Reliving my sporting youth

The Lakers vs. the Celtics in the NBA finals! The Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) goes over the Gavia Pass! I'm having '80's flashbacks all over the place.

Growing up, I was all about Magic, Kareem, Worthy (pictured), Cooper, Rambis, Byron Scott and the rest of my beloved Lakers. Scott Jacobson and I would go back and forth between my Lakers and his Celtics and for most of the '80's the debate raged on. Of course, I've enjoyed fairly recent success as a Lakers fan, but this is sooooo much better. The gold vs. the green will look so sweet (assuming that I'm actually able to watch any of it).







Needless to say though, I am a bigger cycling fan than basketball, so I can't help but be nostalgic when the Giro d'Italia included the Gavia Pass on today's stage, 20 years after my favorite cyclist, Andy Hampsten, somehow willed himself over the snow covered, gravel road on his way to claiming the only American victory in the history of Italy's grand tour. It's been fun reading interviews and retrospectives from the '88 race over the last month. It's been a great reminder of the early days of American cycling's introduction to the European stage and why I fell in love with this sport in the first place.


This year's Giro will end tomorrow and has been a fun one to follow online (I don't have cable or Direct TV, so no access to any televised coverage). The riders will start tomorrow's time trial stage with only four seconds separating first and second place. The current leader is Alberto Contador who won last year's Tour de France while a part of the Discovery Channel Team and he should fair pretty well since he is a better time trialer than Riccardo Riccò and the next best guy is two minutes back. Even though Contador is Spanish and the team is registered in a European nation and sponsored by the government of Kazakhstan there is still a US connection. The team rides Trek bikes designed and built in Waterloo, Wisconsin!

A bike tip from your old uncle Matt and demo pics

If you have it in mind to buy a bike this summer, you may want to do so sooner rather than later. Many manufacturers run on a September to August production schedule where you would see 2009 models begin to arrive at summer's end, so in terms of bike retail season, we are already nearing the end of 2008 even though summer is just starting. With the new model year, comes new pricing and we are already seeing 2008 bikes becoming unavailable.

I got a peek at some of the 2009 pricing and costs are going up. Quite a bit in some cases. So, if you are interested in a sub $500 bike you may want to buy very soon before the new pricing comes into effect. This is almost in direct contradiction to my usual "buy late season closeout or right after the first of the year" philosophy (which I think still holds true for high end bikes), but I am seeing such a shortage of bikes for that budget minded, recreational rider that I think you're better off buying now if you can afford to.

Doomsdaying aside, I was finally able to get a few pics from the demo that I was able to do a few weeks ago in Huron with the Trek Demo Fleet.


Me setting a couple of guys up for test rides on a Trek Remedy 9 and Trek Fuel EX9. The trailer had about 35-40 bikes in it retailing from about $1700 to $5400. We set up probably two dozen of the bikes for demos while I was there.




Me riding a Trek 69'er single speed. This was one of my favorite bikes of the day primarily because I ride a lot of single speed at home with my Gary Fisher Rig. The nice thing with a single speed is that it's all about picking the best lines, measuring your effort and doing whatever it takes to cover the obstacles in front of you. If you aren't successful, it's your fault for not riding smart.








Me riding a Trek 69'er 3x9 geared hardtail. You can tell that they gave us the absolute best location on the entire fairgrounds with all of the garbage and heavy machinery.

Improvisitory dining and other Memorial Day events

Memorial Day found me at work (again) where we had high hopes with good weather and were running from open to close. The only downside of the day was that I had four customers who I needed to special order bikes for. This on a day when if I would have been able to sell them something that I had in stock I would have received commission and a half (3%) instead of the normal 2%. Oh well. I had a really good day anyway and enjoyed the pace more than I have over the last 10 days.

