even went into the lake later on and it was fine.

I had it mounted to my handle bars so it's really jittery, the only time it's not jittery is when I go airborn, but next time I plan to put it on my helmet.

So far...so good!

I have pretty much ridden all the runs on the Sir Sam's trail map.  I think I may have only missed a few of the black diamond runs.  I just like the long flowing runs.

Looking forward to using it in the winter to follow the kids down the ski hill.