Life Catches Up

No swimming today as I had to leave work early to get the other three tires on my car replaced. If you remember, one of my tires completely shredded on our way to Ottawa back in late January. Today I had the car inspected by my trusted mechanic and got the word back that the other three are also of the "sub par" variety and are just about ready to blow. Naturally, with the impending drive to the Around the Bay race in Hamilton coming up this weekend I don't want to face a similar mess so I fixed the problem (hundreds of dollars and several wasted hours later, of course). I even called the dealership where we bought the car last November, not to get any sort of financial restitution or anything, but simply to let them know that the mechanic they used to safety our car put on a set of duds, told us they were new, and in the process risked my family's safety and that of the others on the road at the time of our blowout. Like the title of this post says, life has a way of catching up to you sometimes, and I suspect it will catch up to that crooked mechanic somewhere down the line. I was informed that for other reasons this dealership no longer deals with that mechanic, which is a very good thing. And even though the used car warranty has long expired the dealer asked what he could do to help and offered me 4 new tires at cost. I thanked him but couldn't take advantage of the offer since I needed them replaced asap and couldn't make the trip up to Bolton this weekend on account of the race.

On the lighter side of things, if you are looking for a meal that packs in the calories like few can check out this story about a massive burger being offered at the Detroit Tigers single-A affiliate's, the West Michigan Whitecaps, ballpark this summer. A free t-shirt to anyone who can finish it in one sitting! Someone should tell Dean Karnazes about this thing. And doesn't Nitmos live in the area? Maybe he could check this out and give the blogosphere a review sometime when he is suffering from "hunger pangs".

And in case you are thinking that your long run calorie intake isn't up to snuff, check out this race report from ESPN.com. I almost chucked-up the butter chicken I had for lunch when I read this story, partly from laughing and partly from the prospect of ever being subjected to such an ordeal.

Strength routine tonight. Then lots of exercises that the physio prescribed. I'm back to standing one-legged on a wobble board, something I did religiously for about a year during my slow recovery period. I had built up enough strength in the ankle to stand on that thing for a good ten to fifteen minutes at a time, but now I find that my muscles burn like crazy at about the 2 minute mark. I guess that's a good thing in that I have lots of room for improvement, but I do feel bad that I ever let this slide. Perhaps if I had kept up the wobble board balancing exercises my current foot pain would never have crept up? Hindsight's a bitch.

Not Much... Other than more push ups

Nothing much going on here in my little world. The foot is still footy, though I am cautiously optimistic that in the last day or so it has taken a turn for the better. Stay tuned.

The car mods continue: tonight I wired up a secondary power socket in behind the dash only to find (afterwards) that the fuse was blown. I have no idea when that might have happened, and it could have been something that occurred a long time ago since I've never tested the socket before and wasn't smart enough to test it before I started wiring. Anyway, I have to go pick up a replacement fuse and see what happens. I really hope that there isn't a short somewhere, and I'm pretty certain I didn't introduce a short with my mod.

I am definitely sick now, though I think the worst is yet to come. I still did Week 6 Day 2 of the hundred push ups challenge thingy, though I felt pretty weak. The sets went 22-22-30-30-24-24-18-18 and then I maxed out at 60 for a total of 248 push ups.

Tomorrow I hope to get to the pool for a swim, if I make it to work that is...

Back at the Chinups, and Car Mods

I got back on the chin up plan today, though I decided to change things up a little and not go to exhaustion with every set. Also, I feel like I am coming down with something and feel a little weak as a result. It's funny how your body holds off on getting sick until after something important that you've been working on, and stressing over, has come and gone. Case in point, I handed in my final paper on Monday, and today I am feeling ill!

I did 5 sets of 5 pull ups and then 5 sets of 5 chin ups for a total of 50 "ups". They were pretty easy to do this way. I think that when I feel a bit better I might try something similar to the push up program and do a set to exhaustion at the end of a bunch of shorter and easier sets.

