Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Friends don't let friends tri and drive.

Just when I was hoping to have achieved some sort of Guru status I am sharply reminded that I am, after all, a ditz, albeit an Iron ditz. Allow me to share an anecdote from my recent (last week) past.
I will call this short story, "Why you should not drive within 48 hours of doing an Ironman." and those close to me have already heard it, because Mini-baboo was a witness and I wanted to do the telling before he did so that, hopefully, I would not come across looking as stupid as I feel.

SO I was getting ready to leave work Tuesday afternoon, two days after Ironman Loo, and suddenly asked myself, where are my keys? Not in my purse...hmmm...not on my desk. Could I have left them on the cart? OMG, did a student take them?

Crap.

I checked lost and found...nothing there.

I asked Judy, the school secretary, because she knows everything, Judy, where are my keys?
Judy did not know.

Finally I decided to see if I left them in my car. On the way to the car, Mini-Baboo was walking with me. Well, skulking behind, actually. Teenagers rarely just "walk" because it's not cool enough and teenage boys certainly don't walk with their mothers because it might ruin their rep so they skulk behind them trying to make sure nobody thinks they are walking with their mothers while simultaneously staying close enough in case they need food, money, or a ride home.

So as I said, I was walking to see if my keys were my car, feeling confident that if they were it would be no big deal since I usually leave my car windows down a few inches.

and you know what? They were! But wait. It gets better.



...wait for it...wait for it...





the car was RUNNING.

Yes, that's right. Even better, I was not the first to discover this. As I crossed the lot my path converged with another teacher as we were crossing the parking lot and I was sharing with her my plight, and as we got closer to the car, she suddenly interrupted my story--
"Hey, did you know your car was running?"

Um. Uh.

Uh.

"Has your car been running all day?"

Mmm-hmm. Yep. Apparently, after arriving to work a little late last Tuesday morning I got out and walked away about 7:15 am, leaving it running, with keys in, doors unlocked, in a high school teacher's parking lot. At 3:15, and it was still running. (Since it is a Honda, it still had gas in it.)

and, yes, I am aware of how lucky I was, thank you very much. As absent minded as I am most of the time, I (and several of those who know me well) are pretty convinced that I may be one of the luckiest people alive.)

I'm equally aware that I'm not only lucky but ditzy. I need no reminding of this.

The hardest part was acting cool when my work collegue discovered it. And yes, she remembered; she asked me about it yesterday, fully a week later. Which reminded me of it and I thought you might find it entertaining.

Of course, it would be much easier to blame this on recovery fogginess if it weren't for the fact that I drove off two weeks ago while the gas nozzle was still stuck in my gas tank. I'll blame that one on heavy training. And just in case anyone is worried that this is a symptom of some sort of advancing neurological problem, ten years ago I set my house on fire by accident because I was heating oil to fry food and I forgot. It burst into flames, catching the cabinet above it on fire. Oh, and remember earlier this year, I lost a single shoe? That I was wearing? While I was sitting at my desk? yeah. Such is my life.

But, so anyway, I'm a trivia nut, so here's a new trivia fact: did you know that gas stations have special connections for just such an occasion? They snap off at a juncture at the pump in such a way that they can just be easily snapped back on, and the gas is automatically stopped.

...

22 comments:

  1. Who knew?

    I have been known to not put the Honda in "park" and leave the car....then when I come back to it, it is not there, but has rolled across the parking lot...into the corner of a building...(yeah, and I wasn't training for much at that time I don't think...or was I?)
    I am just glad that while I was shopping my car didn't run over any little old ladies in the parking lot!
    Going to read your shoe story now....I missed that one!

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  2. Fabulous! We all have ditzy moments. After a race my husband handed me the car keys while he loaded up my stuff. I shoved them into my cycling shoe, Like I always do, and proceeded to pack up. 5 minutes later when we were ready to depart but for the life of me I couldn't remember where I put the keys. I crawled on the ground under the car, the neighborhing car, and looked under the seats all while my husband is cussing loudly. In my defense he shouldn't have given me the keys after a race... Anyway, I finally realized where my keys were and we left - heading to the nearest McDonalds for some post-race french fries.

