Iron, costly clean up, money grab
A couple weeks ago I stumbled across an Iron Gym on Woot. It was cheap, only $20 shipped, but had positive reviews from others that bought it in the past. An Iron Gym is an ultra-portable workout station that allows you to turn any conventional doorway into a pull up station.
I was somewhat worried about the quality of it based on the low price. However after I put it together last night and tried it out my concerns were set at ease, it felt quite sturdy.
The device allows me to do pull ups with three different hand positions, including a parallel grip that I can’t do on my outdoor pull up station. Attaching the bar to the door is a 2 second process, it uses your own body weight as leverage to keep it firmly attached. I did pull ups on all three grips and even was able to do front and back tuck levers on it without difficulty.
I put the Iron Gym on the floor and used it to do deep push ups as well as a brief L sit. If that isn’t cool enough it ALSO comes with a set of ab straps. You attach the straps to the bar and then you can do various leg raise exercises. It’s a pretty damn great piece of equipment for $20. The only negative I saw was that it was made in China of course.
I had to laugh as I went through the small manual which included the Iron Gym nutrition guide. I was surprised that the dietary advice would be that hard core, surely not to be followed by the typical tv gym equipment purchaser. Hell I don’t even follow that strict of an eating regimen.
So Ali took the bikes in on Monday, hers to get fitted and my free Trek to get tuned/cleaned. She called me mid-day with a status report that she assumed I would be yelling about.
The guys at the bike shop said the Trek needed a new rear cassette, chain and two new tires. They said both the cassette and chain were worn which didn’t surprise me knowing how hard the bike was ridden. The quote I got to fix it made me sit up a little straight, $375. The price got adjusted down a bit once our NATS discount was applied.
The fact that I got the bike for free tempered what might be my normal reaction, “that is a f’ing rip off, I’ll do it myself” Instead I told Ali to go ahead and have them do the work. I figured after this maintenance I should have a pretty high quality road bike that will be good to go for years to come. It should be done in a week or so.
There was a story in the Naples News the other day about how the Collier Tourism board is applying to BP to get $750,000 dollars for advertising. Their justification was they needed the money to tell people that we don’t have oil on the beach in Naples.
I find myself being annoyed with this. Believe me, I want BP to pay for everything that is f’d up as a result of the oil spill. But I also can’t stand when people hop in line to get a free handout if they don’t deserve it. I want the billions of dollars that BP has set aside to go first to those that are directly and immediately impacted by this mess, not those that view it as just as an opportunity to skim some dollars off the top just because they can do it.
It reminds me of those famous stories of people in Louisiana after Katrina blowing their pre-paid, government provided credit cards in strip clubs. It was just fun money for them. Of course BP doesn’t have the luxury to verify the validity of the thousands of claims pouring in. People know this and use it to obtain cash that they really don’t deserve.
It’s sad human behavior that repeats whenever disaster hits and/or any sort of hand out is available.