Hoarders: Extreme Water Bottle Edition

The ones I could see, I counted.  2-4-6.  15-17-19.  28-30-32.  Wedged into the plastic bin on the pantry shelf, next to the liquor in the fridge-top cabinet, lined like stout soldiers in front of the cookbooks we possess enough water bottles to outfit a pro tour team for a Hors Category stage of the Tour De France.  44-46-48.  With 6 more in the dishwasher and 4 on the drying rack, I can’t believe what my wife said the other night after a teammate kiddingly scolded her for not having team water bottles on her bike.  Joe takes all the good water bottles.  Who me?

Granted, I do have a habit of leaving two or three rolling around the inside of my 4-Runner at any given moment.  Maybe there are 2 in the bedroom and another pair in my backpack.  On a hunch, I bet there’s a couple on the workbench in the garage.  Oh yeah, there might be 4 I left in the dumbwaiter…yes we have a tall house and a dumb waiter…and okay, I confess, she’s right.  We have 55 or more water bottles in the house and somehow we’re still short on “good bottles.”  WTF?

Having “good” bottles is as key to the bike outfit as a nice watch or matching shoes for a work dinner.  She’s right.  They’re not all “good” bottles.  Some are leaky.  However, I can never remember which ones.  The blue ones look too patriotic on the red and white bike.  A half dozen are still pristine, but not from our team sponsor shop BioWheels…can’t use those on group rides or we’ll get teased by teammates.  Others are lame with flimsy tops.  Small bottles are good for lap races, but not all-day rides.  At least a dozen have mis-matched tops.  The Hydrapak Gel-bot is cool and works fantastic, but if I ever start worrying about nutrition while riding the cruiser bike to the grocery store, please, hit me over the head with a garden shovel.

I’m on my tippy toes.  I know there’s some on that top shelf that I can’t see and that shelf is at least 2 ½ feed deep.  I’m up to 55.  Enough bottles that, for the next month or two on any day-to-day two hour group ride, I could toss them like a pro tour rider over the hedgerows when I empty one.  However, I don’t think property owners along Route 8 in Northern Kentucky would appreciate my souvenir. 

Click & Win A Road ID With Flat Joe Biker Pix Contest

Hoarders is on TV.  If you’ve seen one episode, you’ve seen them all.  Crazy old coot grows an emotional attachment to what appears to be garbage, crazy old coot’s family steps in and throws away the garbage, crazy old coot rebels but surrenders, crazy old coot and family cry and hug in the newly cleaned house.  Dear Oprah, Tom Cruise and little baby Jesus please help me from being a water bottle hoarder.  I’m still young.  In ten, twenty or thirty years I don’t want people to walk by our house and marvel at the multi colored objects stacked 3 feet high in our window sills. 

Still I can’t make myself part with them.  I won that one for placing 5th in my age group at a sport level mountain bike race eight years ago honey!  I’m protective about them.  With my trusty black Sharpie, I label them with our last name so teammates, friends and strangers named Joe at races and rides don’t mistakenly take them.  How absurd is that!  You probably have more than us.  No you say.  Count ‘em up!  Don’t be scared.  See.  See!  Hoarder hoarder new bottles on order!  

There’s An iSensor For That. (Sweat Voids iPod Warranty…really)

I thought I struck upon sheer iGenius.  Riding in this heat, I prefer to ride with my jersey unzipped with a thin base layer underneath.  If you like to use an iPod and do this, you run into an iKunundrum.  With the jersey zipped, the iHeadphone Cord is long enough to make it out and around the jersey pocket to your noggin, but with the jersey open, the iCord is not quite long enough and tends to tug at your ears when the jersey flaps in the wind.  My stroke of iGenius was to tuck the iPod Nano under my base layer on my shoulder blade.  I know!  I started singing the Homer Simpson song.  “I am so smart…s-m-r-t…I mean s-m-A-r-t!”  That was until sweat, detected by the iSensor, damaged my Nano and voided the warranty.  Really Seth and Amy?

