Two steps forward, one step back…that pretty well sums up how I feel about my progress. And it seems to apply to almost every aspect of this. Consider the following…
I was planning on leaving for Washington state right after my last Warmshowers guest departed on March 17th. However, Rosa needs me to stick around until the 19th which delays my departure till the 20th.
I still plan on getting back to Vegas around the 11th of April. That gives me time to sell off a few remaining large items in the house, and get ready for the community garage sale on the 14th. There’s always a large turnout for this and I hope to sell off lots of the smaller items. Whatever doesn’t sell will be donated, cause it’s time to go damnit!
My bike/gear is still a work in progress. I made a rather large couple of orders via Amazon, along with other various suppliers and most things have worked out fairly well…except for one of Amazon’s vendors…Bikesomewhere.com. I ordered the Schwalbe Mondails (tires) from them. They were supposed to have been shipped and arrive by the 6th. Unfortunately I get an email on the 6th telling me they just shipped! From Florida! Using standard mail! WTF? I call…left a message. I email and the following day get a reply that the order has shipped. I respond that I was expecting them to have already arrived and again…they say “they shipped”…..aghhhh! Their last reply was, “will an explanation make them arrive any sooner?” My response? “No, but it might have made a difference regarding the negative feedback I’ll be leaving regarding your lack of customer service”. In this day of internet commerce I find bad customer service to be completely unacceptable. I get the fact that things happen, but show some understanding. I believe I did, but didn’t get it in return…..ah well. I’m sure I’d better get used to this type of frustration when we begin trekking south of the border.The reason the tires are important….I still have to mount fenders and really don’t want to commit to a set until how I see they behave with my tires.
Good news though…my bike mechanic/teacher/friend Brett Marshall came over the other day and helped me install my ESI silicon grips. I custom ordered these from ESI last week. They were curious to see how we would handle getting these 20″ long babies to slide along the various curves of my trekking handlebars….well, it took us over 15 minutes of serious twisting and pulling to get them on, but we did it. They look and feel pretty good, but I still need to take it for a spin before I’ll know for sure.
I installed a Minoura Spacegrip 3. This is a ‘T’ shaped bar that clamps to my handlebar. It gives a bit of extra space to hang a couple gadgets from…namely my Garmin and Spokegrenade headlight. Speaking of which….damn that thing is bright!
At this point I should probably mention that I’m still torn between bikes. The Soma frame is clearly a superior frame, but the Schwinn is a bit taller…perhaps more comfortable? We’ll see.
BrokenSpoken 