Riding around on a hot day

Next stop was the library to drop off some books and movies that pumpkin was supposed to read and watch.  Riding to the Fair Oaks library is a lot different than going to the Rancho Cordova library. There is Bridge St which is a little steep and of course the chickens. Every time I ride through this area, I am always on the lookout for a wandering group of chickens. Usually I can hear at least one cockle-doodle-do on the north side of the Fair Oaks Bridge.

Speaking of the bridge, it is bikes and pedestrians only and the view of the river and sunset in the evening is enchanting. I stopped briefly to take a picture of the American River below. Isn't that cool? You would never guess that I am in the middle of a large metropolitan area, just minutes from my house.

I started paying Steve Rodriguez, the handyman via Chase's quick pay feature which allows a customer to send a payment via email - kind of like Paypal. Anyways,  because the amount was large, it sent up red flags in Chase's Money Movement Dept. I got a call from Chase asking me to verify some personal info. Well, for some reason, their computer wouldn't take my atm pin so the service representative first asked me if I knew a banker at Chase? What, are you kidding? I avoid going into banks as much as possible. My transactions take place strictly with the atm. The woman insisted that I go into the branch and solve the issue there.
Okay fine. Might as well take care of a few other things as well as long as I am going to be out and about. The weather was hot but that was just too bad. I downed a few large glasses of water and hopped on my bike for the 5 minute ride to the Chase bank on Gold River Express and Sunrise Blvd. I really don't like that branch because the only way to get to it is through a parking lot. Yep, another car-centric strip mall with no bike racks of course. I parked my bike next to the Zinfandel Grille and headed over to the bank.
One thing good about going inside was the temperature was about 30 degrees cooler than outside. Oooh, yea. I plunked my sweaty self down in the waiting area and started looking aimlessly around while I waited. A teenage girl and her younger brother were sitting off to my left. The girl had ear buds on and was texting furiously as her brother watched. Her fingers moved so quickly, I thought they were going to dance right off the phone.
After a short wait, a service representative came over. "Can I help you?" "I sure hope so", I answered. After a lengthy phone call with the bowel movement, oops I meant money movement department, the problem was solved, at least until the next time the flags go up.

After huffing up Bridge Street, I made it to the library. By the time I arrived, I was a sweaty mess. The drinking fountain just inside the entrance was cold and refreshing, though. I gulped down vast quantities of water.

Last stop was Dollar Tree on Madison and Hazel. I happen to like this one because their shelves are almost always full. I locked my bike and went in.  Some kids were running around the store. I guess it was better than running outside in 96 degree heat. I found everything I wanted and then some. As I meandered back to the front holding my green basket, I heard a woman call to one of the kids running around in a thickly accented stern voice. "No Alberto. You deednt leesten to me and now you gonna pay." I looked up and saw a fat Hispanic woman holding an equally fat boy by the shirt. The boy had a terrified look on his face even though he could have been 10 or 11.  With a fat, pudgy hand, the woman smacked the boy on the butt.  Ouch, that must have hurt because the boy screamed in pain.  With the boy crying and sobbing, the fat woman dragged him to the front of the store.  "Nos vamos afuera. Vamonos Alberto..."
I exited the store with a large bottle of purple Gatorade G2 in hand ready to inhale before the harrowing journey down Hazel. Who cares if it wasn't cold. I certainly wasn't complaining.  After downing the sports drink, I unlocked my bike and got ready to hop on. "Excuse me, Mister." I whirled around to see a young boy walking up to me. "Do you know where a bike shop is?" The father was right behind him. "Oh, the only one I know is Bob's Cycles." I answered. The father smiled and said, "You were the only one with a bike." Yes, the only one foolish enough to ride around in this heat.

My little good deed for the day done, it was time to head down the road from hell.  This is the same street where a pebble bounced up and cracked the windshield of our Toyota Corolla only days after we bought it.  Yes, the city is in the process of widening the road through its powers of eminent domain but that wasn't going to help me now. I coasted as slowly and carefully as I could, watching for ditches on the right and speeding cars and trucks only inches away on my left. Last time I checked, the bridge widening project was almost complete and that was going to be my reward.

Finally I got home and splashed gallons of cold water on my face. Journey complete.

Wearing a Tie

I can't remember the last time I wore a tie. Could have been over 10 years ago. But Su Zhen persuaded me to upgrade my exterior look for a Home Business Presentation or HBP. The meeting was scheduled for July 7th at Qun Yu's and Wang Jun's house in Folsom. They asked me to prepare a short speech on why I decided to sign up as a MA UFB. Yes, there are a lot of acronyms here but that is how they talk about it so I might as well learn it as well.

So I am supposed to give a speech at someone's home in front of people who I don't really know and wear a tie and button down shirt to boot. This is not normal for me.  The day of the meeting, I quickly put something together but there was no time to practice so I printed it out to read when called upon.

