Just Another Thursday

It's been months since I washed my car. Months of rain, sunshine, dirt and pollen from the big oak tree shading the driveway where I park each night.

Today at lunch, I decided to do something about that. I grabbed my homemade PB&J from the breakroom fridge, grabbed a can of soda and headed across the street to the automatic drive-through car wash.

Ordinarily I'd take my car to a washing bay and pop quarters into it until I had scrubbed it clean, but since I was going to eat my lunch simultaneously, I thought it would be nice to be pulled through the car wash, thereby saving my work clothes from getting splashed with dirt and soapy water.

The first sign of trouble was when one of the attendants who was pre-washing the outside of my car knocked on my window. I rolled it down and he pointed out that the sunroof didn't appear to be fully closed. I thanked him, rolled up my window, and hit the 'close' button on the sunroof.

Then I was into the car wash, happily chomping away at my homemade PB&J, and alternating with carrots sticks to add a little crunch.

It was pretty cool to just sit back, my car in neutral, and let the conveyor belt pull me through the 100 yards or so of swirling brushes and spraying water.

At about the halfway point, it all went bad.

That's when the water started pouring out of the sunroof hatch.

I'm sure it would make for a better story if I described the water pouring down on me, soaking my hair and clothes, but (thankfully) the flood was limited to the passenger side, making me immediately thankful that I'd decided to make this trip alone.

Still, I was helpless to do anything but watch as a few gallons of soapy water poured down on the passenger side seat and floor, soaking the rest of my lunch with along with it.

As soon as I was out of the car wash, I rolled down the windows, opened the sunroof, salvaged what I could of the rest of my lunch, and drove around for a while in the ninety degree heat of the day, trying to help the drying process along.

But honestly, after a lunch break like that, I was happy to get back to the office.

A Sort Of Freedom

I've no more calorie-documenting, workout-recording, run-tracking apps on my phone, and I have music and a little android to thank for that, at least partially.

Most (okay, all) decisions I make are affected, at least in part, by either sex or music or alcohol, or some combination of the three.

This one started with music.

I've always been a hoarder of music. First cassette tapes (which are to me like vinyl is to Eddie Vedder, and I'll never get over its passing), then CDs, and finally over the last few years, mp3s.

I have - had, actually - gigabytes upon gigabytes of music files. On both home computers. My phone. My Kindle. My work computer.

Then my phone company did the unthinkable - they began letting me stream unlimited music without having any impact on the 2.5GB of high-speed data I'm alotted each month.

Truthfully, I'd been toying with the idea of moving all of my music to the cloud. Suddenly, it was no longer a concern. With Spotify and Pandora, I could stream whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, for however long I wanted.

And so I took the plunge, and deleted all of my mp3s. Every last one.

I was thinking about that today as I was in the process of entering the calories for my lunch in My Fitness Pal, which syncs with Pacer and Map My Fitness (and Map My Walk and Map My Run as well). And the thought that stuck in my head was, what am I doing?

I've run through the gamut of fitness apps - the ones mentioned above, as well as Nike+ and Runtastic, and even some iFitness band-thing for a while when I had my iPhone - and I've come to the conclusion that it's hurting more than it's helping.

About the iPhone thing - to digress slightly, my daughter has been "stuck" on my old 3GS for quite some time, and has been begging me for my "old" iPhone 5 when I upgraded to a new phone (when she wasn't begging me to outright buy her the 5C).

I'd done quite a bit of reading and research, and had already come to the realization that I'd be much happier on Android than iOS, a realization that has borne out to be true, and the details of which I won't get into now.

And so I got an LG Optimus L90 for a steal and passed my iPhone5 down to my daughter. And neither of us have ever been happier with the phones we have now.

Back to the fitness app - I've come to the conclusion that they really don't help me with anything but to have something to boast about on Facebook and Twitter, which is a whole other blog post (or three) entirely.

And so, much as a runner who runs without the benefit of music or a Garmin is said to be "running naked," I'm doing the same. As I continue to pare back my social media posting, I'm doing much the same with my fitness tracking - reducing the temptation to backslide, as it were.

So, no more fitness apps. Or running apps. Or tracking apps.

Just me and the workout. Me and Zeus and the run. Me and my food.

We'll see how this works out.