Ephrata, Pa.

I’d begun lagging behind my buddies because of some annoying shifting problems. It seemed like the usual nonsense you get when the chain or sprockets are worn, or the derailleur is badly out of adjustment– skipping just when you’re applying the heaviest force to the pedals. At one point as I was standing and cranking hard, it skipped so violently I almost crashed. “Nice save,” said a guy behind me.

A similar incident years ago at the Tour de France sent Tyler Hamilton over the handlebars, a nasty crash in which he cracked his collarbone due to failure of the freewheel. I was not keen on replicating that, so I slowed down further.

Before long the skipping became regular, and I fell behind even more as I stopped to examine my chain. Sure enough, it was coming apart at one of the links, where a pin was hanging on for dear life to just one of the plates instead of both, and that plate was bent. It was a wonder the thing still worked at all.

Grotesquely deformed derailleur

Kneeling in grass by the side of the road, I tried to bend it a little straighter by hand. Kyle showed up and asked what I was doing. “You’ll probably just make it worse,” he said. Less than a mile down the road,  catastrophic failure ensued. The chain snagged my derailleur and triggered instant, violent destruction. I hadn’t been going fast, so I didn’t crash when the rear wheel locked up.

But enough energy went in to stopping my rear wheel to pretzel the poor derailleur, which now jutted at a grotesque angle from the right side of the bike, and was tangled in the spokes as well.

Kyle  returned to help me by standing on the frame while I tugged the derailleur hard enough to free it from the spokes.

With the rear wheel free, I now had the equivalent of an Amishman’s scooter. However, we were 15 miles from my car in very hilly terrain… too far to walk the uphill portions in bike shoes. Pretty soon Bill Brown, Dave Stauffer and the others started to appear, having detected the absence of several in the group. Bill said he had a smart phone, so we could figure out where the heck we were, so that I could call my wife for a ride. (She’s a cyclist too, and over the years we have gladly performed such rescues for each other.)

But then Bill said, “Get on,”  put his hand on my back and started pushing me.

And that’s the rest of the story. Pretty soon Dave Stauffer came up on the other side, reached out his hand, and I felt a new surge of power in my spine. Then the other guys, including Ken Lessans, David (I still don’t have your last name memorized, David), Tom Lausch (who is coming back from surgery and shouldn’t even have been riding as hard as he did solo, never mind pushing me), Marlin Hess, and Jay Brubaker were lending a hand.

On the steepest hills I got off and ran (in my mountain bike shoes, which I was glad to be wearing) and at some points I was able to do the scooter push with my left foot, making like half a Fred Flintstone. Yeah, you guys, I heard the Amish cracks…

But on the level, on the downhills, and on a surprising number of climbs, I was magically propelled at high rates of speed. The backbone of the effort was Bill, who is blessed with an engine not unlike that of a Kawasaki or Yamaha. Or a Harley– that might be more appropriate, given the steady, endless stream of torque. A diesel Harley.

The next biggest contributor was Dave Stauffer, who would just redline himself at high cadence to get me up over the next rise, drop back, then come up again. This is not to minimize the efforts of the other guys– everybody gave what they could. If the shoe had been on the other foot, my bird-like 135 pounds wouldn’t have generated much surplus energy for anyone else.

At some points we were doing over 20 mph, and of course I bombed the downhills, staying off the brakes as best I could. Once, there were three guys at work… Dave on my right, Bill on my left, and someone (not sure who) pushing Bill. This continued for the entire 15-mile trip back to the parking lot.

Hey, sorry if this post got wordy, but so be it. Unless you’ve had eight or nine of your good friends come to your rescue and push you home, you just don’t know what a cool feeling it is.

Speaking of which, it was a cold feeling too. With the temperature hovering around 40 degrees F, I was not dressed for sedentary cycling. My motorcycling days are mostly past.

As a final inconvenience, my buddies (minus Tom, Kyle and Barry Free, whose routes home diverged from the group’s) tolerated my setting them up for a group photo despite our being late getting back.

Then they threatened to leave me stranded next time if I don’t put on a brand new derailleur hanger, chain, and whatever else it needs.

That seems fair. They know me better than I thought.

