Milk was a bad choice

Got to love the code Orange ozone days for a road ride. 8 of us still pumped out 27 miles pretty dang fast and none of us had milk before so all was good.

Friday night the 1st is the local crit race in town so if you are in the area swing by the shop and hang out in front with us. ( its also Pony Boy's Birthday so we will have some special puppy things for him...or at least I will)

We have built Jeff's prototype Mountain Goat Route 29 FS and he is going to take it to DuPont this Sunday to try everything out. We will then strip her down when we get back and make Jeff take her to paint and get some nice colors. My Route 29 SS is almost ready to ride as well and I am going to take it to DuPont as well. David from the Pisgah Area SORBA is hoping to meet us up there to show us some cool routes for our Cackalacky Sunday ride.

Other than that the shop is running pretty normal. Lots of bikes going out the doors with happy owners. I think that people are really understanding that waiting for a great deal on a 2008 just isn't likely when 2009s are sitting right next to them with exact spec and $50-100 price increases on virtually every model(somehow a couple bikes are escaping this)

We are also seeing(like every other shop in the US) a bunch of customers bringing out their older rides and having us tune and "commuterize" them. Bags and racks are hard to get right now but we have a pretty good stock and do have a new one coming in tomorrow that I think will be great for lots of our customers.

Go By Bike

sign up or the cute bunny gets it.

Bike rides and other stuff

It looks like we are homing in on a ride in DuPont for the Sunday ride during the Cackalacky Cup weekend. Sean, Jeff, Darrell and I will head to DuPont State Forrest (Aug 3rd) to pre-ride and find a good route. We are hoping to ride the slick rock trail and see a few of the cool waterfalls. I will try to remember to take the GPS and will show the route when we get back.

The road ride tonight was pretty dang hot. Still had ten guys out and put in a good ride down into LNSP and back around. Everyone got to wave at my grandmother as we passed her house and Sean and I tried to find Jeff's groundhog buddy as we passed Fox Den CC but failed in our quest. That makes two weeks in a row that I have failed to meet Jeff's new buddy and I am starting to wonder if his commuting has him thinking stuff up just to tell me things when he gets to the shop(never know).

I dropped my new Goat frame off at the Powdercoaters Monday and hope to have it back next week. Since we have a silver Thomson seatpost to fit it at the shop, I wanted a silver stem to match it. Well, I had a black stem already that I was not using so my brain said that I should just polish it out...my thumb now hurts and I think I have it to where I will be happy with it but I still may do some more work on it. Polishing something like that from black anodized is not a easy walk in the park. I had originally thought that I may do it to some Fleegle bars and now know that I dont care if they are black! I really can't wait till they boys call and tell me the frame is ready to pick up. We did receive Kees Goat frame and fork from SyCip. It is the first frame that we have had done in butcher paper and I really like how the color came out. We are finalizing what decal color Kees wants and we will get it all purrdied up and out to its new loving owner.

All for now...wESd

We didn't ride so we can ride

Instead on doing our weekly Thursday night mountain bike ride, Jeff Sean Darrell and I went to the second meeting of the Iredell County Parks and Rec. master plan. This is the first time since 1977 that Iredell County has made a plan for Parks and Rec. The county has hired a firm to tell them what the people of Iredell want through questionnaires. Over 85% said that they wanted more greenways and "green" areas. Most people at the meeting had their own agenda, most of those being for some sort of ball field and yes while I believe that we need ball fields for people to play on the questionnaire showed that was not what the citizens of Iredell county thought was most important but we had to talk about them anyways. One of the topics that was brought up was the fact that when the new ball fields are made that everyone wants more parking for the users. We brought up the idea that they should build the greenways that are wanted more than the fields and have them lead to Parks and Rec areas so users can walk/ride to those areas and not have to drive. The guy from the firm did say that they are going to recommend lots of greenways and even had a thing showing that they would recommend 35 miles of mountain bike trails...sweet.

They hope to have a full recommendation by the end of August for the County and the plan is for hopeful completion of 2020. We will see but I hope something works. I think that the greenways are what every city needs to make things better for everyone. We have tons of customers that drive to Virginia to ride their greenways and spend money in their state when they could stay here and support our own economy if we had the greenways that will be proposed. Sounds simple to me, only time will tell.

Cackalacky Coming up fast

The time is coming up very fast for another Cackalacky Cup. We have talked to Captain Dondo and he will be heading our way for the third year in a row and will bring Frank the Welder with him this year. I am very excited to meet FTW, he has worked in the industry for many many builders and seen a lot of cool things in his tenure. We just got the final YES from Rody at Groovy Cycleworks that he will be coming down as well and hopes to bring Bill Grove with him.
We will have the time trial series at ITUSI again which was very fun last year and the best part of the weekend for me is always the trip to Pisgah on Sunday for a ride. I am looking at a couple of different routes and think that as of right now it will come down to the slick rock trail in Du Pont or Turkey Pen. I hope to go pre-ride both of them before Cackalacky to see which one will do for this year.
More to come as plans are finalized, as always, if you have any questions just let us know...wESd