Admiral Nelson rum

True, Admiral Nelson rum might be nearly as good as Captain Morgan, but everytime I look at the bottle I think of this fucking guy...

Ahh, birthdays...

Ahh, birthdays, the time of the year when all the online forums and usergroups you belong to wish you happy birthday and remind you of what a geeky mix of information you subscribe to...

Got chainrings?

In my never-ending quest of giving reviews that don't mean a damn thing to most people, today I'm mentioning BikeBlogCollection.com. Stated simply as "the best collection of bike blogs for people who ride", it seems to be a great way to ride vicariously through other riders not in your part of the world.

The cool thing about it though, is that it's primarily user-submitted, with a submission form on the side. It's not just a set of links that someone is out randomly scouring the net for, rather actual riders are submitting their blogs, looking for readers.

A blogroll link on the side provides all the categories one might think of when looking for interesting bike blogs, including Bike Advocacy, Bike builders, Bike culture, Bike Humor, Bike manufacturers, Bike mechanics, Bike Shops, Bike touring, Miscellaneous, Mountain bike racers, Pro Racers, Road racers, and Singlespeed or fixed. The links in the blogroll include the blog author's description as to why you should read their blog.

The featured blog each month is picked in a technogeek sort of way, the submission form states, "How can I get my blog as the Featured blog one month? When you submit your blog, you are begged to provide a link back to BikeBlogCollection. Google Analytics of the site shows where the most traffic to the site came from, how many were unique visitors, how many pages were visited, and how long was spent on the site. Those 4 factors are taken in to consideration, with the highest one becoming the featured blog each month. So basically, get the word out about BikeBlogCollection, and we'll get the word out about you!"

If you have time in your busy day, check out the site, maybe read a few blogs that look interesting to you, and submit your own, who knows where in the world they might be reading about your adventures.

After the harvest, before the snow...

Adventure Cycling (the shop, not the tour company) put on one heck of little ride weekend. The pics I have are from the rides, I didn't get any of the bike barrel racing or the bike toss. Chris and I blame our terrible bike toss performances on bad technique!

Without further ado, here are two videos and some pics!

Here's Melissa making it down the very rutty Joe's Ridge, and my terrible camera work...

Here's Marni doing the same

The weather during the day was spectacular, but the nights were darn cold, we had ice on our tent from condensation freezing. Here is a Yeti with good amount of frost on it.

Subaru
The food tent, hardly anyone is up yet.
Colorado River valley with changing trees




The first day we did Mary's loop both directions, with a detour on to Horsethief Bench, which has got to be one of my favorite trails.

The second day we went over towards the Bookcliffs and did the 18 Road trails, which are a blast! Ride up the easy road, bomb down the trails, repeat!

Here is Melissa and Marni on top of the Joe's Ridge of the trail named the same. It was rutty, steep, and very intimidating, they both did very well.

Closeup.

Pan out to see how tall it is... the top is the width of a sidewalk and the slope is like that on both sides.
Melissa and Marni successfully killing a difficult rock section on Prime Cut.

Then to end the day we did a little jumping on Prime Cut. Even the chicks got in on the action, if you look at their faces, the first time jumping was one heck of a thrill.

Terrible camera work.. :)


Upping the ante?

Autotrader.com, an example of poor customer service

I try to list the great and the terrible reviews. I try not to be biased, I just like when companies take care of their customers. I think it's totally unacceptable for a company to crap on your after you pay good money for their products and I hate seeing others get duped. To make it worse so many companies have customer service that don't read or listen to your question, cuts and pastes a response or reads it from a script, or generally tries to give you the runaround so you eventually give up. On the other hand, I think there are companies that go above and beyond in making sure their customers are happy.

On October 1 I attempted to list a car for sale on the popular Autotrader.com. Creating the ad online through their website would not allow me to list the trim of the car I was selling, while dealer listed ads had the trim listed. Since this was a car with leather, V6, etc I really wanted to list the trim level as that would make it stand out amongst the base model cars.

