My Mountain Bike

Well, I have a post in here for my road bike, so I thought I should put one up here of my mountain bike as well. Here it is:

The date of this post and the actual date are not the same. I am posting this on August 6, 2011, three days after I got the leather saddle you see on the bike. I’m setting this post to a date before the post of my road bike so that this post doesn’t show up first. See my road bike first, then see this one.

I bought this seven years ago before I knew anything about cycling or bikes. I didn’t really know what a road bike was and didn’t know that mountain bikes are not for riding on the road. My life as a cyclist, therefore, started on this bike. I rode this exclusively from when I really started cycling in the fall of 2005 until the end of 2006 when I got my first road bike. Since then this has been regulated to being a second bike, something that gets ridden once in a blue moon. For example, in 2009 I did 56 rides, and 52 of them were on my road bike. In 2010 those numbers were 57 and 56 respectively. (September 22, 2011 update: due to my road bike being mothballed, I have now ridden this bike more this year than I have my road bike. Overall, however, I still only ride this bike 14% of the time.)

In case you are wondering, yes, I did change the tires. I run thinner slick tires on this, not the fat, knobbly things that come standard on mountain bikes.

Update: September 2, 2011

Thanks to the donation from a cycling buddy of a steel rigid fork, I swapped out the heavy and pointless (for riding on the road, at least) suspension fork that came with this bike. Notice the difference in colour between the fork and the frame. As I write this, I’m also looking at getting better -- and better-looking -- bar ends. It’s time to give this bike a little bit of love, as I really, really should ride this more often.

Update: October 22, 2011

I’ve put drop handlebars on this bike meaning that I don’t think I should call this a mountain bike anymore. The details of this change can be found here, here, and here. An updated version -- complete with more pictures -- of this bike can be found here.

This is how this bike has looked through the years and the changes, even though most of the changes are very recent.

Boy or Girl

Back when we expecting Wen BB, I would often have a conversation with someone else that went exactly like this:

Me: “We’re going to have a baby!”

Other Person (OP): “Wow, boy or girl?”

Me: “Boy.”

OP: “Congratulations!”

That always struck me as being a little strange. Shouldn’t things be the other way around? Shouldn’t people say “Congratulations” and then ask if it’s a boy or a girl?

I haven’t had a similar conversation yet during this pregnancy, so I can’t tell you what has happened, but I have often wondered: What would have happened if I had answered “girl” instead of “boy”? Would the OP have said something like, “Ohh, I’m terribly sorry. Better luck next time!”

Me, I am very happy to have a girl. There’s nothing wrong with a boy, but I have always wanted to have a daughter. And, Wen BB is a boy, so I have already have a son. This way, I will have both a son and a daughter. Perfect. And, she will be my parents’ first granddaughter.

Cold Weather

A lot of people in Canada might be thinking that the weather in Taiwan isn’t cold. Come on, it’s only ten degrees. That’s nothing like the sub-zero temperatures we’re getting here. Yes, that is true, but the problem is that people in Canada are prepared for the cold. People here are not.

In Canada, houses, stores, schools, office buildings, buses, et al are all heated, heated so much that it is only slightly uncomfortable walking around in a T-shirt. If there’s a roast in the oven, it’s darn hot in the house. Well, my grandfather thought the house was always cold, but he was special. In Taiwan, other than department stores and big supermarkets, the only heating we have is closing the window to stop the wind and drafts from coming in. These cement walls don’t help either as they don’t retain any heat. I often find it’s colder inside our house than it is outside.

Also I don’t see people in Canada riding motorcycles or scooters when it gets even remotely cool. If the temperature gets below, what, twenty degrees, people are putting their bikes away for the winter. Here we have to ride scooters all year round, and that includes times like now when it is ten, eleven degrees and raining. That, I tell you, is cold.

I almost prefer the winters in Canada. Yes, it’s much colder, but only outside. I can put on a heavy coat, gloves, cover my head and my ears, and I’m fine. I go inside and can take all that off and sit in comfort with the central heating we have. But here I can’t do that. I have to ride my scooter in the cold and wet and then go inside where it’s not any warmer and try to eat or type or wash dishes or clean up, all with very cold hands. Thank god it only lasts for a couple months. By the end of February or so it will only be slightly cool and by the end of March I can get my shorts out again.

