Another great view from West Alpine today!I’m not sure how much longer I can pull this off, this turning-back-the-clock thing and posting times on climbs faster than I’ve done in a few years. Today, it was 22:15 on Old LaHonda, which I haven’t done since April of 2016. Too bad it couldn’t have been early March of 2016, since I could then say I hadn’t ridden that fast since I was in my 50s. 🙂
Monster sunflower at Sky Londa General StoreMaybe the secret is waking up way too early? Definitely would have preferred more sleep, but sleep doesn’t seem to greatly affect my climbing times. The only other change in routine was that I drank half a can of Pepsi before heading out the door. Kevin and I did attack Old LaHonda a bit differently than normal; we started up in the “big ring” and I kept it there until about a third of the way up. Kevin stayed in the big ring the entire way, and posted a mid-19 time! Here I thought it was just a fun, stupid thing to do, but who knows, maybe something to it?
We didn’t do a long ride today, just up Old LaHonda, down to LaHonda and back via West Alpine. West Alpine was pretty slow on the bottom and not too much faster on the climb; neither one of us felt especially spirited at that point. Still, at 46 something, it wasn’t like we were totally goofing off. Yet, I was able to talk pretty much the entire way. It doesn’t feel like my breathing is better, but perhaps it is? Strava doesn’t lie.
We did get pretty hungry on Skyline so stopped at Sky Londa to grab a bite and a couple of drinks. And there I found the most outrageously-huge sunflower! Yikes. I’ve made it a point of growing sunflowers at home the past few years, but nothing like the two monsters outside the general store.
So looking at the Strava details, I can do 265 watts for 22 minutes. Meaning, over the past 4 years, I’ve lost about 15 watts. Could be worse. Could be that worse is coming just around the corner! My riding has not suffered as much as I thought it might, given my mild bone marrow cancer. I am very fortunate that the meds I’m taking don’t totally sap my strength like they do some others. Hopefully it will stay that way!
You can have an 800+ credit rating, pay the monthly lease, but if there’s a misunderstanding about the lease extension, Capitol Ford and GM Financial might come to your house without warning, hook up the car and tow it away. Without so much as a phone call or email. While continuing to cash your lease checks.
My experience with our (formerly) leased 2016 Chevrolet Volt is the stuff of legends. Bad legends. You can read about the details here, but in a nutshell, we kept sending them money, with my wife writing on each payment that she was extending the lease, and GM financial kept cashing the checks, even though we had not properly notified them, by phone, that we wanted the lease extended. The first and only legit lease extension ended on February 27, 2019.
The first and ONLY phone call ever made to us by GM Financial (or anybody else) was apparently a phone message left on an answering machine. AND THAT WAS IT. The total sum communication between anyone at GM Financial and myself, until June 6th, 2019, when they sent a notice in a normal letter (not registered, nothing scary written on the outside) that we needed to return the car or it would be subject to repossession. That letter was unfortunately not paid attention to; it stated that our lease contract had expired and if the vehicle wasn’t returned to a GM dealer, “We may exercise our rights under the law to repossess the vehicle.”
Which they did. Without anyone at GM Financial wondering why we kept sending them checks, which they dutifully cashed. Checks along with notes asking to please extend the lease. Nobody ever thought to give us a call to say that’s not how it works. Nobody at GM Financial thought anything screwy when they arranged to have the car repossessed. If anyone had bothered to look at our history, they’d wonder what was going on. My guess is that someone did look at the history. They just didn’t care.
But this morning was perhaps the saddest treatment of a customer, or even a person, I’ve come across in a long time. After getting nowhere with Capitol Chevrolet, who insists that what GM Financial does is out of their hands, their social media manager told me to call GM Financial, and gave me a number. I didn’t realize it was the same number I’d called the day after the repossession. The number where someone told me “We don’t have to do that” when I asked if they could send me a copy of the letter they said they’d sent me (which at that point I hadn’t seen).
At 10:36am I got ahold of someone who seemed to grasp the strange nature of what had gone on. She and I discussed the facts of the case, none of which were in dispute (this would change in a later phone call with a different person). It was all about questioning if procedure was followed; if it was really policy that a car would be repossessed when the customer was still paying for it, without bothering to call or email first. After 15 minutes she put me on hold to talk to someone in a different department about it. 6 minutes on hold and my call re-entered the normal queue for a new call. And 10 minutes after that, the phone disconnected.
I called back. Got someone I could barely hear and wasn’t terribly interested in anything. I don’t know if that person intentionally disconnected or if their phone system is just really bad.
I called back again. And this time, I was literally on hold for an hour. They will have phone records to prove it. An hour before I speak to someone who never had any intention of doing anything but tell me that they were within their legal rights to repossess the vehicle. I asked her if that’s how she would like to have been treated, had she made a similar mistake elsewhere. I quoted her GM Financial’s corporate mantra-
We operate with integrity toward
each other, our customers and the
markets in which we operate.
Adhering to moral, ethical and
professional standards is
“the heart of it all.”
She wouldn’t crack. You could tell she was having issues, but she wouldn’t change the corporate response. I asked if she could send this to a supervisor, so she wouldn’t have to deal with being later asked why she couldn’t handle this situation. Get it out of her hands. She wouldn’t budge. It was truly an amazing experience. She told me absolutely, 100%, there was no possiblity of getting the repossession removed from my credit history. It felt like this is what she was paid to do. Her reason to exist. Crush people in a way they don’t bother you any more.
GM Financial and Capitol Chevrolet are going to find themselves greatly bothered in the near future.
