Saturday, February 16, 2008

Is Someone Trying to Tell Me Something?

I have been putting in some decent miles, both running and cycling.

Tuesday, a long run after work. I decided to test my new Nike trail running shoes . Actually got these as a warranty item from Nike. My Free's fell apart last year and while they didn't give me a free pair I did receive a $75.00 coupon. My short 45 min run turned into a 2 hour march thanks to some very icy conditions on the trail behind my house. I needed my screwed shoes for conditions like these....

Wednesday night I was going to take it easy as I had a 5 hour ride planned for Thursday, but Randy posted a Smithville Lake paved trail ride so I decided to go as the pace was going to be easy. Again, trouble with icy conditions. The path had dozens of short snow/icy patches that gave both of us a hard time. Randy took a nice little spill just past Sail Boat Cove. I had just about gone down in a frozen rut myself but I finally got going again and then I noticed lights spinning around ahead. As I got closer, I saw Randy flat on his butt having hit a long icy patch...

I took off from work on Valentines day and headed off on a planned 5 hour ride. A cold front was to come in so I thought that I would try for the elusive all tail wind ride. I had a good South wind to my back as I headed towards Platte City. My plan did not work out as I had to fight the same South wind on the return trip. At the 3 hour mark I was in Ferrelview, out of food and very hungry. I stopped at the convenience store and a Snickers bar was calling my name. It was good, but did not ''handle my hunger" as advertised so I headed home and cut my ride short. Oh yea, I got my North wind about 3 miles from home. Missed an all tail wind ride by about 1 hour....

Friday both Carolynn and Christopher were off so we headed out to Landahl for a quick MTB ride while the trails were still frozen. I decided to run instead of ride to get in a better workout. The frozen trails lasted about 45 minutes then started to thaw quickly so we headed back towards the Argo trail head. Still got in about a 1 1/2 hour run this time on good trails. Shoes worked great which is more than I can say for my van. That darn thing broke down again. This time the alternator went out. I thought we could make it home on the battery alone, but then the transmission started to stop shifting as it needed some juice. As we were all loading up in the Mel's Towing truck, I thought to myself "I think someone is trying to tell me something".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

At least alternators are cheap. Once a vehicle gets that old, just like my truck, everything starts going out. My distributor cap broke a week or so ago . I took that opportunity to change all the plugs and wires while I was under the heard. Should be good for another 100K miles or so.