Amusement Parks and Themed Attractions ... Now back in Pennsylvania, I started my business back up after several years of being away from Contracting and went on to paint the largest churches I have ever completed and had some of my busiest years as a contracter since I started painting in my early 20s. Since my days in Florida, I had thought many times of picking up guitar and vocals once again but was usually too busy painting churches and large Victorian homes as part of my Contracting business. Shortly after arriving back in Pennsylvania, my contracting and painting took on a new direction as I started doing alot of work at Conneaut Lake Park in 2013 and getting into the amusement industry. My crew and I, along with my girlfriend Janna painted alot of the buildings and structures there and landscaped all over the park. With the help of many volunteers from around the region, I also took part in the Travel Channel's makeover of Conneaut Lake Park by renovating many areas of the amusement park for a pilot episode of the show "Mission Amusement". I also embarked on a season long restoration of the park and was already well into renovating many areas there before the Travel Channel's production company contacted me to take part in the filming of their show. Here you see me restoring the pavilions with the world famous Bluestreak roller coaster in the background. I have many videos of my renovation of Conneaut Lake Park and also of my painting projects around Pittsburgh on my YouTube channel at RonSchaubStudios. I was contracted by Mid America Events to paint and re-theme the front facade of one of their Ghost Lake haunted houses at Conneaut Lake that fall and also worked on some of the other haunted attractions and darkrides in the park. Later that December in 2013, Janna spent her first Christmas with my family in Pennsylvania. After all my haunted attractions work in the summer and fall, I got the urge to start sculpting Halloween masks again for several months over the winter and spring into early 2014. Being a Christian and very involved in some of my churches over the years, I sometimes felt awkward about all the spooky props and masks I made... like maybe i shouldn't be doing that. I know it was all in fun and harmless but I didnt want to be wasting my talents on something scary and evil if I could somehow use those talents towards something good instead, like helping people in some way, so I never made a business out of the haunted props. Even though i was good at sculpting and had alot of fun making them, it just didnt seem right sometimes, so I never sculpted anything scary after that. That same year throughout 2014, I took time away from my contracting to learn more about the amusement industry and took a job at Idlewild Park and Soakzone as a ride inspector and maintenance mechanic. I wasnt lifting anymore, had been away from Contracting for several years, and was usually exhausted working in the heat outside or painting huge church sanctuaries when I was indoors, so I lost alot of weight my first year back in Pennsylvania and was pretty thin for a couple of years, going down to about 180 pounds when I was at Conneaut Lake in 2013, then gradually putting the weight back on a little each year as I built up my strength and stamina once again. I wasnt able to find any good weight benches to buy in the stores during this period and Janna had given my old one and all my weights to her uncle in Florida long before moving to Pennsylvania. The next picture here is from 2014 in front of a frozen waterfall where Janna took me for a day out together during the winter at Ohiopyle in the Laurel Highlands near Ligonier and to Nemacolin Woodlands Resort. In 2015, Janna and I got engaged and I built a new art studio / workshop in my basement where I did all my sculpting and special effects hobbies making dinosaurs and dragons along with scratchbuilt miniature fantasy model scenery with waterfalls and mountains and lakes and castles. I affectionately called this my Basement Dungeon Workshop, named after an earlier workshop I built years before in a very scary dark dismal basement of a 100 year old Victorian house that my mom and stepfather own. The basement dungeon therefore has had several locations over the years and my monsters and props and SPFX sculptures were always the main attraction. I had stopped making the Halloween masks and haunted props back in 2014, but now I was back to making dinosaurs and dragons! I was still into painting and art and It was around this time that Janna took me to a couple of different Bob Ross style painting classes where I painted the beach scene above. Throughout the next few years, I continued to paint churches and homes and businesses around the Pittsburgh area. In 2018, I started lifting again after 8 years of being away from fitness and weightlifting, after building a new wooden weight bench out of 2x6 and 2x4 lumber in my basement workshop and buying a large amount of standard cast iron weights and large 25 and 50 pound plates like I had in highschool. I was 47 years old and had toned up a bit and put on some weight and averaged about 230 pounds and had stayed in somewhat good shape for my age from painting houses and climbing ladders all that time. But i wasn't missing too many meals and needed to trim up a bit and was getting self conscious so I thought it was time to finally get back into lifting weights. That year I also got out of the painting business. I had already begun to phase out painting the large homes and churches throughout 2016 and 2017 due to several back injuries I sustained over the years from lifting weights and from 2 separate car wrecks around that time where I was the passenger. I phased out the contracting and painting to doing just smaller residential homes and an occasional store or office from time to time, and dropped the word "contracting" from my business name. I would eventually retire from working off of scaffolds and climbing ladders and roofs amd calling it quits after 25 years in the business.

