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If I have learned one thing from this whole mess with the repairs to the MINI Cooper it's how much of a difference a little bit of good old customer service makes.

The start of the USAA process was handled by a person that was either over worked, burned out, or maybe just didnt give a crap.  It's unfortunate but that was my first image of USAA.  Throughout the entire process the claims adjuster did not follow up on anything, let things drop through the cracks, and never returned phone calls.

On the other hand Phillips has had great customer service.  They have returned voice calls.  They have had things done when they were promised.  They informed of everything that was going on between them and USAA because they were also having trouble with communication from USAA.

This is where that customer service comes in.... I went to pickup the MINI at Phillips on Friday.  When I inspected the car I found the work to be unacceptable, as I had mentioned in a previous post.  My contact there apologized, assured me that everything would be corrected, and promised that they would do everything possible to make things right.  She followed up and continued to keep me informed of the cars progress.  Apologies or not, I was very disappointed and frustrated.  What did I do? I vented about the work quality and the way my claim was being handled here on my blog. 

It appears that my little corner of the net isn't quite as secluded as I thought and someone at USAA came across the post and contacted me.  This person was apologetic and promised to make sure things were handled properly.  He has done an excellent job of that.  He has been doing what I had expected from the beginning.  Acting as a liason between me and the other parties involved in the claim.  He is making me confident that there is someone actually properly handling the claim. 

What my contact at Phillips and the new contact at USAA have in common is a commitment to good customer service.  They have called me, returned phone calls, and kept the lines of communication open.  Despite the fact that there have been many problems that are beyond their control.  They seem to be doing everything in their power to take care of their customer.

That brings us to this last night.....

No races this weekend!  Without the fuel efficient MINI we opted out of driving to Richmond to do the races and had some fun staying in the good ol' Hampton Roads area. 

Saturday we were supposed to go to Gloucester for the Renaissance Festival, but work and traffic had other plans for me.  I received a phone call from a customer that was having problems with equipment.  So I had to head to the Norfolk Naval Base to deliver equipment.  We were going to leave for Gloucester from the base.  Traffic screwed that one up though.... there was an 8 mile back up at the tunnel.  We scratched Gloucester at that point and drove back to the Ghent area of Norfolk to check out East Coast Bikes and Cogan's Instant Art Bar.

The reason for the trip to Ghent was to hit East Coast Bikes to see check out a new saddle.  For those non-cyclists types or those, like me, who still have the word seat ingrained in their head from years and years of calling a saddle a seat.  A saddle is in fact a seat.  It's the place where your arse gets beaten to a bloody pulp from all of your weight bouncing on and being supported by places that weren't exactly meant to support weight.  The mission to find a comfortable saddle has been going on for awhile now.  It started with numbness.  That was cured by getting a seat with a cutout in it.  Now the numbness is gone, but after a long hard ride I was having some MAJOR soreness around my sit bones.  To be graphic, sometimes I had what looked like blood blisters.  Obviously that isn't right, so I was very excited when I read Bryan Burn's post about the Bontrager Inform RL saddle.  After reading the post I went over to the Bontrager site and did some more reading.  It sounded like this seat might just do the trick!  Normally I buy all of my gear from Fat Frogs Bikes, but they aren't a Bontrager dealer, so the next closest place was East Coast Bikes.

I hadn't ever been to East Coast Bikes so I was very impressed when I walked in the door and saw the selection of bikes.  Especially the Felt B12 near the front of the racks.  I was greeted by a very nice employee who took us right back to the Bontrager saddle display and the special fit system.  The Bontrager Inform line comes in 3 different widths to accommodate different sized people. 

