How important is it?

For most of the summer I’ve been asking myself how important it really is to have your heart in cycling if you work in the industry. There are lots of people that work in the cycling industry that haven’t been on a bike since they were 12. A friend who used to work at Litespeed said that people would bring their new guns into work to show co-workers, but you’d rarely/never see them with/on a bike. There are a lot of people who work in the industry and have there hearts elsewhere. Mine wasn’t there.

I didn’t ride a bike at all this summer (other than commuting around town on rare occasion with my wife and son – the odd farmer’s market trip, etc.). I had a garage and basement full of bikes that are absolutely wonderful machines, and the most I touched them was to take some of them to an ebay lister to sell.

I was thinking about business stuff related to bikes – new websites and how to better explain the technical merits of our products – but not thinking about being on one. My mind was in the cycling industry, but my heart just wasn’t.

For the last few weeks I’ve been back and re-invigorated. Probably just in time, as we are hard upon show season and it’s time to kick it into gear for the 2012 product year. And what I’ve realized is that if your mind is in it you can get through, you can do the product development, and you can do the nuts and bolts stuff. What you need the passion for is to find satisfaction from the nuts and bolts stuff, as well as all the other parts of being in business that require inspiration.

In the end, I would say that the summer might have been a bit better if I had been where I am now. But I’ve always been a creative-type guy who has an on/off relationship with what I do. I have a feeling that this may have been the emotional respite before a huge push, and now I am stoked and ready for it.

Valmont. Word up.

So I purposefully located the Hüdz office right near the bike park that was being built in Boulder. The idea was that I could get out on a CX ride just about every day for lunch if I was this close. Well, as previously mentioned, I’ve been a big slacker and haven’t really ridden a bike since the park was opened. Thus I’d never been to Valmont Park.

Time to end that streak. Today I grabbed my favorite steel cross bike and finally headed over. In short – that s#!% flows like Cristal at a pimps wedding. (Mind you I’m not a mountain biker and I only come to this conclusion based on the fact that for my level of bike handling skill, I could ride it fast and hard and it was wicked fun [as T-Hop would say]).

I only had about 45 minutes, but you can give yourself a solid flogging there in that amount of time. Push it on the flat and uphill open sections and then recover on the technical bits full of berms and pumps. String together a bunch of different loops and the lactic acid is sure to build and clear over and again until there’s just no more clearing. Only downside – I think my favorite section I kept riding backwards. It looks like it’s supposed to be a downhill with a series of pumps on it, but I was riding it up-hill and bloody loved it.

Don’t look for me to toe the line in a cross race any time soon. Heck, I wouldn’t even count on me being a regular at Wednesday Worlds, but you can probably expect to see me at Valmont pretty regularly this fall.

That’s what riding a bike is all about…

Recovering…

It’s amazing how it usually requires a day or two to recover from any vacation. I went away for three days, was relaxed and calm as can be. Got in some good training (followed my tri-ish day with a swim and run the next day). Ate some good food (Six89 in Carbondale is fantastic – I highly recommend the striped bass). Even had a beer one day.

But then there was the trip home. The drive from Ouray to Carbondale was great. 133 is a spectacular stretch of road showing just what the diversity and history of Colorado are: Coal mining towns, western slope orchards and vineyards, dramatic aspen-covered mountainsides, and the odd fancy-ass neighborhood with Land Rovers and dogs that cost more than my car.

It’s that last leg of the return trip, those last couple hours in the car at night when you’re traversing mountain passes in rainstorms, that always does me in. I concentrate so intently on the driving so that I don’t have to slow down like most other drivers and the end result is that we get home and I can’t fall asleep for hours. This time is was about 1.30 when I finally dozed off.

Now I’m back at work and super-caffeinating so that I can get through the stack of things to do. Depending on how things go this morning, I’ll hopefully head home for lunch around 1 and ride the bike back. Either have to duck out in the middle of the afternoon or at the end of the day to get in a little ride, probably on the CX bike over at Valmont Park.

Here’s to recovering and finding a way to keep up the efforts.

About time…

Today was a bit of a banner day for me. For the first time since the late 90s I swam, biked and ran in the same day. In succession as well. Thought it certainly wasn’t anything that would remotely be called a triathlon.

I’m in Ouray trying to get a bit of peace before the build up to Interbike and all the crazy that happens with it. Mind you Interbike is an almost pointless show these days, but we go and we try to make it count so that means a good bit of work.

