Six Hours Next to the Saddle

Whilst you racin' types are out logging in your early season "saddle time", I've been puttin' in some of my own. Now some of you that know me know that I haven't raced in about 9 years now. But, that doesn't mean I'm not training! I have to get on top of my game now, because my season is about to start!

That's why I put in six hours "beside" the saddle, doing tune ups on customers bikes! I've gotten a little rusty over the winter time, I'll say. No work to do in the winter months. Well, at least not in the volume that we will be getting in, oh say....ANY DAY NOW! Once the temps get to around 50 degrees, we'll be slammed with wall to wall repairs. All of those bikes hanging dormantly, like bats, from spider web strewn garage walls. They will come down in droves at the first grass cutting. Stuffed precariously into trunks, hatches, and van cargo areas, only to recieve more damage than the previous 15 miles last summer could ever inflict upon them. They will be wheeled into bicycle shops all over the country, into the waiting hands of slumbering bicycle mechanics.

Whoa! What is this! Back to work, gotta get off the Velo News, and the new QBP catalog, and start crackin'! Riding time diminishes, just as it starts to get really nice out. Oh well, at least I'll get more money in the envelope at the end of the week! Pay's been a bit thin lately. Hours got cut, and then cut again! So, I'm lookin' forward to more work. I even got some good "training" time in today.

Yep! Six hours! Three complete tune-ups. Slow, I know, but I'm perfecting my form! I'll be ready, at the line, when the season starts! Just you wait an' see.