Bring it, river!

I woke up this morning and started getting ready to go to the gym. However, I could still feel some soreness in my right hamstring from the weekend. I took an extra rest day on Monday. And well, it truly was hard, but I forced myself to take another rest day today. Better safe, than sorry, right? I'm thinking I might give it another rest day tomorrow as well. And possibily even another one on Saturday if it's still feeling iffy. I've got 16 miles (yikes!) scheduled for my long run, and I could always push it off til Sunday.

Since I was up early with nothing to do, I figured I better go and vacuum out my car before it got too hot. I have no idea when the last time I vacuumed my car was. It was pretty gross. It took me about an hour to thoroughly vacuum my car. But it was pretty satisfying to hear stuff flying through the vacuum hose at the speed of nastiness.

Martin got me this pretty nifty tool free from AAA. You know those tools. The ones you can use to slice through your seat belt and break your window out if you ever find yourself trapped in a sinking car. For the longest time, it's been kept in its box in my center console buried behind a bunch of crap.

There was a ton of stuff in front of it. Wipies, tissue, McDonald's receipts, gloves, beanies, etc. (Don't worry. I vacuumed all those crumbs/dead leaf particles (?) later.) I figured if my car and I ever started going underwater, I would be a goner trying to get handy tool out from beneath all that crap, much less still have time to take it out of the box, pull it out of it's bubble wrap and read the instructions.

So in order to be more prepared I took it out. Whadaya know, it's a flashlight, too! Unfortunately, when I pushed the button to turn it on, it didn't work. I also saw that the pointy window-breaking part looked pretty soft, like red rubber. How that would be able to break a car window beats me, but, hey, I'm no engineer.

Before I tossed the box, I figured I should give the instructions a once over. Hey, it's a manual flashlight! You turn a lever for a few minutes and it works! And what's this?! Always keep the protective cover on the the sharp pointie thing (if you can't tell, I'm paraphrasing here) when not in use.

Ooooooohhhhhhhh! Now that makes sense! However, it took me several minutes trying to remove that red thing. It was on there pretty good. So when I put it back, I left it off partially so it would be easier to rip off. I would imagine every second counts when icy cold waters are rapidly rising over your body.

I put the tool back in the bubble wrap and placed it in the driver side door. I am now prepared if my car ever plunges into a body of water. Or if I need a flashlight to find my bank card that slipped out of my pocket during a midnight run to Jack in the Box.