There’s really just no way to get through life these days without attempting to navigate systems designed by someone else. Believe me, as a lonerologist (the new PC term for “hermit”), I have tried to disconnect myself as much as I can.

However, occasionally even the most reclusive hermit must, for instance, sell off some video games that are collecting dust in his hermitage. You can try standing outside on the sidewalk like merchants in the open air markets of old, but the chances that you will meet the right buyer are slim.

The chances, at least in Atlanta, that you will meet someone who collects spare change, however, are high.

Thankfully, nerds have constructed today’s open air market on the internet. It is called eBay. It has a weird, filthy cousin known as Craigslist as well, but Craigslist sees a very different form of success from eBay because it wrongly capitalizes the first letter in proper nouns, which is a sure sign of something neither new nor fresh.

Yes, if eBay is the big shiny mall they built as the epicenter of the sprawling suburbs outside town, Craigslist is the flea market they hold at the abandoned drive-in on Saturday mornings.

But as shiny and forward-thinking as eBay’s designers were, there are still issues. I ran into a problem trying to sell my items, and having exhausted every avenue, I contacted support via the live chat option.

Now, if you are like me, you avoid contacting customer support at all costs. Their job is to get you to go away, not to help you. They do this by annoying the crap out of you at every turn, using a litany of tactics such as:

• doing everything they can to keep you from talking to a person
• horrible hold music interspersed with lies (“Your call is important to us!”)
• the long wait
• making you punch in data, then immediately asking for it again
• transferring you and making you repeat your situation over and over
• demanding that you call from a different phone

Contrast this with a call center whose job it is to sell you something. Not only will a live person pick up the phone as soon as you call them, but a lot of times they will call you before you even know you want to be a customer! Now that’s service.

Having worked in a call center many years ago, I can tell you that being on the other end of things is just as horrible, if not worse. Customers are pushy, irritating liars whose only problems stem from being too stupid to operate the software.

That aside, I was in a situation with eBay a few days ago and I needed some assistance. I availed myself of eBay’s Live Help feature, which connected me to someone named Stan. As an aside, one wonders why it’s not called eBay lIve hElp, but I guess you can’t take a joke too far or it loses something.

This log is not edited in any way, except to highlight either end of the conversation for clarity.

18:17:16 Agent Stan R.
I am sorry to know that from you that you cannot use the USPS option in your listing. I will be happy to look into this for you.

18:17:21 Agent Stan R.
May I ask for your name?

18:17:25 Customer jim_hodgson
um

18:17:29 Customer jim_hodgson
its jim hodgson

18:17:31 Customer jim_hodgson
…

18:18:17 Agent Stan R.
Thank you Tim.

It turned out that I was indeed doing the wrong thing, but I found my way by screwing with it myself while I waited for Stan to figure out what my name was, even though it was printed right there on his screen every time I said something. So, it’s true, at least in my case, that I was being dumb, but in my defense, support was just as convoluted and useless as ever.

Personally, I think we are entering what I call a new golden age of customer service, because every time a company is a dick to you, you can go make a youtube video about it that gets a bazillion views, and someone will scramble to make it better.

Maybe I need to write a country song about my video games to help boost sales. I need the money for bike parts people… bid high!

I am speaking to you from the past.

If you read this entry the moment it is published, you will be reading it as I am climbing on my road bike in pre-dawn gloom in order to join my Georgia Cyclist brothers and sisters in Georgia Rides to the Capitol.

Even though the capitol building is only five miles or so from my house, we first have to ride up to the start of the ride in Roswell, GA, which is 20 miles away. There we will join up with a mass of other riders and proceed down Roswell Road to Peachtree and finally to the capitol building, where some things will happen.

Sure, it’s going pretty far out of the way, but like a movie roadtrip with no basis in reality, the journey is the purpose much more than the destination. Except I suspect tomorrow’s ride will be utterly free of gratuitous female nudity if for no other reason than the chilly temperatures.

We could drive our cars up to the start, of course, but that would be a bit of a style misstep, and not having your style points all figured out in the cycling world is a big no-no.

For instance, like any cyclist, I constantly study the weather report with some intensity. Rain means slick roads — and worse — rust on my components. While a steel brush could probably remove most of the rust, I could never steel brush away the tarnish upon my image should anyone see me with rusty components. It’s already bad enough that I’m still racing on an aluminum frame.

Like the Mac vs PC argument, the bike frame materials argument is a big pile of abstract numbers and specifications that ultimately boils down to which one you like more. Carbon is more expensive and has the cool factor, like a Mac. Aluminum is stiffer but has arguably the same performance or better for less money, like a PC, and steel is for people who judge each other on beard length or ironic tattoos, like Linux.

But tomorrow is for all bike riders, regardless of frame material, who wish to make their voices heard. It remains to be seen what impact this will have on my beloved city, but the impact on me will most likely be hunger and tiredness.

Luckily, Manland is stocked with food and a very comfortable sleeping pallet, so my needs should be well met.

Have a great Tuesday from your friend in the past, and think warm thoughts. I am probably colder than an ex-wife’s hello right now.

Like it or not, image matters. If someone sees or is about to see you do something weird, occasionally it makes sense to offer up some sort of explanation, which is why the girl next to the dumpster said to me on Friday night “I’m not homeless.”

At the time, I was engaging in some nonverbal communication to let her know that I wasn’t about to assault her in the alleyway. I was doing this by jingling a handful of quarters so that she’d know I was headed for the laundry whose door opens into the alley, and not wielding a club or something. After all, when it’s late and dark out in the city, I feel it is my responsibility as a gentleman to let girls who are walking alone know that they’re not in any danger. If she is walking with me, that’s another story.

