Mileage Plan

This morning as I was riding in to work, I had a marvelous plan for keep track of my biking vs. riding to work. My bike has about 160 miles on it. My car has about 60 miles on it. My new goal is to keep the bike mileage above the car mileage for as long as possible. Obviously, the first trip we make to SLC will shoot that idea out of the sky, so maybe once that becomes an issue I'll just account for that mileage separately. But, I figure it's a good little thing to track.

Still Bikin' It

I meant to blog about this anyway, and now that the question has been asked, I get to respond. Devoted reader Sabrina asks, "Do you get to take it to work?"

Well, Sabrina, I get to take it to work every day I want to, which thus far, has been zero. I'd either have to leave a new bike at home, or a new car, and thus far, I've chosen the car every time. (Two whole days!) I kinda like riding to work, even when I come in at 2pm. And I'm excited for September and October when the weather will be that much nicer. I'm working hard to get co-worker Jason to ride in with me, now that he only lives a few blocks away. It's 51 miles per week, and it doesn't make me quite as tired as when I started. Of course, it still makes me just as sweaty. In fact, my body will now let me ride faster and harder, which just gives me added ability to sweat. No co-workers have complained about it yet . . .

Excuses, Part II

I haven't been posting because . . . we've been doing some shopping.

Out with the old . . .
(A/C compressor fried, needs new compressor, belt, tires, etc.)

And in with the new:
(2007 Honda Civic, purchased new with 5 miles on it. 40 mpg, cruise control, AUX in jack in stereo, nothing falling off, full tank of gas.)

Bugatti

I've been meaning to post this for a while, and now I finally am. It's stolen from Larrie, but everyone should see it. My favorite line is: "This is Germany, there are procedures to go through. I like procedures."

Excuses

Well, no doubt, every one's hearts have grown fonder towards me and my blog in the last 10 days or so. Yes, I've been away. But, I've decided to plunge back in, and to motivate myself, I'm using an excuse theme. I'll tell you what I've been doing to keep me away from such an important task as blogging.

Excuse 1: Church
Yes, it's only one day a week, but what a day that is! Yesterday I went to PEC at 9, followed immediately by BYC at 10. I got to go home at about 10:30 and rest up for the afternoon. Pre-sacrament meeting choir practice was at 1 (we sang in sacrament meeting, I'm the pianist), followed by regular church from 1:30 to 4:30 and choir practice immediately afterward. A few minutes after 5 I dropped Shannon off at home and went to pick up my home teaching companion for our 5 o'clock appointment, to which we were only 10 minutes late. I was back home at about 5:40 or 5:45 with enough time to say 'hi' before heading out for the court of honor at 6. I was home a few minutes after 7. Heaven help me if I'm ever in the bishopric.

Ruby Follow-up

Well, 2 days ago in the mail I got a letter from the manager of the local Ruby Tuesday's. He apologized for the terrible service we received in a personally written letter, didn't make excuses and said that he hoped we might give them another chance. He mentioned that if we come in, we can ask for him personally and get another apology from him. Along with the letter, we got $30 in gift certificates. So, I guess we'll probably go give them another try, sometime. Though maybe we'll give them another month or two to think about what they've done.

Ruby Tuesday

For Shannon's birthday today we went out for lunch (I'm working evenings this week) and decided to go to the new Texas Roadhouse in town. But strangely, it's not open for lunch except for on the weekends. It opens at 4pm each afternoon, Monday through Friday. So, on the was back towards town, we decided to be adventurous and try out Ruby Tuesday. Neither of us had ever been. Neither of us will ever go again.

Upon entering, we waited about60 to 90 seconds wondering what we were supposed to do. No one was there, people were walking everywhere. Some people came in behind us and headed for the seating area. It couldn't be a seat-yourself restaurant, could it? Well, it turns out it's not, and eventually someone came and gave us a seat. If only we had left then.

