Doorbell Oakleys

mmmm, half jackets
Yesterday while I was attempting to take a nap, Yoshi started barking and making a lot of noise. I assumed someone was at the door, but I never heard a knock or doorbell.

After the nap I got up and went down stairs. I saw a tag on the front door and realized it was the UPS dude. Dang I missed him! I retrieved the tag and sat on the couch. I then noticed that the tag said the package was left by the front door! Yay!

I ran to the door and sure enough hidden behind a flower pot was a small brown box. I tore into it (carefully), and extracted my shiny new Half Jacket XLJ’s from Oakley Canada. These are replacements for my broken Zeros which had been discontinued. Mmmmm, I love Oakleys. They are soo comfortable and have excellent optics. I am sure these will have a long lifetime with me.

Slithering Boogeyman

Mike on a skinny
Getting up at 5 am, does not do a body good. In fact, my body rebels against me whenever I force myself to get up that early. Yesterday was no exception.

I picked up Mike and gang, then bombed out to the ferry. By 9:45 were were on the Seymour Parkway on our way to meet up with some MTBR regulars that I know. I was looking forward to meeting up with PatT and Gregg (Mellow Yellow) who both had come up from Washington state. Other Vancouverites included Tim (rotr no more), JimC, CraigH, and Trevor (006_007).

We headed on up to CBC and prepared for battle.

armour up!

Skip to the pics.

We lef the truxk and headed down to CBC for some real fun. Woops, I think someone spilled their grease gun on CBC. It was very slick, and soon the Victoria crew was heard letting air out of their tires. Wow, I couldn’t get over how slippery everything was. It was a weird feeling to be slithering over rocks, and down ladder bridges. Quickly though I got in a groove and started to feel some flow down the trail.

We found some small hits, and some log rides.

JimC

MikeB

CraigH

MikeB

Trevor (007_007)

patT

CraigH

On the first run we ended up taking CBC, then Corkscrew to Pingu, then Pangor and down to the parking lot. Loads of fun. While in the parking lot JimC discovered that his shiny bullit needs some new Dual Crown forks, and a new front wheel. Here he is trying them out.

JimC

JimC

The Victoria crew headed up for a second run and decided to skip CBC. This time around we hit Corkscrew, Pingu, then Boogeyman. We were faster down the trail this time, and it was a lot of fun.

Nearing the bottom, on the double track back to the vehicles, I flatted my front. It was pretty silly, and I am not sure how I did it. After retrieving the my truck from the top I drove the remainder of the Victoria Crew for one last run, while I headed down to get some coffee and a snack.

In all it was a great day. Lots of good riding, and it was good to ride with the Vancouver crew again. I can’t believe how long it had been since I had ridden with PatT and Mellow. Thanks a bunch guys.

The ferry trip home was fun, and there was a great sunset.

Jay

Brett

Jason

It somehow seemed fitting that I spent all my sunlight hours travelling. I left home on the dark, and arrived back home in the dark.

Inconsiderate Clipboard

This Revoked section is a way or me to express my anger over bad drviers. I once had the fantasy that my dream job would be to revoke the licences of the bad drivers thus making it safer for the good drivers.

Yesterday this was taken to a whole new level. Behind VMI is the office for the Airporter. They sometimes use the curb in front of VMI to park.

As I was leaving work on Friday, an Airporter bus pulls up and blocks the driveway, just as I approached it. The driver saw me, but ignored me anyway. He stopped and got out to talk to three of his colleagues. I couldn’t believe he was doing this.

I sat there a couple minutes hoping he would jump back in and take off, but no, the three of them stood there talking, writing on their clipboards and just ignoring me.

I was starting to get very mad. I honked and asked them to move the bus. One of them turned to me and said “go around”. I replied I couldn’t because I can’t see the street. They continued talking. I didn’t feel I could safely pull out onto the street at rush hour, and turn left. Oak St is very busy at that time of day, and where the bus was parked blocked me from seeing a large portion of the oncoming traffic.

I was furious. Some of the passengers were looking at me, then talking, and I really wished I could hear what they were saying. The Airporter drivers swapped a couple passengers from one bus to another, and finally after 10 minutes or so, a driver got into the bus, then left.

I was shaking I was so mad. I was forced to sit there because they were inconsiderate enough to block the driveway of a building that they are not a tenant in. For that I not only revoke their drivers licences, I also revoke their business licence.

I will be calling the police today and see if I can lodge a complaint. It was quite ridiculous.

