Freewheelin': 12.12

It has been a couple weeks since my last post as I have been very busy spending last week working on homework and setting up the Freewheel Winter Bike Expo!

I took the Lake boots on their first longer ride and they did pretty good for a while. About an hour into the ride however my feet started getting cold. I could tell right away it was due to the heat sink problem from the cleat. I could tell because the cold didn't start in my toes where it normally would, it started on the bottom of my foot. I have been hearing a lot of good things about the Aerogel insoles from 45Nrth, but I think I am going to buy the rabbit fur and the Aerogel insoles and see which are better. I am always interested to see if synthetic stuff can stack up against natural things. Much like tech materials versus wool, wool kills it every time. I think it will make a good gear review too.

On other news, we spent quite a few hours setting up the winter bike expo. It was a hoot! I got to see a lot of Freewheel employees I hadn't seen in some time and meet some new friends too. Lots of product transferring and cleaning and moving things and finally Friday night we had a bike expo ready for the next day.

When I had started working on the expo with everyone else they had already knocked out a wall and most of what we were doing was clean up. On Wednesday I drove the van from Eden Prairie to Midtown with the few obstacles we had out there. Then Thad and I took some trash to West Bank and picked up the mugs and Project One display. When we got back to Midtown we did a few other things but then I had to take off for class.

Thursday was spent bringing in fixtures for merchandise as well as bringing in the bikes for the demo rides. I also was introduced to a place called "the molding room", let me tell you that is an appropriate name. Another name that comes to mind that would be equally as accurate is the diarrhea hole, it smelt awful.

Friday was merchandise and beautification day. We turned a messy back room into a store front. It was pretty rewarding. The only part I didn't particularly enjoy was moving the obstacles around trying to get the flow of the course right. I payed for it the next day.

When I woke up Saturday morning I was so sore from moving so much stuff on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday that I could hardly even move. I spent some time waking up and then stretched out for about an hour and felt much better, so I headed down.I am glad I did. I missed all the cool seminars on different fun things, which was a bummer, I really wanted to catch the one about doing the Arrowhead 135, but I missed it. There is always next year. I met a bunch of cool people like Trevor from Surly (bikes), Gomez from fat-bike.com, David Gabrys from 45Nrth, John Gaddo from Salsa, and a few other names that are not coming to me at the moment. I also just met a lot of cool random people that I didn't know before and that was a lot of fun. The fat bike race was a lot of fun to watch and there was plenty of beer and burgers to go around. I also got to see Pete from Fat Tire MN again.

In case you are not from around here or did not hear about this let me break it down for you. Minnesotans love to bike. We don't let things like a little cold or snow get in the way either. So it only makes sense that as winter biking becomes more popular that more winter events for bikes would come about. Luckily I work for the best bike shop in the nation so we really have created something that is a bit of a staple for winter biking in the Midwest. People did come in from all over.

So what is at a winter bike expo? Well, we have fat tire bike demos, we have bikes set up with studded tires so you can see how they handle on the ice, we have clothing out the wazoo. This was not just about retail though, we also had a bunch of seminars ranging on topics from winter bike commuting to ultra endurance marathon training. Something for everyone really. Not to mention the owner of Freewheel unveiled his new carbon fiber fat bike made by his own bike company, Minneapolis Bike Company, which is also new! This was all followed up by a very fun to watch fat bike race with beers and food. Fun was had by all in attendance, you would be hard pressed to find a sad face after listening to Mario on the microphone calling the race. Everyone who was working to set this thing up put in a lot of work and it showed. That is what I love about Freewheel, we, as an entire company, pulled this off as a team. It was pretty great.

Boo for me I had to leave early. I got a text from my friend Thad the next morning that read: I woke up with a hangover and a black eye... best winter bike expo ever! I am already excited for next year...