A Weekend of Victory

It's not often that I get to savor a longish period of time in which most of my endeavors were successful, and certainly not within the past few years. This weekend, however, was just such a weekend. Please indulge me for a moment while I go through what I accomplished and bid a tearful farewell to what was a splendid three days.

1. At close of business on Friday, I had made some excellent progress and completed the critical tasks of a project at work that I had been working on for weeks, since at least mid-December. I was so happy to get it going like I did, I almost did one of my famous victory dances. (If you've never seen one, it's something to behold, I tell you what.)

2. I removed the pieces of the Mustang that were the crucial first steps in the replacement of the transmission. Basically, two sections of the exhaust pipe were in the way: the first is Y-pipe from the headers and the second is the middle section where the catalytic converter is installed. These two sections were situated directly beneath both the transmission and the bell housing (which mates the transmission and clutch to the engine). This means that, without moving those pipes, there was no possibility of getting the transmission out. There were eight nuts/bolts holding all of these pipes on their fittings. I had loosened seven of them. However, one of the nuts on the passenger-side header connection flat-out refused to come loose. Worse, it was reachable from a couple of angles but it was in a very confined space, so the methods I could use to loosen it were somewhat limited; even the primary approach with a socket wrench was at an angle and so simply locking on a socket and cranking with a breaker bar was not a simple matter. To make matters even more challenging, it was slightly rounded already. I tried heating it, spraying penetrating oil on it, different sizes and depths of sockets to see if I could get a good, tight fit even with the bad angle. I had a decent approach from the side, through a small opening in the wheelwell, but the spring and suspension parts were in the way and I could only get a regular box wrench in. Without the ability to get a breaker bar on it, that approach bore no fruit. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, I got a 16mm socket on the nut and managed to get the extension bar in at a good angle. I put a good amount of pressure onto the socket to hold it in place, then got the 3-foot breaker bar on the handle. I pushed hard and turned...and it MOVED! Slightly, just a very small turn, but it was loose. I got it to move a little more, not much, and I still didn't have enough of an angle to keep using the socket, but I was able to come in through the wheel well with the box wrench and finish getting it off. After that, it was relatively quick work.

3. I also got the steering tie rods loose from the spindles, another very difficult task. Only this time I was lacking the correct tool. A coworker had done this before and lent me the tool. Now I can replace or replace the steering box which is also leaking fluid like a sieve.

So enough of the car success. That's fun and all, but there was still more...

4. I ran eight miles without stopping. I haven't really talked about this, but it has become a big thing for me the past few weeks. Every year, my company enters folks in the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. Two of the three other guys on the network security team with me have run it the past couple of years. They invited me to run it with them. Yes, the whole thing, 26.2 miles. Now, as longtime readers are aware, I've climbed 11 of Colorado's 54 Fourteeners, and that's pretty grueling. So I figured I could take this on. This is somewhat out of character for me, because of all the possible ways to exercise, running is my absolute, dead-last, almost-need-to-be-paid-to-do-it choice. I HATE running for exercise. When I run, I am either chasing or being chased, heading for the end zone, heading for home plate, or something like that. On the other hand, a marathon is exactly the kind of ultimate goal I would need to motivate me. I climbed fourteeners because I hate just hiking around in the woods; I need to be going somewhere, and the "somewhere" represented by the summit of a fourteener is pretty awesome. So I figured that as much as I don't like running, running a marathon is pretty much right up my alley. Of course, it also provides a great way to actually start exercising again, something I hadn't done regularly in quite a while.

My training regimen is fairly rigorous, and I am slightly behind schedule. Most marathon training schedules seem to be 16-week affairs, and I actually started training with about 14 weeks to go, so I'm having to push a little, without killing myself, to stay on track. I still have issues with high blood pressure, so it's a delicate balance for me. However, I managed to make my 8 miles (again, I'm behind schedule; this week's long run should've been 10 miles). This was actually a great triumph because it was the longest I had EVER run without stopping, and I was ready to quit at 4 miles. At 5 miles, my body was screaming for me to stop. At 6 miles, I was hoping I'd see Heidi (who had gone to Wal Mart) so she could pick me up and take me home. I don't remember much of the last two miles, in fact, because I pretty much went on autopilot and just ran until I hit eight miles. It's amazing what you can do through sheer force of will.

5. This morning I was up early with Owen, got some breakfast, let Heidi catch up on a little sleep, then went out once she was up and raked all the leaves in the yard. We have a really big tree in the front yard, and it is very thick with branches. It shed many, many leaves. I had meant to get them all raked and in the garbage before we had any serious precipitation and I missed that deadline. Leaving the leaves in the yard can really mess with the grass, so it had to be done. And now it is.

In addition to these big victories, I also had some small ones, like getting two loads of laundry finished, cleaning the kitchen, and emptying and reloading the dishwasher. If you count the major points I scored by watching all of the kids so that Heidi could take my grandma to the casino as a thank-you gift for her staying with us and helping us for the past two weeks, it's been a pretty dadgum good few days.

Let's see if I can keep the pattern going as we start the new week.