Cars and Running...in Atlanta

Heading down to Kurt's house early morning, I left the crashpad in Buckhead and began my 50 minute drive south on 85 to Grantville. Picking up some breakfast bagels at Panera along with some Honey Walnut Cream Cheese hit the spot before we got underneath the car. An enthusiast on the popular bimmerforums website by the name of MLue1 wrote a great step by step procedure which helped in the process of changing the part out. Some said that the swap took only 20-30 minutes, and I was proud that we finished in under an hour. The actual exchange of the part was 10 minutes but the lifting of the car, removal of the wheels...just overall setup was what took the longest. Taking a look at the picture, the new one is on the left compressed and if you look closely at the "bag" on the right side, you'll see the age; the car was manufactured in 01/99. You do the math. Can you believe that a local shop here in Atlanta wanted to charge over $600 in labor? I bought the Left (part number 37121095081) and Right (part number 37121095082) Sport Air Springs using realoem.com to find the part number and eeuroparts where I was able to place a phone order in two minutes! The price was okay at $180 a side but from what I've heard, some BMW Dealerships will actually give you a better price. Next time, I'll be sure to double check. There's always the shocks next!

Hanging out for a few minutes, we decided to go on that run...

Running in Grantville (in southern Atlanta) proved to be just a little too hot for me. After working on the wagon with Kurt, yes, more or less he did most of the "dirty" work but I did about 40% or so, I decided that I wanted to see what hills he kept on talking about around his neighborhood. Off we went. Starting off at a good pace, the heat just really began to slow me down. The smell of the horses near by, the trees surrounding the area, I was definitely out of my element. I was running in heat that was roughly 25 degrees hotter than the usual San Diego weather! Did I mention that the temp was rated at a 105F index!? Smuldering... so instead, I resulted to just doing a couple of long walks sprinkling them with some really fast sprints. I even did a ridiculous leg getting my heart rate to the highest I've ever seen! Check out the details below. I'll trust Kurt on the hills next time, but I can't wait to really get back into "training" mode.

Training since Last Week

If you haven't followed me in the last week or so on foursquare or twitter or on my Garmin Connect Profile, you can see that I've been busy traveling (working) everywhere and working out very lightly, if anything. It's hard to recover from a 55 mile bike ride then hop on the red eye back to work. Last Sunday, I was mostly mush and tried to run a little on Monday (.87 miles back and forth to the Crystal City Mall in Washington DC) but found out I was still sore so that was a no go. My true intentions were to pick up some daily vitamins from the GNC shop since I left everything back at home. <-- #FAIL

Here is Garmin profile of my ~55 mile ride that I did last Saturday with Trek San Diego. I rode with group B2 but then fell back to B3 then fell somewhere between the groups and ended up finishing on my own. It was a little rainy and I like to think that I performed well during some parts, but once again, near the end, I was faltering a bit and ended up resting too many times.

Encouragement

Surprisingly enough, I've been actually getting random hits on elijahnicolas.com but I have been neglecting it completely while concentrating on adellelijah.com. Things such as Facebook Comments for WordPress (also which I just found out will not be updated until a new programmer is found, but hey, it's still a great tool) and Twitter Goodies. Both awesome WordPress plugins that help you, the viewer/user/consumptionist leave comments and retweet and just be an active reader! Good stuff is under way and my schedule, along with LOTS of motivation, will promise...more things to come. I do sound like a broken record but the being a one man married show makes it tough.  Loving life always!  

March and On

Well, for the last year or so, I've been promising a more consistent writing style, reviews and just everyday posts about my random adventures, but lately, I've just been hanging out doing what I do...be a human wasteland until things come up.   In the last month or so, I've had recurrent ground training, a proficiency check (where I test my flight skills and knowledge with a chance of losing my job if I underperform), got my class date for the CRJ700 set for March 23rd, bidded for my March schedule and got the days off that I needed for a friend's bachelor party, looked at a few different apartments in the Atlanta area for possible crashpad solutions and found one with access to the MARTA, and even met one of the three new crashpad roomies and hung out.  

Speaking of which, as an update to the "question of '09", I will be having a residence in Atlanta and the group decided on living at the Uptown Square at Lindbergh. It offers a 30 minute ride on the train system which will save me gas and maybe give me the chance to bring my car back home to San Diego.  I figured that $250 /mo for the peace of mind is a better way of easing myself off of a crashpad.  I just wasn't ready to not have a place at all in Atlanta pending a situation where I would get stuck in a hotel due to weather or training or whatever else.  Uptown Square at Lindbergh received a 12% rating on apartmentratings.com which is a little sketchy, but I'm sure that we can make the best of it.  I'll tell you how it goes as the year progresses.  

As for everything else, there are a few random ideas I have been throwing around lately and we'll see what I end up with.  Hopefully something by the end of March.  *fingers crossed*

if anything, if you're looking for more frequent / daily updates, check out my twitter:eejay and follow me or check out my mobile blog trelijah.