{"id":593,"date":"2013-03-13T09:42:01","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T13:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnjeske.isa-geek.com\/?p=593"},"modified":"2013-03-13T09:42:01","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T13:42:01","slug":"my-first-group-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/?p=593","title":{"rendered":"My First Group Ride&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;and I was dropped in the first couple miles.  It was a cold and windy day and I wasn&#8217;t really sure what to expect when I showed up for my first group ride.  A couple guys set out on their mountain bikes while I waited for the other group to get set (apparently the &#8220;A&#8221; group).  Once everyone was ready, we were off and at a blistering pace.  I held on at 20+ MPH for a little over two miles and finally fell off the back.  Luckily I was able to catch up to the mountain bike duo (after missing a turn and turning around) and had a nice 18 mile ride at a decent pace.  By the time we got back, my hands were cold and my feet where numb, but it was a lot of fun and I can&#8217;t wait for next weeks ride (unless its snowing again!)<\/p>\n<p>The house remodeling project is coming along.  The walls are framed and electrical is slowing getting in place.  Monday night I ordered the doors and picked up a few dry wall tools.  Since I was heading to Home Depot to order the doors, I figured I would order the tools online and they would be ready to be picked up when I got there (or so I thought).  The door ordering process took a lot longer than I thought, being a software guy I saw how inefficient the ordering process was and how I would&#8217;ve changed it to make it a smoother, faster process.  Once the doors were ordered, I headed over to the customer service desk to get my tools.  Apparently the e-mail indicating the tools were ready to be picked up was not really true.  The lady at the desk called someone over who went to go get what I ordered.  I paid for the doors, updated my home address, and waited for the guy to return.  <\/p>\n<p>I waited a few minutes and then a few more, I got an e-mail asking to fill out a survey for how the order pick-up process was.  Five minutes later I decided to fill it out and give some pretty poor scores.  Ten minutes later I got up and started pacing, wondering what was taking so long.  I heard the customer service lady call the guy on the phone and she said he should be coming along soon.  After another ten minutes I decided to give him a few more minutes and I would be returning my items.  Finally, I saw him coming out of an aisle, with a shopping cart with the four items I ordered in it.  What is the point of having an in-store pick-up if I could get the items five times faster than the guy who got them?<\/p>\n<p>Susan and I spent this past weekend at a bed and breakfast in Allegan.  It was a little tricky getting there as the GPSs didn&#8217;t quite get us to the right location, but we eventually found it and had a really good time.  It was a little cold, but we made our way over to downtown Holland to have a look around.  The breakfast was good, and I wouldn&#8217;t mind going back for a nice, relaxing weekend.  We even made it back in time so I could put a new garage door opener in&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>A couple months back my garage door opener wasn&#8217;t working and I determined the drive gear needed replacing.  I headed over to an over head garage door place and picked up a kit and had it installed in less than an hour.  Everything was working again!  Last week, the other opener was doing the same thing.  Figuring it was the drive gear, I picked up a new one, installed it, and&#8230; the opener decided to shear it in a matter of minutes.  That opener wasn&#8217;t much to speak of and apparently openers only have a life expectancy of ten years&#8230;  <\/p>\n<p>I had read it takes on average five hours for a novice to install an opener.  I managed to get it installed in less time then that and with out too much trouble.  I was hoping to re-use the safety eyes and wall push button of the old one, but eventually ended up replacing them.  Unfortunately we didn&#8217;t get the extender brackets for the safety eyes, so I used the old ones&#8230;  It works, but the lights are facing the bracket and it was a bit tricky to see if the beam was making it across.  Everything seems to be in good working condition, hopefully I won&#8217;t have to replace the mine anytime soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;and I was dropped in the first couple miles. It was a cold and windy day and I wasn&#8217;t really sure what to expect when I showed up for my first group ride. A couple guys set out on their mountain bikes while I waited for the other group to get set (apparently the &#8220;A&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}