A new twist on the Nativity story.

OK, it's not a new story, just a new way of telling it. I like these view-historical-events-through-today's-techno-doohickies videos. Enjoy! Hat tip to Mark Shea.

I'm not even a cat guy

Hat tip to Marcel.

Aggie Catholics: An Open Letter To Politicians

So yeah, what he said...

Marcel is a good guy. I didn't know him as well as I should have when we were at A&M together. He puts together a really cool blog and he has this to offer today.

Aggie Catholics: An Open Letter To Politicians:

"We are Catholic and we are American. You will be in our prayers and we promise to pray for you as you serve us."

I especially like his first bullet point:

We are Catholics first. We may be Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, etc. Many of us do not claim a political party. Regardless, we will never abandon our faith for the purposes of politics. Being Catholic is not defined by political party affiliation.

As Mark Shea would point out, we won't support the Party of Evil and we won't support the Party of 30% Less Evil. So quit being all Evil and give us someone we can vote for.


I also enjoyed

We will look past the rhetoric, the slogans, and the ads. We will look for integrity, character, ethical behavior, and honesty.

I'm sick of the standard rhetoric on both sides. It's tired. They all repeat the same crap that they are told to say by their respective party. Unfortunately, with only two parties, they only way to get elected is to "motivate the base." This is done by demonizing the opponent and demanding that the electorate vote to keep the other guy/gal out of office. It's all about being 30% Less Evil than the your opponent (Sorry Mark if you have a copyright on that).

Marcel added some other points that are important. Go check it out.

Big Families and the Small Questions that folks ask

This reminds me of this.

Actually, it was harder to go through the grocery store with 5. With 7, folks are moved beyond pity and curiosity to shock and awe. Plus our oldest is about six feet tall now.

Feel free to discuss. My favorite response to "Are you going to have more?" - I'm not afraid.

And no, we don't have another bun in the oven.

Update: I forgot that I had written about how a number can be judged in other ways here. Of course, that was three years ago. Did they have blogs back then?

Icebreaker Review

OK, so the other day I get an email from Icebreaker. They're an outfit from New Zealand that makes high end clothing out of Merino wool. If you haven't worn anything made with Merino you really should give it a try. This is not your father's wool. It isn't itchy. It's super soft and very comfy. It still retains heat like just about nothing else, even when wet. Best of all, it breathes, and even better than best of all, get this, it doesn't take on odor. So real merino wool socks don't stink when you take them off. Seriously. In fact, I have a few sets of wool socks (from another maker) that I think have a bunch of other material in them. They do stink when I take them off. But the high-wool versions I have I prize highly. They ain't cheap. Awesome doesn't come cheap.

So back to Icebreaker. Their stuff is high priced. Obsequiously good looking models grace their webpage showing off how active sporty their active sportswear is. I will never look that good, even while wearing that $110 wool long sleeve base layer. Did I mention that Merino wool tends to run expensive? But I had seen their stuff advertised somewhere and probably signed up for a promotional giveaway a year or two ago. Even after I discovered that I wasn't a winner, I still got emails from time to time and just deleted them. Then I got this one. It started off with "Ewe are a winner!" (funny!) and said that the prizes ranged from free shipping to free socks to $50 off. OK, I wouldn't mind winning a free pair of socks. So I clicked on the link and got an email saying $50 off. I figured it would be $50 off of a $200 purchase. But no, it was $50 off of a $50 purchase. Free stuff? Was I finally a winner?

Then I discovered that I really had ascended to that mythical realm inhabited by "the winners." The "Sheepstakes" had an option to post a link on Twitter. Anyone who clicked on it got their own code and, of course, you got another. I posted it on twitter and boom! I got another code for free 2-day shipping. Meh. You can't combine coupons so it was only going to be a discount if I actually bought something. Then another shipping coupon, then a free shirt coupon worth, in my case, $110. Yes, a free $110 shirt. So there's two parts to that statement that just scream "winner!' Someone actually sells a shirt for $110*. And someone came up with a contest to give a free $110 shirt to yours truly. You can now refer to me as "Your Winnerness." (not to be confused with what the other 3rd graders used to call me, "Your Weinerness." Fortunately I'm not still bitter about that.) More coupons for free socks, free $20 off purchase, and free $50 off purchase followed. I've reached nine out of the ten codes they allow, but it looks like I'm having Christmas early. If you still want to get in on this, feel free to click here. I can't guarantee that you get what you want, and in fact, I can't guarantee that it will actually work for you. But, you don't have to forward any email to 500 of your co-workers to see if you really are a winner.

