THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

Are you looking for updates on the Tour de Madeira? Well then I’m afraid you’re going to have to go take a gander at my OTHER blog. Yes, I realize I am a loser for having multiple blogs. It reminds me of a Sonic commercial I saw the other day. If you haven’t seen these commercials, then you are missing out. This one wasn’t anything like “DON’T YOU BRING THAT WEAK TOT ACTION!” but it was still pretty funny. Man and a woman in a car. The guy is talking about something he likes at Sonic (Chili Cheese fries or something?) and mentions how he is going to put it on his blog for all his “readers”. Then the woman says “Oh you mean your mom” Good times…

In any case, I wanted to drop a little note to talk again about how awesome a car fixer I am. In the previous post, you noted that I am an amazing battery fixing fiend. So the very day after, Carolyn goes out and the right rear tire is flat. Annoyingly, we just replaced this tire maybe a year or so ago. So, I get home, and decide we need to go to TireDiscounters. I was hoping it was still under warranty, but as it turned out you had to buy that extra, so clearly I did not do that. My choices are a $18 tire repair vs. a $55 new tire. I think about it for awhile, and decide I don’t feel like going home, getting the tire off, and bringing it back, so I opt for the new tire. Oh did I mention that the spare tire is stuck in its position, rendering it essentially useless? So that’s nice. Anyways, I go to buy the new tire and they ask for the old one. I say I don’t have it - can’t I just take the tire home and put it on. I then am made to understand that they have to put it on the rim. So, since I have to go home and get the tire and bring it in anyways, I figure I’ll try the repair. Back to home….

So after I get home, I get the jack out, and I jack up the car, and start taking the tire off. The kids are out playing in the yard, so I don’t want to leave the car jacked up while I go to T.D., so I start to jack the car back down (with the tire off). As you might imagine, with nothing to balance out the rear-right, the car just continues to sink till it gets close down to the axle. I realize that was silly. Of course then I come up with the possibly even more silly idea that I’ll jack the car up, put the tire on, jack it back down low enough to get the jack out from under the van, and then slide the tire off. Obviously that does not work either. So I realize that the jack has to stay on, so I send the kids in.

I get back to Tire Discounters and wheel the tire in. The manager-type guy welcomes me and gets the tire back to the shop. Some other guy starts working on it. He starts spraying the tire with some sort of liquid. I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. I mean I know he was looking for leaks, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to manifest itself. Then I see it starting to bubble up. Aha - air! So as I’m watching him do that, I remember thinking “Hey this isn’t so hard; I could probably do this”. Then he whips the tire up on some machine and it essentially magically takes the tire off the rim, upon which I think “Hmm maybe not”

In any case, there was a small nail in the tire, which he removed. Then he patched it with some sort of patch, and then proceeded to light the tire on fire. No, really. After doing various things, the tire was good as new. I guess. So as I’m wheeling the tire out to my car, the manager-guy says “Take it easy Dan, don’t worry about it”. So then I think, hmm, does “don’t worry about it” mean that it’s free? Should I just drive off? Do I need to go in and pay? In the end, I went back in, and he told me that I didn’t have to pay for it. Sweet!

Now while this was good customer service on his part, I do wonder about it. It was right at closing time by the time we got done. And having worked in a retail environment, I wonder if he hadn’t already done his End of Day procedures, and didn’t want to have to go through the hassle of opening the store back up for my measly $18.

Man. Tomorrow is the “Tour de Madeira”, so stay tuned for a post there. You might check my other blog, where I will update silly things like this. What? You know you’re not cool unless you have at least 3 blogs.

So we’ve been having some van troubles lately, culminating in an “adventure” Wednesday afternoon where the car wouldn’t start after Carolyn had gotten the kids from school and was trying to come home. So Wednesday after work, I stopped by the school to see what was up. I tried to jump the car, but failed. One problem was that it was hard to get the two batteries very close as there was a giant light pole right where I needed to park. I resolved to tell Carolyn that next time she is unable to start the car, to try and not be parked next to a giant light pole ;-).

In any case, that wasn’t really the problem; the main problem was just that I’m an idiot. Luckily our home teacher lives just down the street from the school and I had passed his house while driving there and seen him out in his yard. So I called him up and he came over and un-idiotically jumped the van. I drove home and we pondered what to do. At this point I was a bit worried that it was more than just a dead battery. The battery in there was only 2 years old, and it was a 60-month battery. It seemed kind of odd that it would just be dead. I considered that it could be a problem with the alternator. I called up Pep Boys and they said that they could test the battery if I got it out of the van. Since I am an expert in such matters, this was no problem. I was just going to take it out in the driveway and drive it over in the other car, but then I realized that then if the battery was fine (meaning potentially something else wrong), then I’d have to go back home, re-install the battery, jump the van, and drive it somewhere to get it fixed. So instead, I jumped the van again in the driveway, and drove it to Pep Boys.

I commenced un-installing the battery in the parking lot of Pep Boys. I had brought my toolbox with me, and they had a few tools that they lend to poor saps such as myself. So, as I’m getting the battery out, I move one of the clamps that clamps on to the negative terminal of the battery, and the hood light comes on! I go inside the van and start it up and it comes right on. So at this point it appears to be some sort of connection problem.

The next day, I test things out again and clean the terminals, and clamp things down tighter. Stay tuned, but that appears to be the problem. I definitely felt like a big manly man with all of my car-fixing skeelz.