Anyway, Ouray is beautiful and relaxing, and about a half mile higher than my hometown of Boulder (7800 ft. vs. 5400). That makes things harder here.

I jumped into the lap pool at the hot springs here. Relative to the warm pool that I had come from it was cold as hell. So cold it hurt my inner ear. Actually they said it was 80 degrees, but it didn’t feel like it. Grabbed a swim cap and put in about 1000 meters. Out to play with my son while my wife got in some laps and then off to the room to get my bike.

Of course I brought my single-speed cross bike set up as a commuter (39×18 gear) complete with platform pedals. Not ideal, but the 32mm Challenge tubs were certainly perfect for the gravel roads around here. Unfortunately no water bottle. Some winding around on back roads lead me toward Ridgeway and Orvis hot springs. I made a U-turn and headed back on different gravel roads. Unfortunately the heat, altitude and single gear made the false flat on the way back harder than expected. Throw in a couple steep little pitches here and there (I’m only talking about 4-5%, so nothing to get worked up about) and I was taking a beating.

About 1.30 later I was back in the room, drinking water and lacing up the running shoes. I really had little if anything left and this run was really more a point of pride than anything functional. I trotted around west side of town (the lower, flatter side) for about a mile, maybe a hair more and then walked up the steep drive to the room.

So I’m working my way back. It’ll take a while, but it will be worth it I’m sure. This was a good first step and a nice compliment to the tennis that I’ve been playing and the occasional running and swimming that I’ve done. Those who know me know that I’m going at it very differently from how I did in the 90s when I was your typical self-loathing triathlete bent on self-destruction and ever-faster times. Now I want to have fun, be healthy, take time for tennis and surfing, and whatever else will make me happy, and see where it leads me.

Setting the tone…

Today as the battle in the Garden of the Gods and downtown Colo Spgs raged, I was ensconced in the comfort of the guest bedroom of our house (the only room with a TV) watching the prologue with my wife. I wasn’t planning to watch, but the enthusiasm was there, so I did.

Great to see Levi Leipheimer not on the podium. I hope he gets crushed, and hopefully the gods of cycling will smile upon me and make it so.

Great ride by Danny Summerhill, Danny Pate, and a lot of other quality Colorado riders. That was really nice to see.

Most of all, today set the tone for the rest of the PCC – and no, it had nothing to do with the racing on the road, it was about deciding what phrase or snafu of broadcast would be the trigger for the theoretical USPCC on VS Drinking Game. At first, my wife picked the consistent use of metric measures followed by a hurried translation to imperial measures (‘more than 4,000 meters, or, um, uh {for the Americans who don’t understand metric} 12,000 feet…’).

We were ready to go with that, when all of the sudden, leaping from the pack, the clear winner emerged. This wasn’t the kind of half-hearted, cagey attack you normally see on the first day of a stage race, this was savage instinct: “this innaug-ree-ul US Pro Cycling Challenge…” Arms raised in victory salute, there was no denying it. The mis-pronunciation of inaugural had laid all pretenders to the throne to waste.

And so, ladies and gentlemen; be it coffee (for a good morning hyper) or something a bit stronger, for the next week when Phil says innaug-ree-ul, you’ll need to drink…

Cheers

 

And just as quick as it was gone…

Those who know me have been aware that I have been in a bit of a malaise about cycling industry this summer. Maybe it has been a good time for me to go through it.

Last winter I was beaten severely about the face and neck by the doping sanction of a guy on the Hüdz-Subaru cyclocross team, and then the reproachable actions of that same person and some of his supporters as they essentially stole the team, dragged my name through the mud and burned bridges that I had in the cycling industry.

Follow that up with spending a couple months putting together a deal with Vaconsoliel and Ridley for Hüdz to sponsor the team this year and to then see Ricardo Ricco shoot it all to Hades by triggering the zero-tolerance for doping part of our contract less than a month later, and you can see where the wheels may have started to come off.

We kept moving forward and got a few things taken care of this year – not the least of which is the addition of the Ultegra 6700 hood to our range. We have been working on the 105-5700 hood and a number of other things and trying to keep our product development moving forward as well.

But something has been missing. At least for me. A spark. A level of excitement and enthusiasm. It’s part of the natural ebb and flow of a creative person’s process, but the ebb was longer than I’ve been used to and it got my soul to wandering. In the last two months I’ve actually filed two patents pending on tennis technology: one on a method for racket fabrication and one on a method for treating racket strings to improve performance.