Ron Schaub Studios and Dinosaurs ! ... No longer in the construction trades, I redesigned my contracting and painting website to focus on my arts and crafts hobbies now and started putting together what would become Ron Schaub Studios, which would be based out of my basement dungeon workshop where I made all my monsters and props and special effects pieces and scale models. There were lots of pictures of my old Halloween masks and haunted props, my miniature model buildings and scenery, and the dinosaurs and dragons I was sculpting, and I explained in detail how I made them. As I spent hours and hours building wooden armatures and clay sculpts of dinosaurs and making lifesize paper mache and plaster built-up models, I rebuilt my workshop and set up several large work benches and bought all kinds of special fx supplies for making molds, casting rubber latex, and clay for sculpting. Though I was now working regular jobs for the next couple of years, I would experiment and tinker around in my workshop like a mad scientist making dinosaurs and other creatures, and building miniature scale model layouts and castles and buildings and scenery. I started experimenting with other supplies and learned about fiberglass and other ways to make lifesize animal replicas like sharks and crocodiles and made armatures for museum style statues and replicas of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life. I had a dream and goal of having my own prehistoric museum someday, and also building prehistoric wildlife and dinosaurs for other museums. I also planned on building themed environments for amusement parks. Several years later I would get back into painting houses again for awhile and change my website back into the old Contracting business website again. I still hadn't played guitar or taken any more vocal lessons or done anything with music since my hospital stay in Florida, but lifting was off to a good start, and I began to tone up pretty quickly over the next few months. Then I bulked up a little more, adding some muscle once I started getting used to working out again and weighed 240 pounds for the first time and was noticeably larger. My chest and shoulders and arms were getting bigger again, though I was eating like a horse and getting a little chunky around the waist too. Rather than ripping up and getting defined like in my early years, I was now starting to look bigger and more powerful, though not near as strong as when I was younger in my early twenties and thirties. The idea was to lose some weight and tone up, but I was gaining weight around the midsection with my crazy appetite to fuel my workouts. 2018 and 2019 proved to be a good foray back into weightlifting as I added muscle and got stronger. I built myself up to bench pressing 220 pounds in sets and maxing around 280 to 285 like I did during my senior year in highschool, but weighed much more now as an adult in my mid to late 40s, so i didnt have the muscular definition I had as a teenager or in my early 20s. I did have some size though, and my arms and chest and shoulders were getting bigger again like in my Florida days. Once covid happened though, I had alot of unrelated health issues and had several surgeries throughout 2020 and 2021 so I stopped working out, losing some of the muscle I had worked so hard to build, and put on another 5 pounds tipping the scales at 245. Ive lost an inch in height as I've gotten older too, so I'm no longer 6 ft tall, but about 5'11" now... so it wasn't a nice and toned and muscular 245. Instead, I was actually getting too heavy and out of shape... which was out of character for me since I was usually pretty toned and built well most of my life. Fortunately, I was able to drop another 12 pounds and weighed 233 by mid 2021 in time for summer and a big move to the New England area.

