UPDATE: ALL NECESSARY BIKES HAVE BEEN DONATED!!! THANK  YOU ALL FOR YOUR GENEROUS SPIRITS!

Bicycles for the Group

I've received emails asking what the deal is with bicycles. So here is the explanation.

A couple months ago, in conjunction with the toy drive, the Chief thought it would be fun to be able to bicycle around parts of the green zone with his band of merry men and women, handing out toys to those in need. They would wear matching t-shirts and just have a good time. When their time came to leave, they would donate the bicycles to needy Iraqis.

When the request first went out, a group contacted us saying they would donate the mountain bikes. FedEx agreed, bless their souls, to ship the bicycles FREE, via air, to the Chief. Wow! Unfortunately, the group that offered to donate the bikes strung us along for a long time and, after saying they were ready to ship, cut off all contact with us. A very weird situation which left us in a lurch. No bikes and FedEx trying to be nice, but left with nothing to ship.

When the Chief mentioned this in his last journal entry, one of his readers came out and offered help in a big way. He found an inexpensive mountain bike on Amazon.com and offered to buy 4 of them to send!!! I won't mention his name because I have not asked his permission, but what an amazing person. I have now contacted Gary, our WONDERFUL FedEx guy and good good friend to the Chief, to see if FedEx will still ship these for us for free. He thinks this is the case, but is checking.

I am going to buy some myself and send over to the Chief. Another person has offered to buy one and send. If any others are interested, contact me via email with the subject: Mountain Bike. It looks like, with shipping, a total cost of around $100 per bike. Pretty dang cheap. Once we get the details of where to have them shipped from FedEx, I will contact those who want to donate. We don't need that many. A few more people and the Chief and crew will have more than enough. Again, when it is time for them to come home, the bikes will be donated to needy Iraqis.

I hope that answers all the questions about Mountain Bikes for the Chief.

Regards,

Plunge

PS - A bit about email here. As you probably know, I screen ALL of the Chief's email. This cuts down on the spam and crap going to him. When he replies, it goes through me as well. This causes a bit of a bottleneck. The Chief is WONDERFUL about answering email, at times, only minutes after I forward it to him. Unfortunately, I'm not as diligent at getting the replies to you. If there is a delay, blame it on me. If you have never gotten a reply from the Chief, blame it on me. I don't think he has ever failed to reply to email that I have forwarded to him. So, if you didn't get a reply, something screwed up on my end, or your email was so obnoxious that I didn't forward it. :-P  Sorry about that. Hope that clears up a bit of the email situation.