eBay buyer totally torpedoed my confidence in the human race.

I just sold this wheel on eBay:

HED Bastogne Clincher Front 700c C2 - eBay (item 200399251578 end time Oct-28-09 06:42:17 PDT)

For brevity sake, here is the listing description:

NEW HED Bastogne

C2 rim technology

You're bidding on a new HED Bastogne 700c C2 clincher front wheel. This wheel is laced 3x with Titanium spokes for cyclocross. This wheel would be a great front to test out the new tubeless technology coming out for cyclocross or road racing.

Specifics:

• C2 23mm rim width
• Alloy braking surface
• Clincher rim design
• Titanium bladed spokes
• Alloy nipples
• 28h rim
• HED designed sonic hub

Skewer not included.

Shipping is $15 anywhere in the lower 48.
$26 to Canada plus import taxes and duties.

Feel free to ask me about this wheel. Thanks!

THE STORY:

So, this guy buys the wheel right away. Great. One less wheel in my apartment. A few days later I get an email saying this:

hale111359: Received the wheel today. This is not a HED Bastogne wheel as shown on the HED site. It is way heavy, 810 grams instead of 651, wrong hub, and hub binds when installed. The only thing Bastogne about it is the sticker, which is not correct per the web site. Please process a refund including return shipping.

At this point, I didn't even think that he had not read the description. I assumed he was thinking that I had sold him a used wheel. This wheel was new, never ridden so I responded:

What are you talking about? It was a wheel directly from HED. Its
never even been ridden.

hale111359: You advertised the wheel as a HED Bastogne Front 700c clincher C2. Go to the HED website and pull up that wheel. Other than the rim, please tell me what about the wheel matches. And yes, the hub binds and does not spin freely when mounted.

At this point I know I'm in for a shit storm. This guy just referenced a 2010 product off HED's website that does not resemble the version of the wheel I had sold him. The hub issue was simply him over tightening the skewer, which I have found a lot of people do. He followed up before I could respond with:

To be fair as a follow up, I was able to free up the hub and it spins freely.

After this, I was like, "Well, if he can figure out how to loosen his skewer, maybe he's not a total idiot." So, I started down the path of stating facts as succinctly as I could,

To be accurate, please refer to the images that were posted with
this auction. The wheel you now have are the images that were
posted. Standard build Bastonges are radial front - this was a
custom build 3x with Ti spokes. It is exactly what was posted in
the auction. You are correct that this wheel is not a standard
build, but it is a HED Bastogne Clincher front 700c C2 wheel. It
is the buyer's responsibility to read the auction posting and view
the images posted. It is a HED Bastogne built by HED for me
this year.

hale111359: Why did you not state that it was a special custom build ? Are you saying it is the buyer's responsiblity [sic] to determine if the seller is engaging in misleading advertising ? Please show me where HED describes this wheel as you have it built ? They don't that is the point. As you title the item, one should be able to assume it is what the manufacturer advertises without doing comparitive investigation to find out the deception.

Uh oh. This guy has never had anything custom built, nor can he read. He also can't see pictures. Maybe he bought the wheel using a string and can listening to modem clicks to determine what he was looking for. Either way, I'm now faced with a guy who is convinced I mislead him and who has never had a custom product (or possibly even knew it was possible to get?).

Sir, please go back and read the item description. The item you
bought is exactly what was described. HED does make wheels to
spec for sponsored riders and special dealers. This was outlined
in the description of the item. Your argument is based solely
upon the title of the auction, which cannot describe in full the
details of the product.
FYI: All wheel manufacturers will oblige special builds for riders
if you call them directly.

This seemed like a good response, no? No.

hale111359: I am sorry you see it that way. The average person does not know this. No where did you say this was a build different than offered to the general public buyer. It is unfortunate I will have to take this to a paypal dispute. You will not win it because your add was misleading by ommision. Neither of us will have the funds for a period and you will not have a wheel to resell. I wish you would reconsider the refund, it would make it easier for us both.

Well, I'm sorry you never learned to read! Average people can read, right?! I am still at a loss for how he thinks my post was misleading?

So, I retort:

Sir, the description is as follows:

You're bidding on a new HED Bastogne 700c C2 clincher front
wheel. This wheel is laced 3x with Titanium spokes for
cyclocross. This wheel would be a great front to test out the new
tubeless technology coming out for cyclocross or road racing.

How is this NOT what you have in your hands? And you say that
I left out something in the description, did you not read this
sentence, "This wheel is laced 3x with Titanium spokes for
cyclocross." Further more, did you NOT look at the pictures
provided? EVERYTHING was given to you and you chose not to
completely read and understand the auction as described. There
is no misleading, omission or oversight on my end. You did not
read the auction OR look at the images!

