Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Driving > Rock > Crack > Unhappy Driver

I was heading out to my physio appointment this afternoon. I was entering the local Parkway that bypasses town. I swear I wasn't driving that close to the guy in front. He was at least 25-30m in front of me and all of a sudden I see a decent sized rock fly up through the air and I hear "Crack" followed by me cursing.

You see, I have had my current car, a lovely 91 Ford Tempo for almost 5 years. I
acquired the car when I first got my license (yep I was 24 when I got my license) from my step brother for a steal at like $700. While it isn't my dream car, it has done me pretty well. In fact, the odometer just rolled over 300,000km around a week or so ago.

When I bought the car, there were a few small rock chips in the windshield. Two winters ago (3 years after buying the car) when we had brutally cold temperatures hitting well below freezing (well below for Vancouver Island that is) I had the heat cranked on the way to work. I went out on a break to move my car to find the chip had spread into a nice long crack. That crack spread about 80% of the way across the windshield, right in the middle where the main line vision is.

You can kind of see the main crack



I put up with the crack, even though I know it is illegal as they could say it obstructs my view, because I didn't want to pay the deductible for the insurance. The plan was to move to a new truck (blazer) sooner than later. Here we are a year and a half after that crack occurred and I am still in the Tempo. My Blazer sits in the yard waiting for an engine swap (long story). Actually you can see the red in the back ground in the photo above which is my Blazer. No idea when Jason will get to doing that as he has been busy on home repairs and redoing our fence.

So today, I now have a brand new crack in the windshield and this crack is now on its way to intersect the other one. It already spread a decent amount today, so I imagine with a few more hot days over summer, it will join the other crack. At least I hope it does and doesn't decide to go off in a weird design to obstruct my view even further!

Beginning of the chip, where the rock hit today



Now I have to decide whether or not I replace the windshield as it will cost me a $200 deductible through my insurance. Grr.

In other news, in my last post I think I mentioned something about doing a workout the following day. Let's just say "BOMBED." Yep complete disaster. I was nowhere near the paces I was supposed to run and I couldn't even finish the workout properly. In fact, I couldn't even finish my cool down on the way home without having to stop a few times. I went out at about 10:15am and it was the hottest day of the year. I think we set a record high temperature for that day. I was dehydrated and had no water with me.

As I was running I first debated stopping at a local gas station and begging for water. Then my thoughts went to stopping at a local house and asking for water. My last thought was "maybe I should hitchhike home." Unfortunately I was too far from home and in my opinion no matter how much I was dying, I didn't want to walk. I wanted to get home as fast as possible, which meant running. I gulped down a ton of water and took a cold shower as I was overheating. I headed to work with a headache and I didn't visit the washroom until at least 10:30pm even though I had been taking in water regularly for the last 10 or so hours. Since then I have tried my best to work on my water intake. I was doing well, but today I think I fell off that routine! Oops. Back to it tomorrow.

I got my redemption on that workout yesterday. I was up early and running before 7:30 to beat the heat. The workout went well considering where I am in my training, which basically means it is still early in my training plan for my fall plans. I felt good and ran the paces I was supposed to.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a present in the mail! New shoes from Molly. Okay well not really from Molly as I bought them but she was nice enough to ship them to me! Thanks Molly! Aren't they beautiful? I love them, the Saucony Kinvara's. Plus they match my sunglasses!



I also did some light gardening last week. That means I pulled out some weeds (at least I think they were weeds) and then put in 4 plants. I am not a green thumb so hopefully I don't kill these! I just wanted to add some color to the front of the house.



More posts to come, sooner than you think. I have more to say, but will split it up into multiple posts rather than one very long post! Until then see you on the trails!

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