Digitizer System

yoshi sees a bird
Yesterday I was poking around Future Shock and noticed they had an old Handspring Visor Deluxe for sale for $50! Sue had been talking about getting a PDA recently since her schedule has been so hectic. I thought this PDA would fit the bill perfectly. The downside was that this was an open box item. All that you got for the $50 was the PDA and snap cover. No cradle, software, or stylus.

The stylus and the software are easy to acquire. The cradle is a different story. I wandered up to Staples. What a find! They had a cradle that would work, and it was only $5. I snapped that up, rushed back to Future Shock and bought the PDA.

I was so proud of myself. I got home last night, dropped some batteries in, and was prepared to be amazed.

Amazed I was. The PDA didn’t work! The digitizer was messed up and wasn’t accepting any input at all. :grr:

I tired resetting it, I tried the hard reset. Nothing worked. In the end I had to return the PDA to Future Shock.

It took a long time to work my way through their system, but I insisted they give my money back, and not push me off to their 1-800 number. Anyway, I still need to return the cradle.

Extreme Downside

get off the sidewalk
Today I learned of the Vancouver Island Adventure Games. A bunch of “extreme” games are run in and around Nanaimo. The one that got my eye was the Downhill Mountain Bike competition. This event is run on the streets of Nanaimo. They build up lots of stunts for the competitors, and sounds totally fun.

The downside? The competition was this past weekend. I had no idea it was happening. Damn. I will have to watch for it next year, and put it on my list of events to do.

Hindsight Crispness

clean for once
This morning was my first ride on my Bullit since my Tyax trip. Besides today, I have been to the dump once on my Chameleon. Pretty sad considering how nice the weather has been. The problem is that Sue and I have been extremely busy on the weekends. It has been a lot of fun, but most of the stuff excluded bikes.

Today I decided to take Yoshi out for a spin. We got out there fairly early in the morning, but it was quite warm already. I took him over to the hose and doused him down in a preventative effort to control his overheating. In hindsight, I should have doused myself too.

The ride was hard. I haven’t been out on the Bullit in a long time, and it showed. My timing was off, and it seemed I could never find the right gear. I forged on though, and headed to the switchbacks. This trail has been my nemesis for a long time. The best I have ever done on it was a single dab. Today was nowhere near that record.

I got to the top, and was seriously overheating. I rested for a while, and Yoshi just ran around a bit. He was sort of interested in some birds at one point.

yoshi sees a bird

In the mornings it feel slike fall. A crispness settles in and reminds me that winter is just around the corner. The trees have taken notice and have begun to change.

nice leafs

My bike at one point demanded a rest. It somehow coincided with the crest of a particularly steep hill. Who was I to second guess my bike. Was it tired? Was it overheating? No, that was me, but the bike wanted a rest anyway.

resting

In the end I was tired. I never felt like I had any rythm or flow. I only backed down from one rock face, and my technical riding was fine, but I seriously need to work on my fitness. This is getting depressing. Normally this time of year I am in the best shape of the year.

Maybe this year will be different now that I have the road bike. I will likely get out on that tomorrow.

Record Mortgage

eaten away bite by bite
:rant: Why do we as a society let banks get away with what they do? They charge us more and more every year. The service levels drop more and more every year. It seem that every year the banks announce record profits. Anyone see where I am going?

We the people lend banks our money. They use it to invest, and they used to pay us interest each month, sort of as a thank you for using our money. That no longer happens (to me at least). Instead they charge you up the ass for the privledge of lending them your money. They charge you to get access to it. They practically charge you when you think about your money. I am getting sick and tired of it, but I don’t see much of an alternative. Which is the lesser of two evils is not the best mentality when it comes to your financial well being.

A perfect example of why I am upset with banks occurred today. Sue and I have our accounts on the unlimited plan at the Bank of Montreal. We pay for this each month with our service charge. I went to deposit a cheque I received recently. It was a $30 US cheque. They charged me $5 for this service. 🙁

I have an account in good standing. I pay my service charge, and they still have the gall to charge me a :fuck: service charge for depositing a $30 US cheque into my CDN funds account. If I had walked in with $30 US cash I would have walked out with $40.25 CDN. Instead I only get $35.25 CDN. When I inquired about the missing $5 the teller simply stated that the clearing house charge them a fee. I am sure the clearing house charges them a fee, but to me that is their cost of doing business. It isn’t like I deposit US cheques on a regular basis. It is just frustrating.

I have been banking with BMO for quite a few years now, and I know that my account balance is quite puny, but whatever happend to customer service? When time comes to shop for a mortgage you can be sure that I will indeed shop around for better banking.

The more I think about this, the more upset I get, so that is it for now.