Congressman Earl Blumenauer added some new legislation to the $700 billion bailout that helps employers encourage bicycle commuting. The Bicycle Commuter Act of 2009 allows employers who sign up for the program to allow a fringe benefit of $20 per month for employees towards the purchase of a bicycle, bicycle parts or repairs.
I found them on the Internet and tried to purchase a bike rack for my Forester. I thought everything was going ok until a week later when I had heard nothing from them regarding my order since I got the order confirmation email. On the site it “claims” they do not charge your card until the order ships. This was a complete lie.
After several emails to them and no response, I started filling out the web contact form. It was not until the 2nd attempt filling out this form some 3 weeks after the order was placed that I finally had somebody call me about my order. Finally, it was all going to be concluded.
Not so fast! When I got the person on the phone they informed me there was a mixup and the order would be an extra $68 but if you go to their web site as of this moment it is still the same price. The reason I went with these jokers is so that I could save a few dollars but it looks like I should have just stuck with the original online seller I was looking at Patrick Accessories. They were really nice on the phone when I spoke to them when I started this whole process and I just called them to place my latest order.
I guess trying to save a few dollars does not always work out but thanks Patrick Accessories for being a quality vendor.
Well, the summer is winding up and I have managed to go through the whole thing job free thanks to the support of my wonderful wife and the money we saved up while I was working. It is now time that I get back into the spirit of working. To do this I am undertaking a project to upgrade the software that drives my hobby site indietorrents.com. This is a huge undertaking but when it is done it should create a stable, feature rich, template based bittorrent tracker system that others can use. I am still in the process of determining whether I rewrite the source completely or base my version off a stable branch of the most popular tracker software.
After this I intend to take a project I started while i was working and make it into a commercial project management software product I can sell to construction firms. This will be the real test of my programming abilities but it should also be a fun project and I am going to employ the help of a few of my friends to complete it. For this project I will be using Cake PHP a very nice PHP framework for web development.
I also plan on riding the annual Sequatchie Valley Century in October. I want to do the entire 100 mile distance but that depends on how much training I get in between now and then. There is one nasty (for me) mountain climb
Been busy having fun, will try and keep this up to date. I got a new mountain bike last week which I want to tell you all about and post some pretty pictures of.
I don’t know about you but I am sure happy that Spring is back. After work rides on the road bike, runs along the river walk, weekends spent outdoors doing who knows what other than enjoying the warmth in the air and the fresh blooming flowers. This spring I intend to do bike camping, long hikes or trail runs and up the ante on my bicycle training to include some mountain climbs.
For starters work has been a beast lately. Beyond that I suffered through a bout of bronchitis/influenza that had me reeling for 7-10 days and required an additional 7-10 days to fully recover.
Just as I had recovered I ventured off to Big Sky, Montana for a long weekend where I learned to snowboard. Yes, you heard that correct, drewcifer learned to snowboard and experienced his first ski slope in all his 37 years. To learn this I took a lesson that was incredibly painful but after a few hours of advice from our instructor we were ready to hit the green runs the following day.
It was absolutely one of the most fun experiences I have ever had. I will be going snowboarding again in the future and hope to someday live in an area where I can do it more often without flying 3/4 of the way across the country. It was worth it though as the resort was very nice and not at all crowded. We never had to wait in lines and our group lesson became a private one as the wife and I were the only 2 people to sign up. How cool is that?
I get busy at work and I don’t even realize but I am neglecting to post anything here for weeks at a time. I hope everybody had a great Christmas and New Year holiday season and that you were able to survive the onslaught of your families with no permanent damage. Our holiday was very busy since both if us only got off the days of Christmas and New Years day. Next year we are taking more time and want to take us a bit of vacation then which will ensure we are family free (always a bonus).
Now that the new new year is here and the holidays are over it is time to start training for the next big event. I think that event for me is going to be another 1/2 marathon in March and then the 3 State 3 Mountain Challenge (100 miles) in Early May. I may opt out of the 100 miles and do the 65 miles that only requires a ride over 1 mountain but we shall see.
In addition to these 2 events I will be running 3-4 times a week until the 1/2 marathon in March. This should be plenty of time to train for this. Wish me luck.
I was doing so well for a few weeks training very hard to get back up to a 10K distance and then my job duties were changed to make me more of a manager/supervisor and I have lost all motivation after work to come home and run. In fact I have been more likely to be found running down a beer at JJs Bohemia than running off come calories. I really need to change this behavior and get back in the swing of things both within this blog and out of the streets. I guess this sort of stuff happens during the holidays. I will let you know how it goes.
The weather has also been shocking the past few days reaching up into the 70’s. This is typical of Chattanooga winter where it gets warm for a week and the trees and flowers get confused and start to bloom then we have a bitter freeze to kill them or weaken them opening them up to infection and eventually killing them. We are killing ourselves through global warming we are just to stupid to see it. Well some of us are.
Well it is over and I shaved 7 minutes and 33 seconds off my dismal time of last year. My swim and run times were a slight bit better than my times of last year but my bike time and transition time in the first transition were much better. I am not sure how much better in each because they did not give splits for those two sections but my overall time last year for both was about 6 minutes more than this years time.
I also purchased another bike to go with my steel frame Bianchi Volpe and this one is a true race machine. Carbon fiber frame, mid range Shimano components and an overall long distance champion, the Bianchi 928 with Shimano 105 components. It should be here tomorrow or Friday and I can’t wait to get this baby out on the road for a long ride. This should make my training and performance in the Sequatie Valley Century much more pleasing.
My training for the upcoming Sports Barn Sprint Triathlon is coming along well. I am swimming the distance pretty effortlessly (unless the water is very choppy) and the running is going to be OK. I am again this weekend doing the trial run on the entire event which we did 2 weekends ago. I expect I will be doing a much better time this year than last year. I hope to take my time last year down from 1:12:05 to below 1:00:00. I will know for sure if this ig going to be possible on Saturday’s trial run. Wish me luck and come out and see me finish.