I know it's been a while since I've posted and the posts have been a little "light"... but it's still amazingly busy after Interbike. You may remember that I've talked for the past few years about working towards getting away from model years with our products. Well, we've done that, but we've also decided to go to two product releases a year as well. That means that the Fall '07 products you see in the new catalog (which you can
download from the current company website) are not even on the ground yet and I am wrapping up design of the Spring '08 products. In fact, my esteemed colleague and Product Manager (Wayne- "Fuzzy"- Doran) is headed to Taiwan next week to work out a bunch of product details. Shortly afterwards, in early November, I'll be headed to Taiwan again and then on to Tokyo for the Japanese version of Interbike- called
Cycle Mode. So, I think maybe, just maybe you can see why the posting has been light and why I'm slowly, but certainly, losing my mind.
(Not that I'm complaining because I still feel like a lucky bastard to have this job... just in case the bosses are reading...)Anyway, there has been plenty to talk about over this gap in my posting and I really don't even know where to begin. I never really finished posting about the Eurobike show and the products there, I didn't really talk about all the Initerbike stuff, I've skipped over lots of the cool things that have been going on with people, places and things... and the ongoing saga that is professional bike racing. BUT... I will do my best to get back on track and back to covering it all.
I have recently been riding my Speciale Fixed a lot and have been enjoying it immensely. I had been riding it for the past several months set up very close to my Kilo position, so that I could do the occasional Kilo workout on my lunch rides (thinking I was going to be racing a lot more than I did this year... once). I recently rebuilt it with a more traditional track/ road set up;
It's set up with a bunch of parts I've been holding on to for a while-
- SunTour Superbe Pro track cranks (167.5mm length) and NOS Superbe Pro bottom bracket- NJS stamped!
- Sugino Mighty Comp 46t chainring and Campagnolo 16t cog.
- TTT Mod Dazzan alloy track sprint bars- a whopping 39cm wide too!
- Deda Zero stem.
- Old Lorica bar tape that was on my first track bike from 1992/93- complete with all the scuffs from crashes.
The saddle is a sample, with a couple colors wrong, of what we will be using for the new artwork on our Masi-branded saddles. The "Masi" lettering is not going to be yellow, as it is shown, nor is the Masi "M". However, the rest is pretty close- though the off-center Masi headbadge artwork will be black. The cool thing is that the saddle sample is of our low-end saddle... but it rides really, really well. With some nice Ti rails, this thing would be on a few more of my bikes. With the shape, curved at the rear, it kinda reminds me of an old
San Marco Concor (my second most favorite saddle ever- behind the Arione).
All in all, it feels really good to be riding my bikes again. All the travel has made it very difficult to keep any kind of rhythm and I'm sure to lose it again with the travel on the horizon. Still, I'm enjoying each revolution of the cranks I am able to get.
I've also been spending a lot of time on my SoulVille. Yep, I'm cruising around in mega style on a 20" SoulVille from our demo fleet from Vegas. It's a pre-production bike, so the fender rubs the tire in the rear, the fork axle-to-crown height is short and the virtual top tube length is too short so I get toe overlap on the fender. Still, even though it is a little small for me, it is a dream to ride. Once the final version is done, it'll danged-near perfect. You folks will
LOVE this bike when it finally arrives- most likely in late December or early January. I'm actually going to be playing around with this bike quite a bit. I'm planning to load it with a rack and baskets.. more on that later... and will be testing the platform for a true utility bike. More to follow on that, so stay tuned. I'll also have photos soon too. I may remove the fenders and do some other mods, so it won't likely look like the catalog bike... at all.
Ok, time to get ready for my nephew's christening. It's raining here today, so like a true SoCal resident, I'm not out riding. Hey, it only rains twice a year here... so why bother?
Tim
(Let's see if the
BSNYC comes by to rip my bike apart... go easy- I'm delicate.)
Azuma, my distributor in Japan, set up this booth with the other brands they distribute; Easton Components, Kore Components and Cervelo bicycles being the biggest... aside from Masi, of course.
The Masi sign stood out really well in the sea of brand banners.
Looked good from a distance too.
Me, hanging out with the bikes- I really liked the way the Coltello race frame was built up as an urban fixie with riser bar and suede Keirin saddle. Hiro, my Keirin racing brother at Azuma built the bike up and was very eager to know what I thought of it. He was very happy that I liked it. It was really great to watch the Japanese consumers flock to it and take pictures with their cameras and camera phones.
One of the coolest things was the Japanese version of the Masi catalog. It's really cool, for me, to see all the Masi stuff written up in Kanji. I'll have to scan a few pages of the catalog this week and post them here- I got a big kick out of it.
Nothing makes a product guy happier than watching people stare at your products. Since I don't speak Japanese, I couldn't really talk to many of the consumers and mostly hovered around, waiting for the chance to answer questions when possible. It was awesome to see the reception the bikes were getting. I spent the two days of the show smiling from ear to ear. (Terai-san is the man in the grey suit waving and Masa Nagoya is standing next to him in the pink shirt.)
There were also test bikes there and they were on the road nearly constantly! Many of the test riders came back with very large smiles after riding the bikes... which in turn had me smiling very broadly too.
