robotech_master

So, I got all excited on Monday when I got the news that my Juiced Bike battery was finally ready to ship, after a month and a half of waiting. But the excitement may have been premature. 

When I checked up on the FedEx tracking number they gave me, the status never changed. It just said "Shipment information sent to FedEx" and was never updated. Finally, today at lunch I called Juiced again, and they checked and found that the battery was being sent back to them by FedEx, due to a lack of documentation. I checked in with them again shortly before closing time there, and the rep said she'd passed it on to her manager to see that it got corrected and shipped back out again. There hadn't been any further updates by the time they closed at 8 eastern, but hopefully I will hear something tomorrow. 

At this point, it seems highly dubious that the battery will arrive on Friday as originally projected. It's got to come all the way from Chula Vista, California to Indianapolis, Indiana, and it will have to come by ground because that kind of battery cannot be air-shipped. But on the other hand, I went ahead and took all of next week, plus the following Monday, off work, to have plenty of time to ride it, so hopefully I'll still get a good few days in before I go back to work.

Assuming something else doesn't go wrong. Like, my bike's motor refusing to work once the new battery's connected to it (it has sat idle for a couple of years, after all), or my charger not being compatible, or something else like that. With as many things as have gone wrong already, I can't help but think that maybe something more is right around the corner. Argh!

Meanwhile, I've been looking ahead to accessorizing. The cargo rack is nice, but not exactly convenient to strap stuff to sometimes. But there are bike trailers. This one on Amazon looks potentially useful, but the hitch looks like it's made for normal bikes, not ones like my ODK II that have a huge cargo deck behind the seat. Maybe something with side-hitches, like this one, would be a better bet. Well, I'll keep looking. It's not like I'll be investing in it any time soon. My new phone, smartwatch, and whatever the other repairs to my bike cost will have depleted my savings considerably for the next little while.

Hopefully I'll get some good news about shipping time tomorrow. Will just have to wait and see…and give Juiced another call at lunchtime.

Well, here I am back at work again, getting ready for the Big Weekend. This weekend was a Big Weekend of another sort, as it was the annual "Tax-Free Weekend" in Missouri and a lot of other states, where states voluntarily forego their chunk of the 6% sales tax in the name of Education, saving a decent chunk of change for back-to-school folks (and people who are not going anywhere near schools but can still use the same stuff). And there were some purchases I'd been needing to make anyway—my numbers of slacks and shorts have been dwindling, and my shoes were just about to fall to pieces around my feet. And there were also some things I needed to buy for trip prep. And Saturday was the only free day when the buses would be running on the schedule that would let me catch a return trip home without having to go 3/4 of the way around town to get there. So Saturday was it.

( My Saturday Shopping Experience )

At work this morning, I arranged to get my paycheck this week a day early, so I can deposit it on my way home Thursday and have it officially hit the bank account Friday afternoon. That way I'll have the money in hand in case of emergencies, or in case I see anything I've just Gotta Have at the dealer room.

I've estimated the amount I can afford to spend, and I should be okay as long as I stick with it. It will probably mean passing up a lot of tempting purchases, but on the other hand I'm not really going there to buy stuff anyway. In the worst possible case, I may have to put a couple hundred dollars more on my credit card, but I can pay that off with the next BioKinetic study.

Alas, when I have to worry about conserving my finances, what a time for me to rediscover a company with which I had become acquainted in the past, a company formerly known as JerryCo but now known as SciPlus. A salvage and surplus seller, they had a newsprint catalog full of hundreds of interesting items, each of which was accompanied by a line drawing and a quirky, amusing write-up. I could spend hours reading through the catalog, about electric motors and gears and lenses and things in which I had no interest whatsoever, just to chuckle at the jokes. Their catalog is on the Internet now, but it's still got the line drawings (and color photos for some items) and the quirky write-ups. And there's so much tempting gadgetry and gimmickery there that I could easily have blown $30, $40, $50 or more on the stuff—if I didn't have to worry about the upcoming convention trip. Ah, travel frugality is such sweet sorrow…