###

If you run a business, you may already know people who write well and are versatile. Sure, they have talent with words– they didn’t get to be pros without getting their point across clearly in a style appropriate to the audience, all while avoiding grammatical and punctuation errors.

But what about their other skills, such as the ability to research a topic quickly and thoroughly? Suppose you find a writer who also knows his or her way around the Web and social media? Now you have someone who can affect a company’s bottom line in all sorts of ways, with powerful, polished writing that resonates with customers, staff, suppliers, business partners, and the world. Here are five points to ponder:

1. Professional writing applies not just to websites, marketing and advertising, but to business letters, conference summaries, internal documents, knowledge bases, even articles for submission to publications. Published articles in industry trade journals are a wonderful way to complement your marketing strategy, raise awareness of your brand and increase your company’s prestige in the minds of customers. All the above will have a positive effect on revenue.

2. Website content management – Are there errors, bad links, and outdated information on your company website because nobody updates it regularly? Is your site being optimized to attract search traffic, and organized to serve visitors efficiently? Is there any reason for people to read what’s on your site? Time after time, usability studies show that if you build a clean, compelling website, you’ll have a competitive advantage.

3. Search engine optimization and marketing (SEO and SEM) – Do you have anyone in charge of these areas? A writer’s skills figure heavily in these word-based disciplines. Hiring a writer to manage them could make a big difference in leads, conversions, and sales.

4. Social media marketing – Agencies can help get you started, but who inside your company is paying daily attention? Knowing what’s being said online about your business is important to protect your business reputation. You can’t fake this or hand it off to outsiders. Learn by interacting with customers, both happy and unhappy. If nobody at all is mentioning your business online, it’s the perfect time to step in and take control of your online image!

5. Effective email campaigns – Here too, an internal staff person who can write professional copy, hire graphic designers, set up and manage mailing lists, administer and track results can be more effective– and cost-effective– than an outside agency.

The list of potential uses for a writer goes on and on. How about powerfully written request for testimonial letters? Use of testimonials on websites and other marketing media can greatly increase the odds of acquiring a new customer. What about customer surveys? Even small companies can benefit from regularly polling their customers and analyzing responses.

Now that I’ve advocated the idea, where can you find such a person? You’re reading one of his blog posts right now. How’s that for a call to action?

###

Siegrist's Mill Covered Bridge on Sunday, 9/11/11

On Sunday morning, after the water had gone back down from Tropical Storm Lee flooding, I rode around on my bike taking pics with my phone cam. First, I wanted to see what was left of the Siegrist’s Mill covered bridge, built in 1885 and swept off its foundations several days ago.

Second, I wanted to ride down Pinkerton Road along the creek and see the damage to the stone bridge. I’ve now posted three photos from that scene.

In one of the panoramic shots, a beautiful inset marble slab shows the date of the bridge, the contractor’s name, and the names of the county commissioners.

The stone bridge on Pinkerton is still passable on foot or by bike. Obviously the road is badly damaged.

This bridge was 128 years old when damaged by Tropical Storm Lee.

Another view of the approach.

Good things come in multiples of three.

In the wrong hands, this hot-rod handheld Sears trimmer could be, uh, harmful. Especially with the lawyer-approved safety switch removed. Hey, I was looking at it and it broke, OK?

What could be called a shocking transformation started innocently enough: the battery died. I liked the trimmer, but a new 6-volt battery cost about $30, which is most of what I paid for the whole thing. Since I already own two extra trimming heads and I like how the hedge clipper attachment works, I didn’t want to give up on it, but neither did I want to fork over $30 for another wimpy NiMH that would just croak in a couple years.

An epiphany ran through me like an electric eel on Ex-Lax. I realized I had a spare 18-volt battery for my Ryobi drill! And I don’t have to pay a plugged nickel for it. After the initial euphoria, however, I approached the first test with trepidation. One doesn’t lightly TRIPLE the voltage to a motor and expect good things.

But it works. Oh, yeah. This high-rpm tool flat annihilates grass. I’ve trimmed around the house three times this summer, and it hasn’t overheated or exploded yet. Perhaps that’s because I’ve learned to use it in short bursts, like a machine gun.

You say you want video of this thing in action? That can be arranged. Y’all leave me a comment below.

