{"id":1828,"date":"2010-02-01T13:16:01","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T18:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=1828"},"modified":"2010-02-01T13:16:01","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T18:16:01","slug":"really-the-question-is-why-were-they-driving-an-aztek-in-the-first-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/really-the-question-is-why-were-they-driving-an-aztek-in-the-first-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Really, the Question is&#8230; Why Were They Driving an Aztek in the First Place?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My sister, Allison, was in town this weekend for my Grandfather&#8217;s 95th birthday party. I&#8217;d like to say that it was an awesome surprise for him&#8230; but I don&#8217;t think he realized that she was the twin that lives really, really far away. By the time the other twin arrived, the party was in full swing and he didn&#8217;t really have the time to be properly surprised. At his advanced age, perhaps this was for the best. :p<\/p>\n<p>I love having my sister around. I wish that I could see her more often. It almost makes me want to pull up stakes and move all the way out to California. I&#8217;m sure she&#8217;d just <em>love<\/em> it if I showed up on her doorstep, right? Do you think she&#8217;d have room for me, the dog, two cats and Kristian? Also, I&#8217;d probably need a job of some sort.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose that I will have to be contented with the occasional visit.<\/p>\n<p>One of the highlights of my weekend was going on a long training run with Allison on Sunday. We&#8217;ve been training for this half marathon &#8220;together,&#8221; but we&#8217;ve only done a couple of runs together when she was here for Christmas. Otherwise, it&#8217;s all been virtual. Not that I don&#8217;t love having her in my corner, but it&#8217;s so much nicer when we can head out running together. Knowing that we&#8217;ll be running this race together pushes me to make sure that I&#8217;ll be able to finish it&#8230; but running with her next to me is a much better kick in the pants.<\/p>\n<p>Our run was ten miles. I was a little nervous about finishing it. You know with that whole &#8220;stabbing pain in my foot&#8221; situation. But, I guess that the time I took to rest paid off. My foot didn&#8217;t hurt at all. Mainlining ibuprofen before we&#8217;d even started might have had something to do with it. Possibly. Perhaps.<\/p>\n<p>This is how awesome we were on our run: at about the halfway point, <em>we stopped and pushed a car up a hill<\/em>. Yeah, that&#8217;s right. We ran six miles. Pushed a Pontiac Aztek up a hill. Then ran four more miles. Because we&#8217;re just that badass.<\/p>\n<p>We were running along, happily chatting, when we noticed two women in an Aztek, frantically trying to get it to start and meeting with complete and utter failure. I ran up to their window and asked if they&#8217;d like a push. They happily accepted, one of them hopped out to help us and then I told them that it might work better if they put the car in neutral. The car slid backwards for a second, but then we leaned into it and started going forward. Slowly. Very, very sloooooowly. I think that the sight of three girls pushing a ridiculous vehicle shamed some of the people driving past, because a guy stopped and helped us. Which was nice, because then the car moved faster than an inch about every 30 seconds. We got it into a parking spot and were then on our merry way.<\/p>\n<p>Let me tell you about the sensation of running after you are no longer pushing an Aztek. It feels like <em>flying<\/em>. I mean, I was mother loving <em>Superman<\/em>. I could do anything. I was footloose and fancy-free. At least for another half a mile until my fatigue caught up with me and I begged for a walk break. We still finished the run on a strong note. Well, strong for me. Allison probably felt like she was walking backwards.<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;m going to be able to finish this half marathon. I am so psyched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My sister, Allison, was in town this weekend for my Grandfather&#8217;s 95th birthday party. I&#8217;d like to say that it was an awesome surprise for him&#8230; but I don&#8217;t think&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,2,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-random","category-training"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-tu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1828"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1830,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions\/1830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}