We sat and looked through the menu. We decided what we wanted, which we never do quickly. After about 5 minutes, some people were seated at the table next to us. About 5 minutes later their order was taken. About 5 minutes later, I got the attention of someone cleaning a nearby table and asked if we could be helped. She went and told a waitress, who seemed unimpressed. The bus-girl came back and took our drink orders and got those for us and soon a waitress came to take our real orders. The food arrived in a reasonable time. Mine was a BBQ, bacon cheeseburger. Shannon ordered a turkey guacamole burger without lettuce or pickles. She got a turkey guacamole burger with lettuce and pickles.

We ate. The food was good. We finished eating. We got a box from the waitress. We talked for about 15 minutes and then she got us the bill.

On the up side, we saved a dollar or two on the tip, because no one at that restaurant deserved much.

Movies

I know we have some readership overlap, so some of you will already have seen Adam's mention of the Minesweeper movie. But it is certainly good enough that everyone should see it.

In other news, 95° is about the limit for riding my bike to work and not needing a shower upon arrival. That's what I get for going to work at 2:30 in the afternoon I guess.

The return trip

Well, the masses have demanded an accounting of my return trip on my bike last week. So here it is.

It's hotter, but it's more down hill and I don't worry so much about getting sweaty. I made it home about 5 minutes quicker. I rode again today, and tried hard to not go too fast. Then you're gross all day at work. Yes, taking a shower is an option, but I'm not exactly excited to do that at work. As I was laboring up a hill this morning, I was thinking about riding my bike as a kid and the lengthy rides we'd go on. I seem to remember being able to stomp on the pedals for hours on end before my legs would get tired. Not so any more. Am I really that much wimpier than I used to be? Or do I remember my childhood biking days as being more glorious than they really were?

Biking

Well, I rode my bike to work today. I only got slightly sweaty. It turns out it 5.1 miles and took me 24:30 minutes. And my rear end isn't too sore either. So the first half of day 1 went alright. I'm going home right now, so we'll see how it goes.

Not so Safety Inspection

So, my car is incapacitated right now. It turns out that the A/C compressor is shot. So it doesn't move at all. But of course, that very day (the 30th of the month) is the day that we were to take Shannon's car in to be safety inspected. And so, that was the day the check engine light came on. We decided that we'd take the car in and see what the light was all about. It is probably the same thing that caused us problems when we got it inspected last year. "Purge Flow Error" or some such gibberish.

Anyway, the car passed safety inspection. We had to put new wiper blades on it, but they failed to even mention that the check engine light was on. They apparently couldn't care less. And I was just happy that it passed. Once I got in the car, I also noticed one more thing they didn't seem to care about: the back doors have no handles inside. We took them out to replace the broken ones in the front. You can still get in and out if you know what you're doing, but again Jiffy Lube didn't seem to care at all.

Vegas

Well, we went to Las Vegas last night. It was roughly as I expected, but here are the not-so-surprising surprises of the night.

The Strip is long. I knew it was long, but I guess I didn't fully respect the amount of walking that I would be doing.

Once you're inside, there's nothing to see. The whole point of the exterior of the casino is to get you inside because you think it will be cool. The whole point of the inside of a casino is to get your money, which means gambling, restaurants and drinking.

It's hot in Vegas, even at 10pm.

There's not actually as much morally poisonous stuff thrust in your face as I thought. Oh, of course it's there, but I figured it would be completely unavoidable. Of course there's the "Vegas Dancer" sort of stuff, but the truly Bad stuff is fairly avoidable. Don't take anything that anyone is handing out on the street, and don't look at what's been dropped on the ground, you'll do ok. Oh, and don't look in the newpaper racks on the street either. But those are all above eye level (the people who hand out the business card size ads are all . . . short) so keep your head up, look at the lights and you can survive the Vegas adventure without completely wallowing in the mud.

The fountains at the Bellagio are the single best thing to see in Vegas. We got to see them do "Viva Las Vegas," "Hey Big Spender" and one other song which I now forget. Two were good, but "Big Spender" was particularly excellent. The directional fountains really seemed to capture the feeling of the song.