It was time to spiff up my blatant self-promo card, so I used my piercing intellect to come up with this breakthrough concept, which I printed up and glued over the old card. A targeted few were mailed this card, which pointed them at this blog and prodded them to vote in my poll.

So here you are, and the poll is over there to the right. Fly free across the page and select as many as three answers. Try not to injure yourself in the process.

* * *

Oh, and just to clarify: I am looking for two things: freelance work (writing, editing, developing websites on WordPress) and a job as communicator, marketer, digital and social media guy, webmaster. If you know someone who could use help in these areas, I’d appreciate your letting me know.

###

You see a lot of great images while helicopters are flying around during the Tour de France… it’s enough to make a person want to visit the country. Much varied terrain and rural beauty. It seems there’s a castle (“chateau”) in just about every town.

Here’s a photo I took from the TV with our Panasonic Lumix. The real purpose of this post is to test the Auto Thickbox plugin, but you’ll enjoy the view. Click on the pic to test. Leave a comment if you want me to post more such pics. I got lots.

Au revoir!

Sorry. Here’s the real story, which involves how I got to ride in all three of the above yesterday.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, sunny and cool, nobody to visit, nothing planned. I wanted to take a drive. My wife tends to take a dim view of Sunday drives, feeling that they belong to past generations when gas was cheap. But she loves me, so she assisted by generating a pretext– going to Bed, Bath & Beyond to spend a $10 rebate coupon. And buying bananas. Good enough!

We piled into our old friend, a rusty 1988 Dodge Raider, and set off for parts known. Or so we thought.

Prior to liftoff, I glanced at the odometer, noticing that it exceeded 120,000 miles by about 17. A small alarm went off somewhere in my mind because the gas log (a piece of paper taped to the dash) indicated that it should be out of gas at this point. (The log is necessary due to a bad fuel sender in the tank, causing the gauge to always read full. Which makes the dashboard a more cheerful place, in my estimation, so I’ve allowed this particular malfunction to linger a bit longer than is wise, as you are about to learn.)

I got the gas can I use for the lawn mowers, which I have been meaning to fill up for a month, and besides it would give me something to tote to the station on the miniscule chance that we actually ran out of gas.

Two-point-three miles later, we ran out of gas. The old Raider coughed and died almost as if someone had cut the ignition. You know how race car drivers sometimes zig-zag to move gas toward the fuel pickup? In the Raider it had zero effect. On the engine. My wife urgently requested an explanation, however, and I realized that she hadn’t watched enough races to have a clue what I was doing.

We coasted to a stop, and a strange calm ensued. The Precious discreetly pointed out that the nearest gas station was only about half a mile away. Later I would learn that it was almost exactly 3/4 mile. Pretty good guess. I grabbed the can and, feeling peppy and wanting to make up for my error, ran/walked/ran toward the gas station. A Dodge Charger police car came by going the opposite direction, and I thought, he’s gonna see me, then see my wife with the car, then come back for me.

When I was within a couple hundred yards of the gas station, a Toyota Prius pulled up next to me and a man who looked like a thin Kenny Rogers invited me to put my can in the back. This was my first-ever ride in a Prius. It started out silently on electric power, but after a few seconds, the engine answered a call from the computer to fire up, settling in at a steady RPM and pretending that it was completely disinterested in the fact that it was powering an automobile, as opposed to, say, an industrial-strength sump pump or a truck refrigeration unit. I admire the idea behind the Prius but can’t relate to the car-as-appliance thing. (Oldsmobiles got automatic transmissions in 1940, but I’m still waiting for people realize it’s just the wrong way to operate a car.)

At the gas station, while standing before a pump and fumbling with my credit card, I took the expected call from my wife. Soon the cop arrived and promised to take me back, so the Prius owner scrammed, after I thanked him profusely.

The back seat of the Charger was a surprise. I am not large, and the perp barrier took up most of the meager footroom that is to be found in the back seat of a Dodge Charger. Imagine an agitated, combative, claustrophobic perp being forced into that space. Can’t we all just get a longer wheelbase?

The young officer was courteous, thoroughly professional, and squeaky-clean looking. How do policemen achieve that look? When they shave, they must somehow intimidate the whiskers into retreating below the skin’s surface.