Oh, yeah, review? I guess us "winners," have to show off how winner-y we are to do some reviews of how active and sporty we are in active sportswear from time to time. So I've received one BodyFit 150 Short Sleeve Atlas base layer and one BodyFit 260 Long Sleeve Tech Top. I've only worn the Tech Top long enough to judge the sizing and it fits OK on my freakishly huge frame. It sports extra long sleeves with loops for your thumbs. I'm looking forward to real winter before I get to wear this for a while. It's not at all thick but I can tell that it's really warm. I can see it will be a necessity on cold-weather bike rides. I've worn the base layer a couple of times now and it's pretty nice. It's a bit short on me, which isn't so surprising as they list the height for their XXL sizes as 6' 2" and at a bit over 6'5" and with a healthy case of Dunlop's Disease it rides up a bit. I haven't worn it while riding but I think it will be fine with bibshorts on. As a base layer on the relatively warm October we've had so far? It's warm, really warm. And it's soft. And it doesn't stink after I take it off. All in all, I'm stoked. And I'm a winner.


Please note that nobody sent me anything with the understanding that I'd review them nicely. I don't do that. I did pay just $8.25 each for shipping which is paltry compared to what I got, but that's their "sheepstakes." I doubt they even know I or this blog exist.
* Please note also that $110 is about the going rate for a merino wool cycling jersey.

No rest from parenting

Lots of parenting activities this week. Every night. Monday night it was an event for Band. Tuesday night was a parent's meeting for Gymnastics. Wednesday night was Religious Ed at our church. Tonight is Choir Concert, and tomorrow night is a HS Football game.

Oh, and in case someone's saying "that's what you get with seven kids," please note that all of this is for two kids. All but Friday is for one kid. This parenting business can make one, well, busy. But oh how it's worth it. My oldest (not the one that almost all this is for) has really shown a great streak of gratitude lately, recognizing when we are going an extra mile for him and thanking us for the effort. That one "Thanks Dad" text message can go a long way.

On the other hand, it's not the constant go-go-go nature of this that's so tiring, it's the moving-of-the-herd when different members of the herd get out of school at different times and some members of the herd have to stay in their car seats for all-to-long.

Coming up this weekend --> State Road Race, and a party for a fifth birthday at McDonalds!

It's my BIRTHDAY

Yesterday, I entered middle age. I am now 40. I am also no longer a "Fred," (a bike rider who buys way more bike than they need or a racer wanna-be entranced with the latest and greatest bike stuff) but a "MAMIL," a Middle-Aged Man in Lycra.

You should now pause to breathe deeply and ponder the difference and the Earth-shaking consequences.



The birthday was fun and was accompanied by several distinct highlights.

1) I took the day off. In fact, I bugged out an hour and a half early the day before.

2) I still did Father-type things, taking my oldest to school to wrap up some scheduling difficulties. So I'm still feeling like I'm an asset to my family. I'm thankful that they humor me so.

3) We all went to the water park. There was splashing, sliding, and screaming (water park necessities). My 11 year old and 13 year old daughters can seriously scream. I heard this blood-curdling (is there any other type?) scream from one of the slides and wondered what who could utter such noises only to see Emily ejected out of the black tube. She was trying to be loud but it sounded like someone falling off of a cliff.

4) Water Park frolic was followed by late afternoon McDonald's, meaning no cooking or dishes for anyone. And they got me a "Share the Road Y'all" Texas license plate for a gift. Perfect for the guy who's driving and wishes he was on his bike.

5) I went to the weekly Wednesday nighter and raced my bicycle. Why? Well someone has to come in last. I lasted about a lap and a half of a 5 lap race (or was it 6?). I dunno. By the time they finished I was in a stretcher with an IV of Shiner. OK, not really. I went out and did some intervals trying to catch B racers going over the center line.

6) I came home to the above "Over the Hill" themed cake. The bike, interestingly enough has no down tube or gears. But it does have a headlight, and a little mirror. So it's obviously a commuter bike. Maybe an oversized folding bike. And the mirror is to make sure you can keep your hair looking good under your helmet.

Fun times for the old man.

Ninja News is back!