Relocating to New England... I had planned to start buying instruments again and remodel the basement workshop to make room to bring back my old music studio from years ago where I could put together a band and have rehearsals right next to all my monsters. However in late May of 2021, Janna and I wound up relocating for the next several years to the New England area where she would take a job as a travel nurse. We would visit all the New England states while spending a year in Hartford, Connecticut... then the next couple of years in different areas around Boston, Massachusetts. This photo of me in the blue shirt was taken in the Fall of 2021 while living near Hartford, Connecticut. I did eventually take off the last several pounds of extra bodyweight and toned up a bit and got back in better shape and have since averaged around 225 pounds for the last several years and have lifted weights off and on... about the same strength I was when i graduated highschool, but built bigger like I was in my thirties. However, aside from all the surgeries, my asthma also got alot worse around this time in 2021 and 2022, and I developed high blood pressure as well about a year before we relocated to Connecticut. This made it hard for me to sing or even talk for long periods of time as I would get short of breath very easily. It became much harder and dangerous to lift weights, mulch all of our flower beds and landscaped islands throughout the yard in the hot weather, or shovel snow in the winter. Anything remotely strenuous like going up alot of stairs or carrying ladders and paint buckets around , or even exercising became very difficult and I would always have to reach for my inhaler and sit down. In some cases I would overheat and my heart would pound and I'd have chest pains, dizziness, and nearly pass out and have to sit in the yard or on the floor exhausted, worried i was having a heart attack. This carried over to our first year in New England though I would hit the weights hard and tone up a little in both Connecticut and Massachusettes and build up my heart and lungs to where my exercising wasn't so hard anymore. 7 months after we relocated to New England, I started working out in our Connecticut home to build up my strength and my heart and lungs to hopefully help my asthma and high blood pressure. This picture of me in the creme colored robe was taken around January or February 2022 around that time. I also went on a low carb / keto diet for about 5 months but found out that doesn't work well for everyone and actually caused several problems. I was eating alot more cooked vegetables to make up for all the carbs I was cutting from my diet so I wouldn't be so hungry. I almost completely eliminated potatoes, rice, cereal, and pasta... except for once in a while and only ate small amounts of bread... usually just a slice of toast with my breakfast. Sometimes i would not eat the buns if I had a hamburger or chicken sandwich at a restaurant, or just a part of it to keep from being hungry. I increased my protein though to about 120 or 130 grams a day up from my usual 100 or so. There was always a good amount of protein on my plate, some cooked vegetables, and a small amount of carbs... usually fruit. About 3 months in, my hair started falling out and my fingernails became brittle and started breaking off easily. I broke my right metacarpal bone of my hand just below my thumb reaching under my bench seat to hold it up while I raised it. The seat was a little heavy and it fell as I pulled the bar out from under it to adjust the height and although I had a hold of it, the weight of it broke my hand somehow as my hand twisted trying to keep it from dropping. It was a freak accident that shouldn't have been enough to break my thumb or hand, but it might be that the low carb diet also caused my bones to become brittle. Then in the last month I got a terrible "keto" flu where I lost another 7 pounds, going down to around 220. Apparently a drastic or sudden change in diet can do all this, and it usually takes effect about 90 days after the change. While in Connecticut, I strained or pulled a muscle and possibly tore my left pec during butterflies on my heavy bench press day. I didnt realize i was overtraining and straining my pecs because my workouts were going so well and i didnt have any pain, but the stretch I got from doing butterflies (lying lateral flyes) at my age after heavy bench presses was more than my body could take apparently and I eventually injured myself. I was at a concert at the Mohegan Sun Arena when my fiance Janna got up to go to the restroom or get a drink. I then casually laid and rested my left arm along the back of her chair stretched out somewhat and a few minutes or so later turned to my right slightly to see if she was on her way back yet and felt a sharp pain in my left pec muscle which felt like maybe I tore it. I must've already strained my chest muscles during my workout the day before without knowing and that little stretch and turn at the concert was all I needed to injure myself. I was in terrible pain for weeks and couldn't do any chest exercises for several months after that without intense pain and risking a more serious injury. After a year in Connecticut we moved to the Boston Massachusettes area in mid 2022. After a few months of healing, I resumed my workouts with some changes to avoid reinjuring myself, and I had already slowly added all my different kinds of carbs back into my diet while I was away from all the lifting. I was weaker and couldn't handle the heavier weights from several months before, but I knew I would get back up there in a few months. However, I went on a high protein diet this time and ate like a bodybuilder. I steadily but gradually increased my protein by 20 grams each month... 