Fun & Fitness over 50

Another installment in the shallow, materialistic and sometimes pitiful recounting of the little 'things' that make me happy.

As most of us do who blog about the health and fitness arena, we try to tie whatever we write about back to the topics of health and fitness. Of course, our lives are about much more than just health and fitness but we try to adhere to the primary subject matter for the sake of our loyal readers who return or subscribe for just that reason.

For example, to paraphrase the penultimate country and western theme: "My wife left me, I lost my job, the bank repossessed my truck, and my dog died. So to drown my sorrows I walked down to the gym to work it out and they had canceled my membership for non-payment. So I didn't work out today."

However, I may not be able to link what I'm about to share with health and fitness for the first time in my blog life, so if that turns out to be the case, I ask your indulgence and forgiveness.

In the past I have listed things that make me happy and those things are usually related to health and fitness; bikes, bike clothing, other sports equipment, getting a deal on equipment or clothing, etc. Most recently, it was "the thought of going skiing" that made me happy. Pitiful.

Today's entry requires a little setup. I have this very special car. It is a '95 Geo Prism but it is unlike any other Geo Prism on the road. It has special "customizations". The first is this driver's side door handle treatment.

It provides an extra easy grip for opening the door except that you have to open the passenger door first to unlatch the driver's side door. As an additional security bonus, you can leave the door unlocked and it still cannot be opened without unlocking the passenger door.

The next "feature" that I would like to point out is the rocker panel. The metal has been strategically removed to reduce weight and provide enhanced cooling to the underside of the vehicle. This is duplicated on the other side of the car as well.






Moving on to the passenger side, the rear view mirror has been removed to reduce wind resistance
and the rear panel has been "re-contoured" as a spoiler to improve side-to-side stability and handling.
You can see this is a very special car! So what makes me happy?
I have one little problem. One of the spark plug wires keeps coming undone. They go through the valve cover and I suppose the material of the wire has become soft and weak and the compression keeps working it loose and pushing it out of the valve cover effectively leaving me with 3 cylinders to run the engine with. Rough! The remedy is simple, just pop the hood and push the wire back on. The problem is that the hood has been increasingly difficult to "pop". I think there is a spring that pushes the hood open when you pull the release lever and that spring is either broken or weak and it takes a lot of fiddling and retries to get the hood open. Finally, it just wouldn't open at all. So I had a flash of insight! If I could wedge something between the hood and the body that applies some pressure, then when I pull the release lever, it would spring. It turns out my ice scraper works perfectly for this purpose.
Now I don't have to get the hood release OR the spark plug wire fixed. So that's what makes me happy!

Pretty sad, no?

On another note, I DID drive "special car" to the gym today for a great workout after smugly popping the hood and securing said spark plug wire. Ha! There's your health and fitness angle!