And this is a nice ninja news story. Basically it's the old bad-guys-are-mugging-kid-for-ipod-in-alley-and-look-up-to-see-ninjas-bearing-down-on-them. Kind of old school storyline, but it worked. Muggers pull kid into alley to get phone and ipod, muggers start to beat kid up, muggers picked wrong alley (right next to Ninja Senshi Ryu, a school for Aussies to become even more badass), ninja students pour out of ninja school and proceed to unleash ninjaness and ninjadom upon muggers, muggers flee, and end scene. You can see the particulars, along with a video here. It kind of takes the edge off to see an Aussie ninja talking on screen, with no hood, and no voice disguising, but it's a nice ending. Apparently Ninja Senshi Ryu doesn't teach students how to run down opponents though. The muggers got away but "arrests were made in connection" with the incident. That could mean anything though, that they caught the muggers or arrested someone who tried to fence the ipod or that one of the ninja students had an outstanding warrant for traffic tickets. Still, I'd give it four our of five throwing stars.

New Design

Just thought I'd try a new design here. One of the things I'm always picky about is embedded pictures or Youtube videos that end up being oversized compared to the default blogger content width. I may have to try to do it myself to get it right though.

You might leave ministry, but you never really leave ministry

Today, I was picking up some gluten-free stuff at Sprouts, a gentleman approached me and said "You must be Bull." I didn't recognize him but he pointed out that he used to be a parishioner at St. John's, where I was the Youth Minister. Just in case anyone is keeping track, that was almost TEN YEARS AGO. Did I mention that I've grown a goatee and long shaggy hair since then? After exchanging pleasantries and names and current situations, he mentions that he had seen me somewhere else but hadn't come up to greet me then, and that essentially he was looking for me since then, that he had an eye out for me. I was last a YM ten years next month. And I was only there for two years. I don't think I set the world on fire in that time. In fact, I was forced out because some of the staff didn't think I was doing my job well enough, and they probably had a valid point.

But ten years later, a parishioner still recognized me in a grocery store. And remembered my name. And was still interested in my life. I'm not sure if he was a parent of one of the youth there, or in K of C, or just a man in the pew.

You never really do leave. And for some reason, I'm OK with that.

I was in Daddy Heaven

So it was a week after Father's Day, and I had to drag them up at dark-30 in the morning to get them there on time, but I was able to follow this all morning long.

Yeah, my younger son is a bit slower than my older son, but he worked so hard. 25 miles and nary a whimper or whine. On the way home, he even said "I need to work on hills. I mean, I don't want to work on hills, but I need to."

My older son never complained, never moaned about riding too slow. He even helped the younger one up some of the steeper hills.

Daddy Heaven.

I fell for this one

I haven't been here for a while, I might as well make a big re-entrance...




Hat Tip to Marcel.

Gluten Free Review #2: Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Pancake Mix

Well, I also picked up some more pancake mix. My oldest loves his pancakes so we go through the stuff pretty quickly.
Something I've noticed about GF Pancake mixes in general: they tend to be thick. We've tried three different brands and they all come out extra thick when they are prepared according to the directions. It took serious extra milk to come up with pancake batter that would run like pancake batter should.
Bob's Red Mill makes a bunch of different Gluten-Free mixes and flours. After trying some Maple Grove GF Pancake Mix we tried out Bob's.
Preparation - Nothing special to note. Even a really groggy 14 year old boy can make these. Of course the first ones were over an inch thick. After cooking those we added more milk, and a bit more. They seem to cook up fine on the griddle though. They did come out a bit browner than most and since they were so thick, you had to flip them before they formed bubbles on the top.
Texture - Somehow these came out fluffy like Bisquick. I don't know how they did it. The first batch were a bit dry. The second time we made some (the bag has 22 oz, enough for more than one breakfast) we added even more milk and they came out wonderful. Fluffy, light, spongy, amazing. This was what we were told we were going to miss with gluten-free stuff. Really a home run.
Taste - If you check out my previous review of Maple Grove, you'll notice that I reviewed their taste before their texture. That was intentional as I liked their taste very much but their texture, while not bad, wasn't all that great. I've intentionally reviewed Bob's Red Mill's texture first because it is that good. The taste though, not so good. It just wasn't pancake like. A bit too whole-grainy. A bit bitter. I think it would have been OK in a slice of bread for a sandwich but not with butter and syrup. My 8 year-old son said that it was like eating a soft pretzel. The 14 year-old didn't like it as much as he liked Maple Grove but he proved that with enough butter and syrup he can eat anything. He did make a second batch but that was because we were out of Maple Grove.
Value - Bob's Red Mill is widely available in my area. I can find it at all the grocery stores (Krogers, Tom Thumb (a Safeway variant), and Albertson's), at "Market" stores (Sprouts, Market Street, and Central Market) and at the big box superstores as well (some WalMarts and Target). I think this pressures the price down a bit. I think it's a shade less than Maple Grove per pound on special. And it does go pretty far because you have to thin it out to make decently runny pancake batter. So it's in a pretty good spot price-wise. You can also find it by the case online, either at gluten-free vendors or on Amazon.com, even at Bob's Red Mill's website.
Final Verdict - I'm not buying more of this stuff unless it's for a non-pancake recipe. The flavor just doesn't work for pancakes. The texture is really great though. Maybe we could doctor up the batter with sugar or some other flavors but it's just not a hit for our family as-is.

