Details, details, details...

I spent some time today talking to my friend Kendall over at Ritchey. How weird too because I went on my lunch ride today in my Ritchey socks... creepy.

We were talking about the new bikes coming and all of the incarnations things go through to get to a final bike. My cohort in crime, our Product Manager for all brands here, Mike Varley and I stared at so many widgets and doo-dads on the way to putting together the bikes. I acknowledge up front that there will be people who will wonder why we selected this part or that part, since that happens all the time, but I really think things look spectacular. You start off thinking you'll use bar and stem "A" and then move to "B" and then "C" and then maybe back to "B"... before you go to "D". Tires? Don't even get me started on tires. I've ridden some good ones and some bad ones, but I am confident with the tires selected. I've ridden several different saddles too. As Mike said once, "you better stop soon or your ass won't know where home is." Touche'... or should that be tooshy? Colors are even harder to decide, so I decided to take a page out of some other people's books and am doing them all in black. Or maybe white. Although I really like red too... dammit... I guess I have to think about that some more. Colors are always tough and some people will say we did it right and some others will wonder what the heck we were smoking (some bad tires).

Ok, so let's say the bikes are done. Great. Nap time then, right? Wrong! Way wrong. Now it is time to start planning things like Interbike and catalogs, new websites and other sales functions. The fun is just now beginning. Getting the bikes to bed was merely the beginning of the silliness that is now on the horizon. One of the things that amazes me is that Mike used to do all of this by himself... for Haro bmx, Haro atb, Del Sol cruisers and Masi. I get dizzy just thinking about the colors for my bikes. I can't imagine trying to work it all out for all of the brands. That's probably why he's so skinny (it has nothing to do with the better diet and more miles than me).

I need a beer.

Tim