To properly size the saddle Bontrager developed a special fit system.  I was expecting this big elaborate system, but it was only a board with heat sensitive gel on it.  You sit down and it leaves an imprint of your sit bones.  Pressure is then applied to the gel where your bones contacted it and a color shows through.  The color corresponds to a size designation for your proper width saddle.  In my case it was the 146.  What was really cool was the fact that there was one white seat left and it just happened to be in my size!  On the way to the register we noticed that East Coast Bikes happens to be a Hammer Nutrition dealer as well so we snagged a container of HEED.  I had been wanting to try out HEED to see if it would eliminate the stomach pains I have been getting while training and racing.  The product I am using now contains glucose and sucrose.  Those two sugars have been reported to cause some people stomach cramps.  Hopefully the HEED will work!  I was impressed with East Coast Bikes they had a good selection and carry several items that I aren't normally stocked at Fat Frogs.  There location is good too.... it will give me an excuse to eat at Tap House Grill and a new favorite, Cogan's Instant Art Bar, more often.

After leaving East Coast Bikes we walked a couple of blocks over to...

Boo Bee Juice Drink for kids is now available in the UK in four great flavors: Strawberry, Orange, Mixed Fruit, and Pineapple.

Ok…. that’s just a cool name for a drink.  I want some of that for my next race.  Even better I will get some for my son to take to school with him in his lunch box.  I can hear the conversation now…. “Hey, Bobby do you want to taste some of my Boo Bee?”  Even better the results when little Sally is overheard by the lunch lady asking Bobby the same question. 

More information, if you really need it can be found at the UniBev site: Boo Bee Juice for Kids.

Lets see how this works.  Instead of Scribefire I am going to try something else.  I was really liking Scribefire but there are too many little “issues” that seem to be coming up with it.  The problems may very well be with my install of it so I will try straightening it all out once my level of frustration settles back down to normal.

GRRRRRR!!!! Lesson learned!  Backup!
This was supposed to be a nice long post written here about my revelations on my training program.  When posted through Scribefire plugin everything was lost!  It did it on the previous results post for the Langley Speedway Crit as well. 
Oh well.... back to the drawing board.... only this time in Google docs with a copy and paste to something else to publish the post.

Why must the same stuff travel the email circles over and over again. It is so simple to check something out before forwarding it out to everyone in your address book. Here's a prime example: The May 15th Don't Buy Gas Day. The Don't Buy Gas Day email has gone around in differing forms several times in the past years. Some may remember the Boycott Gas emails or the Boycotting the Large Gas Companies. Another common email hoax that has been seen repeatedly is the Microsoft and AOL scams that tell the recipeint of the email that if they forward the email to all of their friends they will be given money from AOL and Bill Gates. Come on, use some common sense people! Do you really think that by sending out spam you are going to get money from a big corporation.
One of my favorites is the threat from Dihydrogen Monoxide (DMHO). It was not so quite widely distributed as the Boycotting Gas emails, but none the less it was still passed around. It was said that Dihydrogen Monoxide was horrible, it's found in everything and was causing all sorts of deaths. It was attributed to causing accidents and death in the winter. It was involved in blizzards, typhoons, and hurricanes. Even worse, it can cause death if it is accidentaly inhaled! I recall some people, who and where they were will remain secret, were discussing this email in all seriousness that they really needed to be more vigilant about their potential exposure to this kill compound. The truth is that DMHO is water. Di (meaning two) - hydrogen and Mon (one) Oxide (aka Oxygen) being H2O. A quick search on google.com for "DMHO" or "Dihydrogen Monoxide" before sending out the threatening emails could have saved a lot of people some severe concern.

When a threatening email is received, whether it be warning of a computer virus that is going to blow up your computer or a $1000 check in your mail box. Go to google.com or snopes.com and do a seconds worth of research before clogging up everyones email boxes with a bunch of crap.

Oh and if you send the following link out to everyone in your address book within 5 minutes of reading this post I will be sure to give you a great big whopping transfer to your account of $0.00. That is only if you email your account number is that the transaction can be processed.
Here's that link: http://www.stormyworld.net/2008/05/internet-hoaxes-and-chain-lett-1.html

One post that I made in December about Kanye West and his purchase of a fixed gear track bike has drawn more traffic than any other post. My statement in that post about Kanye being a worthless sack of crap even drew some comments of disagreement. I still dont like the image he puts out to the public and his music isnt any better, but that is not why I am making this post. I am curious as to why a post that only has one sentence of text and one image can draw so many hits through Google's image search. I didn't even create the image, it came from a site called Razor Apple. Was it the image itself, the reference to Kanye West, or something else?