Re-organising Blogs

I hope I'm not confusing anyone, but I re-arranged and re-organised my blogs. (It probably doesn't make a difference, I don't think anyone is reading these anyways.)

This blog (http://chuckclark.blogspot.com) is mostly for stuff relating to me and only me. In the future this site will probably contain stuff I have written or thoughts that I have.

If you're looking for posts about biking (or cycling), life in Taiwan, or things we have done or things about my family, then look at Bikes, Kids, and Temples (http://bikesnkidsntemples.blogspot.com/).

For stuff about my children, look at Fruits from the Nanatree (http://nanatree.com/fruits/). Anything relating to Wen BB or Wen CC will be located there.


And don't forget about my collection of Chuck's Cold Jokes (http://chuckscoldjokes.blogspot.com/) and Letters to Leland (http://letterstoleland.blogspot.com/)


Also, make sure to check out Nanatree (http://www.nanatree.com/) if you did not come here via there.

I now have MacJournal set up on my Mac to be able to post to my blogs, so hopefully I will be able to blog more often. One of the hindrances before was the tediousness of having to go to the blog, log in, type the post out, format it, and then publish it. With MacJournal set up, the only thing I have to do now is type out the post. It's always hard to find the time to do that, but at least the tediousness of it is gone.

Open Letter to an Unspecified Company

I'm sorry, but you're going to have to accept alternate methods. Cancelling by phone would be fine if I were living in the Pacific time zone, but unfortunately, I am not. I am living halfway around the world from you.

Your practice of only being available during regular business -- and only in your own time zone, by the way -- is quite short-sighted, inconvenient, and impolite. Not every one is able to call during regular business hours in the Pacific time zone. As the majority of people in the world don't live in the Pacific time zone, I would think the number of people who can call during regular business hours is very, very small. Most people in North America don't even live in the Pacific time zone, so you can't even claim you are catering to most people in North America.

When you are available, it is night time here. Why should I lose my sleep so you can do your job? It should be the other way around, should it not? The company should cater to the customer's needs, no?

Moreover, the one time I did call to try to cancel, I was put on hold for a very long time until in the end I gave up. I didn't give up out of frustration or because I figured that if I were going to be on hold for so long, I might as well just continue; no, I gave up because a long-distance phone call halfway around the world where I have been on hold for so long is just too expensive. The least you could do is provide a toll-free number for people not living in your area code.

The thought occurred to me as I was on hold that maybe you like to put people on hold on purpose. I can't see your phone lines being that busy. If so, you need more phone lines. I'm willing to bet you put people on hold on purpose for a long time because you figure that if unsatisfied customers are on hold for long enough, they will eventually give up and won't bother to cancel. Am I too far off with that observation?

>>If you want to cancel, please call us at (1) 760-602-3000 M-F 8-5

Pacific Time and select the appropriate menu option. Be sure to

listen to the entire list of choices in order to ensure your call

is directed properly. Alternate methods of cancellation will not

be accepted.

Good from the Bad

The bad news is that my boy has been really sick lately. He’s had a cold and a fever. He’s had no energy; for two days I had to carry him around as he wanted to be held and didn’t want to see anyone other than me. With not feeling well, he also wasn’t sleeping well, and one morning he woke up too early. He wanted to go outside, so I walked around outside carrying him for about an hour. The good news out of all this is the view we saw being out that early in the morning. There were the trees, the fog down in the valley, the mountains in the distance, the clouds over the mountains, and rays from the rising sun shooting up from the mountains. It was beautiful.

Knowing the Owner

I like going to shops where I know the owner.

My wife has decided she would prefer me to go riding at night while our boy is sleeping. I usually go very early in the morning, but apparently if I’m not here when my boy wakes up, he keeps looking around for me. So, to make things easier, I’ll probably be doing most of my riding at night from now on.

For that I need another light on my bike, as it can be pretty dark out there. So I go into a bike shop yesterday, a shop where I know the owner and he knows me. I tell him I need a light, he asks me what for, I tell him for riding at night so it needs to be bright. He shows me one that is very bright, has a lot of functions, but is also very expensive. Then he shows me another one, and finally another. After informing him that I already have one light, that I just need to make things a little brighter, he thinks the third one would be good enough. That one was a quarter of the price of the first one he showed me. Most salespeople would probably try to convince shoppers to buy the most expensive one, but he tells me to buy the cheapest one.

That’s what I like.