The Most Economically Stimulating Time of the Year

How did that happen? Where did Christmas come from? Christmas is miles away isn't it?
What do you mean only four hours?

On Christmas eve, I avoided the sales floor for most of the day, and tried to stay tucked away in the tech room as much as possible. We close at 5pm, and the two closers decided to walk out the door at 5, leaving a cashier and me to do all the computer signage and attempt some boxing day prep.
It was incredibly quiet walking home. Not quiet because there was no one around - quite the opposite. There were cars everywhere, and people rushing into shops even though the clerks closing the doors were telling them that they'd closed at six. But walking down the street, the cars were making a "flowing" sound, sort of like a river. I couldn't hear any taking, any loud car radios, even the police car that came through an intersection with lights flashing didn't have the siren on. No horns, or enlarged exhaust sounds, I didn't even make eye contact with any other pedestrians on the way home.

I had Christmas day off, and the weather was really nice, so went for a ride up Tzouhalem. I didn't get on well with the bike, and I haven't been for the last couple on months. I can't ride stuff I could on my old bike. On flat-ish, straight-ish single track it's great - it floats over roots and rocks and pedals very well (in the middle or big ring, but feels weird in the granny). I just can't get up or down anything remotely technical - I just keep toppling over. I sometimes manage to fall off before I've got on (literally - getting off or on the bike is like getting in or out of a Range Rover). It was quite a frustrating ride in all. On the way up, I had a terrible time climbing the single track, on the chicken runs, I has a terrible time bouncing down the rocks and roots, and when I got to Fluid and Resurrection, I just felt clumsy. Even with the fork dropped and with the bars lower and a shorter stem (which have all helped to a degree), I can't make it go where I want. I can't make use of the new berms up there.

Boxing day was crap. A million demanding customers all looking to get 75% off everything, and expecting me to talk to each of them for an hour about what to buy.

Today I went for a ride with Ted. We ran into Gail and Linda on Why Be a Roadie, and rode with them up to Little Dipper, then down Cake Walk, the bottom of Middle T, Show Time, Three Musketeers, and Toxic Tea Cup and Resurrection. I would like to point out at this time that I was waiting at the bottom of Resurrection for several minutes for Ted to catch me up. Though he's apparently suffering from the Man Flu again.

Something Strange

...happened this morning.
I woke up at 8:74.
Not only had I slept in, but I'd woken up at a time that didn't exist.
Even more strangely, I didn't realize this until I'd showered, dressed and was making my breakfast/lunch.
Strange.

After this I went to Thrifty's to get some groceries.
Three strange things happened here. Firstly, I bought cheese, which I haven't done in a long time. I'm not sure what to do with it now.
Secondly, I bought some Hobnobs. That isn't strange, but near the Hobnobs I saw some "reduced fat" Oreos. This is also quite normal, of course, as every food now also comes in a low fat version. But on the front they said "30% less fat per two cookies". I realize that a large portion of the population are mathematically illiterate, but where did this come from? Surely, one cookie has 50% of the fat that the two have in total, therefore if two cookies have 30% less fat than two regular Oreos, then each will have 30% less fat than each regular one. Or does it mean that two "reduced fat" Oreos have 30% less fat than one full-fat Oreo, and each diet Oreo has 65% less fat than the regular one. But that sounds more impressive, so why wouldn't they just say that? Am I missing something?
Thirdly, I thought I'd get some Chrismassy tea. I picked up the herbal one, because I only get the caffeine-free stuff. It tastes (and smells) of mint. I never associated mint with Christmas. I associate mint with lamb and toothpaste (not together).

I just wrote a sentence about how nothing strange happened at work today, but had to backspace, because this in itself is stange. Not a day goes by that we don't have a crazy customer that has a go at us because we only stock two types of video cassettes or that we won't knock 50% off the price of their laptop. Today was very uneventful. I'm caught up to within 48 hours for the first time in 10 months. No one tried to argue that virus removal should be covered under warranty, or that they woke up in the morning and their screen was cracked. None of my customer's cats knocked apple juice into the CD drive of their owner's laptops. No one managed to spill an entire bottle of tabasco sauce on the keyboard of their laptop while using it as a recipe book. I found no rotten flesh in desktops. No hard drives spontaniously combusted.
Strange.

New Post

Yes, well, I guess it's been nearly three months since I made a post.

Since the last post:
Went to Mount Washington for a day with Roland, Katie, and Roland's brother and sister-in-law. Fell off a bit onto the camera in my pocket.

Roland's Bighit:

Katie's new Slayer:
There were some more cross races.
I rode to the one in Bowen Park, but didn't race.
It was raining for the ones ones in Victoria, and I didn't feel like riding down there in the rain and standing around freezing all day, so didn't go. Apparently though, the second one was dry (!).
I helped put up the course at Providence farm, and helped out with the barbecue on race day.
I completely forgot about the one in Shawnigan Lake and was out riding and saw the sign, so stopped by to watch the racing for a bit. This was the only dry day in November.


