Chalk it up as a lesson learned or intriguing marketing study, but if you were like me and ran out of time to make it by the Performance Bicycles store for double points this weekend and did a web order on Sunday night, you might want to check the prices of your order with their latest mail order catalog. It seems the web site prices don't match the catalog and there are currently three, count'em THREE, versions of the current catalog with prices that don't match the web or the other catalogs. It's my bet that my call to the 800 number was the first of many, and this may turn out to be a busy Monday morning on the Performance phones. Taking the time to check the prices saved me $50 dollars on a combo purchase. Sadly, the customer service representative could not fix the price in the existing order so I have to make sure I see a $50 refund on my credit card after the order ships. Hopefully a second call will not be necessary, but I am not holding my breath.
Helped out Donna Webster, one of the ADA St. Paddy's day cyclists, by shooting a wine tasting she organized in memory of her sister. Met some great people, many cyclists and tri-athletes all helping out a very worthy cause – Hospice of Wake County.
Hospice Wine Tasting (Random Image)
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Made it out to shoot the TORC Curse at the Crab race tonight. At this moment, the riders have a little less than an hour to go. The photos are hosted on timbrown.us in the 2010 folder.
Thanks to all of the cyclists who came out and rode the St. Paddy's training ride for the Tour de Cure. There were over 50 folks that braved the initial clouds for a ride that ended with semi-sunny temps in the high 60's. The photos are available at performancepixel.com.
(Random Image)
Many thanks to all of the players, parents, coaches and volunteers for making our first season of Upward basketball a great success. The photos from the last day of games is hosted on timbrown.us at this link:
http://www.timbrown.us/index.php?album=%2FFBC%2F2010-02-20%20Upward%20BB%20Games
(The server was updated overnight to another system as noted in a previous blog entry. Hopefully no one will have any trouble finding and downloading images on the new system. But if you do, email me using photos _at_ timbrown.net)
Got up this morning to find the server running the photo archive site, timbrown.us, was powered up but unresponsive. Nothing I have tried so far lets me see POST message or status, so I am thinking the thing is pretty much dead. So right now I am getting an old machine updated and hope to have it in place sometime this weekend.
Update:
Spent most of Saturday updating an old laptop that was a couple of revisions behind on Ubuntu. Installed Apache and PHP to turn it into a web server and connected the web content drive via USB and timbrown.us is up and running. This will probably be the set up for the next few weeks while I move all of my desktop data over to a Windows 7 box I picked up a few weeks ago to replace the DJ computer at Jellybeans. Using the computer at the rink didn't work out so it became my new desktop system. Once I get all of the data off of the old desktop, it will take over hosting the timbrown.us site.
Something is going to have to go from my busy schedule. Between several work projects, UNC CPDM modules, DJ'ing, and trying to fit in some exercise every now and then, I am out of balance on my time. Tonight I did manage to get to the Bicycle Chain and spin on the trainer for an hour. Tomorrow is looking like a 16 hour day with work and DJ'ing. With all of the snow and rain we have experienced over the past two weeks and the forecast calling for wind gusts to 35mph on Wednesday, I am hoping that the behemoth trees in my yard have strong enough roots to keep standing.
Debby met with Ralph and Dileep to plan the next Ride for the Tammy Lynn Center that will be June 26th. Looks like there is a lot more support for the ride this year from the center on the marketing side of things. The start will still be Centennial Campus and NC State, but there will be some adjustments on the return route
I did try my first trainer class at the Bicycle Chain a couple of weeks ago. To get the bike ready, I put a cassette on an old wheel off of Debby's bike. Not sure what was going on with it, but I couldn't get on the big front sprocket. Got home and checked it and it looks like some cable stretch that needs a little more tweaking than I can do with the barrel adjustment. As far as the class itself went, there was no instruction, just cyclists going at their own pace while watching the last hour of one the Tour of Flanders races from a few years ago. Without my big sprocket, I couldn't do a lot of heavy peddling, but I tried to work on technique with the new Ritchey pedals. The left cleat needs some realignment.
Debby and I visited the Cycling Spoken Here shop last weekend and their trainer nights are led by an instructor with a focus on being able to hit the road at pretty much full strength once the weather changes. We will have to check that one out sometime in the near future. When I was by the store tonight, they had a new Madone with Di2. I guess the hardest thing to get my head around was the size of the little wire running where cables housings usually go It was a sweet looking bike.
First workout of the new year almost kicked my butt. Too many Christmas goodies along with a cold over the holiday almost did me in. My heart rate maxed out at 186 BPM, but my lungs are as clear as they have been in a couple weeks. Hey RPM, I will be back tomorrow to do it all over again.
Update: (1/5) Tonight went a little better on the HR side of things, but the room was very hot so I lost a lot of fluid. Stopped by the Bicycle Chain and checked out the trainer sessions they have on Tuesday and Thursdays. I plan to give that a try next week.
Thanks to a twitter post by Lori Bush, I ended up at the Internet Archive for books and texts that are publicly available either through open source or groups like Project Gutenberg. I am currently using the Adobe Digital Editions reader software for OS X to read ePub editions. To test the software I downloaded a 1960's Mao Tse-Tung text entitled "People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys". The booklet is only ten pages, but is an interesting read. Given the time that has elapsed between these writings and today, you have to start to wonder if the Chinese are behind the scenes with some of our former friends who are our new antagonists. Who is to say Hugo Chavez will not be driving a Volvo in the near future.
