I’ve stated several times on this blog how I am into staying physically fit. I made a few posts on how I had ballooned up to about 245lbs after my divorce. My treadmill was just gathering dust in my bedroom when I decided I needed to lose weight. I went on a low-fat diet and exercised on the treadmill at least twice a day. These weren’t just your ordinary workouts. I’m talking 5lb ankle weights, 10lb wrist weights and a 10lb barbell in each hand. The pounds just melted off. I am now very much into physical fitness.

Thursday morning, as I was about to start my morning routine, I put the treadmill key in and got on the treadmill. Well, the treadmill took off at about 50MPH and I almost went through the wall as a result. Shocked, I yanked the key out and the treadmill immediately stopped. Not knowing what was wrong, I safely got off the treadmill, put the key in and pushed the level up to the normal 2.5MPH…it didn’t budge. I feared the motor, after 8 years, had given up the ghost. I had been hard on the treadmill for the better part of three years and figured I had more than got my money’s worth.

I started looking at prices of treadmills and was stunned. I was even more stunned by the prices of NordicTrack. The cheapest one I could find was about $800. It had everything I needed. I noticed that over the years, treadmills had really evolved. This one had its own sound system. It had various gadgets telling you how far you had walked, calories burned, how fast you were going. It even had exercise routines with a disk you could place in the treadmill. So, deciding I might as well go a head and bite the bullet, I pulled out my wallet for my visa card. As I was typing in my billing and shipping information, I remembered something when I first put my present treadmill together. There was the power cable connecting up into the console. It was a very tight fit and it kept coming loose because I had not made a good connection. I finally got it to connect. So, just to make sure, I got my screwdriver out, took out a few screws beneath the console and what do you know…that SAME cable had come loose! Thinking I can’t be this lucky, I pushed the cable back in place and tried to turn on the treadmill. Came on immediately!!!


Just goes to show, sometimes the simplest solution to a problem is the right solution. I was thinking the motor had burned out on the treadmill. I mean the treadmill is almost 10 years old. But, it was just something as simple as reconnecting a loose cable. And, in the process, I saved myself $800 of much needed moola in my bank account. Merry Christmas to me, Merry Christmas…to…me.