Christmas & a Cautionary Tale

Merry Christmas to me, Merry Christmas to me, and etc. and etc. This is the Joby Gorilla Pod, they've been around for awhile, but just recently penetrated my consciousness. They're genius for little cameras. The tripod has a small removable foot which you can leave on your camera (and in my case can still open the slot to get the SD card out) so it's always there and ready to lock on to the tripod. It's very light, and fun to use, you can shove it into position and it will stay there. It's pretty cool. Now I have to wrap it until Christmas.

The magnificence of the bike rack seen in the previous post was tarnished after it damn near dropped Jim's new full suspension MTB on the road. Jim's new bike has the frame geometry where the forward part of the top tube slants down at 45 degrees and then flattens out. It appears that this geometry does not work with the stick up arm that clamps over the top tube. There will be more on this saga later. Today's diatribe concerns Performance Bike's return policy for items ordered from the catalog and returned to a brick and mortar store.

It states quite clearly on the web site that 100% satisfaction is guaranteed, if not happy bring it back. I will give them credit for taking the bike rack back without demur despite our not having any of the original packaging. Then he (the sales clerk) told us the refund method would either be store credit or a check that would be cut in 2 weeks or so. Apparently the brick and mortar stores can not see which credit card you used and "the credit card companies will not let them refund to a different card." Bollocks. I pointed out to him that when I did the same transaction with a pair of shoes, I received a credit card refund. He said that should not have happened, but it did weaken his argument. Jim piped up with "that's disingenuous." At that point the guy lost his temper, gave us the refund back on the card and wished us a good day. So, be aware of this wrinkle in the return policy when buying online.

For those of you who have not yet arrived in Tucson for the winter, I would like to tell you that Chief Meteorologist Chuck says it's going to be an El Nino winter. That translates to colder and wetter than normal. So bring your warm clothes, I don't think it's going to be like last winter, which was just phenomenal.