120, 140, 160, 180, then 200. My hair started coming back in, my strength increased to about where I was before that awful keto flu and pec injury, and I quickly put on weight. Here is a selfie of me that I took in 2023 while staying in Danvers, Massachusetts in the suburbs of Boston around that time. I eventually bulked up to 235 pounds but started getting to big around the midsection and worried I was putting on weight too fast and the high protein had some side effects as well including pain in my kidneys, frequent urination, and constipation... so I went back to eating normal again. I still sang in the car and at home during my time in New England, especially in the Boston area, and followed countless vocal coaches and guitar instructors on the internet for several years. Though I hadn't owned an instrument since 2006, I started writing music for the first time in years including lyrics and ideas for riffs and intros and melodies for rock songs. Humming into my voice recorder on my phone and also into my old cassette player, I started coming up with dozens of ideas for songs and writing down all this new material for a possible band I could put together singing cover songs along with my new original music. I couldn't wait to go out and buy my first guitar in many, many years. Although all these new musical ideas I had been working on have not been fleshed out into fully arranged songs yet, I actually came up with a surprising amount of material including melodies, riffs, intros, chord progressions, and lyrics including older ideas and melodies from my early days learning guitar and later through the years.

Returning Home to Pennsylvania... In mid-2023 our lease was up in Danvers and we moved to a different town on the other side of Boston called Burlington, and stayed at an extended stay hotel for a few months before going on a series of cruises to the Caribbean, Mexico, Alaska, Canada, and Hawaii. We were at sea for a couple of months and also visited Florida and California between cruises. We came back to the hotel for a few more months and during that whole time in Burlington and away at Sea, my weight bench and weight set were in storage and I only worked out once in a while in the fitness centers on the ships, and dropped the extra 15 pounds gained from my high protein diet, taking me back down to around 220. In the Spring of 2024, I eventually returned to the Pittsburgh area and Southwestern Pennsylvania and found myself in church again for the first time in many years. It was very emotional for me... and because my asthma had gotten worse for a few years there during all my health issues, I would get out of breath when I would sing praise and worship songs and traditional hymns in church. I would struggle to catch my breath in between phrases and verses. I started singing my 80s rock songs so practicing what I had learned many years ago would eventually help me sing in church again like it had in Florida. I practiced the bel canto scales and vowel and warm up exercises that I learned at Mcgrail School of Voice before singing my rock and 80s songs I grew up with when I was at home. These vocal warmups helped with my voice, but the breathing exercises i learned were also very helpful with my breath support and holding longer notes and getting through phrases and verses without getting all out of breath. I started going to the park and practicing my vocals in the car, belting out songs by Dokken, Skid Row, Whitesnake, and more. Here's a photo of me around that time in October of 2024 getting ready for church. It was at this time that I decided to make a career change and leave my Contracting and painting for good to become a personal trainer and maybe even teach music lessons and pass on what I had learned over the years singing and playing guitar... but I was very rusty. So, I continued to practice my vocal techniques and relearning all that music theory and studying chord diagrams on the guitar... reaquainting myself with all the notes on the fretboard, how scales and keys work with different chords and notes, relearning intros and riffs to some of my favorite 80s rock and metal songs, modes, intervals, chord progressions, and anything else I could think of. The following year, I bought a Fender guitar and amp from N'Stuff Music, formerly Pianos n Stuff, and