With the Nano on my shoulder blade, it worked iAwesome.  In a riding position, the iPod rested flat; there was plenty of cord and no tug at the ears.  I tucked the excess cord in the back of my jersey.  The Nano is light and flat and after a warm up, I didn’t even notice it was there.  Guinness Brilliant!

Not quite.  After a few rides, I began noticing that the iPod wasn’t holding a charge as long as it used to.  Initially it would work for 3-4 rides.  Now it was dying on the 2^nd ride.  Then, it died in about 2 hours.  Uh oh.  Then, it wouldn’t charge.  Then…dear iJesus.

I was upset.  I received it as a holiday gift only 7 months ago.  I loved it.  It was blue.  It matched my team cycling kit.  I used it a lot.  Bike rides last a lot longer than most people’s 3 mile runs.  It’s certainly possible that I could use up a battery designed to last for more than a year in 7 months, I rationalized.  After exhausting all the fixes on the Apple website, I took it to the Apple store.

“Did you make an appointment,” the young iClerk asked.  What?  Really?  I need to make an appointment to return a product?  It’s broken and I’d like to see if you could either fix it or replace it.  It’s under warranty.   I can’t just leave it with you?  “Our back room is very big and this (iPod) is very small,” eluding that it would be easy to get lost.  I nodded.  You really need to make an appointment with the Genius Bar, he pressed.  You can do it online.  iSmoke was about to blow out my ears, but I held it back.  So, what you’re saying, I said, is that I need to go home, make an appointment, and then drive all the way back here.  I think he saw my point and appreciated a calm demeanor, so he offered to look into my issue between appointments.  I faked my gratefulness.

A few minutes passed and he came back out with a fresh iPod Nano, some paperwork to sign and noted that the warranty period would only extend one year from the initial purchase.  Understandable.  Happy, I signed the repair form and went home to charge it up, load the music and ride. 

Two weeks later.  Same thing.  iPod Nano, iDead.

So, I went online to make a service appointment.  Click.  What?  You have to be kidding me?  In more or less words, the error message said, we’re sorry our system doesn’t work with your browser.  Please download and install Safari (Apple’s web browser.)  I blew my top in our living room.  How many (bleeeep) fiery burning iHoops do I need to jump through to get this (bleeeep) fixed?  Serenity now.  Serenity now.  Luckily, I found another link, I think the one for my specific store, and I made the appointment without Safari.

This has water damage.  The iClerk said when I came in for my appointment.  You see there’s a little sensor (pictured from Apple website) in here and it’s been exposed to water.  “Well I didn’t drop it in a puddle or a toilet.  I use it for cycling.  It’s been hot out.  It must be sweat,” I retorted.  He pointed out the iSensor inside the headphone jack.  Like a pregnancy test, it turns color when touched by water.  He said, it shorted out.  He wasn’t budging and the sensor doesn’t discriminate between sweat and water.  He offered a discount on replacing it, 89 dollars and change.  “It’s not water damage.  It’s sweat.  I’m not paying $90 dollars to replace a product made for exercising that isn’t impervious to sweat.”  He was kind, but unyielding.  I left in a huff, dead iPod in hand.

Later, I found this iPod Warranty post on the Apple website:

Summary

If an iPhone or iPod has been damaged by liquid (for example, coffee or a soft drink), the service is not covered by the Apple one (1) year limited warranty or an AppleCare Protection Plan (APP). iPhone models and iPod models that were built after 2006 have built-in Liquid Contact Indicators that will show (as described below) whether the device has been in contact with water or a liquid containing water.  Click to read it all.

So be alert.  The world needs more lerts.  Sweat is made of water.  Sweat will kill your iPod and it won’t be covered by warranty.  I’m not the only person this has happened to.  Here’s another funny blog,  and another with links to a ton of comments about the issue.  So until Apple makes an iPod with better seals to address the problem that sweat can find its way into the electronics, you’re no better than a dufus who drops his iPod in the toilet.  Then, get ready to jump through the iHoops.  It’s you against the water sensor. 