Anyway, as I was opening the door to the laundry, she was pausing next to the dumpster, and said “I’m not homeless; I think I lost my keys in here.” I guess it hadn’t occurred to her that without means to enter her apartment, she kind of was functionally homeless.

I said “It’s okay if you are, I don’t judge,” and went into the laundry room to shuffle some items around and pump quarters into the machines. When I came out she was still there, bent over into the dumpster, peering into the darkness beyond the sliding metal door in the side.

“Do you want a flashlight?” I asked.

She said “Oh. Yeah that would be great!” as if she hadn’t previously considered it. I walked down the alleyway with some wet wool items that can’t go in the drier in one hand, retrieved the flashlight from my car, was delighted to see that it worked, and delivered it to the girl by the dumpster.

I then dragged over a block of wood that was nearby for her to step on, as it became clear that she wanted to climb into the thing and wallow around in the trash bags a bit.

“I threw my keys in,” she said. “They were in my hand when I threw my trash bags in and they slipped out and I think they’re in there.” She indicated that she lived just on the east side of the alleyway, in the same building as me.

Looking inside, I saw that the dumpster only had a few bags in it, but I knew that two of them were mine. I tried to think if I had thrown away anything that might give a clue to how depraved and ridiculous I am, but my mental search revealed nothing but orange peels and coffee grounds and packages of instant oatmeal.

I asked if she wanted to wear some dishwashing gloves so she didn’t have to put her hands in the trash, but she declined, and clambered up into the dumpster.

Personally, when I throw my trash away I do everything I can to not touch any part of the dumpster. If the metal door is closed, I find a stick or something to push it open with. I wash my hands after I throw away the trash too, but this girl who I now knew as my neighbor just grabbed the sides of the thing and hauled herself in.

I felt it might be rude to just watch someone root around in a dumpster, and wanting to be on good terms with my neighbor and new friend, I went back to my apartment to hang up my wool items to dry. Then I came back to see how dumpster proceedings were unfolding.

I walked around the corner, and looked inside, and there she was, moving trash bags around and looking under them. Thankfully, most of the garbage seemed to be balled up in bags and not just loosely being gross.

“You know, I get the feeling about you that this isn’t something you do often,” I offered by way of conversation. She was a pretty conservative looking person, after all, outside of being inside a dumpster and rooting through garbage.

“Good. If you said I looked like I do this all the time, I would have to cut my hair or something – Ah!” Smiling, she bent over to pick up her keys, jingling and reflecting the flashlight’s beam.

We both laughed and rejoiced. I couldn’t believe she found them. She clambered out, returned my flashlight, and we chatted briefly about how not very social our building is.

“What can you tell me about the guy who shares a wall with me?” I asked, since they were across the hall from one another. “Sometimes, late at night, there are noises.” I was purposely vague, but she knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Oh. Yeah. It wouldn’t surprise me. He has pancreatic cancer, so I think he’s living for the moment.”

We said goodbye, and she went into her apartment and I into mine. I washed my hands and then read a little bit, but my mind wasn’t on it. I was reflecting instead on living for the moment.

I am tempted, occasionally, to leave the front door of Manland unlocked for quick trips to the gas station or the drug store. This has greatly annoyed previous girlfriends of mine.

The way I figure it, there’s an outer door that protects me slightly from random passers-by, so the only people who would be trying the knob would be my neighbors, and I seriously doubt that Upstairs Cutie has any interest whatsoever in purloining my bicycles.

I do, however, believe that locks keep honest people honest. If the pot smoke across the hall from me were to clear for a few moments, those neighbors might find themselves rummaging through my kitchen for snacks before they even knew what happened, which is presumably how most events in their lives transpire.

But really, the main problem with the idea of leaving my door unlocked, outside of the scorn of some of my associates, is my own behavior. In the process of running whatever quick errand I have to run, I invariably forget that I’ve left my door open to save time, and only remember when I put the key in the lock to unlock it.

Upon turning the key, it moves more easily than it should, and I feel a brief tickle at my neck as the Vulture of Shame glides over me.

But what is a man to do? I’m tired from a bike ride. I’m sweaty. My head and hairstyle give the impression that someone has stapled a face to a chicken’s ass, but I know I want to have a cold beer in my hand under the hot shower and there are none in the fridge.

I can’t put on regular clothes in my condition, as they’d have to be washed, or burned. So I pull on my sweatpants, throw on my “Want cheap gas? Pull my finger!” tee shirt, and head out for a quick mission to snag a pot pie and some cold beers, hoping like hell that I don’t see anyone I know or want to know more nakedly.

Upstairs Cutie seems to have a sense for when I am outside Manland looking as stupid as possible and chooses these moments to emerge or come home. Where is she when I am having new golden trimming fitted to the handcrafted saddle for my warhorse Mr. Gallops? Brushing her hair, I guess, or drawing flowers or whatever girls do, but certainly not paying attention.

In last night’s case, the operation went off without a hitch. I didn’t see anyone hot enough to embarrass me, I got my items, and I charged home safely unseen. Then I put on some tunes, cracked a coldie, and got in a hot shower, all the while smiling the smile of a gentleman well pleased.

The weather is getting warmer, I’m injury free, and my calendar is full of almost nothing besides my work and riding bikes.

Happiness, my friends!