Chromilo Amin

I purchased the SC 700C Solaris Hybrid bicycle over 3 months ago at a discount and was super excited to start getting fit. It helped with my daily dose of exercise, clocking in at 22 km per day on my bike commute. I have been riding to/from skytrain station from Monday to Friday for the past 3 months and love it. Just like wearing my Fitbit Flex consistently, I have gotten used to this routine and love my bike that way. I hate my bike when it affects my routine and takes me off-kilter. I have already had numerous issues with the front and rear derailers so I had tons of practice adjusting it so that it's perfect. The bike also does not go as fast as other bikes because I see riders easily pass me on similar routes using other hybrids. It just seems to lack efficiency which is actually better for me because I end up exerting more effort on a 40 minute bike route. Using Endmondo on my phone, I average around 17 km/hr using this bike and that's on a good day when all my muscle...

Here is my new daily bike route to and from work (marked in blue). The distance is approximately 11 km and it takes me about 45 minutes to complete one way. That's a solid 22 km with the return trip daily, if the weather plays nice. The terrain is not quite flat and has some slight inclines (shown in the pop out) so it takes some getting used to. I plan to cut down the time to 30 minutes hopefully in 3 months time, but for now I'm just happy to be able to complete a day of cycling.

We just finished running the Vancouver Sun Run this past weekend and am happy to see that I improved significantly from last year's Sun Run race results by 9 minutes. It took me 52 minutes to complete a 10K run! I ran the Granville Island 10K Turkey Trot last November and finished that in 55 minutes but I also don't think a 10km route for one event equals a different event in terms of time it takes to complete. So looking strictly at the stats for the Sun Run, I also dropped to being in the top 22 percentile for my age category instead of being in the 50 percentile from last year and the years before that. It must have been 4 years since I was able to run the Sun Run in under an hour so I begin to think what it was that let me break out of the cycle. Lose Weight  I weighed close to about 170lbs every year that I ran the Sun Run, except this 2015. I lost about 12lbs to prepare for the race through a combination of daily exercise and diet. I would say it's the diet...

Last week, I helped my kid with his homework to name as many saints or heroes from a poster of cartoon characters. It was difficult and we could only name a few like Pope John Paul II, Mother Theresa, or Joan of Arc. These characters always wore the same clothes so it was easy. It was especially difficult naming the other characters  because I had just come back home from a week long trip by bus from Seattle. I wasn't really into it and could hardly see the image that my wife took of the poster. At one point, I named rapper Tupac Shakur as one of the characters on the poster (I'm a big fan). Under different circumstances, we would have named more but apparently our efforts were good enough because my kid received a medal for it. That's awesome.

My wife and kids put together this present/package for a 2-4 year-old girl to receive this Christmas. The kids didn't want to part with their red fox plush toy so we put in a teddy bear instead. On top of that, they put in crayons, a dress, toothbrushes, a story book (which took my daughter some convincing to let go), monetary donation, etc. I was late in bringing the shoebox for our group dropoff at the downtown location so I had to go to the Greyhound bus depot at 295 Terminal Avenue,in heavy rain, to drop it off personally. Happy to do it.

We own a Whirlpool front-load washer, Model WFW8300SW01 and Serial HLT4932808. About a month or two ago, the wash cycle would not complete with error code "F21" on the console. To get around this in the meantime, I manually set the dial to drain cycle and this would fix the problem, most of the time. I called around for a local Whirlpool technician and was told it would cost $81 to just come out and have a look. It might have to come down to this but I wasn't about to just hand over my money so I googled some fixes. The error code would also come up some times on drain cycle and am never sure which of the two troubleshooting techniques I applied really made a difference. The manuals say that error code "F21" could be caused by a kink in the drain tube or that the wall power was low on voltage. With this in mind, I tried the following: 1) unplugged the other power bar that shared the power circuit with my washer, and 2) drained water from the drain tube by remo...

The end of summer is fast approaching but don't let that stop you from making one last trek down south of the border with the family before we all start donning clothes from our fall wardrobe. Head down during the week instead of the weekend for less lineups at the border crossings and at the zoos. It's also cheaper in terms of accommodation. Here is a transcript of our latest adventure. Fun Center at Tukwilla This is our second time at this facility and it's always a good time for the kids. There are arcade games indoors and fair rides outdoors. We drove the race kart twice around the track (once for each kid), did the trampoline, and sailed around in a rubber dingy with water guns on them. In the arcades, kids accumulated about 288 tickets, from winning games and by contribution from a couple who didn't care about redeeming the tickets for prizes. Kids were able to redeem about 4 different toys each with this number of tickets. The Inn at Gig Harbor We looked...