My Car Hates Me

Every morning I sit in my car and wait for the train. I keep the engine going a few minutes after I get there because it's frigid cold out right now and I don't want to dress up like Ralphie's brother in A Christmas Story. So I sit, maybe stare out the window or listen to the radio until the train comes. Well today, it was really cold out so I waited as long as I could to open the door. At the magic moment I pulled the car door handle and nothing happened.

I pulled again, the train about at a stop 30 feet away. Nothing. I pulled the other door handle and it opened without issue then pulled it closed. Tried my door again. Nothing. Fuck, I figure it must be frozen shut. I check the lock, not locked. I pull again and push on the door really, really hard. No I don't think it's stuck. Fuck it, escape through the passenger side door. Open, grab my bag, jump over the passenger seat, grab my cup of tea, lock the car, and I'm the last one on the train.

I shouldn't bother locking it anymore. If someone steals it that's like a blessing to me at this point. The thing hates starting on these cold mornings and it's only a matter of time before it dies for good. Now it doesn't want to let me out. Piece of crap. It will be interesting to see what happens when I get back to it this evening.

Since Walter brought coffee and hot chocolate to the time trial last week I have a stack of Dunkin Doughnuts cups which I can use to bring a cup of tea. This is wasteful of me but it just doesn't taste as good out of a travel mug. It never does. When this stack is done I may stop brining tea, or maybe I'll try a travel mug to prove it to myself, or maybe I'll try coffee in a travel mug, or maybe I'll buy a stack of disposable cups from Costco. That's highly wasteful I know. I have no response for that, other than this:

USA!
USA!
USA!

At some point I should tell the Cruise Burrito story to make more sense of that. Hi Terren.

Despite my wife getting Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream yesterday as well as my raiding her real vat of chocolate chip cookie dough while she was making cookies for her playgroup today, I dropped back into the 180s again today. I skipped right over 189 and went for 188. I'm getting back into the groove after a week and a half. It's not easy, but yesterday I had a really good eating day until I got home.

Finished Berlin Conspiracy last night which is a mere 2 days for that book. It was cheap on Amazon but still $7 for 2 days of reading is a bit steep. I think there were some connections left out with some implications that kinda turn the whole thing on its ear. And as the story went on it got a little goofy but not too bad. As I said yesterday it was predictable. And in the end (the presumable period "after the book") the bad guys win anyway, since it's a fiction about assassinating JFK in Berlin. So you know the "good guys" will win temporarily. Still I found it entertaining if not a little sketchy in consistency at times. I will likely read the author again as that was his first book I believe.

Moved on to Fierce Invalids again this morning and I picked up the 6th book in the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe series even though they basically suck. I'm only 2 more books from being done and they're really small so I'll hammer them out in like 2 days each. I'm in a reading groove right now so I may pick up something heavy after this, maybe Bowling Alone or give One Hundred Years of Solitude another chance.

Nothing exciting going on with the bike this weekend. Chimney Rock Saturday where I'm going to meet a guy from the board who's selling me an old fork for $25. Says it's only been used maybe 20 times so it's a solid deal. Sunday and Monday I hope to get on the road bike for my race to 2000 miles. I should really compare time spent on the roadie versus the trainer but that would be a slam dunk for the roadie since my average speed on the trainer crushes the road bike. Yes, I know, exciting.