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jimsjournal |
Car repairs -- 09/06/12 |
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My car has been in the shop the past few days -- mostly for repairs I had been putting off for a while -- okay, so it's been more than a year for the suspension work -- new front and rear struts, rear antisway bar, etc. plus full alignment -- plus a new gas tank (ouch! they are expensive!) and all of the associated seals and flanges and hoses. The total came to $2676.48 (that's including $126.69 in state tax on the parts). That is several hundred dollars more than I paid for my first brand new car. Yeah, I know, my first new car was a 1967 Chevy and I filled the tank with 25 cents a gallon gasoline. Long time ago. I've had my Toyota Corolla for quite a while now. It's a 1999 model that I bought in October of 1999 -- yes, at a nice price break because the 2000 models were out. As you can tell, I am not the kind to trade in a car every three years. And since I just put $2676.48 into a car I've owned for almost 13 years, you can be certain that I intend to keep it for a bit longer. Of course you may recall that back in April when we bought a 2004 Toyota Avalon for Nancy, it was to replace her 1996 Toyota Camry which she had been driving for 16 years. (Now it is Jeremy's car.) And Jill is still driving the 1993 Honda Accord that she bought in the summer of 2003. I was home alone when the repair shop called to say my car was ready late yesterday afternoon -- Nancy had a tennis match up in Warwick after she was finished with classes for the day and Jill was working. I had considered biking there but then decided to run in to town -- it's almost 3 miles (2.87 miles according to Google pedometer) so I thought that would be a good thing to do, especially since for the past week and a half I had been biking and hiking but not running -- and I have a 5K race coming up on Saturday. At lunchtime today Jill was going to go for a run and I thought I should get another run in before Saturday so we set out together but less than half a mile into it I was short of breath and decided that wasn't good so I walked back home and worked out in the basement -- some weights, etc. but mostly half an hour (8 miles) on our exercise bike. The shortness of breath might have been because (at my suggestion) we had started right in running instead of doing a warm-up walk and also I kept up pace on an incline -- not very steep, but a few hundred feet long. I had been deliberately alternating workouts to avoid running two days in a row and I guess maybe that was a good idea. Oh well, I am still looking forward to Saturday morning. It is a fairly level course, a few slight grades but no serious hills. And this Saturday's race should be a good tune-up for the CVS 5K a week from Sunday.
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