I did have to build a bike myself for a customer during my lunch break because we didn't have the size that we needed. I had tried to push it off until later in the day, but the customer needed to be on the road before when I thought we could finish it, so I told them two hours and planned to build it myself. I grabbed my lunch (yogurt and granola) and headed to the shop to build. I reached the shop before realizing that I didn't have a spoon. I really didn't want to run back up to my desk, so I improvised and used a Pedro's Tools tire lever instead. I think the shop guys found great humor in the utensil selection.

Meanwhile, back at the homestead Amy, Jim and Marilyn put a coat of paint on the inside of the garage and hung peg racks and some peg board to get the garage put together a bit more. By the time I got home, Jim was putting on the finishing touches and everything was looking great. The only casualty of the day was the beer that I knocked over while putting my bike back on the Thule car that spilled all over the floor and camping chairs. The floor was easy to clean, the camping chairs may smell like beer for the rest of their existence. That should be fun the next time we take them to a church function!

A Day with the Trek Demo Fleet

I had a great time hanging out yesterday at the State Fairgrounds in Huron with Ken from the Trek demo program and Mike our Trek rep. We were there as part of the first South Dakota Outdoor Expo. The store was involved in kayak, bow hunting, air rifle and bike demos throughout the grounds and Josiah and I spent most of our day helping set people up for test rides on high end Trek and Gary Fisher bikes.

We arrived Friday night and took a look at where we were set up. They had built a demo track for the mountain bike stuff that needed some serious modifying. Think of a motocross track on a smaller scale with a simple out and back design. It was way too aggressive with some obstacles being completely unrideable for all but expert riders. We managed to track down a bobcat and tamed it down a bit. Unfortunately, the demo truck was closed up by that time and we had to wait for the next morning to give it a test run.

We arrived at about 7:30 Saturday morning and helped set up the tents and bikes. The demo fleet consists of 30-40 bikes hauled in a trailer by a beautifully decked out VW Toureg and Ken who handles bike demos from Toronto to Manitoba to Arkansas. He had been in Detroit the week before and goes to Winnipeg next. Ken's got a full assortment of tools, his service stand and everything else that you need for a successful demo.

Armed with bikes, Josiah and I headed out to give the course a go. Neither of us was horribly successful as Josiah got hung up between a couple of rises that didn't have enough space between them and wound up on his back and I came off of a table top obstacle and had to bail out when I lost control. Thankfully, I stayed upright and held onto the bike, but I didn't manage to actually stay on the bike. More course modification ensued and we finally had a course that we felt gave riders a chance to really try the bikes out without fear of death.

One of the fears that I had for the event was that it was advertised almost exclusively to the hunter/fisherman crowd and that we would go almost completely unnoticed. This fear was compounded when we saw that we were on the outskirts of the event behind several buildings. You were either going to have to really look for us or stumble onto us to know we were even there.

For the first two hours, we saw nobody and were getting pretty frustrated. Josiah and I had a chance to really work the course on some really great bikes, so it wasn't a complete loss for us. I started with the Gary Fisher Hi-Fi Carbon Pro and Superfly (both about $5000 retail bikes) and rode the Fisher Hi-Fi Pro 29 and Paragon and Trek Remedy 9, Fuel EX 9, geared 69'er and 69'er single speed and was the only one to do a road demo all day with a Trek Madone 5.2 with a beautiful Bontrager Race X Lite wheelset (an upgrade over the regular Madone 5.2).

I enjoyed pretty much everything that I rode, but kept coming back to the Hi-Fi Carbon Pro and 69'er single speed. I've never really had a chance to ride much full suspension, so the Hi-Fi was a whole new experience for me. I own a Fisher single speed, so the 69'er single was a natural fit for me. I did really enjoy the 69'er geared bike as well and know that was probably Josiah's favorite of the day. I don't know how many laps we rode, but I rode everything that came out of the truck and spent most of the day from 8:00 am to probably 5:30 pm on a bike.

We finally started seeing some action late in the morning and wound up doing 53 demo rides through the day where we would set up the rider, give them some instruction and then head out on the course with them. The course was still a bit aggressive for most of the riders that we saw and we had about an 80% crash rate, no injuries (other than pride) and lots of smiles. We had a lot of teenage riders and probably about 20 adults through the course of the day. Most of the riders learned how to navigate the course and wiped out less as they became more familiar with the speed they needed to carry.

