Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Celebratory and Symbolic Donuts

To celebrate my accomplishment of cycling 800 miles (617 miles the first week and a disappointing 177 the second), I decided to share the glory with four donuts:
But the donut is not just a self-congratulatory treat. It has a more symbolic meaning. The donut (with a bite taken out) just so happens to be the exact shape of my route through Alaska. Coincidence? Hmmm...


And last night after I got back, Bryan and Jenny had dinner waiting for me! And it was a healthy, non-processed, no barcoded foods type of dinner. Fresh green salad straight from their garden and halibut caught two weeks ago! They grow a lot of stuff in their garden, here is their mixed greens area:


SENDING BACK OLD YELLOW: Packaged up my bike and trailer, brought them to the post office this afternoon. Recall that the dimensions of the bike box just barely passed last time from Boulder. If it is more than 108 inches (length plus girth) then they charge $90 extra! Well, the (disgruntled?) USPS employee measured the length (38 inches) and then she measured the girth, and she came up with 70 1/4"! She then looked it up and she knew that 108" was the cutoff. She told me that I was over and that I needed to pay th $89 surcharge. I was flabbergasted, I asked her "Can't you just like give me a half of an inch?"... ... wrong question to ask a USPS employee!! But I demanded a remeasurement and some other measurements along the length and most came in at around 69 7/8" but there was one that continued to be 70 1/4" so I told her I'll squeeze the package a little tighter and retape it, and that worked. Whew! Talk about close! Anyway, I think she just wanted to display her power over me... but in the end it worked out.

Heading back to Colorado late tonight!! It'll be 1:30 am in Colorado when I leave Anchorage. See you all soon, and thanks for tuning in to my journey. I'll undoubtedly have some more miscellaneous stuff posted within the next few days.

Oh, and does anyone want some peaches?!

Here, check out wheelchairdogging in Valdez:

video

1 comments:

Stefan said...

Nice. Hope you weren't too bummed not to be celebrating with a maple longjohn and 3 regular donuts...

Geez that USPS woman was a biatch! 1/2", gimme a break!! When I fed-exed my old bike to my bro in CA, I was 1.5" over, and the Fed-Ex guy was like, oh whatever. It's close enough...