This Ordinary Life

After failing to acquire a used heart rate monitor (HRM) on eBay, a colleague made me aware of a London chain of cycle shops, Cycle Surgery, that will price match even web-shops.

Now the HRM I was bidding on was the Polar S725x and which sold for £166. I thought this was a great deal as they normall retail for £250 until I found one new online for only £176 from Affordable Supplements. As I had a triathlon the that weekend, I decided to take this price to my local Cycle Surgery for a price-match.

Now at first, this was a very smoothe transaction. I walked in and said "Hello, I would like to buy one of your finest heart rate monitors," (well, not exactly in those words, but you get the gist). I told them which model, which they had in stock or at least I thought they did as there were two boxes on display that were branded "Polar S725x".

Things were still going fine when I asked if they priced matched online retailers, "Yes, as a matter of fact we do, sir". I had checked their corporate website ahead of time to confirm this, so it was a loaded question. Actually, everytime I ask a shop to price-match to the web I produce a little pack to ensure they don't have any grounds to wiesel out of honouring their promise. However, Cycle Surgery really did impress me.

Now in the shop they had the S725x priced at £244.95, significantly more than the £176 I had found online. The shop assistant was fine until he noticed this himself at which point he said, "sorry, we can't price match that because it's a different model as the prices are so different".

In true Macguiver style I was ready for this and got out the pack "I had prepared earlier" and countered with "but how can this be, as the one I found online is the S725x and the box here says its a S725x..." This resulted in a "I'll have to call the stckroom and confirm that".

To cut a very long story involving a half hour of my time, a number of calls to the stockroom and a lengthy debate with the shop assistant, the outcome is they didn"t sell me the watch.

According to Cycle Surgy, there had been a grave error by there distributor and altough all the pckaging across the whole chain of shops stated that they contained S725x's they actually only contained S725's, the older model discontinued in November 2005 and now only available as part of an extremely expensive package including a power guage for £379. A likely story...

I got the same story when I phoned their head-office. However, irrespective of why they couldn't sell me the S725x, the reputational damage has been done and I won't be shopping there anytime soon. Actually, shorty after this altercation, I had a puncture and went straight to their fiercest competitor, Evans Cycles, and bought a new innertube from them. Their service was excellent and they even loaned me some tire levers and allowed me to fix my tire right there in their shop.

Moral of the story is, don't offer price-match to online retailer if you can't accept the fact that the savvy shopper may find a great price. Secondly, when confronted with a price to painful to match come up with a better story of why you can't like "My dog ate the original packaging"...

Posted by this ordinary life at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Three hour drive, big pasta dinner, night in a B&B, swim, bike, run and drive home again. This is my life for at least the 6 weekends a year where I participate in triathlons across the South and Midlands of the UK. A good friend of mine got me into this sport a year ago and I have taken quite a shine to it.

First tip of successful triathlon participation - leave your dignity at home. This is a sport of lycra and participants of all abilities and physical statures. You see the buff, the not so buff and the downright fat. Perhaps you, like me, are one lof the latter yourself. Irrespective of what shape you are in, what is important is that you are setting yourself apart for more than 99.9% of the population because you belong to a strange group of people who love pain called "triathletes".

Over the course of the coming months, I'll be sharing with you my own triathlon journey. I hope that some of my experiences with help those of you considering doing your first triathlon get out there and do it. I'll also share with some of the tips that I come across whuch will hopefully culminate in me doing an Ironman distance in September 2007.

I hope you'll join me...

Posted by this ordinary life at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'll let you in on a little secret, bleach... It's been around for ages and reminds me of old grannies and clean toilets, but now, at least in my world, it has a new lease on life.

The UK weather has a certain reputation, although not wholly true (it rains more in Syndey and San Francisco than in London), but it does mean that the place is more suceptible to mould and mildew than, say, Phenoix or the Gobi Desert.

One of the main results is mouldy bathrooms and shower curtains. Now our shower curtain isn't the Rolls Royce's of shower curtains with mildew resistance, but it does the job and keeps us from flooding the bathroom. Over time it got a bit tired and seemed to be on its last legs. Being a frugle German, I first tried to wash it in the washing machine (worked great for dirty runny shoes...), but this didn't even remotely do the job. Frustrate, but not downtrodden, I got the bright idea of soaking it in a bucket of water with bleach. What else did I have to loose?

Before I go on and you think I am crazy, if you buy a decent shower curtain in this country, it will put you back up to £30 ($50). I don't know about you, but I have better things to spend that kind of money on and am willing to waste £0.30 of bleach and a pretty much ruined shower curtain trying.

Here the science bit, I used 20ml of lemon scented thick bleach per 5 litres of water in a bucket and soaked the shower curtain for 6 hours. All of the, what appeared to be, permenant mildew and lime scale stains were gone and I had a clean as new shower curtain.

I then proceeded to bleach some old towels and this did get them whiter than white, but left them quite hard and scratchy. I think they would need a bit of fabric softner and a dryer (very rare for apartment dwelling Londoners) to get them back to normal. Believe me, scratchy towels may be great for all-over-body exfoliation, but let's leave that to the experts.

The moral of the story is just beacuse it looks dead, doesn't mean it is dead. Try a bit of bleach and see if it comes back to life...

Posted by this ordinary life at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)