Then I went to the People’s Pedal Party in Colorado Springs on Sunday before the start of the Pro Cycling Challenge (bloody awful name for a race if you ask me). I don’t like expos or things of that sort, so I really wasn’t looking forward to the event. But one oyster Po’ Boy and a cold IPA later and I was ready to set up the Hüdz booth. A friend came down with me unexpectedly at the last minute and helped make the whole thing a lot more manageable (thanks a million Jawad). It was a good thing too, because Trent got stuck in Mountain Traffic coming back from Aspen and spent a miserable 6 hours in the car to finally arrive around 5pm (PPP went from 4 to 8). And while there was nothing overt or conspicuous that happened, some how when I woke up this morning I was enthusiastic again. I was stoked about being lucky enough to have a job that is based on making cool stuff for bikes.

I was back.

I am back.

Lots of big things in the works, and hopefully some or all of them come through and I’ll have an amazing amount of blog fodder for people to read for years to come. Whatever happens, I’m glad to have more heart in the game again, rather than simply relying on the brain to keep me moving forward.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

 

Rueben’s, ummm…

On of the groovy things about having such a concentration of bicycle industry people in Boulder is that Rueben’s (incredible burgers and Belgian beer) has an industry night on Mondays where the poor and wayward bike types can come, each cheap food and drink cheap beer and BS. We’re hitting it up tonight – Eric, Trent, and I with our new marketing intern Keith. And, I believe that Trent is bringing his superstar girlfriend Amanda with him. If you’re local and not up to anything tonight, come out and say howdy…

Ordering 6700 Hoods

On the Hüdz website, you can now order 6700 Ultegra hoods from our order section. The product page should be up shortly under the Shimano Enhancement Brake Hoods section. Please note that we will not be shipping Ultegra 6700 hoods until the end of the week – probably Thursday or Friday. Ordering now will get you to the front of the queue, but won’t have them in your hands this week.

Ultegra 6700 Enhancement Brake Hoods in the flesh…

Spy-camera-quality images of the newly minted 6700-compatible hoods

Spy-camera-quality images of the newly minted 6700-compatible hoods

The quick scoop on what we did to make the Ultegra 6700 Enhancement Brake Hoods the most comfortable thing you’ve ever held (while holding a Shimano 6700 STI lever, that is):

1. A little additional material in the ‘saddle’ on the top (the area where the flat transitions to the tip at the front of the lever); 2. Our DA7900 proven flap over the shifting mechanicals makes the hood more comfortable in your hand and keeps you bike shifting better because it keeps debris out; 3. A slight crest on the top fits the contours of your thumb-palm junction better than the flat Shimano hood; 4. We thinned down the lateral sides of the hoods on the back to reduce the overall volume so that it fits somewhere between a Dura Ace lever and the Ultegra lever with a Shimano hood; 5. And, of course we have the signature finger dimple on the underside.

The mold should actually be back in the press this afternoon or tomorrow morning. We’ll dial in our molding cycle (barrel heat, pressure, molding time, cooling temp, and cooling time) to make sure that the parts are perfect, and then we’ll be going full speed with production.

We hope to have the website updated so that you can order 6700 hoods by Monday. Parts shoudl start shipping from Hüdz on Wednesday or Thursday next week. We’ll keep updates coming on this as we get closer with it…

If my life were a naturalistic movie…

The clouds would have parted this evening. But my life is not a movie of any kind, so it continues to be cold and rainy in Boulder and one of the most dour Mays that I can remember.

On the upside, I was handed three perfect sets of Ultegra 6700-compatible hoods tonight. These are from the first proof of the mold that started this afternoon. The mold will run through part of the night and we’ll get 100 sets or so out for testing, then the mold will be pulled to change some things with the water lines (this mold required a complex parting line [a first for us] that changed how the water lines are running – if that makes sense to anyone here), and put back in on Friday for production.

The mold will run 24 hours a day for approximately the next week and we’ll start shipping orders the middle of next week – if everything goes according to plan.

The fact that we are proofing the mold today means that is is three weeks behind schedule for production, on a project that is a solid year late. When the mold-maker that our production company hired briefly checked himself into a mental hospital during mold fabrication I think we saw just how little you can control in a project sometimes…

Anyway, good things are on the rise…

We’re busy growing, solidifying, and diversifying the company this year and this new mold is a great step in that direction. Now all I have to do is email the 2,313 people that have been pleading with me for the last couple months to get these Ultegra hoods done and let them know we finally did it.

That’s going to be fun.

Now if Carlos Sastre could just find a way to put 7 minutes into Alberto Contador in the next 10 days…