Taking Care of Business

Big Business

I got a call again on Monday from one of my credit card companies, Urbi-Finance, complaining that I owed them money. Ugh, I thought, I did that on-line bill pay through my bank, and something went wrong. I asked them if they hadn't gotten an on-line payment, and no, they said they hadn't.

So I checked the on-line thingy for the bank, and it showed that the payment went through. And then I noticed something, a BAD something. The last four digits of the credit card number that weren't Xed out were the same as on my other credit card, the one that wasn't having problems.

I figure I somehow, stupidly, typed in the same number. So my mistake, and not a good one.

I called the bank, and they said the payments had gone through and been accepted by Urbi-Finance, so I should try talking to Urbi-Finance.

I called Urbi-Finance, and told them about my mistake. They said there is no way to track down a payment problem, but that I have to have my bank fax the payment information. [I was frustrated! What kind of multi-national financial company doesn't have the ability to track payments in all sorts of ways? Seriously? Think about it!]

So I called my bank again, and explained my mistake and what Urbi-Finance said. The customer service person said he couldn't fax that information, but that he'd put through a search request to track down the information and resolve the problem.

This morning, there was a message on my machine when I got back from my bike ride asking me to call so that the bank could put through a conference call with Urbi-Finance. We played phone tag a bit today, but finally this afternoon we got it all together.

The bank account guy put through a conference call to Urbi-Finance; I explained what I'd done to the Urbi-Finance guy. And the Urbi-Finance guy looked and said that I've got a large credit to my account with the last four digits XXXX. But, XXXX is the other account, I said.

Well, turns out my other account, even though it's with a different company, is actually an Urbi-Finance card. It took a while, but the guy said he was able to correct it and that the money will be credited to the right account within a couple days.

Boy, was that a stupid mistake!

Still, if the customer service folks at Urbi-Finance had tried to figure stuff out with my first call, they should have figured it out, no? They did when the bank got them to try.

Little Business

I made a couple of calls today that I've been putting off. I'm bad about putting some things off, but there's no good reason I put these calls off. And both of them are in my own interest, totally, and my choice, but still, I put them off. But I couldn't put these off any longer, realistically, and get what I want. Now, because I put one of them off so long, I'm going to be have a minor difficulty in the next week (or whenever). I am NOT thrilled with myself. Stupid Bardiac! I need to learn not to put things off, but even so, I should have predicted that it would be six weeks to do this, rather than say, three or four weeks. Three or four weeks would make sense to me; but six weeks is reality.

Biking Business

Usually, I drive my bike to a trailhead and ride a rails-to-trails trail which is relatively flat and goes a long ways. But I've felt that I should at least try some hills to build a little leg strength. One of my friends was teasing me a while ago, about how she knew some hills that would kick my ***. I responded that she should be real, because my driveway kicks my *** (and it's a normal driveway, with a very slight slope, about a car and a half long).

I live near the top of a hill in some hills. [NB. If you're a real biker, these count as hillocks, perhaps. The Northwoods is NOT the Rockies, the Sierras, the Andes, the Pyrenees, the Alps, or anything like that. But for me, they're hills.]

A couple times now, I've taken short rides (5 miles or so) up and down the hills near my house, and I can make it up the hill.

A while back, I noticed a trail along the side of a local highway about a mile from my house, but prompty ignored it figuring that if I made it to the highway and rode there, I'd never make it back up the hill to my house. I continued to ignore it, but wondered where it went.

Today, I finally put things together and rode my bike down to the close trail and rode out on it. It went out about 3 miles along the highway out of town, but then there was a nicely paved road leading off away from the highway, so I took that. And there were hills, up and down hills. And very little traffic.

The problems are, and there are two: one, I'm a scaredy cat going downhill. If the bike gets up to 30 on the speedometer, I'm wide-eyed with terror, and playing the brakes. I pretty much brake down all the hills to keep it well below that. And then, I'm a whuss going uphill!

But the new bike was a help, since it has some serious granny gears!

I rode about 16 miles, and my legs really knew they'd had some exercise coming up the final hill to my house. Boy did I go SLOW!

When I was a little kid, I remember having this sense of total freedom when I got on the bike. I could cross the local highway to go to the store when I had money; I could ride to other suburbs. Today, for the first time in a long time, I got that sense of freedom on my bike instead of in my car. There's something about being able to go up that hill to my house, so that if I want to ride somewhere, I know I'll be able to make it home. Very fun!