Hiking Fail

Dave and I were headed off to Red Hill in New Hampsire to hike yesterday to get some exercise in and also enjoy the great weather. I wasn’t sure how my hips would fair, but if they weren’t doing well, we were going to call it quits and head back to the lake. Well, we didn’t make it too far.

We had arrived at Red Hill, parked on the side of the dirt road, and then ate our Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwiches. After a car pulled out of a more official parking spot, we were going to try to move the car but we quickly realized that was not going to work.  Dave’s car is a Nissan Altima that got lowered a few inches, which you can imagine wouldn’t fair too well on a dirt road. The car was digging itself into a hole, literally.  I don’t know if you can really tell from this picture, but the rear wheel is lifted off the ground by almost a foot!

A couple came over to help us and we tried to push the car, only digging the car a deeper hole. I didn’t mind too much because I got to play with the couple’s golden retrievers, which were probably the most friendly dogs I had ever met. I wanted them to come spend the rest of the weekend with me. Eventually we gave up and called AAA and the wait began. While I was walking around the car, I got nicked by some thorns near by. Battle wounds!

Almost every car stopped with a carload of people trying to help, only with the same solutions as everyone else, “Let’s try to push the car.”  Even though we would tell them that it isn’t going to work, they insisted we try.  We appreciated their effort!  Then, everyone quickly realized we were just making it worse. Then a family stopped that had an SUV AND a means to tow us-well sort of-they had actually forgotten the tow rope, but their house was only a mile away. The man said he’d go get the rope, and we felt bad, but the wife had said it was really no bother because her husband loves this kind of stuff.  After we hooked up the cars, it was only a matter of a minute or so before our car was free.  Hooray!

The man who helped us was so nice!  He was on vacation from his chemical engineering job with his parents visiting from South Africa.  Cool?  Heck yes!  He also went to MIT, so that was pretty impressive to Dave and I.  After we said our thanks and parted, we realized we never exchanged names.  Doh!  Dave and I felt horrible.  We ended up driving to Dunkin to grab a gift card and wrote our friend a note to leave on his windshield wiper.  We didn’t feel like hiking after our little incident, but knew the man who helped us was hiking with his family.  We hope he got the note!  And maybe we will see him if he goes back to visit his school sometime!

After all the hooligans with the car, we grabbed lunch (yes, it was lunch time and all we had done was try to get our car out of a rut) and sat by the lake.  I went for a short swim and then Dave wanted to run.  I knew I should still wait, so I took out the mountain bike and followed Dave around.  You can’t really tell from this picture, but this hill is pretty steep!  Riding with this mountain bike really allowed me to grow some appreciation for my lovely road bike at home.

After our cardio workout, Dave and I did the P90x Ab Ripper workout.  Love that workout!  I am excited to see some progress with this workout and the Jillian Michael’s 6 Week 6 Pack!  I’m excited that my hips didn’t hurt after the biking either.  I am starting to include more biking in my life, and know soon enough I will be hitting the road with my running shoes soon!

Have you had good civilians help you?

Many times!  One time includes my flat tire Friday!

Did you do anything exciting this weekend?