Gluten Free Review #1: Maple Grove Gluten-Free Pancake & Waffle Mix

So we've dove into Gluten-Free food now, I thought I'd post some reviews of what we've tried. Since there's actually quite a few different brands out there, it's as much to keep track of what we like and don't like as it is a review for anyone else.
Today I'm going to talk about pancakes. Our family loves pancakes. Sometimes we eat them for dinner. My 14 year-old son Joseph has no problems with getting up and making them himself before anyone gets up. It used to be Bisquick or even a from-scratch recipe. Now we can't use those anymore, so I decided to try a mix. There are plenty of gluten-free from-scratch recipes out there (I'd go check out the Baking Beauties Blog if I were you, even if they haven't updated anything in months, it's still got a TON of recipes) but I didn't want to have to invest in all the different flours and starches and gums that you need. I just got some mixes. The first one I'll talk about is Maple Grove.
Maple Grove is not a big Gluten-free house like some other shops. They have a bunch of gluten-included items (we call them gluten-full at home), Belgian waffle mixes, syrups, salad dressings, maple candy. But their gluten-free mix was a shade cheaper than the Bob's Red Mill at Krogers so I picked them up. I seem to remember $3.29 a box.
Preparation - Cub Scout's Honor, I don't remember anything about the making of them. My wife whipped them up. I seem to remember that the batter came out a bit thick. But no complaints about the preparation. It was basically the same as any other pancake mix. No special gluten-free extra materials to add, no special dances to shoo away the gluten. Just mix it up and slap it on the griddle.
Taste - These pancakes came up tasting really nice, a bit sweet, with a hint of vanilla. Seriously, a hint. They did have a different texture than Bisquick pancakes though. Almost gritty. It wasn't terribly off-putting. A guy I work with whose wife has Celiac Disease told me that in general, gluten-free food tastes good, but the textures that I'm used to are hard to repeat. In fact he told me to get used to nothing having that good texture ever again. On the whole the kids thought that they were OK but they wanted to try other brands to see how they came out. So overall they were OK. Not light and fluffy like Mom used to make, but the taste was better than I expected.
Value - This is a touchy subject, because not everyone is as cheap as I am. But then again, they may not be supporting a family of eight and a half. So I actually check price per pound. Gluten-free stuff is expensive and I ain't made of money. The pancake mixes aren't at as much of a premium compared to some other stuff (like pasta or bread) though. And Maple Grove is less expensive than some other gluten-free brands. As a comparison, regular old "gluten-full" Bisquick runs about $6 for 40 oz. That's two and a half pounds. This stuff was $3.29 for a pound. Not bad. Bob's Red Mill was a little less per pound but a bigger bag (22 oz) and there was a mix from Pamela's that ran about $5-6 a pound (I think). So Maple Grove scores pretty well in the value department.
Final Verdict - The price was OK, but that may be an indication of the market for gluten-free pancake mixes. Preparation was straight-forward, no different than what you would expect. The taste was well above my expectations, better than what you would get out of most "gluten-full" pancake mixes. Texture left a bit to be desired though. At first we thought that we might pass on getting more Maple Grove for our pantry due to the texture but after tasting some others we might go back to it. It seems that getting a good taste is harder than we thought. More on that later.

