The Advisor Advises

I took a closer look at that '1848 5 lire' coin that I thought was a hidden treasure - it appears to be a fake coin, made to look like a really valuable one - perhaps created to get people like me really excited...like that's going to work.

You're probably wondering whatever happened to my bicycle.

I was wondering that very same thing at 8:00am this morning while I listened to someone's idea of good on hold music on the Canadian Tire customer service line. A young lady tells me, "that was shipped via UPS on Aug 17 - here's the tracking number, etc." (she didn't actually say et cetera - not even eck setera, although I do love hearing that)
So I go to ups.com, enter said number, and voila! it was apparently delivered yesterday at 14:38. My first thought is, "who has my bicycle?" I click on details. The package was delivered to the back door. Hmmm. I run up the stairs and look out the back door. There is a big box leaning against the double stroller near the BBQ. It wasn't there last time I was out there...

So the UPS delivery person stops by on a Monday afternoon with a rather large package - approximately the size of a new bike in a box - that is adorned with labels proclaiming that it is a new bike in a box - finds that there is no one inhabiting the property that shares the address on the bike box shaped package - and he/she comes to the conclusion that it would be reasonable to leave the bike box with the bike in it in the back yard. My back yard has a 6 foot chain link fence. That's the kind that you can see through. Last spring a stroller was stolen from my front yard.
When I got over the shock brought on by the decision making ability of the UPS driver, I brought the box into my living room. I opened the top flap and found that the bike is not assembled. Nor did they send a bicycle assembling tradesperson.
I have added 'LOCATE AND HIRE BICYCLE ASSEMBLING TRADESPERSON' to my To Do list. And by 'tradeperson', I mean 'friend who has more experience than I do with bicycles. And by 'more experience', I mean 'has ridden a bicycle with more than 1 speed and not fallen off'. And by 'fallen off', I mean 'launched his/her body over the handlebars while travelling at an embarassingly low speed'. And by 'embarassingly', I mean 'this happened to a friend of a friend of mine - I'm definitely not talking about me'.