Also tonight I couldn't help myself and just had to go tear apart the inside of my car to install that auxiliary input for my IPod & Satellite Radio. I had all the bits and it had to happen. The install was not super easy, but it wasn't difficult either. I had to take off a panel down low in front of the gear shifter, unscrew a couple of bolts that held the climate control and radio unit, and then pull that thing out. That's the part that was hard, and even though I didn't need any tools to pry it out my fingers were in pain and little bloody at the end. Once everything was out I plugged the aux unit into the CD Changer port at the back of the radio, attached the grounding wire to a metal screw on a piece of metal chassis, and then used ties to hold it all in place and keep it from moving around. I also had to take out the little cover that sits in the hole where the fog light on/off switch would normally be if the car had any fog lights, and then drill a hole in that thing so I could fit the aux input through. This is all that is visible in the car and it's right beside the 12-volt power socket, nice and convenient. I then put it all back together, reattached the battery (I took off the negative lead on the battery to avoid a nasty shock), typed in the anti-theft radio code, and WOOT WOOT! The thing works like a charm!

Here's a picture of the way it looks that I found on the Internet - though it is not my car it looks exactly the same as mine. It's also where I got the idea for installing it like this. I added the arrow and words just so we're all clear on what the heck I'm talking about:


The next step is to install the Satellite Radio cradle somewhere convenient and run the wires for the power supply and antenna so that they are not visible and hanging all over the place. I also want to split the 12-volt socket in behind the dash so that I can plug the power adapter for the radio out of sight and still have the power socket on the dashboard for other things.

Sorry, I didn't take any pictures. I find that when I get going on these projects I just focus and doing anything but the task at hand seems like a waste of time. I didn't even realize that I didn't take any pictures until after it was all done!

Oh yeah, no lunch time swim today. The weather was nasty in the morning so I didn't bike to work and, therefore, had no reasonable way to get to the pool on time.

Car Stuff and More Pushups

I had the car rust-proofed over the weekend, which was a good idea since they use the nastiest salt on the roads here and it rots cars from the inside out it seems. Anyway, I don't know if that procedure had anything to do with it or anything, but the next day the "SRS" light came on on the dashboard (d'ya like that? the "do do" in a row, and I wasn't even talking about my 4 year-old!) and it was not going off. Naturally, what with this car being new to us, I started to wonder what the heck was going on. Turns out the SRS system has a multitude of sensors all over the place, like in the airbags, the seat belt buckles, under the front seats, and in the tensioners on the seat belts. These sensors are particularly sensitive to voltage fluctuations, and I wondered if the rust-proofing that was sprayed all over the engine affected the alternator or something.

Anyway (and I'm sorry for this boring recount, but if you own a Honda you may actually find this interesting) we talked to our mechanic this morning and he recommended I disconnect the battery for a few minutes, and if the SRS light stayed on afterwards to bring the car to him or get on the horn with the dealer who sold the car to us. He even said he'd talk to the dealer on our behalf! What a great guy.

However, disconnecting the battery would also make our radio inoperative since it's one of those "anti theft" kinds and the code that unlocks it was nowhere to be found. Therefore I went to plan B: erasing the memory of the computer that stores the SRS data. If we managed to do that and the light still came on I knew the problem was serious enough to involve a professional. If it stayed off, we'd be OK, at least for the time being. I should also mention that this is a problem that is common to all Hondas, and I was assured that the danger of the airbags deploying without warning was non-existent.

So, tonight we managed to reset the computer using a pair of tweezers from a Swiss Army knife. It involved turning the key to the "on" position, and then going through a series of steps where the tweezers were used to complete a circuit in this wire doohickey located in the fuse box. The instructions I found on the Internet said it's likely this would take more than one attempt since the sequence had to be followed precisely with proper timing, etc. We got it on the first pass and the SRS light is off! We'll monitor the situation and hope that this solves the problem.

Also of note, on my bike while heading home I noticed not one, but two Honda Civics of the same vintage pass me with their SRS lights clearly visible on the dashboards! You'd think Honda would deal with this somehow since it seems to be a prevalent issue.

Oh yeah, this isn't a car blog, and I am not a car guy... But hey, I can't run so I might as well write about what I'm up to, right?

Tonight I did do some more push ups. The sets for Week 5 Day 1 went 36-40-30-24 and then I maxed out at 58 for a total of 188. It was not easy.