I spent $300 on you!

Lawrence Toppman

So I call Nordic Track about my broken treadmill. The cracked rear endcap, a two-foot piece of plastic with holes for bolts, will cost $129 to replace. (This is the law of supply and demand: They have all the supply, so they can demand whatever the ^%$#@! they want.)

I also have to spend $139 for a technician to repair it, because I may have knocked something else out of alignment while pulling the endcap off. But I can't make an appointment with one until the part arrives -- which, a week later, it hasn't.

I had to think hard about this. I could buy a cheaper treadmill for $300 above the repair cost, consigning the old one to a landfill. I could turn it into a rack on which my wife could drape drying clothes and bags of books. But if I did that, I might relapse permanently into such a steady state of inertia that an earthquake wouldn't move me six inches. And what kind of blog would this be if I stopped halfway to my weight-loss goal? A true-to-life one for most of us, but still....

So I burdened the MasterCard. In the interim, I spent $32 for a comfy-looking exercise mat that would let me do sit-ups and push-ups until the machine is fixed. Then I threw out my back so badly that I could barely walk and have spent the last two days icing myself and thinking deep thoughts from a recumbent position. (I climbed out of bed today specifically to write this blog. For you, o reader, I sacrifice money AND comfort.)

The scale still says 183.5 pounds, 11 under the starting position, despite no exercise and a few days of indulgent eating during a visit by my parents. The fates are letting me off the hook for a bit, it seems. But I hope that Nordic Track endcap arrives before my own gets bigger.