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  3. I just laughed so hard, I started snorting.....
    I've never walked away from my running car for the day (I'm not saying it is beyond the realm of possibility though).
    I did once send my unoccupied revved up scooter through the wall of my garage. And... every time Mike backs my truck in to deboard groceries I try really really hard to put it in reverse to leave the garage when I start it up again, which would land me squarely in the backyard via the garage wall. No breakthroughs as of yet, but I see it happening sometime in the future.

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  4. That is so funny! My 17 y.o. daughter did that while she ran into CVS one day.

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  5. Anonymous9:50 AM

    That's too funny! I had a ditzy moment when I went with my 9th grader to registration. He gave me the usual instructions not to talk or embarrass him. It's a new school, so they had student names with their locker number printed on posters on the wall. I found his name on the list..last name first and then a "G" after it. I said, "okay, your locker must be on the ground level because there's a G." He looked at me and said, "mom, the G is the first letter of my middle name!"

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  6. I totally remember the dread of losing your keys as a teacher. And you don't even want to have them turned into the office if they are found. Ugh.

    Glad everything turned out ok, that was pretty funny!

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  7. HAHAHHAHAHHHAHAHHAHHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I needed a good laugh with all these college kids coming back with their IT problems. This job would be so great if it wasn't for the students! Way to go IronBlonde (better snag up that url before somebody else does!)

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  8. I have a friend who did that. With his new convertible. Roof down.

    And he didn't have an ironclad excuse!

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  9. My excuse would be that my battery was bad and if I shut it off, it would not start again so I had to leave it running all day. I'd buy that story.
    I too laughed really hard. Glad no one is here to witness it. I remember the single shoe post and that brought back some good laughs as well.
    Who cares how ditzy you are. You're Iron Misty. Enough said.

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  10. Hey I would go with

    "I was in T3 and couldn't take the extra few seconds to turn the car off."

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  11. HOWL!!!!!!!!!

    Ohmigod I can't breathe. I had to read this out loud to Moose, and he got annoyed because I am laughing too hard to speak.

    You are a classic!

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  12. OH NO!
    LOL
    I am so glad you have some kind of divine protection :)

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  13. Great story! Made me laugh out loud. Closest experience I had was one time when I had just gotten my new car. This was my first car that had a keyless remote, which at the time, I thought was the coolest thing ever. Well living in the wonderful state of Ohio, it was February and snowy and cold, I was at the store and hate coming back to a freezing car. So I left the car running, keys in the ignition, heater running full blast and locked the door while I took my trusty keyless remote with me. I thought I was being so clever and wondering why more people don't do this. When I returned with a cart full of groceries, I was alarmed to find out that the remote will not work when the keys are in it. At least the icecream didn't melt while I waited for a friend to retrieve a spare set of keys for me. Chalk it up to experience.

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  14. Damn that's funny!

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  15. hee hee, going to read this to my husband. Maybe then he won't be so mad about me throwing his keys in the trash can at a gas station at our last race and not realizing it until 12 hours later. (Two posts ago on my blog!)

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  16. I knew that the hose disconnects. It also shoots toward your car and leaves a dent.

    I'm sure your car would have kept running for 17 hours. After all, it's the car of an Ironman.

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  17. Oh.My.GOSH! That is toooo funny.

    I used to lock my keys in the car a lot (but not with the car running). Mark got tired of having to come bail me out all the time and eventually made me get a car with the clicker remote thing so that I'd have to be outside the car with the keys when I locked it.

    But that wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from just exiting the car with the car running. LOL

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  18. It is a dang miracle a teenager did not rip off that cute little car. You must have the car angels watching over you!

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  19. oh thats a good one. i once stomped around my house in a desperate search for my cell phone ... while talking on my cell phone.

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  20. LMAO! Jayne Williams wrote about this in Slow Fat Triathlete - she calls it Post Race Stupidity Syndrome. I get it BAD and I totally should not drive after even a short race. There's even scientific research to back up why it happens (something about having burned up all the stores of stuff our brains need), so it's not like we're completely to blame.

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  21. I call these my blonde moments. I can say this because you've admitted that you're not a real blonde!

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