New Hours?

Been thinking about changing things up lately.

The idea is closing Sunday and Monday. This would allow the three of us (Danny, Tony and I) to all get 2 days off a week (good for us) and to have 3 people working the shop during all business hours (good for the customers, and us).
We've just gotten busy enough that it is getting stressful to run the shop with just two people, particularly when those two people are running the floor and also are mechanics trying to complete several repairs that day.

So, I guess I'm throwing this out there looking for a little feedback from our customers. Does this seem like a bad idea to you? Will you swear off Bikeworks for life? Or will it be a non issue?

A big boy business would probably do something like analyze the sales data, crunch some numbers, and decide if it's a wise choice. But I'd personally prefer to base our decision on anonymous responses to a post on our blog.

So if you would, please let me know what you think.

thanks
Dan

Missie the Missle : Say it aint so.....

Just saw this....

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/jun/18/0618_cyclistmissile/

That's just a bummer. Guess being an ex-world champion doesn't pay the bills.

Also, awesome websites:

http://thisisphotobomb.com/

http://www.sexypeople-blog.com/

And awesome videos that I found thanks to How to avoid the bummer life






Bueno bye

Getting all roadie.

Been putting some miles in on the road bike lately.
Yesterday Swintoni and I raced in the Sandia Crest road race. It was good times. That is certainly a hard race. I'm hoping I finished somewhere mid pack in my race (the Cat 4, 5's race).
The highlight of the event for me was getting to race on my dirty new wheelset, a pair of Edge Composite rims laced up to American Classic hubs, with tubular tires.
Check out their stuff:

http://www.edgecomposites.com/

I also just noticed that they have an unbelievable demo deal, details described on their site. They are willing to let you ride a pair of their wheels for a week for free! We're talking about $2,000 wheelsets being loaned out to strangers for abuse. That is how confident they are you are going to freak out about how your bike rides with a hot wheelset on it.

I was freaked out a little yesterday riding my bike with my new wheels. Being a light guy, I have never experienced coasting past people like that before. I think riding a completely different bike, but with standard box section wheels, would have felt more familiar than my bike with these new wheels on it. But I quickly got used to them, and they are fantastic.

Anyways, I'm a little excited. Tomorrow evening is the Tuesday Night Crit, and I'm excited about that too.

Also, this sunday is the Ben Hall Memorial ride. It isn't really a race, just an organized, very difficult mountain bike ride around 10K, Faulty, etc, that many people will try and do as fast as they can.
Ben was a good friend of ours, who got killed in 2004 in Moab during a mountain bike race. Every summer since then, Hawke Morgan and Stevie at Fat Tire have put on this memorial ride, which is really cool. There will also be a potluck afterwards at Doc Long. Check out the details:

http://www.bcdracing.com/epic.html

The Bikeworks guys will be there, and hope we see some of you all out too.

Hope everybody has a good week.

Never go to work.

I took today off, it was sweet.



I painted the ceiling in my kitchen. And you know what that means! Next time I'm not at work, I'll be painting the walls! Yay.

We had some fun the past couple of weekends not being at work. Thanks everybody for putting up with our ridiculous hours and letting us go play. None of that for a while, back to the ol' grindstone.

I'll have some hot hot bike porn to show off soon. Like Danny and my new wheelsets, Edge carbon tubulars laced up to American Classic hubs with Sapim spokes, hand build by danny, weighing in at 1080 grams a set. Ohhh dirty. Never had tubies before, guess if your going to do it, might as well do it right.

Smooches

Racing is fun. Lets do it again!

We all took the weekend off, closed up shop, and headed up to Angel Fire to participate in the Chile Challenge race.
It was sweet. We all love out little bike shop, but it certainly is nice to get away once in a while. Got back yesterday feeling rejuvenated and sassy.
Danny and I raced the Cross Country, and we had several other friends out there representing Bikeworks in the Mountain Cross, Downhill, and Super D events. It was a good time all around.

If you want to check out results, they can be found here:

Angel Fire Results

In fact, we had so much fun not working, we're going to close up shop this weekend and do it again! This weekend is the Pajarito Punishment race, at the Pajarito Ski area outside of Los Alamos.
Check it out:
http://nmmtb.org/#

The Cross Country race is on Saturday, which Danny and I will participate in, and the Downhill race is on Sunday. We are a major sponsor of the DH race. Tony has been busy getting all kinds of sweet prizes to give away, and we will be raffling off a frame from Transition to one lucky racer.

So, we encourage you to come up and play with us. It's a beautiful mountain, even if you aren't inclined to race, and is a great place to spend the day outside.

In other news, Charlie once again has a new toy:



Perhaps his best looking bike yet. This is a Maverick / Spot collaboration. One of only three Maverick hardtails around. Originally this bike was a one of a kind project for Interbike

http://bikemag.com/gallery/interbike_08_9er/

But Charlie and one other lucky Maverick fanatic bike shop owner convinced the guys at Maverick to make them one. And the original ended up in the hands of Dale, of Dales Pale Ale.

Who's bike is this? Oh, it says so on the headtube:

It says "Charlie" on the right, and "LE 29er #3" on the left.

The frame is made to work with the belt drive, but Charlie isn't going to use the belt for now. Why you ask? Because as he puts it, he "has a Chubby for Chub hubs."


We will be lacing these hubs up to some Edge Composite carbon mountain rims for ol' Chucky, and it will be ridiculous. Unfortunately for now, the Chubs are only available in freewheel configurations, which means no belt drive, but we have been told cassette hubs will be available later this year, in both geared and SS versions.

In other bike porn, we have recieved our first Carbide SL frame from Tomac:


With 90mm of rear wheel travel, this carbon fiber wonder weighs just over 4.5lbs on our scale in a size large, with the rear shock. It's a beautiful frame, and just plain satisfying to hold in your hands. This bike has been getting some serious attention from the press lately:

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/tomac-carbide-sl-2009.html

Speaking of Tomac, there were a few pros out in Angel Fire this weekend showing off what the Type X is good for; going crazy fast. Taking 1st and 2nd place in the mens Pro XC, and 3rd and 4th in the Short Track XC, the Type X frame is quickly showing itself to be an extremely capable race machine.

http://tomacfan.blogspot.com/

And last but not least, a bad ass old Yeti ARC frame converted to accept a belt drive.






That's it, back to fixing bikes. Thanks for reading.