Elicit Substance

While this past week should have been a week to ramp up my mileage, I instead wound up dealing with new issues pertaining to my Piece O'Crap car. The car actually failed it's yearly state inspection and I was off to deal with a parking brake repair. For those outside of Massachusetts, if your car fails, you have 60 days to make repairs and get it re-inspected before they revoke your registration so I had some time to get it done. I rarely use the parking brake so I had no idea that it no longer worked. I was told that the cables were original to the car so it was definitely time for replacements.

Unfortunately, there were no new cables to be found in the region and the garage had to order them directly from Dodge but they never bothered to tell me this. When I dropped it off on Saturday, I was told that it would be ready by 2PM. After not hearing from them by 5:30, my husband gave them a call (so we could avoid the old, "We won't give the man the same runaround that we would give a woman." trick) at which time he was told the car would not be ready until Monday. MONDAY?!?!? Have they ever heard of a courtesy call?

Seeing as how I needed the car to get to work by 4:00 AM on Monday, we made them put the car back together and I picked it up Sunday afternoon. That was my weekend.

Monday morning brought a call from the garage that the cables might be in on Tuesday so I took the opportunity to squeeze in a 35 mile bike ride. I wanted to go longer but it was so hot and sticky that I could barely peel myself off the bike at 35 miles. I was not feeling very encouraged by how the heat was affecting me but kept telling myself that it would not be so humid in Texas and I still had time to get stronger and lighter. I showered when I returned home and went over to the clubhouse for a nice, easy swim just to clear my head.

Tuesday brought a different kind of endurance test. Right after I got out of work, I received a call that the brake cables had arrived. I stopped off at home, grabbed a magazine and then spent the next 3.5 hours in the waiting room at National Tire and Battery while they put in the new cables. $750 later, I finally have a legal car... I hope.

Friday was my next opportunity to ride but only managed 20 miles. The one positive I can take from this is that I was working it as a strength ride - pushing heavier gears - and I have noticed that my average speed per hour is slowly creeping up while the numbers on my heart rate monitor have remained steady, indicating that my overall efficiency is increasing. Now I just have to extend that efficiency on longer rides and get it done soon.

I'm just hoping that the car passes inspection so I don't have to deal with this again this year.