Thursday was sort of a forced recovery day. I was heading home to get in some riding miles before the sun went down and as I was taking a back road home to beat traffic I saw a truck on the side of the road.
He is a muscian who works for a 4x4 business taking tourists out into the desert. They do a big BBQ and he strums the git-tar. Its pretty common around here. Remembering my 2 hour penalty out in the desert waiting for Mistress to pick me up after both tires went flat on my road bike, I figured I would Pay-It-Forward for the two couples that offered me assistance that Sunday morning not so long ago.
He was really flustered, thinking he is going to be fired and clients are waiting, his boss is waiting, its getting dark. I let him use my cell to talk to his boss. But his jack doesn't work in the spot we put it because the suspension is made for absorbing more stress than normal. Then it breaks. Mine is too small. I drive down to the auto store to buy a new jack and they sell him jack oil. The jack is still busted. So I drive him back down with the jack, they tell him, "Oh those jacks suck, they break all the time, let me replace it and maybe you can get this one to work once." The first place we put it, doesn't work, so he puts in a unstable place, I pray, and it works.
Total time to change one tire, 90 minutes. I felt sorry for the guy, there was no lights anywhere around him and it was three miles to the nearest store, which happened to be the auto parts store. I am sure someone would have stopped before too long, it is a busy road, but you never know how long they would stay or commited they would be to help him. I ended up using my lights to illuminate the work area. We both ended up cutting our fingers up because it was a massive blowout and the steel cable from the tire were poking us as we used the jack.
So I didn't get home until well past dark and I hadn't eaten in seven hours. I had enough time to put Mighty Mo to bed but missed helping Mistress deal with a massive asthma attack that left the little guys lips blue and him gasping for breath and freaking out. She took him to the park down the street since he has been couped up all week and he got carried away running around.
Today that missing bike ride from Thursday and Saturday late morning I will report how my swim to the buoy inside the canyon went. The team is going to change their routine to help me out. We will all go into the canyon as a group and the whole goal is to get me to the buoy and back, a total trip of probably only 800 meters, without a complete mental collapse.
I really think I have the ability to swim that distance, its just that little matter of not having any safety around like a bottom or a wall or a line to follow or that if I stopped and had some horrible immediate need that I would be able to make it to the shoreline safely. I know, what a ninny.
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3 comments:
i was the same way swimming in open water when i first started. luckily, benny went out with me and swam behind me. mine isn't so much a fear of drowning, as it is a fear of not knowing what is under me, behind me, in front of me or possibly right next to me. the lake i practice in is world famous for tiger muskies. if you don't know what those look like, google image it. i shit you not, they don't let you keep those fish unless they're 46 inches long. it's quite frightening when you think that they're also predator fish and have sharp, sharp, sharp teeth. did i have a few freak outs the first time i did it... um, hell yes. did it get better? yes. just focus on your swimming and don't let your mind wander.
you are definately a good man comm. how awesome of your team to be so supportive of you in the open water swims. you give me hope that i can overcome my swimming issues.
I will pray that your son will get better.
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