As I described this story to Craig he observed “When I plug in a treadmill it works, when you plug one in it sets off a chain of events.”

This story starts a few days earlier when Craig (as part of his impending child’s birth) was forced to relocate BrandNewEngine corporate offices from an upstairs guest bedroom to the penthouse suite on top of DTOMRacing Enterprises LLC World HQ. The window view he requires as CEO, meant that the Geiger family gym had to be broken up and partially moved. Thankfully Jim’s Gym had an opening for a treadmill.

I suspect this was motivated by Craig looking at me and thinking about sharing a car that has a fixed weight limit attached. Meaning every extra pound over what the car’s mandated weight is dead. So like a jockey it pays to be skinny. I had decided when we took a year off of racing I’d take a year off of being fit as well. So saying “Here why don’t you take this treadmill” was sort of a polite Craig way of saying – “Hey fat ass shape it up.”

As we carried the treadmill precariously down the penthouse suites narrow steps, and again up my steep muddy hill into its basement Jim’s Gym home, we quickly discovered – if you move treadmills for a living you probably don’t need one.

Later that afternoon I went for the final assembly / test drive. The basement has one outlet, so I put it conveniently next to that outlet which is one of those bathroom sink GFI types. When I plugged it in, I heard a “pop / click” sound that those make when they go off. I immediately tried to reset it without luck.

Now there are two background things to keep in mind here:

1) From June of ’09 DTOMReaders will remember this about my house.

and

2) I have a caveman like understanding (fear) of electricity.

So keeping those things in mind I’ll proceed with the chain of events.

After trying to reset the outlet, I check the clock radio that was plugged in as well just to make sure it didn’t have power. I swap plugging things in different, reset again. Nothing is working. I check the breaker box to see if any of those have tripped. Nope, everything still looks to be on. For giggles I find the one labeled “BASEMENT” and flip it on and off. Nothing. Oddly the lights (which go off when the “BASEMENT” breaker is flipped) remain on despite no power to this outlet.

Okay, I figure it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that this outlet box has achieved its usable life span. On Monday I consult with people more practiced in electricity and home repair than myself and that is the consensus. So on Tuesday I run to Home Depot and pick up a new GFI outlet and a little tester dealio. Thanks to the tilt of the earth, and Daylight Savings time it is dark when I have time to do this. So I go downstairs, flip the breaker marked BASEMENT and proceed to wire this new outlet in the dark holding a flashlight under my chin.

Much like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation I throw the breaker and proudly plug in the little tester. Nothing happens. Now I’m out of ideas, I had one shot in my locker and that didn’t work, so I retreat. The next morning I call in the big guns, my buddy Matt has a father-in-law that is a master union electrician (retired), he conferences him in and we go play by play. Based on my explanation the best he can come up with is – perhaps the outlet you bought is supposed to be wired differently (since I just copied how it was already set up), OR something about the circuit line and load, GFI blah blah blah that I couldn’t follow.

SO – keeping in mind numbers 1&2 I figure I’m out of my depth here time to call in reinforcements. So the electrician arrived at 8:30am. I recited my tale to him, and he pulls out a little electric detecto light. It isn’t showing power to that outlet – so far so good. He asks “Are you sure this outlet is on the basement circuit?” To which my only answer was “Well we’re in the basement?”. He said, “Do you know if your bathroom outlet(s) are working?” Turns out, the BASEMENT labeled circuit was only for the lights. This particular outlet as he proceeded to find out was part of something called “OUTSIDE”.

Now it did turn out that the particular breaker for OUTSIDE was going bad, after he fixed it he points to my outlet now proudly showing its bright little green light. He said, “See you did wire it right all along!”. To which I said, “You mean I wired that box up with the power on, and did it in the dark for no reason since that wasn’t even the right breaker.” The electrician guy really got a kick out of this and started just laughing. So I asked, “How did I not get electrocuted?” His response was an unsatisfactory – “Thats a good question, I don’t know.”