The Spelling Gene

OK, in our house we often talk about the "packing gene." It's the one that Kim has that enables her to put more dishes in the dishwasher than I can. It usually shows up when I think the dishwasher is full but there are still dishes in the sink. Kim exercises her "packing gene," and more dishes get crammed in, rearranged, etc.
I think there may be a "spelling gene," and that some of our kids skipped out on it. I'm a good speller. English is a tough language and I guess all the phonetic reading that I learned as a kid really came in handy for spelling. I can even spell hard words usually. Not a Scripps level speller, but I'm pretty dang good. Our oldest has always done well with spelling. The next one, not so much. The third was also great. The fourth, he's positive about it, but he's having to work hard at it. Notice a pattern?

So, the other day, the three year old and two year old have this conversation:

Isabel(3): W makes the "wuh-wuh-wuh" sound, like wuh-wuh-water, and wuh-wuh-wet.

Audrey(2): No it doesn't! W makes the buh sound, like "buh-buh-buh" sandals.

Someone missed out on the spelling gene.

Celiac Disease

A couple or three weeks ago we got a diagnosis for our 10 yr-old daughter, Allison. She's always been amazingly skinny and we thought it was some combination of genetics that she had six pack abs in preschool (my wife would still be within ten lbs. of her high school cross country weight if she weren't pregnant and I graduated HS at 6'5" and 165 lbs). She's strong and seemingly healthy, just skinny. We have asked her doctor if she were too skinny before but they just pushed us off. Too many obese kids out there to deal with I guess. Kim had taken her in for a different issue (a slight scoliosis) and the Nurse Practitioner had noticed a bruise on her arm and asked if she could run some blood tests. Kim had thought that she might show up as anemic but instead she came back positive for Celiac Disease. I'd go on about what it is and what it does, but instead I provided a handy link. Go ahead, click on it. I don't mind waiting.
So you back yet? Malnutrition. Yeah, I think all parents want to hear that attributed to their child. So then we noticed that our skinny daughter also had pale skin and dark circles under her eyes and while she could do more dips and could hold a plank position longer than any of the other kids, she got winded easily. OK, so we have to go gluten-free now. My first response was that we would all do it. I didn't want to create a "gluten-free" zone at the dinner table and I didn't want Ally to feel marginalized. On top of it, I discovered that we would have to get a second set of kitchen tools just to make sure that the gluten-free stuff doesn't become contaminated. That's the rub, it only takes a little bit of gluten to go a long way with Celiac Disease. It's can't just be about reducing the amount of gluten, you have to get rid of all of it. Just cooking some Malt-o-Meal next to her gluten-free oatmeal can mean that she gets malnourished for the next week or so. Yuck.
So since then, we've gotten confirmation (via a biopsy) that she does have Celiac Disease. We've started buying and eating gluten-free food. We've stopped making food with gluten in it and I think we'll be giving away the last of that Bisquick in the pantry sometime soon. I decided that I'd blog about it a bit. I'll be reviewing the foods that we try as well. It might get me blogging regularly again.

100 miles of nowhere, or more

So in my efforts to finally find the end of the internets, I've stumbled across many a cycling website. One that caught my eye is that of Fatty, www.fatcyclist.com. Being a man of size myself I was naturally attracted to the title and they guy is a fine satirist. His big push is now to organize others to fight cancer by supporting the Lance Armstrong foundation. I don't have a particularly special place in my heart for Lance (although that's changing a bit) but cancer, you can't quite argue against fighting cancer. So I noticed he offered others a chance to do a century and donate to the Lance Armstrong foundation and you wouldn't have to leave home to do it, I jumped. Well, not literally, I think I was sitting down at the time and if I had, I'm sure I would have injured my knees on the desk. Discretion is the better part of valor and all that. A year ago he rode 100 miles on rollers to raise money. This year he posits a 100 Miles of Nowhere for everybody everywhere. You sign up and donate, then you ride your century on a trainer, rollers, or as small a course as you can find. There's even a bunch of guys who are going to do it on May 30th up at the velodrome in Frisco, TX. So I decided to do it as well, but since I live on a cul-de-sac, I decided that I'm going to do it right at home. Yup, 100 miles on a cul-de-sac. I also wanted to show it off with my handy-dandy GPS ride tracker on my phone, BimActive. I tried about 20 laps the other day and all I got was zero miles. Yup, all that spinning around and around just looked like random GPS noise. So then I tried adding the cul-de-sac circle and the rest of the street. Per my son's odometer, that equates to .09 miles per lap. I think I need to do over 1000 laps to get this done. We'll see if I can keep it going that long. Part of it is to raise money to fight cancer (an old school buddy just started his 1st round of chemo this month, my wife has one aunt who's a survivor and another was diagnosed in March), part of it is just to do something crazy. I always seem to be looking for a windmill to tilt at. This Saturday, May 23rd. From whenever I get up to whenever I finish. The girls are having a bake sale. They've already made flyers.
Oh, did I mention that I'm going to do it twice?
See that link above where there's another group of guys doing the same thing at the velodrome, the bicycle track? They are doing it May 30th. I know a couple of them and it just looks like fun. I'm not track certified though (maybe I can work on that) so I'll have to pull out my trainer on the infield and do my miles there. Who knows? Maybe my girls can bake some more cookies.

