It’s been a while since my last post here and there have been a lot of little things that I wanted to mention or write about that were not really enough for a full blog post by themselves so I decided to include them in this multi-topic blog post.

I’ll start off with my Day at the Races. My wife and I went to Arlington Park race track this weekend for something fun to do and, in my case, to get some photos too. This is not really a bike related topic but when I was there I noticed a lot of similarities in the racing scene between the horse race and the bike races that I was at this summer (the Tour of Elk Grove specifically).

OK, well the horse race scene is much more about gambling and there are plenty of other differences too but for some reason there seemed to be a lot of similarities too. They are both colorful events that draw large crowds (and are good photo ops 🙂 ). Both events share the anticipation of the race itself, a similar speed/pace, and the excitement of the race and competition are similar.

Well, this is a stretch but I had some Photoshop fun merging one of my photos from the horse race this weekend with one of my TOEG photos (the photo shown here). I also just looked up the average speed for horse races and it is very close to the speed of professional bike races at times so the photo may not be as obscure as it appears at first (well, maybe if the cyclist had a paved track).

2013 Bikes Available Online

In other actual cycling news, I wanted to mention that I have discovered that there are now some 2013 bikes for sale online. Specifically, there are some 2013 versions of the popular Cannondale bikes for sale at REI like the Cannondale Quick, CAAD10 and CR1 for starters.

Hybrid Elliptical and Recumbent Bike

As we start falling into a little more of the indoor fitness season, I have been looking into the latest fitness products out there and found an interesting new product from Proform. It is a hybrid elliptical trainer and recumbent exercise bike. This is not going to be for everyone but since hybrids do typically meet the needs of some people that are looking for a combination of two (or more) products in one, this may be perfect for some of you. You can see my review on this fitness product at the Proform Hybrid Trainer Review on this site.

Helpful Information about your Social Security Statements

And finally I want to mention one more topic that is not even bike related but I have found this information to be very valuable and since this blog has a large number of readers and subscribers I wanted to post it here (as well as on some of my other sites). If you are here only for the Bike Info and/or if this does not apply to you then please feel free to skip this one.

This is not real new but many of you may have noticed that the government does not send out the hardcopy Social Security Statements that show your entire working history, earnings and potential retirement benefits from Social Security anymore.

What you may not know is that you can now get the exact same Social Security Statement online at: www.ssa.gov/mystatement. You will need to setup a login  account which will require your SSN (of course) and additional personal tax information that only you should have. It looks like the security is pretty good and I am glad about that. You may need to look some stuff up in order to setup the login account.

Anyway, once you set this up, you will have access to all the SS Statement info that you used to get in the mail.