Admittedly not the best customer tone, but c'mon.

hale111359: You claim there was not room in the title which is misleading, yet you were capable of putting it in the title of your other listing for the rear wheel. Listing 200399250686. I have a copy of this listing for the dispute/claim. I am sorry it will come to this.

This is the title:

HED Bastogne Tubular 700c C2 for Cyclocross

And here is the convo:

Me:

"Whats the difference about the listing for the rear wheel?"

hale111359: You state HED Bastogne Tubular 700c C2 for Cyclocross. HED has no tubular or cyclocross wheels in this line shown on their website.

Oh shit. I now realize what kind of guy he is. No common sense. Nothing in that brain assigning deductive reasoning. Just someone that reads headlines on the newspapers and thinks hes an informed voter.

I cried for a bit knowing my eBay feedback would forever be subject to tarnish because of a complete idiot.

Fine. Just send me back the wheel.

What did he do? Kept the wheel and left negative feedback.

FUCK YOU HALE111359!!! Let him know you love him, too: http://myworld.ebay.com/hale111359/

Riding Bikes in Allentown

First off, I need to find directions before I head to the races. Driving to races sans navigator is not a good thing. Doubly so when you have to deal with New Jersey morning traffic and subsequent Allentown road closures. To find my way I just drove the wrong way up one way streets in Allentown and through red lights and what not until I found a place to park. And then I got a parking ticket.

So, the race was a race. A race in that a bunch of my teammates and friends showed up to play bike game. Romone Benitez won the prize for "FAstest Fred" before the show even started. Bib shorts over the jersey? Holy shit dude. I've seen some retarded stuff in bike races, but a Cat 1-2 race in Allentown during the Triple Crown?!!!! C'mon!

This fashion blunder made him an easy target to cover through out the race. Being that I made a super last second arrival- to the point that Brady Gibney (my fast teammate who is only half a bike racer after a Somerville crash) had to pin my number on at the registration table. I didn't pedal one stroke before the start of the race. But, I started in the second row and threw myself in the top 10 for the entire day. After being pinched at Somerville and learning (trying to learn, really) from crits this year, I vowed to stay in the top section of the race and cover dangerous moves. Somehow my radar got jammed (by Liz Hatch walking around maybe?) and I missed the break. Like, THE break. Two guys put 20 seconds into us and they held it for 15 laps. Dave Fuentes and a Van Dessel rider. Well, if that wasn't just simply disappointing.

With 5 to go Brady rolls up next to me as the fighting starts to get tough. He asks how I'm doing. I complain about the slow speed. (It was really slow. We averaged 25mph in the crit. Stupid slow). That was the conversation. I figured that I stood a better chance at getting away then sticking around for a field sprint. With 3 to go I went with Ramone and Matt johnson (super fast man from Empire who beat Levi back in the day). Those two horses pulled so hard that I had to sit on them on the back stretch to recover, but through the start finish I fucking poured everything I had into the pedals and reduced the gap to the break to 12 seconds with the two guys in tow. We hit the back stretch and I looked over my shoulder and the field is there. Maybe 5 seconds back, but there. Not far enough to keep killing it. A few tried to bridge, but as Tim Johnson says, "Theres always a welder" and we came back together.

The final sprint was not set up with a lot of speed. We came through the last two corners and PA Lightening and some others were on the front. Jason Snow took the field sprint because he's a bad ass who is probably the best bike racer in the field. I wish he would share some tips with me.

Another race another entry fee.

After the race there was the Pro race. It was on TV. It was sweet. Also, Liz Hatch in person is stunningly beautiful. Even after a bike race. No wonder she was in Maxim. Joe Whitman and I watched the show at the Allentown Pub, which was surprisingly empty for being an air conditioned place with awesome beer and the race on the two plasma TVs.

If you want to see the race results and the final, click here.

Its about time...

To go to bed.

But my friend Adam St.Germain has been egging me on to write something here more than an internet post, and I have been thinking.

Thinking a lot really. There are things I think about all day and there are things that flash my head.

I;ve been thinking that I might be a good stand up comic. Then I think that I might be the only one who laughs since the "context" is really specific to me. And I'm not good at putting three thoughts into 3 minutes. I'm a talker. Though I like to think I listen, too.

Bike racing has been pretty sweet this year. Mainly because I tool a year off of Columbia Architecture grad school. If you want to do something that makes you feel like a piece of crap, go to architecture school.

So, bike racing has been good. Started off fast in Belize with a 13th overall on GC. For a UCI 2.2 race, thats pretty good. A handful of top 10s in March and April but then the cycling gods started to interfere in a bad way. Flats at Battenkill. Ran out of food and water at Hills of Somerset. Now, I'm sitting here at 11:27 at night because I can't sleep before the Allentown race tomorrow. I should be in bed. I have to get up at 6.

In fact, I think I will. enough of this "posting". More to come. I might even write more of a race report tomorrow!