I should have been a mechanic...

Saturday, January 15, 2011

I started the day with an hour on the trainer. I had some running around to do and had scheduled time to walk with Holly later in the day and wanted to make sure I didn’t run out of time for the ride. Savannah was home for the long weekend and I needed to take the Jeep to see Dan since the windshield washer pump was on the blink again. I figured he’d take a quick look, make some simple adjustment and that would be that. It was new after all…he’d installed it two weeks ago. When he got out his jack and started putting the Jeep in the air, I started to think it was going to take a little longer.

“The windshield washer fluid comes out up here,” I said, pointing to a spot just in front of the windshield. He’s supposed to know everything about cars, but he was crawling under the left front wheel.

“Thanks, John…I know that. The pump plugs into the engine behind this panel, though.” He was removing something from the inner wall of the wheel well. Seems like a dumb place to plug it in…but what do I know? Little. Turns out it had come loose and I asked him if we should duct tape it on so it didn’t happen again. He didn’t think much of my suggestion, but now I’d know what to do if it happened again.

Now that the fluid was working, I noticed how bad her wiper blades were and that she didn’t have a one on the rear window. I made a stop at Auto Zone and picked them up, thanking the clerk for his offer to help install them. Did he think I was an incompetent boob? Well…I am and after struggling with trying to remove the old ones for 10 minutes, walked back into the store to take him up on his offer. He came out, pushed some invisible button and they slipped away. I thanked him…just before strangling him to death for making it look so easy…the bastard!

I also stopped at Patterson’s Fruit Farm to pick up a bag of apples. That’s all I wanted…but then…the smell of the bake shop assaulted me. I’m worthless and weak when I’m there…and succumbed to an apple fritter the size of a basketball. I wolfed it down on the car ride home.

Holly and I made it to the park a little before dark. We did some off-trail hiking into the marsh though not my longer trek. She was huffing up the hills and lamenting how out of shape she was. We made it to the edge of the marsh and I could see someone had been walking on the frozen surface. It could have been an 80-pound kid I was following, which meant I could be going straight through…but nothing ventured, nothing gained…and I wanted to get Holly to come out and share in the experience. She came reluctantly, but couldn’t see the value of standing on frozen water that might not be all that frozen. We returned quickly in near-dark.

Without the fritter, it would have been a good day. With the 8,000 calorie fritter…not so much.

Bike duration: 60 minutes. Hike duration: 60 minutes
Training Heart Rate: 130 biking. 75 hiking.
Calories burned during workout: 900 biking. 300 hiking.