Maybe one of these days I will finally understand all this internet traffic stuff!

Kanye West Bought Himself a Track Bike - Razor Apple - Stormyworld.net

see more crazy cat pics

Ok I am one of those people that likes the icanhascheezburger.com stuff. Yeah it's unbelievably stupid stuff with misspelled and/or made up words. But, sometimes we all need to get away from the main stream and just enjoy something with no other intention other than being funny. No politics, no opinions, no religion, just plain fun.

After several days of steady rain we finally have a break!  I am feeling a nice ride this evening out to Creeds!

 An update on my darling wife... Amber had her edometrial ablation yesterday and seems to be doing well. She slept the ENTIRE day yesterday thanks to Oxycodone and 800mg Ibuprofen. She took her last dose of Oxy last night before bed and slept through the night with minimal discomfort. This morning as I left for work she said she was feeling pretty good.

Today is the first of three days without being able to get out and ride!

I have ridden the last three days in a row and had some great rides!  Yeah the winds been strong but it felt great to get out.  Especially in daylight in temperatures that allowed shorts and short sleeve, not 6 layers of clothing to stay warm.   Now it's three days off... tonight is the drive to Charlottesville, V, tomorrow is a day of officiating collegiate races, then Sunday is a full day of officiating for Jeff Cup.
That means no riding until Monday.
Good luck to everyone that is racing this weekend!

Last night I rode the loop once again, this time with Jay, Dan, Stacy, and Gilbert. March is officially here, the wind was blowing like mad again! Especially in the Trail of Tears section of the ride. It made for an interesting experience, riding while laying over at a 15 degree angle. Overall it was a much better ride then the one Tuesday night. I felt better and was able to push much harder. I wimped out when asked by Dan and Stacy to ride out to Creeds, due to the fact that I still had a bunch of furniture moving and relocating to do.

A Crappy Tuesday Ride...
I got home to find that our Boxer's stomach "bug" has passed which meant I did not have to clean up an ass-plosion from all areas around her crate. Everything else worked out too. The planets were aligned and biking gods were all putting the powers on me so that I would be able to ride. So, off I went to the shop to hopefully meet a few other folks and head out on the normal Pungo Loop for an epic Tuesday night ride.
Upon arriving to the shop I found only a few Team in Training Riders, most of which where of the loose fitting, non-spandex, clothing slower moving variety. I let them head out and waited about 57 minutes until 6PM to see if anyone would show up. No one else did. Then I walked outside to find that the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. Now it was in the low 40's and there was a nice steady wind. I went out anyways.
The first section of the ride through the neighborhood wasn't too bad if you like riding in a wind tunnel. I passed the Team in Training group on the way out of the neighborhood and kept on going. The turn on to New Bridge Road put me into a head wind that did not stop until I got to the very end of the loop. Normally the wind doesn't bother me too much, but for some reason I was having trouble pushing myself. I felt lazy.
For most of the ride my legs felt over worked and my lungs felt like they were half the size they should be. It felt like I was working really hard. What was strange was that my heart rate was staying about 10 beats per minute lower than what I would normally have with that much perceived effort. I don't have any of the fancy power tap things, so I have to go on what I feel and it sure did feel like I was working hard. I guess I was just having an "off" day. Hopefully tonight will have me feeling more energetic and make for a more enjoyable ride.

Yeah it’s Monday!  Back to work!  What a happy day, NOT! 