After the speech I stuck around for a little while longer and met Gary, a Harvard educated doctor who told me that all the world's diseases can actually be distilled down to one disease which is a failure at the cellular level to either absorb the right nutrition or get rid of waste. A very controversial take on modern medicine but this theory is the premise that through nutrition and lifestyle changes, most problem diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes can either be controlled or prevented from occurring at all.

Fluffy's Muscle Spasms

Today I took a walk with Fluffy to Bel Air via the American River Parkway back end trail behind Gold River. There is a secret path I go through which helps me to avoid traffic. It actually goes through a junkyard.  Previously, going through that path meant battling with Spanish thistle and prickly bushes. That was clearly unacceptable for both me and Fluffy. I resolved to fix the problem and one Sunday a few weeks ago, I brought my heavy duty clippers. In the space of about 20 minutes, I had cleared the entire path of all problem branches and thorns, making it a pleasant route to travel.

I noticed that since I cleared the path, there appears to be much more traffic through that area.  The grass looks more flattened than before. But I am digressing. The real reason for my post was what happened after Fluffy and I exited the path and continued on cool, wet grass. All of  a sudden, Fluffy dropped to the ground and rolled around. This is something she loves to do in cool grass which looks like some type of celebratory squirm. I watched in delight as she wiggled back and forth in the grass. After a couple of minutes, I lightly pulled on the leash to get her back up but when she started walking, she began dragging  her right hind leg. Then she tried to hold the leg up. Then her left leg started dragging. I had her lie down on her back so I could check her out. Was it a thorn? I checked both her legs and paws. There was no thorn or prickly thistle in her fur. I held her leg up and it started to spasm. Then her other leg started to spasm. This was strange! What was  happening. I had her get up and we continued on. I watched carefully and after about 2 minutes, the limping disappeared.

A Second Business

Today I went ahead and signed up to be an "Unfranchise Business Owner" with a company called Market America. What is MA? It is a product brokerage company. What is a product brokerage company? They have a web portal in which people can purchase two kinds of products and services. First, they have their own branded products in nutrition, cosmetics, household goods and other daily use products. They also allow their partner stores to advertise and sell through the MA portal. This is the product brokerage aspect of their business. All the well known web based stores such as homedepot.com, macys.com, walmart.com, sears.com and thousands of other stores are all accessible through the portal. So why go to walmart.com through the portal? Why not just go directly to walmart.com? The reason is that by navigating to the partner store through the portal, the consumer can get cash back. In addition, just by referring the portal to friends or family, a user who has signed up as my preferred customer can get a .5% referral fee on all their referral's purchases. Wow, that sounds good.

So what makes this business different is that in addition to getting people to sign up as preferred customers, you leverage your efforts by signing up distributors below. Sounds like multi-level but it is setup in such a way that anyone can potentially make a lot of money, not just the people at the top.

Commitment to make this business work and actually turn a profit takes about 2-3 years. Seems like a long time but it isn't that long and the investment is not that high. There are a lot of seminars and meetings to attend to stay on track.

I signed up on Cindy's behalf. The signup process involved Cindy's friend from church named Su Zhen and her upline distributor, Wang Jun. Both of them came over and walked me through the sign up process online.

What we got immediately was our own web portal. I also had to order product and setup auto transfer since there are minimum quantity requirements that need to be met each month.

Introduction to Market America

When we got back from our trip to L.A., wifey asked me to attend some presentation about a business called Market America. She and pumpkin were scheduled to take a church trip in San Jose which conflicted with this event which coincidentally also took place in the Bay Area.

I had to arrive at the In-N-Out Burger on Sunrise at 5:50 AM. Ay caray. It was not easy to get up so early but I managed to half run, half walk to the designated pickup place at 5:45. At 5:48 a van pulled up with 5 women - Coco, Wang Jun, Su Zhen, Patrica Wang and two other women who I had never met.

I had a long conversation with Su Zhen who is the person that introduced the business to Cindy. She is from Taiwan and lives in Folsom with her husband and 2 daughters.

Finally after a long ride, we arrived at Santa Clara University a little before 9 AM. I am not used to sitting all day so this was going to be a challenge, not so much for my attention span but for my reluctance to sit so long. The speaker, Phil Guido, came on and talked about Market America and how he got into the business. He also talked about how to recruit new distributors and stay focused on duplicating efforts.

My job was to take lots of notes since I had agreed to attend on Cindy's behalf. Could this work for us? Selling products was not my forte. Memories of trying to be a telemarketer for Armstrong Cabinet Refacing about 30+ years ago have always haunted me whenever confronted by a business like this but I thought I should be open to something different. Besides, it is nice to be able to do a more social activity than staring at the computer all day. 

Master Bath Remodel

Our bathrooms were in need of remodeling. The shower leaked in the master bath and the shower doors were falling apart in the guest bathroom. After much discussion, we decided to have them upgraded. We hired this Russian guy named Vasily who was a tile specialist. He did a great job in both bathrooms.

