Riding from the garage in the sticks

Dropped off the car yesterday at my new favorite Service Center. It's in Longshop.

Longshop is one of this places in Virginia that is signified by a small green sign about 1-2' long and 4" high. According to some locals I work with they do good work, and cheap, and they fixed my truck right good.

It's funny though, I get the cold shoulder from some of the guys there. I try and sit a spell and talk to them, but sometimes you're never going to be local, if you know what I mean. Regardless, they treat my pocketbook and my car right. Well so far at least.Need top drive it some more to make sure they did it right. Had a ton of stuff done to it. Part of the 90K service that I couldn't do plus installing some new suspension parts and other junk.

For all the stuff below it took them less than a day and 1/2 and charged me $449:

-Install new timing belt (customer supplied)
-Install new oil pump seal (customer supplied)
-Inspect oil pump
-Inspect water pump
-Inspect Fuel system hoses, connections
-Flush Coolant
-Inspect transmission/differential (front/rear) gear oil
-Replace brake fluid
-inspect brake linings and rear drums
-Inspect Brake lines
-Inspect steering
-Install all 4 struts, strut mounts /springs (customer supplied)
-Front end alignment
-Inspect front/rear axle boots and axle shaft joint
-Install shifter bushing (customer supplied)
-Remove rear hitch

It drives pretty sweet. Gotta drive it a bunch to get the new feel for it, and still gotta get a 'clunk' noise out from the rear swaybar.

I dropped the car off and rode the mountain bike back home. It was chilly to start, but warmed up ok. Nice ride, super super easy. Legs turned over well, hurt a little on the hills. I wish I could have seen the look on their faces when I rode off. Hell that boy is riding his BI-CEE-CAL from here.

Missy, a local road rider caught up to me by my house. She 'might' be racing for the Fuji Women's team out of NC. That would be cool.

We got 4" of snow last night and this morning. By 2 this afternoon most of the roads were totally clear, and it's supposed to be in the 50s this weekend.

This morning I did about 45 mins on the trainer. The plan called for Zone 2, which I calculated to be like 200-250W. That seemed high actually for a recovery ride. but I did it no sweat. Probably a good thing actually, because I do better with intervals after a good riding day more so than after a day of complete rest.

Tomorrow it is back to the intervals. I've made it 1 week. And still going strong. Sure it's hard to motivate, but can't really get outside much anyway. They are hard. I am tired a lot but the light at the end of the tunnel is going to be riding strong.

One good byproduct of getting up and riding b4 breakfast is that I started to lose a little weight again w/o really trying. Getting up and then having a cup of coffee and then riding b4 breakfast seems to help me lose weight.

I'll buy that for a dollar.