Exercise Bike

So FedEx came yesterday to deliver my exercise bike (Everlast E260 Upright Exercise Bike) I had purchased from Costco, but unfortunately they needed my signature, which I provided today on the little slip they left me. I came home today and there’s this giant box sitting in front of my door. I did get home after 11pm today, but after dinner, I started building it. Meanwhile, Stranger Than Fiction was being played. I had started watching the movie during dinner. The movie ended and I started Employee of the Month. Funny thing was this movie was filmed inside a Costco (or a look-alike) which they renamed to Super Club. I finished building the bike halfway through this movie, despite having to take it apart multiple times because as a guy I made assumptions about the instructions and when I had multiple parts left over, I had to consult the manual.

Here’s the finished product:

Interestingly enough, the front leg of this bike has wheels, so I just lift the behind and push it to the center of the living room (in front of the couch) and exercise as I watched the remainder of the movie. Initially I had the arms more upright, but it was blocking a chunk of the movie, so I decided to lower it. Since I no longer have the Pro Club membership, I get an extra $2xx per year, so this bike’s mostly paid for by the extra cash, so I don’t really have any qualms.

Speaking of Costco, I was looking at my latest American Express bill and noticed a $25 charge at Issaquah Costco on the exact same day of my TV purchase where the total came up to be $18xx. I was like, I couldn’t have gone back to Costco and made another purchase. That was the day I had to call up Derek to come help me with loading the TV in my car. I was thinking… did I get Costco gasoline that day. Could’ve been it, but somewhere down the bill, I noticed that the merchant for Costco gas is different from the Costco store. I start digging for my TV bill and was wondering maybe they made 2 separate charges. Found the bill, but the amount matches the $18xx amount on my credit card bill.

I’m scratching my head and thinking what could it have been. I decided to print my credit card bill and go to Costco and ask them what the $25 charge was for when I remember… That was for my membership upgrade from Gold to Executive. That’s right, I wanted to take advantage of the extra 2% I get back, which I completely made back already with this purchase (the 2 extra % will bump me to $36 extra in rebates). That got me thinking, the difference between the Gold and Executive membership is $50. How did they decide on the $25 charge. I got my membership sometime in August, so it’s little over half the year already, so that would most likely be the reason for only charging half the membership fee.