enrolled in music lessons at their Little Lesson House to brush up on both guitar and vocals throughout the rest of 2025. I had previously taken guitar lessons there when I was in my 30s. It was also many years since I last played guitar and i had forgotten so much, but it was all coming back to me from learning on my own again and hands on practice with my instructor. Power chords, 7th chords, scales and keys, picking, music theory... everything came flooding back as I finally started playing once again. My instructor, Todd Seitz, went to Berkley College of Music in California and got to meet George Lynch, my favorite 80s metal guitarist from the band Dokken. Todd was the best hands on/ in-person music instructor I had ever met and he taught me riffs and intros and parts of songs by bands like ACDC, Dokken, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, and Great White... anything I wanted to learn. Due to my work schedule though, and all the hours I was putting in at the gym, I almost never had time to practice, so my lessons were sometimes frustrating as i began to relearn how to play... including basic techniques, alternate picking, timing, and switching between chords. But, when I did have the time, I would practice for hours. I would begin learning different songs on my own like when I was younger in the 90s, along with following several YouTube guitar channels that I had been watching over the past several years while in New England. I haven't sculpted anything since we left Pennsylvania a few years ago, but have gotten back into drawing and fantasy art so I'm planning to sculpt again in the near future, so maybe we'll see some dragons and monsters and fantasy themed environments soon. On the fitness side, I couldn't wait to start helping people as a personal trainer but I wanted to get in better shape and build up my strength before I started taking on clients. So, I joined Alexander's Athletic Club in Harmarville and worked out 2 to 3 hours a day for the first several months, lifting like a bodybuilder doing several exercises per body part, and doing my 2 day split routine of chest, shoulders, arms, and abs 3 days a week, and training my back and legs the other days in between, and usually taking Sundays off. I eventually cut some exercises from the workout to make the workout shorter to about an hour and a half. As far as my health goes, I'm doing much better than a few years ago. I still have back problems from many injuries oner the years which ultimately caused me to give up painting churches and homes, but I'm working out again and finally bench pressing over 2 plates (currently 230-235 pounds) in sets like I did back in my Florida days and maxing 300 pounds once again... not bad for a guy in his mid 50s. This has lead me to finally taking that step towards helping others as a personal trainer so I'm now accepting clients for weekly personal training sessions in weight training and fitness.

One Last Visit to the Northeast... This year in late January of 2026, an unexpected trip back to New England has given me the opportunity to spend the next few months once again in the Northeast, in what will be my last visit to this part of the country. While making my primary residence in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, I've spent the past several winters in Boston and look forward to my stay here once again. Since arriving here in New England for my extended visit throughout the Winter and Spring, I've continued my same workout routine at the Cape Ann YMCA in Gloucester Ma, about an hour from Boston where I am now offering personal training sessions until i return back to my home state of Pennsylvania. While here, I am currently accepting clients for fitness workout sessions around the North Shore and Cape Ann areas for a limited time only. Along with the fitness training, my musical hobby is taking on a new direction as well. Now that I'm once again getting back into playing guitar and singing my rock songs I grew up with, I'm planning to help other people sing and play their favorite songs too... whether it be just for fun in the privacy of their own home, or cruising in the car, or maybe to surprise their friends at a karaoke bar or at a party, or perhaps someone wanting to join a band or write their own music. So, I will soon be offering in-home private lessons for beginners for guitar and vocals throughout Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania. I look forward to helping other musicians... young and old... who are just starting out singing or playing guitar like I was many years ago. So whether you're looking to tone up and put a little muscle on, just wanting to lose weight and become healthier and happier, or are interested in music and would like to learn to sing and play guitar, feel free to give me a call to discuss your needs. Thank you for stopping by to visit my site and getting to know me a little, and I look forward to meeting you someday and helping you on your way to becoming healthier and making music together. Sincerely, - Ron Schaub