The big 100

“The big 100,” as they call it. I woke up today thinking it would be more festive or something. Well, I must disappoint myself and you all — it’s just another day. Three months of sobriety become the usual. So, to fill more of my free time, it’s been long overdue to use my gym membership not only to sponsor them. Hence I got a brilliant idea yesterday, inspired by a friend — “Hey, let’s go to the gym!”

I haven’t been running or jogging in years. I have tried to visit a gym regularly over the years, only to figure out there could be better ideas after a night of drinking. It helps to sweat off the hangover, but it doesn’t give you a feeling of accomplishment, more of a “Christ, thank you that I was able to survive this without passing out on the treadmill or while doing a benchpress” (still not sure what would have been worse, the first one would probably be hilarious for other gym visitors). The longest gym streak I can remember was, perhaps, three months tops at a 1–2 times a week rate. I’d like to know if I can make a habit out of it this time around.

This “first time” felt very different. First, I stepped on a treadmill with the idea of warming up with a paced walk, only to figure out that I hadn’t broken a sweat after 10 minutes. Ok, I thought, let’s crank up the speed to something resembling slight jogging (6–7 km/h) — same effect — no sweating, heart rate just slightly elevated. So crank up the speed more — now I’m slowly running at 10km/h. Yesss. I can feel sweat drops on my forehead — mission accomplished! A year ago, the thought of running one kilometer would kill me even before I attempted to give it a go. Now I managed to do 2,5 km as a warmup. My heart rate was close to the max (if you’re wondering how to calculate it — it’s (220 — your_age), so you shouldn’t exceed that for safety reasons or unless you know better during your initial training).

Stepping off the treadmill didn’t feel like I was about to die; I felt warmed up and ready to do some weightlifting. That feeling was new, very new. I spent the next 45 minutes to an hour exploring various new machines in the gym, figuring out whether I still had any muscles left. Apparently, I did. Weights lifted were around what I can remember I did in the past, some I could even increase, thanks to my new hobby as of two years — doing some car repairs. Those rusty bolts sometimes require some muscles to persuade them to come loose. For those of you who are considering repairing your car, or cars of your friends, yourself — here’s a nifty manual to follow:

So today, I woke up to that well-known feeling of discovering muscles I didn’t know existed just because they started hurting. Fairly pleasant, I must admit. I proved to myself yet again that I at least have muscles still. Considering the fact that I need to go and help a friend fix his car today — this is going to be utter fun pain-wise :) Leading a life of an IT person, my life usually revolves around the lifestyle of what we call “an office plankton”; in other words — I do not have a super-active lifestyle. My fingers are the only part of my body that moves regularly and at a fast pace. Let’s see if I can keep this gym thing up with the same determination as my sober streak.

Yesterday we did some maintenance work in our car shop that has been dangling for over a year now — hung up a new air reel next to the main car lift and made a cover for a piece of power-current wiring that was roaming all over the floor. The chap we are running the garage with somewhat balances me out — I have this slight OCD: I want things to look neat, professional, and so on. But, on the other hand, he is a tad more hectic, so I get to annoy him with my whining about finishing things around the place. Thus we made another run for tidying up — we still need to finish up today to fasten some air tubes to the walls and cut them to fit cause now it is lying around as a roll of spaghetti, and I know I’ll be utterly annoyed every time I look at it.

One of the brightest moments of yesterday was when a present for Ruud’s (my garage partner in crime) birthday arrived. Unfortunately, it came a bit early; he’s not due for another five days, but oh well. Nevertheless, he’s turning 60, quite a milestone, so a few other garage regulars and I decided to give him a new toolbox. As I said, he is a tad hectic, so car repair time usually consists of 40% fixing and 60% searching for the tools. “Hey, I just used this wrench; where the hell did I put it?” The daily mystery of “hex socket 13” often remains unsolved until the next day. The bloody thing lives its own life and walks out on you when you need it the most. It’s a love-and-hate relationship, I’m telling you. Anyway, a new toolbox might help him reduce the time searching for tools (if he does make the box complete at the end of the day, instead of piling the contents up on the work surface).

Among my usual tasks of creating things in the clouds for data to flow there and for intelligent folks to create more brilliant things by using that data — the day has finished with me test-driving my new car chip-tuning box in so-called bench mode. Most cars can be chip-tuned via their OBD-II ports; however, some older or trickier ones require you to connect directly to the ECU. Bench mode would be where you power up ECU in standalone mode without going into the guts. There’s a way that looks scarier to the customer, boot mode, where I need to take the ECU out, open it up and hook me up to one of the chips inside.

This time a customer came in for an oil change, and while we were doing that, he figured out we could do chip-tuning, so he wanted to give his car some more torque. Peanuts job, I thought, took my toolkit out, hooked me up to OBD-II… and nothing happened. ECU didn’t respond. At all. Mumbling, swearing, doing a voodoo dance around it, all the usual garage procedures didn’t help. Finally, pressed on time slightly, I decided to give boot mode a go, and hallelujah! ECU came to life and identified itself correctly. An hour later, the customer came back with a broad smile — 40hp and 60nM extra did feel good. So did I, as I enjoyed seeing that smile after seeing the horror in customers’ eyes as I pulled cables and connected strange devices to their cars. (Kid was most scared, but we settled that with a box of chocolate cookies!)

What was I talking about again? Ah, the big 100. Well, as you can see — life is full of living even when I don’t hang out in the pub. As I set myself an initial goal of 180 days before I consider returning to that pub on occasion, there’s still a road to go, and it has been quite enjoyable so far. I may return to the pub, but maybe I won’t. Or I’ll return there and stick to the alcohol-free drinks. Time will tell. Spring is in the air, and summer is coming, and I’m definitely not planning to miss enjoying sunny weather on a terrace. Which beverage will be in my hand by then — time will tell.

Thanks for reading,
Yours,
RHD