Peering through the Plexiglas with my feet pointing not straight ahead, I asked how he liked the Charger and he said fine, but it’s a V6 and he’d rather have a Hemi, which two newer ones in the fleet have. I surmised aloud that the V6 might be using less of the taxpayers’ money in gas, but he wasn’t having any of it, asserting that the mileage was about the same. I doubt it, but I can’t blame him for wanting to believe. Or is the V6 that sucky?

Back at the Raider, he parked in a protective position behind us with lights flashing while I poured in a gallon, and then we were off. Thanked him too. Good people.

Long story short (or is it too late for that?) we gassed up, drove to where my wife thought the store was, realized it wasn’t there, drove back home, switched to the old BMW 328i, drove over to York, spent the gift certificate on a measuring cup and towels for Paul, then hit a Wal-Mart for two bananas. For 24 cents. What is this, 1959?

###

A/B switch (left), instructions, three coaxial cables and splitter (right)

The switch arrived yesterday and it works as advertised. It came with a splitter and three cables, plus some mounting screws and Velcro if you’re into that sort of thing (I didn’t use them).

Why you need this switch is to get back the the unscrambled HD channels for local broadcast networks that were stomped on by the mandatory “digital transport  adapter” most customers are getting.  That gizmo is necessary because they’re switching the standard-definition channels from analog to digital to free up bandwidth for more channels.

It took me 15 or 20 minutes to hook up. I keep it on “A” and use the remote Comcast supplied with the DTA, unless I want to watch a car race on Fox or ABC in high-def. Then I hit the “B” switch and use my TV’s remote. When I’m done, and want all the Comcast digital channels back, I have to remember to put the TV on channel 4 so the DTA can see it. Then I hit the A switch.

Getting pretty messy behind the TV now.

One other note. With all the additions and changes Comcast has been making to their channel lineup lately, don’t forget to go into your TV’s menu and have it re-scan them. For some reason I couldn’t get NBC HD on 8-1 until I did this.

Rhonda from Comcast Corporate called a few hours after the A/B swtich had been delivered by UPS.  I assured her I was happy, and she responded with noises of corporate contentment. I guess I could make this sound creepy, but it wasn’t.

OK Comcast, you win this round. However, my huge monthly bill and your refusal to provide à la carte channel selection are– pardon the current-events analogy– kind of like the BP oil spill. You can pour on the dispersants, but the underlying issues are still there.

Background: Things went haywire in a hurry when I asked customer service a question by typing instead of talking (see previous post). Why, I wondered, couldn’t I get an intelligent response to a simple query via email? I am one of those who prefer to communicate with businesses by email. I’ll only pick up the phone if email doesn’t work, or if I’m in a hurry for an answer.

Long story short, lawyers have instilled a deathly fear of having anything “in writing” in Comcast executives. So their the policy– which was not followed in my case– is to send a canned response, and if the customer goes away, great! If the customer replies,  however, the representative is supposed to pick up the phone and call the customer.

That’s what didn’t happen in my case, and Rhonda has contacted “Diane” to explain. Poor Diane. She might be just like me, a person who just happens to prefer email to the phone.

But she’s a small cog in the giant corporation, which must protect itself from emails that could be dredged up and used by forces hostile to Comcast, costing them millions.

I’ve tried to relay all this without sarcasm or bias. Most Comcast employees are good folks just like you and me, trying to make a living. And they do watch tweets and blogs (although I had help getting their attention from the friendly and approachable Eric Stark, who wrote the article that started me on my quest).

I do think the decision-makers at Comcast could do a better job of not wasting our time. First, obviously, the front-line warriers who respond to email queries could use better training. But second and more important, the policy as explained by Rhonda– even when executed perfectly– is insulting and time-wasting to those of us who prefer to communicate via the keyboard.

My recommendation to Comcast is to post some kind of warning that the best route to full and complete answers is via phone. There must be some way for them to be honest with us on their customer service page without using Dilbert-like directness such as: “Please enter your query here. We will intentionally waste your time with a canned response that has only a 10% chance of answering your question. However, since we’ve found that an additional 40% of customers get discouraged and quit after receiving a canned response, it WORKS FOR US! WOO HOO!!! HIGH FIVE!!! Thanks for being a Comcast customer.”