It will likely be next Saturday or the Saturday after that for the big 50 mile Tour de Madeira. I haven’t ridden much lately, just due mostly to time constraints. I went out for a ride this afternoon and it went fairly well.

I had talked some with PJ this week to try and coordinate a ride, but didn’t come up with anything. I believe he is riding also this afternoon. He is going to ride with me in the TdeM. Most of his training rides seem to be “real” rides - you know, where you actually go somewhere, whereas most of my rides are crazy ones where I loop in and out of various side streets, similar to the TdeM. It will be interesting to see if that makes any difference - if there’s any intrinsic difference between the two styles of riding.

I ended up on a route that went north of my house - mostly through Indian Hill, though also through parts of Madeira (obviously), Sycamore Twp and Montgomery. Cycle computer distance was 18.08 miles, which I completed in 1:33:03, which is about 11.7 mph.

I did set my new max speed, at 28.8 mph, which was coming down Lyncris Dr in Montgomery. Of course, as is the case with most rides of mine where I’m doing a lot of circles and ins and outs, what goes down must come up - coming up the flip side wasn’t much fun… I probably could have gotten even faster had I realized the topography over on Blome Rd. I came flying down that hill at around 25 mph, but had to slow down to turn right into a subdivision. Then when I was done, I again got up to 25 or so continuing down the hill. If I had realized it, I would have done that subdivision a different way (from Finley) and just busted down the hill. At the bottom of the hill is the one lane covered bridge going over Raiders Run. This was actually the 2nd time in my route I had crossed Raiders Run (previously on Keller near Montgomery), so to celebrate, I will comment that it is very difficult to find any information on Raiders Run while doing a Google search that does not talk about football.

I did have to walk up some of the flip side of the hill coming up from Raiders Run, but one interesting thing I found was on the subdivisions off of Blome - at the end of them they have sort of traffic circles (with a grassy area in the middle) instead of regular cul-de-sacs - perfect for a rider like myself.

I amused myself through most of the ride while humming one of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard. Oh and thinking of things to entertain you in my blog posts :-). The other thing I saw was that one of the places I had previously visited while GeoGolfing

All in all, a fun ride - as always check out my cycling log which is off to the side

Yes I’m in Swing Space at work. Here’s what that means. We recently added a new wing onto our building, and so now we are in the process of moving everyone around to new places. Our department is essentially staying in the same place, but we have a bit more room, so I can actually get my own desk again!!! (In case you hadn’t heard, I’m currently in “the pit”, which I share with 9 other people). Well, actually CURRENTLY currently I’m in swing space. But before I moved, I had been moved from my real cube to “the pit”. So, we have this swing space, which is similar to the pit in that there are a ton of people in a small place. They move us down here so that they can reconfigure our cubes while we’re gone. We’re only here for 2 weeks - we move back up this Friday. So that’s nice - one other group that was just down here was down here for 6 weeks.

Though there are some perks to being in swing space. #1 - free lunch on Tuesdays. The downside is that you have to wear this ridiculous tie-dye T-shirt to get your lunch. But hey, free lunch. I have postulated that really, this is a ploy by the company to see how low they can make their employees prostitute themselves. Apparently the going rate is a $6 lunch :-). Actually, in our group, Tuesday is a “holy day” of Chipotle - everyone always goes to lunch at Chipotle on Tuesday (though I usually don’t go). So a bunch of people decided that they would still go to Chipotle, but they stopped by our cafeteria to get a $6 “lunch” of chips, cookies, pop and snacks. I just ate my lunch.

The other thing is that they have a weekly trivia contest every Wednesday. First person with the most correct answers gets a $25 gift card. I answered the first one (10 questions long) last week in 11 minutes. I’ve been sweating all week to see if I won. Results came out today and lo and behold I won. When I went over to collect my prize, I saw that I was also fastest this week. So if all my answers were correct, I should win again next week.

So that got me thinking - maybe I should just stay down here - $25 bucks and a free lunch every week - sounds good to me!!

Here’s the 2 trivia contests, if you’re interested in playing along. Fair warning - I used Google and the Wikipedia plentifully. Questions 3, 6 and 9 of both contests are Luxottica based, so if you’re not an employee you might have trouble with them.

Trivia 18:
1. Olivia Newton-John was raised in Australia, but where was she born?
2. Who bounced back to No. 1 with “Maria” in 1999?
3. In what Chinese Capital City did LensCrafters’ open their flagship store?
4. How old was Sid Vicious when he died?
5. Which songwriter’s songs included “Hound Dog” and “Spanish Harlem”?
6. Who is Elizabeth?
7. Martin Kemp was formally with which successful band?
8. Whose 1990 album Violator remains their best-selling original album?
9. Which annual event do children collect used glasses for Gift of Sight?
10. Who wrote the Jimi Hendrix hit “All Along The Watchtower”?

Trivia 19:
1. Which singer had a 1995 U.K. No. 1 with “Boombastic”?
2. UB40 had a 1983 No. 1 in the U.K. with which song?
3. On February 27, 2006 - Luxottica Group announced a ten-year licence agreement with what company?
4. Graham Nash left which U.K. group to form Crosby, Stills And Nash?
5. What was Right Said Fred’s only U.K. No. 1?
6. Today, Licensed brands are located in 1,337 locations. How many locations does each brand have?
7. Which band released the album Surrealistic Pillow?
8. What was the only U.K. No.1 single from Michael Jackson’s Thriller allbum?
9. If Neuman delivers your mail, Who delivers your shipped deliveries?
10. Which rapper worked with Curtis Mayfield on a re-mix of “Superfly” in 1990?