Life is Hard

The Wife and I were getting ready to fly to Pensacola yesterday for an afternoon of sun'n'fun with a couple of friends who live out there. Got the plane all ready to go, pulled out onto the tarmac, did my last minute checks, went to take off...and the plane felt funny. What the hell, right? So I stopped the plane, cut the fuel back, got the wife to stand on the brakes while I took a look outside (there's nothing like looking, if you want to find something). Turns out the nosewheel had gone flat sometime since preflight (in the last 5 minutes or so). So I notified tower, called the plane rental place, found out that it was going to be a couple of hours until we got our plane back. So I called our hosts, let them know we wouldn't be making it to Pensacola today, and planned to do some local flying once the plane got back on-line. Then the rental place called me back and told me the plane would be down at least the rest of the day. Oh, well. The Wife and I went and ate sushi instead.

Moral of the story: never, ever use a small plane for travel if you HAVE to be there.

Sick of this Life...

Been pretty damned sick the last couple of days. Without getting overly disgusting with the details, let's just say that I've been feverish and spending a lot of time sitting in the bathroom. The annoying thing is that I haven't been quite sick enough to stay home from work. It tends to be really hard to find a replacement, especially on short notice, so I have to be about unable to stand before I'll skip a shift. So the last couple of days have been fairly miserable. Not sleeping well because of symptoms, then having to go to work. Today I'm off; didn't have to get out of bed until I was damned good and ready. Slept for about 13 hours with only occasional bathroom breaks, had some really bizarre dreams, and my gut seems to be settling down.

Shoes

I wear sneakers a lot. I mean, an awful lot. I wear them to work. I wear them to exercise (rarely). I wear them when I'm hanging around the house. I wear them when I'm going out. Basically, unless I'm going to a wedding, to court, or to bed, my feet are in athletic shoes. I generally keep 2 pairs of sneakers and swap 'em out every week or so; supposedly this extends the life of a shoe.

A few months ago I participated in a "mud run", basically a 5k obstacle course with a lot of (you guessed it) mud holes. Afterwards, one of the tread spots on my right shoe was loose. So I pulled it off and went on with my life.

A few weeks later, my left hip and lower back started complaining. In fact, my back froze up pretty badly and it took kind of a while to rehab it. In fact, it's still not 100%.

My back was getting worse at the end of last month, starting to be really a nuisance. I had gone back to taking meds for it which is a big deal for me. I was having a hell of a time figuring out what the problem was; it's not like I had added any new activity or anything.

After several days of aching, I swapped my shoes (you guessed it, I put away the shoes with the missing tread spot and put on the other ones) and my back and hip have been getting steadily better since. I've even started running again.*

In retrospect, it all seems pretty obvious. But really, associating left hip and back pain with losing a one-square-inch piece of tread off your right shoe is kind of tough, especially when it takes several days or weeks for symptoms to show up. When you think about it though, these shoes are pretty extensively engineered. It makes sense to think that all the bits might be important.

I got a new pair of shoes today, so far so good. More updates as events warrant.

*Well, I went running yesterday.

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