Ninja news from all over

OK, I had a couple of imitation ninja stories over the past year, but nothing seemed to show up for weeks on end at news.google.com.  I had given up hope that I could regularly record the exploits of the near ninjas among us.  True ninjas, of course, we would never know about.  Or if we did, we'd be dead before we could blog about it.  Enough of such happy thoughts, on to the news!

In Massachusetts, a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a sword in a scabbard tried to hold up a dry cleaners.  In a classic Not-Really-A-Ninja move, he first went to a nearby convenience store with said ski mask on and said sword in scabbard in plain view.  Presumably he was trying to carb up for his later efforts in the dry cleaners.  Maybe picking up some beef jerky, some Cheetos and a Red Bull.  You know, ninja food.  Well, the clerk in the store decides to call the cops, when Mr. Not-Really-A-Ninja asks, in an obvious homage to Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, if the clerk is talking about him as he hurriedly takes off the ski mask.  When the clerk tells him, "Uhmm, yeah," he takes off.  Later attempt at holding up the dry cleaners fails, as the person there claims "I can't open the money drawer."  This guy is so Not-Really-A-Ninja, I have to wonder if his sword is sharp.  Also, the total ignorance tactic seems to work for dry cleaner clerks when faced with inept ninja-tude.  Just remember to take a note of that, dry cleaner clerks everywhere.

In Nearly-Ninja News, a man under arrest for posing as a ninja during an armed robbery last August got into more trouble this week.  The news of note is that, after being caught, still waiting for a trial, he was being moved from one cell to another for a disciplinary infraction when he resisted.  Jailer grabs the suspect's arm and executes a take-down.  But apparently there was some Ninja-dom in this suspect, as the deputy ended up going knee-first into the concrete floor, causing him "extreme pain."  Of course, the news is that said deputy has filed a criminal complaint.  "Interference with official acts causing injury."  At least it wasn't the suspect suing the deputy.

Expect more Ninja News as it breaks.