This was a good weekend.  A nice ride Saturday that had me dropped from the fast group in the Trail of Tears.  It’s amazing how much more effort a fast ride takes when there is a lot of yo-yo’ing and dodging people that can’t seem to hold a line or want to constantly jump out of the saddle throwing the bike backwards.  Either way it was a good ride.  Later in the day was a great time with good friends at my favorite restaurant, the Tap House in Ghent.  We even ran in to Chris, Wes, and the rest of the Alley Cat gang that had just finished the most recent Norfolk Alley Cat Race/Scavenger hunt.  Chris has put up a race report on his site, here.  I think Wes doing the Alley Cat with a child in tow in a bike trailer may be an Alley Cat first.  (I am not sure who took the picture but it was discovered on Chris’s site)  The beer and food was, as always, worth the drive from Virginia Beach to Ghent.  The St Bernardus was awesome, the Aventinus Eisbock was even better, and I cant even remember what it was that I had for my third.  It amazes me how much better some beers taste coming off the tap.  Oh yeah, the cider steamed mussels and burger were awesome too.

Sunday, I rolled out of bed at 630, saw the temperature of 38  degrees and decided the bed was much more enticing.  After a couple more hours of sleep Amber and I did some driving around Norfolk and Virginia Beach to deliver groceries to some folks.  Later in the day was a drive over to my father’s house to enjoy a nice family dinner.  My son the wonderful child that he is loved his new clothes that were acquired on a late night grocery run to Walmart.  Due to a crazy Saturday schedule and us being the awful parents that we are we didnt have clothes packed for him to stay with his Grandfather and Michele so the nice vest and tie were acquired and left on the doorstep late Saturday night so he would have something to wear on Sunday.  Isnt he just the most handsome little ten year old!  The picture is linked to the rest of the images that were taken that day.

Amber and I did a lot of driving around this weekend and I noticed that something seems to be happening on the road…. people seem to have forgotten what that piece of plastic sticking out of the steering column is supposed to be used for.  You know, a turn signal.  There was a time that they used to teach people in drivers education classes how to use them.  It used to be common courtesy to let other drivers around you know where you intended to go.  Not any more.  Every where you go there are fewer and fewer people that can seem to push that little bit of plastic an inch.  Maybe it is just another of those things that lazy people just cant seem to garner up the energy to do.  I for one use it religiously… I signal my turns, signal my lane changes, and sometimes even signal with my one finger signal when the fat lazy redneck driving his big old rust bucket Ford pickup decides he wants to cut me off.  That is cut me off with out using his turn signal because his hand is too busy flicking his cigarette out the window. A quick hunt for images to attach to this vent turned up this: Turn Signal Jacket For Cyclists : TreeHugger.  Pretty cool, but what good would it do… no one wants to use turn signals anyways. 

I am not the only one currently sick and off the bike as can be found by riding BKW's truthful post on cyclists being ill.  This has been a depressing week... today makes it one week since I have ridden.  It's killing me not being able to train when I know VBW Smackdown and the Dismal Wind Comes From All Sides The Whole Dash Time Time Trial are only a few days away. 
Hopefully I will be able to get in some road time Saturday if the weather holds out!


http://www.belgiumkneewarmers.com/2008/03/sick.html

This is really sucking!  I am still not feeling good!  How much longer is this going to last???

I am trying to remain optimistic about this, but I think I am starting to get sick.  Most that know me know that I dont often get sick.
I sat last night on the couch enjoying a glass of my favorite stout, Rasputin while finishing up running updates on a fresh install of Windoze XP for a friend when my chest started to get that unfamiliar "itch" and tightness.  Then by 9 last night there was an occassional cough.  This morning it's worse and I am feeling the aches start to set in. 

This is really going to suck if I have to miss the Sonny Hutchins race and a rare trip to Legend Brewery.

Live2ride's blog mentions that Sonny Hutchins at Southside Speedway in Richmond is fast approaching.  Only a couple of days away!!  This will be the day that I officially have lost my mind.  Many people know that I lost it a long time ago, but this will be my first time on a track with a bunch of other people on a fixed gear bike.  For those reading that aren't up on the basic bike terminology that means a bike that has no brakes and can not coast.  When you are on the bike you are pedaling whether you want to or not.  So, me being on the course with a bunch of other novice track riders should prove to be interesting.  Gilbert (aka Keirinracer) promises that this will be the most fun I can have on two wheels.  I guess we'll see on Sunday! 


http://live2rideride2live.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/sonny-who/