Are we done yet?

This week has absolutely flown by. Not sure if the holiday mess has turned things up or if I have hit what is known to some of us as the Cracker Barrel time warp. I will clarify that for those who may not know what a Cracker Barrel time warp is. First, the Cracker Barrel is a southern-ish glorified Denny's with more random crap than a swap meet fixed to the walls of the inside of the restaurant. It seems like what should take no more than 45 minutes to be seated, order and eat somehow always takes 2 hours which they manage to make seem like 30 minutes. Maybe it is actually a time warp, still not sure...more details to come.

Work:
The work scene has been rocking this week. From the final few Christmas bikes making it out the door to some new products, we have been crushing it around here. We had the pleasure of a visit from the True Temper/Alpha Q boys this week. Looks like we getting another order of carbon road and cross forks as well as some steel tubing...that's right folk, steel tubing. We are going to build a few prototypes next week and I cannot wait to ride one. Not sure what I am going to have built, but I will have a few days to think about it over the holidays. Ben and Bert are great guys and we are very excited to get to work with them on a regular basis.

We are looking forward to hosting the Dirt Rag crew sometime in the next couple of months. No official plans have been made yet, but we are looking to have them down to Chattaboogie for some bike riding, custom fitting and of course some misbehaving. Maybe even a test bike for review...I will keep my fingers crossed. I will take any open bets for which lucky member of the Dirt Rag posse will get the bike to test.

Had an awesome phone conversation with my pal Brandi at Industry Nine this week. We are going to have them build us a custom 650B/27.5 wheelset for a custom bike we are going to be building for RC @ Mountain Bike Action. I am looking forward to this project for many reasons. This will be my first interaction with RC and our first 650B that will go out past the prototype stage. I am beginning to like the idea of a 27.5" wheel. But for me the 29er works well, so I am not sold just yet. I can totally see the merit of a full-suspension 650B bike. Now I want one of those. Anyone out there what to hook a brother up, just drop a line. That is about all I have on the work front at this time. More to come after the holidays.

Ride:

This week's riding schedule has been pathetic at best. Other than our Tuesday night ride, which was awesome, but freezing cold, I have made 2 solid efforts on the rollers this week and that is all. Thursday was on the books for this week, but the weather was rainy and cold, plus I went to dinner with Ben from Alpha Q. We will try again next week for sure. I plan on riding Raccoon Mountain tomorrow morning, then more obligations, then off to Nashville for Christmas. Thinking about bringing the road bike for a trip up to Joelton just like the good ole days. I need to spend some time on the road bike considering that we are doing an 81 mile training ride up the Cherohala Skyway next weekend. I think that I have ridden my road bike about 4 times since moving to Chattanooga a year ago. Not counting the rollers of course. There is way too much awesome mountain biking here to waste good riding time on the road.