I got a lot of riding in in October. I managed to talk the bosses into changing my hours from 12-8:30pm, so I now have the mornings to go riding in. This was working well for me in October, and I was riding most days, clocking 300+ km a week.
But then it rained non-stop through November. Even when it wasn't raining full-on, just drizzling, I'd take my cross bike out and all the trails were flooded. Some houses down the road were flooded, and there were sandbags around my building for a week, but the water didn't really get close.
At the end of November the rain just stopped.
Last weekend I rode to the top of Maple Mountain on Saturday. I've never been to the top before. I didn't take into account that it starts getting dark at 4pm though, so didn't have time for any trails on the way down. (UPDATE - I think this was the week before, because Hilary's pottery sale was that day)
On Sunday I put the cross tires on the Lemon and rode the old railway bed to Lake Cowichan. I rode there on the south-most trail, and back on the one on the north of the river. It took me about 4 hours and ended up being 63km.
Yesterday (Saturday) I went on a road ride. It was bloody freezing! The frost on the ground that usually disappears when the sun come out stayed around all day. I started riding anti-clockwise around Shawnigan Lake, but decided to carry on and see where the road went. It's a great riding road, a bit like May's road, very momentum-y, with perfect corners and little hills, and smooth paving - that soon gave way to a gravel-less gravel road, if you know what I mean (used to be a gravel road, but not much gravel left on it, just hard ground). I carried on to Koksilah Park. I climbed around on the frosty rocks for a bit, with tread-less shoes. I tried riding around on some of the trails, but there were some pretty pointy rocks and frosty roots, and if I broke my bike there was no cell coverage and the only people around for miles were pot smokers on quad bikes. There's a yellow gate there, blocking a bridge over the river, that doesn't appear to have been opened in a very long time. I'm wondering if this is where the "Burnt Bridge" trials begin. (Apparently, Burnt Bridge was "thee" place to ride, but then it got logged, and trails were built on Tzouhalem. Another chunk of Tzouhalem just got sold off, and the houses keep getting further up the mountain, even since I've moved here. Apparently, ten years ago the trails began where the school now is, and there were no houses above there. So where do we go when Tzouhalem's gone? Maple? There seems to be a lot of potential for trail building there, but it's all a bit gnarly. And they're still logging it. Every time I group there there are fresh branches on the roads. Prevost is too steep for general trail riding. Cobble Hill is being looked after well, but it's quite a small area, and very "multi-use". There seem to be a lot of "regional" and provincial parks around, but they're usually quite remote, so no one goes there except the adore-mentioned potheads. And the odd cyclist that enjoys wandering around on backroads and getting lost. There are mountains everywhere, and I'm continually surprised by where I can get to on my cross bike without braking any rules. But the reason all these mountain are accessible is because of logging roads... I'm getting off topic again.) I headed back towards civilization, taking a detour along Glen Eagles Road, which looks to be another of them roads where rich people buy a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, spend millions building a house on it, and then complain that they had to pay for the gas to come "all the way" from the other side of Shawnigan Lake in to to town. They think their computer should be jumped to the front of the queue and be fixed while they wait so they don't have to come "all the way" into town another day. I'm sure they have to come into town every two or three days anyway for something-or-other. Don't these people work? Probably not. But my point is that they chose to live where they do, so shouldn't be complaining about it, and especially not expecting for special treatment because they paid more to live further away. They're like the Saltspring-ers that we get in work all the time. "Do you know how much it costs to take the ferry?" "I don't have a choice. There isn't a computer shop on Saltspring, y' know." Sounds like an excellent business opportunity to me - why don't one of these whiny Saltspringers start up a computer repair business? I had a guy in on Friday that wanted his computer fixing - while he waited. I told him that the queue was about three days long, and I don't work on weekends, but he called a manager over, and he won of course, because the managers are soft. So I put everything else aside to try and fix this guy's computer. He thought his CD drive wasn't working because of the upper/lower filters issue and tried to fix it in the registry, but deleted a whole load of stuff, and his mouse and keyboard stopped working. He was complaining it was taking so long, but the mouse and keyboard weren't working, CD drive wouldn't work, I didn't have an IDE CD drive I could use instead, and the BIOS was so old that it didn't support booting from USB! I had to take a DVD drive out of another customer's computer to use temporarily. I hate customer's like that - it wasn't even something that was our fault, or an issue with a defective computer he'd bought from us or anything, he screwed it up himself. Woooooow - check out the complete and utter off-topicness!
So I continued my ride around the lake. It was a very nice day - no clouds and very sunny, but by this time the sun was starting to set. I was plenty warm enough while riding, but once I got back to the highway the wind hit me and my skin was freezing. It's weird how you can be warn on the inside, but it feels like your outside has frozen solid (like an armadillo - soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside).
I did a total of 86 km (I also took a detour around Cobble Hill, and started off along Tzouhalem Road and came up onto the highway along Bench).

I'm sure much more has gone on since September, but I'll wrte about that in March.