...And, cast on to them was a boy who they named pickles....

One of the great things in life is to work in a bike shop. The unmistakable smell of the bikes and grease makes all bike shops smell the same. This, along with working with people who share in the great passion for bikes makes an entertaining environment. Then there is defiantly a hierarchy of the bike shop that kids of this generation do not seem to understand, comprehend or.... enjoy. One of the other great things to come out of this environment would be the random nick names given in affection to various workers.

Working in a bike shop, you are living in a fishbowl. Some customers can be demanding and want you to give them everything for below cost. And, others want their repairs completed immediately on their huffy because they are going to ride later that day. They say, “oh, I have some errands to do and I will be back in an hour”, two weeks later the bike is still hanging from the hook in the back. Or, they will wait and watch and question you as try to fix their bikes and can’t understand why they need $50 in more repairs because some kid at Walmart has set their beloved huffy up wrong.... but these customers tend to be the exception as most are fantastic.

As a mechanic working in a bike shop, you get to see kids who want to work in a bike shop come and go. These kids are put to the test almost immediately when they start to work, this can be a hard concept for some of today’s youth. Long gone are the days where we were taught that one must apprentice and learn as much as you can before you are handed a $5,000 bike let alone a $200 bike.

Bike shops today seem to attract their share of young kids who believe that they would like to work with bikes. Of these kids there are only a few that will make it until they leave for college. The people and the demand for work will soon weed out the kids who do not have attention for detail. But, it is the one kid who know their place in the hierarchy order of pecking that will earn the respect of the mechanics and ultimately the coveted nickname... one that they will use when they are around. As time passes soon the young will graduate high school and move on to college and this will be interrupted by the bell on the front door ringing as it is opened by another kid being cast into employment in a bike shop and a voice from the back will yell “Lets call him Pickles!”

Why Italy is cool.

Besides the obvious of choices of Andrea Tafi and Paolo Bettini, Italy has some cool factor going for it.

Number 1 is:

And in particular the 159 Sportwagon:

Which look unbelievable in person, especially when they are used by the polizia.

When driving in your 159 sportswagon on the highway you can stop at an AutoGrill and have lunch for two and a Cafe´:

Just to balance out the automobile:

and,

I will leave you with the ever lovable Fiat:

Sitting in a circle chipping canties while drinking coffee.

Back in college, one of my professors had a theory on why they find so many flint shards along the Illinois River. His theory was as follows; women were the gathers and provided much on the food and other necessities for daily living and men were the hunters and spent more time sitting around in circles talking and making arrowheads out of flint. The professor went on to say that this trait in men and the need to hang out has been carried on through the years and can still be seen today in our society. Tim Allen’s television show “Home Improvement” was a great example of his theory.

As I think back to when I was young, my father followed in this theory. My father would take us to the bowling alley during the cold winter days in Minnesota. There he would meet his friends, one of whom managed the shop during the winter on weekends, and they would all stand around the counter talking and drinking beer from longneck returnable bottles. My brother and I would feast on Slim Jims that were washed down with orange Crush pop. The winter afternoon would be whittled away bowling, playing pinball and listening to the exchange of conversation between my father and his friends. That is until my brother and I grew tired bowling and my father grew tired of giving us quarters for the pinball machines.

As the summer months pass and cyclocross season approaches, it will bring a group of us to gather for coffee and bagels before a morning spent riding cross bikes in the woods and around town. On an occasional Saturday, when the family’s schedule permits, an afternoon can be chipped away sitting in a circle at Wheelfast bike shop eating lunch while sitting and talking.

A Father's Day Ride

Sam Splat

The find for the day!

How do you read in your head without reading?

The title was the question posed to me by my youngest today as she sat reading her book. My other child looked at her and decided that this was a question that she didn't want to broach. She shook her head and left the room before returning to do what siblings do best...pester the other one. And, this is the transaction that has lead into the first postings.

A disclaimer should be stated first before this endeavor starts, and I have read many disclaimers like this before in other blogs ... all typos, misspelled words and other poor grammatical errors are mine alone. I also do not claim to be a wonderful wordsmith, but I do like to write and my reasons for starting a blog are many. I have a few main reasons in why I finally decided to start, they are (and not limited to) as follows; I have a few friends that started to blog and I enjoy reading them, but there is frustration in that they do not post very often and I wish they would. With this being said, I have bugged them enough and thought it was time to pick up the torch and run with it by writing a blog myself.

And, this concludes the first of what I hope are many posts. But, then again, only time will tell....