morning bikers

Since I worked a half day on Memorial Day/Zachary's birthday, I promised him we would do something (weather permitting) on my next day off.  He chose cycling at one of our local bikeways.  An added bonus was the presence of numerous geocaches, nicely spaced, along the route we intended to travel.

I loaded several cache coordinates into the GPS last night.  We got up fairly early this morning, filled some water bottles, loaded the bikes in the van, and packed some snacks, the camera and GPS, our helmets, and my "rolling office" (more on that later).  We were pedaling by 8:45, and the morning weather was absolutely perfect for a nice ride. 

Our first attempt to find a geocache was met with an onslaught of mosquitoes, mud, mosquitoes, standing water, mosquitoes, much weeds and poison ivy, and mosquitoes... mostly thanks to the weeks of relentless rain our area has received.  Our second attempt and third attempt met the same fate... caches found: 0,  mosquito bites: too numerous to score.  We quickly decided to abandon geocaching, and life was good as long as we kept moving and wisely chose our rest stops in the drier and open areas.

We didn't have an agenda or schedule, but just took our time riding and talking up and back the trail.  We stopped to look at both a turtle and a snake sunning themselves on the asphalt bikeway, and took a snack break at our turn-around point.

I told Zachary ahead of time that I would probably need to stop at some point and spend some time on the phone.  This is very unlike me.  I am not one to often have my cell phone in my ear, and I give my number to very few people, because I like carrying it without being bothered by it.  However, I showed a car and partially worked a deal with a customer yesterday.  We didn't quite complete negotiating, but the customer wanted to consider the car and the numbers overnight, and let me know "in the morning"... my day off.  For a commissioned salesperson, this creates a dilemma.  I can:

1. Work my day off to try to close the deal (hoping he actually calls like he says he will).
2. Share the deal (and the commission) with a salesperson who takes a different day off.
3. Give out my cell number and try to close the deal by proxy.

I very seldom choose the third option, but this time I did.  He seemed like a very solid customer, who would not abuse my cell phone number, and I felt that I had a strong possibility of putting the deal together.  The phone rang while we were riding, so I pulled the bike to the side, pulled out my pen and paper, and went into salesman mode.  He made an offer on the car and I spent some time on the phone, volleying offers and counter-offers between my customer and my manager back at the dealership.  In the end, we came to a stalemate $1000 apart... no car deal.  The interruption was fairly minor, and it gave Zachary a brief lesson in negotiation and a glimpse into the life of a car salesman.

Despite the brief trailside car deal attempt, we had a very enjoyable morning together and completed 14 miles of riding.  Happy Birthday (again), Zachary... love you, buddy!

the obligatory self-photography shot... we got a keeper on the first attempt!