When did I get old?
On Saturday, after months of saying I'd do it, I went and bought a treadmill from Sears. It was a pretty nice model and had features that I'd use. The plan was that I could be walking while watching TV instead of sitting while watching TV.
We backed up the truck to the loading area at Sears and two burly men loaded it onto my truck. I suddenly realized that it is going to be an entertaining exercise to get this sucker into the house.
It just so happened that our next door neighbor and 3 of his friends were outside when we were trying to muscle the thing into the house. With their help we got it in without much effort.
I used my handy-dandy box cutter and just sliced the sucker open. Of course, some assembly required. In all honesty, based on the "destructions" it shouldn't have been that difficult. I just had to put the safety rails on and the wheel assembly. But my impressions were really wrong. I don't know how many times I had to go to the garage to get a different screwdriver that fit the head of the screw better. Not only that, if the screw wasn't lined up perfectly with the hole it just didn't want to go in. On several occasions you had to be on your back like you were changing the oil of your car.
One step required the insertion of 4 large bolts. 2 were screwed into threaded holes so no nuts were required. The other two had self locking nuts on the other side. The instructions told me to hand tighten then to tighten down with a adjustable or crescent wrench and the provided Allen wrench. I could barely get the crescent wrench into the tight space occupied by the bolt and all the other major parts of the treadmill. But I got it done with some banged up knuckles.
Then, I turned the page and I was instructed to fold the treadmill in a certain way so I could assemble the wheels. Wouldn't you know it, the "destructions" on the previous page was only referring to 2 of the 4 bolts. From this new angle, I could've easily gotten to both sides of the other bolts and could've easily tightened them down. Oh well, live and learn, but I was still frustrated
Well, needless to say, I got it put together. Of course I had to try it out. So I fired up the treadmill and put it into the easy jogging preset mode. It apparently takes me on a 30 minute trek where the speeds go between walking and jogging speeds. I was sweating like a pig. The ceiling fan above me was still set in winter mode so it wasn't blowing air down on me. But I successfully completed my first trial on the treadmill
Then came Sunday. Nancy wanted to do her workout videos. So I said I would go on the treadmill. I got her iPod synchronized with my play lists (cause mine doesn't have a case yet to protect it) and climbed aboard. I decided to do a manual mode which lets me decide how fast and what incline I exercise at. I started walking/jogging to the soundtrack from "Pirates of the Caribbean". It is a great music for working out to. By the time it had ended, Nancy's workout videos were still going, so I just switched to my work play list which is composed of a lot of dance and disco songs. Needless to say, when her videos were done, I had been on that thing for over and hour!
I could barely move and I still had the lawn to do. So I lazed about hoping to catch my second win, but alas, it didn't happen.
I live in Texas and it is hot in April (heck it was hot in March). I went out to the yard armed with my sweatband, 5 bottles of Gatorade, my "outside" baseball cap, and plenty of sun block to protect my fair skin (I glow in the dark). Oh, it was miserable. I have to say this has got to be one of the best years for my grass. It is thick like a carpet. Good for my lawn, bad for me. Even with the impressive "cruise control" feature of my Honda lawn mower, it still took a lot of energy for me to mow that green carpet. I also had to edge, and weed eat the lawn. Nancy had to bring me a bigger bottle of Gatorade because I drank everything I had.
Well now I'm sitting her typing this at 8:00PM barely able to get off the couch. My hips, calves and Achilles tendon are killing me. It has hit me, I am old.....when did that happen?
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