PowerCycle

11/11 Happy Veterans Day. Arrived back to Los Angeles yesterday morning and took a taxi over to my friend Danny’s house to collect my bike. Big thanks to my Uncle Alan for getting up at 4:30am to drive me to the airport. It was so nice seeing everyone. Glad I made the trip.

Once my bike was loaded up I rode over to the pier to meet Danny, Simon and Heather for lunch. Simon took my bike out for a quick spin around the promenade and because only the 3rd person to ever ride it besides me. He’s ridden the tour stages in the Tour de France so I wasn’t too worried about it. Lunch was at Hennessey’s Tavern and the food was great. It was getting a little late by the time I rode over to Jen’s to get the couple things I’d left over there so I grabbed a motel for the night. The sun sets at 5:14pm which doesn’t leave much time for riding unless you start out early.

My destination for the day was the Doheny State Beach CG about 65 miles to the south. Getting there went pretty smooth. Most of the riding was on the PCH or on separate bike paths. After having not ridden for a week the first few miles were a little rough on my legs but my butt was 100% so once my legs warmed up I was good to go. Around Laguna Beach it started getting a litte hilly but nothing too bad.

When I finally made it the the CG I almost wished I would have kept going. I’m not sure who decided to sandwich the hike/bike campsite between the showers/bathroom and a popular dog walking/jogging road but they should give a little more thought to where they stick people not enclosed by an RV. The trains that went by every 20 minutes not more than 100 yards away didn’t help either. I also had to provide my driver’s license to even camp there for the night. This time the guy at least tried to justify asking for it besides just saying its a state park policy which its obviously not since I’ve only been asked for it twice. He said something about a guy abducting a girl and then leaving some kind of clue hinting that he’d be taking her to a campground. So the police come to the CG and see his name on the register and just like that the girl was saved. There were so many stupid things wrong with this story I just smiled and handed it over.

My laptop saga may be coming to a close. Asus, who are pretty much useless when it comes to customer service, actually has an awesome technical department. I checked online and was surprised to see that that had fixed it a day after receiving it! Now it was on its way to Boca Raton (my Aunt’s house). Unfortunately it was going to be there 2 days after I was going to be gone. My Aunt was also going to be in Vegas then so no one would be there to sign for it. That would mean it would go back to Asus where it could then be resent to a destination of my choosing. I tried calling Asus to see of they could call FedEx and change the destination address (only the shipper can make this change) but I already mentioned the useless Asus customer service right? They couldn’t even get a supervisor on the phone so I could explain to them what I needed.

I called FedEx and after several calls I spoke to this extremely helpful woman in customer service named Evelyn. I explained to her my situation and asked if she could help get the package rerouted to a UPS Store in Chula Vista who could then hold it for me ($5) until I picked it up in a couple days. I’d also have to change the shipping method from Ground to Air which isn’t something they can normally do. Evelyn said she’d see what she could do and call me back. 20 minutes later the laptop was rerouted and upgraded to air delivery so I’d have it in time. Sure FedEx and I had some problems in the past but this more than made up for it.