Part 3 of the best damned  6-part series you will ever read on health clubs!    

But shortly after having begun my new regime, I noticed the belt on the treadmill was pulling to the right and the only way to get it back to the left was by holding the bars and kind of tilting my body to the right while pushing the belt to the left with my feet.  This problem rapidly got worse, so I dug up the owner's manual and adjusted the thing in attempt to keep the belt centered.

It would work fine for a bit then pull either one way or the other and I would continue my walk leaning one way or the other to continually re-center the thing, but it just would not cooperate.  Bottom line is this: after doing this little dance with the treadmill for a couple of weeks the belt began to fray.  Actually, being as old as it was big chunks were starting to fly off of it every which way and the strings that held it together was getting all tangled up in the rollers.

Finally, I just couldn't take it any longer and so I called the 800 number on the owners manual (yes I was able to find it).  Much to my surprise when I dialed the number, after all these years, someone actually answered the phone.  To my greater surprise they actually were customer service for my brand of treadmill.  And shockinglingly, they were extremely nice AND knew pretty much everything there was to know about treadmills.  Well, at least mine anyway.

The woman's name was Clara, she worked out of her home in, I think it was Iowa, and I'm pretty sure she could have torn down my treadmill and put it back together in the time she spent with me on the phone.  It was then that I learned my treadmill was 12 years old.  It was also then that I learned that a new belt and accessories were going to run me about $120.  She walked me through the fix, offered me a 20% discount and told me I could think about it until the end of January.   All I could think was, where in the hell was this woman when my computer crashed??