I tried calling, but like the majority of customer service centers now, the hours of operation weren't any time convenient for people who actually have jobs. So on the evening of October 1 I send this email:

"Hi, I was trying to place my ad today. I put in the VIN, the right trim, etc... When I went to post it just lists it as a "Honda Accord Sedan". I see others listed as their trim level such as "Honda Accord EX V6 Sedan", why can't I post that?"

Over ONE MONTH later, on November 6, I receive this stern reply:

"Thank you for using AutoTrader.com. I understand that you purchased a Magazine/Online Combination ad. Since all magazine listings and information must be maintained by the print office you will need to contact your local Trader Magazine office to place, renew or correct those ads. Ads placed with Trader Magazine are posted onto our website but unfortunately we cannot edit, renew, or make any changes to those ads and they cannot be edited on AutoTrader.com. All Trader Publications offices can be reached by dialing 866-678-2852. The magazine office must administer all Trader listings in order to keep the print and online copy matched. You can also find your local Trader office at http://www.traderpub.com/usaindex.html. Click on your state then the office closest to you. Then click on LOCATIONS to obtain their phone number. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you for contacting AutoTrader.com!"

Well... I wasn't placing a magazine ad and I SURELY wouldn't go through all the trouble of calling or visiting a local office during my working hours to simply get a trim level listed in an ad I was trying to create online. I replied back with this, because of the difficulty and lack of help I cancelled my ad creation and never paid for or used their service:

"Lame... I did this online through Autotrader.com... thankfully I never went through with the purchase process because it just didn't give me what I needed... I sold it in two days on Craigslist... thanks for making it WAY harder than it needed to be..."

'08 Jersey design

Finally got the jerseys for the race team/ride group together for '08. To meet higher minimums and get better prices, we'd talked about opening up purchases to friends and family. The design was brought to fruition by my friend Greg Hammer at Hammerarts.com.

Here is the front.

Here is the back.

The dryer that doesn't dry

About two years ago I purchased a Maytag MDE2400AYW dryer from Sears after the friendly salesguy there convinced me that the washer/dryer combination was much better than the all-in-one kind. I wish I'd never bought it... The washer works great, but the dryer is the biggest piece of crap I've ever had the luxury to grace my house.

I had purchased a Maytag dishwasher for my house a couple years before and it still is the most awesome and robust dishwasher I have ever used, so I thought I couldn't go wrong with a Maytag dryer. Usually I read reviews before making purchases, but this one the salesguy convinced me and I really thought all dryers were the same. I was wrong, after finding reviews I found this dryer was affectionately nicknamed "the dryer that doesn't dry".

The first load I ran in the dryer, the display said 1hr 36min. It took much longer than that and the clothes were still damp! I went online and called both Maytag and Sears. I was told I probably had lint buildup in my dryer venting and would need to clean that. Sure, I'll give it a try, my old dryer dried an entire load in 45 min, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. In my mind I was already thinking that my old dryer wasn't a piece of crap like this lemon.

I cleaned all the venting out, got new and tight metal venting from the dryer to the wall and tried again, same result! I called both Maytag and Sears again, but was given the runaround this time.

I had learned to live with it, resorting myself to the fact that doing laundry is an all day affair for a couple loads and finding creative ways to make that work. But now this piece of crap errors out midway through drying with a dreaded "3E" error on it's readout. I can let it sit for awhile and then start it back up, adding even more time to the already painful laundry time.

I went online and found lots of others again having the same problem, I contacted Maytag about the error and was given the number for a repair company that I could have come out at my expense. This dryer is less than 3 years old and it's NEVER really worked, going online I see tons of other people with the exact same defect. Great companies take care of their customers and fix problems when it's obviously poor engineering or design, I've had such great experiences with other companies like American Honda. I'm normally pretty brand loyal until a company proves to me that they're not worthy of my being their customer. I think rather than paying almost the cost of a new dryer to fix this thing that never worked anyway, I'll just toss it in to a ravine and buy a better one from a competitor.

A bunch of reviews can be found here, where others have the same issues.

Subaru Legacy GT

Finally some pictures and fun video...

What I need to do... :)

I wish you have a funny day!