Holy Water Bottles

I could be going to hell.  If so, my wife and a bunch of racer type cyclists from Milwaukee are coming with me.  Woo hell!  The most extreme epic ride ever!  I’ll wear my helmet with the horns.  We’ll have a Papal Peloton!  I grew up Catholic, went to Sunday school, received a coupla sacraments, know the Lords Prayer and Hail Mary by heart and in all my worldly Theological studies I’m certain that drinking Holy Water at least gets you a few whacks from a Nun’s yardstick.  I’m almost positive that somewhere in the bible it says “Drinketh the wine and thou be seateth at the right hand of the Lord.  Guzzleth the Holy Water, and thou gets few jabiths in the keester with a hot rusty pitchith fork.”

If you’ve been angry because there hasn’t been a new blog post in weeks, I’ve been on vacation.  Rule #1 with this blog is that riding comes before writing.  So while on vacation in Wisconsin we tagged on to the Holy Hill Ride, Milwaukee’s regular Sunday morning pilgrimage to a spectacular spired church perched on a scenic hill 35 miles or so out in the sticks from downtown.  Superweek, aka The International Cycling Classic, also features a stage through Holy Hill country.  This is the second time I’ve done the ride.  I grew up in Milwaukee, but my passion for road cycling didn’t arise till I moved to Cincinnati.  Therefore the only times I visited Holy Hill were on Christmas and at 1am with a six pack of Mickey’s big mouth beers during prom.  The Holy Hill ride ranks right up with Cincinnati’s covered bridge ride, skinny farm roads leading to a place that’s always better reached by bicycle.  Like most cities and their Sunday ride traditions, this ride has been going on for a long time.  From what the peloton of 30 or so said, the Holy Hill ride has been going on probably before the Green Bay Packers won their first Superbowl, but after Harley met Davidson.

Milwaukeeans will try to fool you to thinking that the topography is hilly, mainly by calling people from Illinois “flatlanders.”  Since I’ve moved away to a place that actually is quite hilly, Milwaukee for all practical purposes is as flat as a pancake with a few thick ripples of syrup on top and running down the side into Lake Michigan.  But.  But.  But, for some reason that only a geological genius can explain, there are a few areas that were not smooshed by glaciers.  Holy Hill sits on top of one of them.  The wooded hill probably rises 300ish feet above the farmland below.  Not quite Cincinnati high, but definitely tall enough for a 3-4 minute climb with a couple of soft switchbacks capped off by two steep stabs to the cornerstone of the church.  Of course, King of the Mountain points are in full effect every Sunday.  While, I did not win the surge to the top, I think I certainly made a few locals fear that the out of town guy may spank them on their own hill.

At the top, we stopped for a natural and to fill up the bottles.  The temp was tickling its way toward 85 degrees.  The group split up.  Some stopped at a small out-building with a restroom and bubbler (Wisconsin speak for “drinking fountain”).  The rest of us, stopped in front of this little grotto with what appeared to be a natural spring watched over by a statue of the Virgin Mary.  In plain English, the sign next to the spigot said, “Holy Water.”  Now, I’m no Theological expert, but I’m pretty sure this would lead most god fearing people to believe that this water was meant for blessing and quenching the thirst unfortunate souls and not for guzzling in 28 ounce quantities.  Despite Mary’s furrowed brow of disapproval, everyone filled their bottles from the tap and made holy water jokes in the shadow of the colossal cathedral.  H.  E.  Double toothpicks.

Regardless of our apparent sin, none of us were struck by a bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky.  However, someone did get a flat tire right there at the grotto.  Coincidence?  I dunno.  Regardless, no one wrecked on the way home.  Maybe it was blessed.  We went on to have a wonderful vacation in Wisconsin.  Who knows?  They say the body is 70% water.  For a few days, maybe ours was Holy Water.  Is that doping?