Review of Action Wipes

Gotta story for you folks.
They are finally building a gym here at my office. Hooray! We've got more than 500 employees officed here and it was part of the original building plan, so it makes sense to have it. Unfortunately, it won't be here until October, and as they are going to have to do some renovation work, the only office shower will be closed soon. Then new facility will have three or four showers in the Men's Locker Room, which will be great. I think we'll be able to get some folks to do some lunch rides. But how am I to be able to ride my bike to work and not be stinky all day? With no shower? Of course, lots of folks do this. One option I had seen was Action Wipes. They're supposed to be like baby wipes but for adults. I'd also heard of them through their Twitter campaign during the Tour of California. Really genius if you ask me. So I figure these might work. I look them up, decide to try them, place an order, and right before I do, I realize that hey, there might be an online coupon code out there, let's Google it to see. I did that and came across Ultra Rob's site. He had a coupon code from that week and was having a contest to give away a free set of wipes! So I used the code and entered the contest. I didn't win, not surprising, but I did get surprised by what happened next.
When you order something online, you usually expect some email traffic from it. So Paypal will send you an email if you used that. Then you would expect an email confirming the order, and perhaps an additional one confirming that your stuff has shipped. That's what I get from Amazon and eBay, from small and large online bike retailers, from everybody. Well, there was more from Action Wipes.
I got all those emails when I ordered my stuff on Thursday and then I got another the following Tuesday. It was the owner of the company (Action Wipes is still pretty small) apologizing for not emailing me sooner, and telling me that she had sent the stuff priority mail and that I should expect it that day. Nice, very nice touch. Then I get home and open the package and in it are my order, and an extra, small pack of wipes (what was being given away in the contest), and a short hand-written note. I have to say, those are not what you expect. Those are things that say above and beyond. From that point onward, I wanted these to work out for me. So the whole un-biased reviewer thing goes out the window at this point, but that's part of the review. I'm biased and it's all their fault!! That's not something that Action Wipes should be upset about, obviously. It's one thing to drool over a piece of beautiful bike equipment, ridiculously light, impossibly stiff, made from unobtainium and priced to show it. When you dump out eight grand for a set of wheels you set yourself up to love them (note: when you have six kids, eight grand only equals three hunnerd dollars, but it feels the same). You have to like that stuff. But wipes? Who gets all geeked up about wipes? Me. I do, and only because they went so far to make sure that I had an individualized, personal experience. The shower at my office is still operational but I brought Action Wipes today because I wanted to try them out. I wanted them to work really well. I wanted to show them off and say "check these out, even more, listen to how much they made me feel like a real human being."
So, review time. I used them today and I don't stink. I don't feel slimy. It was only after about nine miles, at about 60 degrees, with a tail wind, and I didn't average 20 (although the guy in the truck behind me was pretty impressed at my 35 mph on a short downhill). But they worked fine. Well, I only used one, they're pretty big, almost like a thin sponge. And they point out that they are washable and reusable, which I'll try to verify. I don't know how they will work after riding a century, but I didn't buy them for that. I don't know how they will work after an 80 degree ride (we'll get 80 degree mornings off and on from June to September) or after a 30 degree ride. But I like them. I encourage you to give them some money and see if they work for you. Or maybe just give them a chance to impress you before you use them.

Bike Commuter Tax "Benefit"

OK, so as part of last year's "stimulus" package, something called the "Commuter Tax Benefit" was extended from mass transit commuters to Bicycle Commuters. By the way, the writer of this blog commutes on bicycle to work quite often. It's only for $20 a month, which doesn't pay for a ton, but hey, that means I never have to worry about having the dough for some spare tubes, eh? Maybe I can throw it all at a nice set of lights or a helmet or some shoes. Yup, it's looking better and better. But it's up to the company to offer it, it's not something I can set up for myself. Dang it! I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't have been for those meddling kids, and their dog too! But I digress.
Then I noticed a glitch in our local HR's web site where for one afternoon, there was a banner headline about a "Commuter Savings Account." Of course it was gone the next day, and the link never went to anything. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by a buddy of mine who's a journalist for the Dallas Morning News. He was researching it and he knew that I rode a bike. So I really looked hard into it. Here's what I found out so far.
OK, the "Commuter Tax Benefit" has actually been around for a while. The original law was drafted to give tax incentives to big companies to offer fringe benefits to employees tax-free. Note that the companies still had to fund the bene's, but now they could fund them tax-free on their part. So it would encourage (theoretically) the employers to offer more bene's in lieu of or in addition to salary. There are several sections of it including moving expenses, retirement planning services, and a fringe bene for folks who's home valuation is adversely affected by a military base closure. The transportation section is focused on parking and mass transit costs and is just now being opened up to bike commuters. Please note that no employer is obligated to offer any of these cash benefits. In 1998, the law was amended to allow employers to offer these benefits in a different manner. Instead of funding a cash benefit, it allowed employees to set aside money from their own paychecks as pre-tax dollars, then draw upon those accounts to pay for these qualified costs. If you are an employer, which would you choose, to offer free money to your employees? Or to offer your employees the chance to bank away their own money tax-free? Hmmm... Not a hard choice. Fund the management of the plan instead of funding the plan itself. So instead of bicycle commuters looking for a cash benefit, now the best they can expect in some circumstances is a tax-free reimbursement. If their employers offer it. And so far, mine doesn't. Actually, I didn't expect it. We've got thousands of locations, some with hundreds of employees and some with only a dozen or less. It sound like a nightmare to manage that plan. And the taxes that I pay on $240 are next to nothing. OK, with six kids and 14 dependents on my W4, it is nothing. It would have been nice to have as a bike-stuff-in-a-pinch security blanket, but I don't see anything suggesting that it's going to happen soon, or at all.
So I'll just have to ride my bike in order to ride my bike, like I always have.