Fainting Incident at Blood Source

I like to give blood. I have given over 5 gallons since moving up to Sacramento in 1997 and before that I used to give regularly to the Red Cross in West L.A. While in L.A., I recall some of my donations were in platelets but since about a year ago, I have been giving whole blood exclusively. For many years I went to the Citrus Heights facility on the corner of Fair Oaks and Greenback. Then one day, I was driving up Folsom Blvd in Folsom on my weekly pilgrimage to Winco to buy some groceries when the familiar Blood Source logo caught my eye in a small strip mall. That is a lot closer than Citrus Heights, I thought and the bike ride is infinitely more pleasant. The American River bike trail is just across the street so I immediately decided right then and there that I was abandoning the Citrus Heights location forever. The Folsom office is actually a little smaller but more modern and the nurses are sweet too. After giving a few units of whole blood, one of the nurses asked me if I wanted to try giving some platelets. She said that in some cases, I could give both platelets and whole blood. The only downside is that a platelet donation takes about 50 minutes to an hour while I could squeeze out a pint of whole blood in less than 10 minutes. When she mentioned that they have personal DVD players and all the latest movies, I decided to give it a try. Of all the times I have given blood, and that is quite a few times, I have never felt any unpleasant side effects. Yea, I might feel a slightly light headed when I first get up but after wolfing down a pastry and a few cups of cranberry juice in the rest area, I am good as new. The platelet donation machines have changed quite a bit since back in the 90’s when I gave at the Red Cross in West L.A.. They are computerized and there is only one needle for input and output. The input is some kind of citrus juice mixed with red blood cells and the output is platelets. During the process, it is common to feel numbness or tingly sensations in the lips or arms or chest. No big deal, just suck on some tums and it usually goes away. On that Sunday morning, I had a couple of large cups of tea in the morning. The nurses said to make sure to drink water to help the blood flow out easier. Before settling into the donation chair, I took a piss per instructions because it was going to be a long time - the computer calculated a 113 minute session. I have no idea how it calculates it. But in any case, there was only a little bit of piss at that point. I guess the tea hadn’t digested through my kidneys yet. After getting comfy we got started. The movie was Inception - some sci-fi movie with Leonardo DiCapprio about a team of people that can invade other people’s dreams and change their minds about things. At about the 45 minute point, I started to feel the need to take a piss. Bad timing of course since I was in the middle of donating. But at that point, I didn’t feel numbness or tingly sensations so I didn’t ask for a tums. That turned out to be a mistake as I would later discover. But my biggest feeling was wanting to pee. By the 1.5 hour point, I felt like my bladder was ready to burst but I held on. The minutes seemed to slow down. Finally, the process was completed and after waiting a couple of minutes, I rushed into the bathroom to relieve myself. I unzipped and let out and out it came out, slow at first and then building into a torrent as furious as a dam that had just burst. The pee just kept coming. I didn’t know a human bladder could hold this much liquid. After what seemed like 2 or 3 minutes, I began to feel kind of woozy standing there waiting for this show to end. By the time it did, the room started to get dark around me. I quickly bent my head over for a sec until the faintness went away and then opened the door and walked over to the rest area. I knew something wasn’t right because the room kept getting darker until I shook my head. I made it over to the refrigerator to pour myself a juice. As I opened the refrigerator door, that woozy feeling returned. I quickly poured the juice and downed it in 2 gulps because I was afraid I would pass out standing right there. I told myself to hold on. Maybe if I sat down things would get better. I sat down and tried to focus on a newspaper in front of me.
I made it to a chair at the counter and tried to focus on some article in the newspaper in front of me. The darkness returned and I didn’t have time to shake my head or place my head down. I suddenly felt too tired to keep my eyes open. I knew what was happening to me but I couldn’t stop it from happening. I laid my head down between my arms and started dreaming for a brief second before I blacked out completely. When I awoke, I was lying on the floor with my legs on the chair which had been tipped over. My first thought is that I had fallen backwards but the sight of 4 smiling nurses allayed my concerns. "David, David!", Kelly called to me. "Look, there are 4 beautiful nurses around you."  That comment made me chuckle as I regained my consciousness. They told me that I had slumped over and one of them had spotted me from all the way over on the other side of the room. They apparently knew what to do and all of them sprung into action. They tipped the chair backwards so they could monitor me. I was lying right on the cold floor but it felt good because my body was drenched in sweat. The body does weird stuff when you pass out and they had used water to cool me off. My arms were tingly but after sucking on a few Tums, the tingly feeling went away. It took about a half hour before I felt good enough to get up. Good thing I didn’t ride my bike like I usually do since a trip back, though downhill most of the way would have been wobbly. I drove home about an hour later and had to call them when I got home so they would know I made it home okay. That whole rest of the day I couldn’t keep any food down. It was about the most unpleasant blood donating experience I have ever gone through. However, that being said, I plan on continuing to donate when the weather gets a little better.