We've had many a slow day here in KC other than our weekly rides out and about on the motor cycles...
Laast Tuesday we traveled up to Platt City, a town North of the KCI airport.... Its about 40 miles up there but mostly on the beltway interstate, so it went really rapidly.... We arrived ahead of most of the crew at about 9:30 but even then there is always several guys that are already done eating....
That day was really hot!! We kept seeing 103 and hotter numbers on the motorcycle dash thermometers... When we came back into the city, following cars at 30 mph about killed us off.... Stopping at the traffic lights was hottest of all....
But then on Wednesday it cooled down as a rain front came thru overnight... Still it was 87 that afternoon, but that seemed so much better..... The trip that day was over West to Topeka and then North to a small community about 20 miles North on US 75... Mayetta, Ks... I had to go look on the map for that name...
The place was just a main street of old buildings which were mostly vacant... The restaurant was an older storefront as well, but had been cleaned up a bunch inside.... They had advertised fried chicken, but didn't have any... Seems that they didn't understand or perhaps believe that we were going to bring 50 people to their little town..
They only had 4 people in the entire restaurant, and simply couldn't stop long enough to fry any chicken.... I had a burger and chips with a diet coke.... Kind of hard to mess that up... But even then we waited a long time... But we were gabbing it up with a long table pulled up on the end of a 4 person booth... Lots of BS...
On the way back, we struck out cross country trying to make the next North South highway and get out of going thru Topeka... But every road we tried turned to rocky gravel.... We turned around three different times.. If you get on deep gravel, you can't keep the bikes upright, so you don't take that chance...
Eventually we ended up back in the East end of Topeka but did miss most of the town... Next we were at a Burger King in Lawrence for their 99 cent ice cream cones..... I didn't get back until 4 PM that day....
Oh, I did get a new cell phone.... A Samsung Galaxy S5... My old phone had been wet a couple of times and was beginning to run its battery down in only a few hours.. The new phone turned out to be a fiasco... I had to beg and plead for an early upgrade as I had 5 months left on the old contract... There is no more graduated buy out of the contracts... They wanted $350 to buy my way out or I could purchase a new phone for $599...
They would finance it over 20 months for $30 per month... But the phone service bill would be the same.. plus the 30.... Or go up 30 depending on how you look at it... Not a deal, anyway...
I finally got another customer service gal on the phone and she got a waiver from corporate for my old contract. Then she had me lined up for a $99 new phone... That was the new subscriber price.... I thought I had cut a heck of a deal and signed the new two year contract...
But a couple of hours later, I received a confirmation that the good deal price was now $300 for the upgrade.... That meant I spent a lot more time talking to them trying to get it back down... I finally got a $75 credit to my bill for accessories and $10 per month off of my data plan for another year... And even those numbers aren't proven out yet until I get the bill to see what they actually charged me..
If it works, I may still have a good deal, but it will take a long time to realize it.. And I still have to pay the $300 right now... But that is half of the $599 outright price... They have you coming and going... At least the new phone is nice..
This is getting too long, perhaps I can tell you about the phone next time...
Retired Rod
