Just a Taste

The temperature was in the upper 40s this morning, which in my book is "cold." Out came the long tights, shoe-covers, gloves, and even the helmet liner. There's just no point at all being cold on those first winter-ish training rides. Of course there were only three others up on the levee this morning: Bob, John and Joe. Although the plan was to do a nice easy ride, the wind kind of forced us to do a little extra. At least the skies were clear and blue and the scenery was actually worth looking at, so the 24 miles went by easily. I know that today was just a taste of Winter, but as usual it got me thinking about wintery things like new shoe-covers, long rides in the country, cheap training tires, and hot coffee.

The saga of the car mirror continues. In the last episode, we had gone over to Champs Collision because they called to say that the mirror had come in and they could pop everything back in place while we waited. Well, it turned out that they had ordered the wrong mirror, so the guy said that since we wouldn't meet our insurance deductible, we might as well just go on down to the Volvo dealer and have them order the correct replacement mirror. OK, fine and dandy. Should have done that in the first place. So I asked the guy to just give me back the motor assembly and I'd be on my merry way. There was a moment of silence and he said he'd have to find it and would call us back later in the day. Of course, after calling them this morning we learn that they have now managed to lose the entire motor assembly to which the mirror attaches and we're supposed to now go down to the dealer and have them order everything but bill the cost of the replacement motor assembly to Champs. I have a feeling this whole thing is going downhill fast. Repeat after me: "If you want it done right, do it yourself." This whole experience did not go down so well with me after what happened yesterday with the order for the replacement laptop. After waiting over 24 hours for Tulane's "Computer Concierge" to get us specs and pricing on a replacement Thinkpad for which I had sent them the original spec sheet, they finally send me a quote for a similar Thinkpad that is about $1,000 less expensive, not including the $430 service agreement they tacked on, despite the fact that it comes with a 3-year parts and labor warranty. Sound a little fishy to you? So basically I lost a whole day because I was foolish enough to expect someone else to do a competent job at something at which he was supposed to be proficient. After an hour on the phone with the GovConnection sales rep., who was at least marginally familiar with the product, I finally found something that was in stock and had basically the same specs, including the integrated broadband capability that was missing from the earlier quote, and got the blasted thing ordered for delivery today or Monday. The extra memory, which I'll have to install myself in order to save time, actually arrived this morning. Then I get to install all of the software that it needs, re-configure Outlook to talk to our Exchange server, etc., etc. Once again, "If you want it done right, do it yourself."

Heading out to DC on Sunday for a conference. I need to figure out if I'll be able to squeeze in a little ride time in the early morning and if I can I'll see if Christian can lend me something with two wheels for a couple of days so I don't get too fat. One thing about these conferences is that they keep you pretty busy from 8 am until at least 10 at night unless you're willing to miss a few things. I think I can probably get in an hour and a half in the morning, shower and get to the conference by 9:30 or so, and that should work out fine. I kind of wish I was going up on Saturday like I sometimes do, because it would be neat to do the Sunday morning D&D ride from Georgetown.