It has been quiet here for a bit, and with good reason. A lot went down. First, there was this pile of bikes that showed up right at the end of the month:

That got fed into the worker ants lair:

Adorned with shiny parts:

Built into bikes:

Yeah, that's right. We rock cute puppy calendars here. That's how radically hardcore we are. Bikinis and girly calendars are sooo 20th century...

Then punted right back out the door:

A couple hundred frames came in on a Thursday, went through QC, the boys in production went into overdrive, and by the following Monday they were all on their way to customers, 120 of them as complete bikes. Some long hours were pulled in the process, and we want to slap a heartfelt high-five to them all – Aryeh, Joefish, Brian, Todd, Hightower, Chapin, Leif, Hoffman, Marc S, Andre, Sean, Will, Victor, Ryan, Sweetride, Danny B and Mister Blackstorm – you are all heroes. Especially when you dress up in sailor costumes.

In the middle of all this, we had our company xmas New Year “just happy to be here”, pre-February party. Things got a little out of hand. Okay, that was a lie. Nobody from here was involved in trying to park a car on the guardrail overlooking the boardwalk, but that action did just take place about two blocks from the ol’ cannery here. Just yesterday. Pretty awesome photos there…

And, right after the shipping mayhem was done and packed out of here, this showed up:

Phase one of the Ariel and Abby “How many sets of tires do you think we’ll burn through this year?” demo tour. Trailer got wrapped up all purty by Chris at Cadillac Designs, now we just need to get the van done, then the trailer and van outfitted, then wait on the parts for the fleet, then build the fleet, then the kids can hit the road. Fingers crossed. Their route is beginning to take shape, and it looks something like this. More or less. Don’t quote me. We’ll have a proper schedule up here and on the site in the next week or two, once we are sure we can actually get this rolling monster out the door in time.

But yeah, it’s been a bit hectic. Sorry. Now that we’ve got our feet back under us though, we will quit while we’re ahead, and leave you with some totally unrelated trials motorcycle slow-mo video:

Daaaaang….

Our displaced by fire, seething with grump, mile churning, bike with too much travel riding, tobacco chewing, born again redneck family man Mark Weir checked in Yesterday with a brief pair of emails:

Just had a malfunctioning fire alarm go off in our house we are staying in.

Talk about a heart stopper. 5am early bird special 7 fire alarms went off at the same time.

I was so disoriented that when I came out of the haze I was almost more pissed that there was no fire.

You should do yourself a favor and try it sometime.

Hating my new life.

Followed by:

Start drinking early today I think…

Ironically, minutes after receiving that email, this showed up from Chris Duncan:

We’ve got a lot of comments on our (albeit skeletal) support of Chris. Some are confused, some are hate filled. Some think we are really doing ourselves a lot of damage. And every time we spread any of his art (I like to think of it as art anyway. I mean, it’s not really marketing. And it is creative, and it does spark controversy, and provoke thought, so why the hell not?) out into the world, I get a barrage of phone calls and emails from Chris hisself. Truth be told, the dude makes me nervous, and I don’t always answer the phone. But I remain curiously fascinated with his efforts. Fascinated, but still sometimes totally confounded. As with the above video. So it is with art. My girlfriend likes to point out that I have “no emotional connection” to art. I prefer to think of it as a “limited emotional range,” usually wavering between confusion, joy and sorrow. Chris Duncan’s videos inspire all three limited emotions at once, speaking for myself.

Maybe it’s the limited emotional range that stunts me as a writer. I can spin a good yarn about bicycles, but I’m no Sy Safransky. Sy Safransky is the founder of a magazine called The Sun, which any word geek should be regularly ingesting, because it is always filled with words that make you think. And in my case, be confused, filled with joy, and saddened. Which are all good things. Here are a couple gems from his notebook in the January 2010 issue:

THE FIRST DECADE of the twenty-first century is nearly over. If I’d read that sentence fifty years ago, when I was a fourteen-year-old boy, I would have imagined atomic-powered flying cars and world government, not traffic jams and global warming, and not cities that looked more or less the same, and not people who still wear dresses and high heels (high heels!) and suits and ties. Ties! In 2009!

IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY it took six months to cross the country by covered wagon. At the start of the twentieth century it took six days to make the trip by train. Yesterday I flew from North Carolina to California in a little more than six hours. The engineering marvel of a modern jetliner borders on the miraculous, yet how mundane flying has become. There I was, soaring through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, fulfilling one of humanity’s age-old dreams, and all I could think about was how little legroom I had and when the couple behind me was going to shut up.

IF I PRAY DURING TAKEOFF, why not pray at the start of each day? What distinction do I make between the gods of the earth and the gods of the sky?

Check the full notebook here, and spend some time reading some of his other columns, too. Then pick a back issue, and read some of them cover to cover. Good writing, lots of it, stuff that makes you think. Me? I’ve got my limited emotional range and my hamstrung, hamfisted way with words where even I can’t tell if the words and I are dancing or wrestling. At least I still gots my day job.