I called the mechanic to see how my beloved (and much missed) car was doing.

“Still waiting for the heads to come back from the machine shop, and the tech who took your car apart had to leave. His brother died last night. So we’ve got someone else coming in, but it’ll take a little bit longer since he didn’t take the car apart. We’re now looking at like Tuesday or Wednesday”

Crap.

I was really hoping, betting actually, on getting my car back today. I already have a hotel reservation for Saturday night, and a race planned for Sunday. That’s about $90 bucks that is gone, unless I find a car to borrow. I’ve posted a status about it on Facebook, but I will only probably get responses from people in California.

More on being carless: It’s not THAT bad. I mean, once you get over the fact that it’s much harder to get around. You can’t do all your shopping in one trip, it sucks when it rains, and getting places after dark is hard.

I miss my car…

I just watched this movie:

It was really well done and the ride looked amazing. Amazingly pretty and amazingly hard. Out of the 16 or so riders that started only 6 or so finished.

One of the common threads was how boring and monotonous the ride was. just spinning your pedals for 2711 miles following a dirt road all the way from Canada to Mexico, climbing an astronomical amount of hills.

It made my legs hurt. Then it made me feel bad. I’ve been, well, not complaining, but maybe mentally suffering and bragging about how tough I’ve been this week. A 26 mile ride on Saturday killed my legs, then all this week I’ve been riding to work and back. A whole mile trip, one way. On these legs that are so dead and haven’t had any rest at all.

These guys have put more mileage on their legs in half a day then I have all this year.

Sometimes, I just get shoved back into my place.

On Sunday, my car broke. Luckily I was just in my apartment complex’s parking lot when it decided to die and subsequently refused to start. I pushed it back to its spot and tried unsuccessfully to fix it.

I was without a car. I was carless. And I have learned something about carlessness. It’s a treat.

I once heard a quote that went something like this: being sick is a luxury. I get to walk places. While everyone else just drives to the supermarket, I get to go on an adventure, gather as much supplies as I can hold, and carry it all back to my man cave.

My self-imposed de-evolution of mobility is something I can relish at this point in my life. I have no kids to carry. My work is a mile away. The store is half that distance. I have two bikes. I have friends to bring me places. I have the luxury to be carless.

Today, as I was sitting in my car waiting for it to warm up, I started thinking. I though, Man, I’d really like to have a surround sound system for my house. Yeah, I think that’s the next big purchase that I want to get. I wonder how married people make these decisions. Do they make a list and take turn saving up and buying things off of it? Then my car was warm enough to defrost and I went on my day.

I worked a half day.

After my work, I went to the H. E. B. and picked up some stuff I needed for my race tomorrow and got some gas. While I was waiting for pump, this guy in a truck rolls up. He says hey, I say hey back, and he ask me if I want a free wireless surround sound system. I looked at him crazy, like he offered me a stolen sound system. He’s says he’s delivering it from Austin and his boss just said he could just keep it. He wanted to know if I wanted it.

I said no, thanks. And he left.

Three minutes later, I put it all together…