Whew...

I recently had to buy a MacBook to replace the iBook that was on the verge of death when I returned to Seattle from the IAAF World Track & Field Championships in Osaka, Japan.

This iBook served me well since I bought it in late 2001, and survived six World Cross Country Championships, three World Track & Field Championships, the Athens Olympics, my niece Krista spilling water on the keyboard, a fall out of my backpack in St. Etienne, and several sets of wandering eyeballs in Mombasa (where unfortunately, I knew of two IAAF staff members who had their laptops stolen at World Cross).

It's also gone through two Mac OS updates, from OS 9 to OS 10, then last year to 10.4 (Jaguar) in order to be Nike+ compliant.

While working on several blog-related items last month, I noticed that the screen was acting up. Turned out that the LCD needed replacing; only problem was that my laptop was too old for Apple to look at it, but they were nice enough to refer me to an outside repair facility, Advanced Laptop Service in Ballard.

When disassembling the unit, they found the logic board was bad, with a failing video circuit.

As I need a laptop, my only recourse was to buy one, as I have two events to cover in the next few weeks, including the Nike running summit and San Francisco women's marathon this weekend, and the US Olympic Trials-Men's Marathon in New York on November 3.

Here's a picture of me holding my trusty iBook...I will be able to do some work with it, but not enough to be able to stand the rigors of going through airport security, being hauled to meets and races, etc. By the way, I found out that I wouldn't be able to update my iBook to the new Leopard operating system that Apple will release on the 26th.

I hope this MacBook will serve me well for the next six years...