We packed up at 6:00 and they are back at it again today, but I had to head home after grabbing some prime rib with the guys so that I could be home for church this morning. I rolled in about 10:00 last night and wanted to watch the news because KSFY had a cameraman at the event that shot some at the mountain bike course, but of course when the story aired, it was all about hunting and fishing. Go figure.

Sickness and Seminary Class

By the time I got home from church on Wednesday night, I was feeling exhausted from too much work, not enough sleep and a few attempts at 5:30 am bike rides to get a few miles in. Throughout the night my stomach was unsettled, head hurt, alternated between being too hot and too cold and found myself wide awake at 3:00 am despite being physically exhausted. I actually got out of bed, grabbed the iPod and listened to a little Rita Springer just letting it wash over me as I tried to soak body and spirit in rest.

Thursday has been my day off for the last year, so I knew I'd have a chance to sleep some throughout the day, but I had a few morning committments that I feared I might have to miss. Thankfully, a little Tylenol, some Sudafed and some Airborne had me feeling well enough to take on the morning.

Amy and I had been invited to be guest speakers for a worship leadership class at Sioux Falls Seminary by Cory Seibel who spoke at Mercy last fall and I really didn't want to miss it. Thankfully, things went well as we talked about our current roles in worship, what we've done in the past and what worship looks like at Mercy Church.

After class, Amy headed off on her new bike to teach at USF and I had coffee with Shel at Black Sheep. The school year seems to make it almost impossible for us to get together outside of church activities, so I was glad I was able to keep the appointment. I think the last time we'd been able to do that was Good Friday and we're hoping that we'll be able to get more face time with each other over the summer.

By last night, I was feeling okay, but not great and decided to skip our Thursday night product meeting at the store and rest instead. This morning, after a good night's sleep and a little food, I feel much better. That's a good thing since I work the next six days straight. I'm hoping this won't start a new cycle of fatigue and illness.

Chewed Out

I have been really fortunate to not have any customer service nightmares to this point in my sales career, but yesterday was a doozie. I had a call from a customer about three weeks ago wanting to order a bike for her son's birthday that we no longer had in stock. I tracked one down at one of our other stores, had it sent to us and when she called a little over a week ago to confirm that it was there, everything looked rosy.

Yesterday morning, she showed up to pick up the bike. The only problem was, we no longer had it. I don't know what happened, but the bike that I ordered for her got sold to somebody else. I don't know whether it was intentional or accidental, but I got to deal with one very upset customer as a result. She had taken the day off from work to come pick up the bike that she had ordered and called to confirm and there was no way for us to send it home with her that day.

She was teary eyed, shaking and asked to talk to a manager. I called Jen over and we tried to move on to the solution side of the problem, but the customer needed time to vent and the two of us were the nearest targets. She was absolutely justified in her anger. I don't blame her a bit for being upset because it was definitely our screw up.

Jen and I offered the best solution scenarios that we could which included trying to order the bike again (knowing it would probably arrive too late) and substituting another bike at the same price which normally we sell for $80 more. After she talked to her husband on the phone, she settled on the replacement bike. I tried talking her into one frame size that I think would be better for her son right now, but that he would outgrow in about three years, but she opted for the next size up which I don't even think the kid will be able to ride. I was not going to argue with her about it, but told her that I would be happy to order the original bike just in case he doesn't like or doesn't fit the one she took home. She declined. After I helped her load the bike, I told her to give me a call if there was anything else I could do for her. I expect I'll probably hear from her soon if her son can't ride the bike because it's too big.

I pretty much expended all of my energy for the day on that one disaster and it wasn't even 11:00 yet. I spent a little time trying to see if I could figure out where the original bike had gone and who had sold it, but wasn't able to make any progress so I decided I just needed to let it go. Hopefully, that never happens to me again.