Monday location: Seven 9:05 am – 9:10 pm
- Official: A Music project is happening at Seven. Details will be public shortly. Finalizing the date.
- Product Development: Integrated fender mount system for Seven’s carbon fork category. I’ve iterated the design a bit more to help streamline the production process. There’s still a lot of room for improvement – from a time-study view.
- Product Development: The Honey Bikes “Cross is Boss” cyclocross project is just about live. Probably this Friday. Three cool and unique cross bikes will be available for a very limited time.
- Product Development: Working on the RSC Endurance Team bikes.
- I know I’m working too much when I tell someone I have, “a 2-hour meeting at seven o’clock” and the person asks if that’s, “morning or evening?” In this case it was an evening fitting.
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Sunday location: Studio | 7:50 am – 7:07 pm
Learn Chinese? Apparently I have to learn English first.
I had no idea what a ‘Pomelo’ was.
“[S]kinny tires might look faster, but after the 4th flat, you’ll be regretting not putting at least 25 gators hard-shells on. Bring plenty of spare tubes, tools etc. A frame pump might not hurt either. And this course crushes souls and carbon wheels…”
The 2013 Rapha Gentlemen’s Race is complete. A great time was had by all of the people I know that participated in the ride. The Ride Studio Cafe Team did an amazing job – taking third place by only three minutes.
Matt Roy leading the charge at the Rapha G-Race 2013
Matt Roy noted:
“We were the third fastest team on the course, missing the win by only 3-minutes… but not at the expense of being gentlemanly… we stopped to assist an injured rider along the way and checked on anyone stopped along the roadside.”
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Friday location: Seven | Studio || 7:35 am – 9:10 pm
- Product Development: I’m way behind on a new mountain bike design for Seven Cycles. It’s been rolling around – on paper – for a few years. Matt O. and I are starting to work on a prototype. I’m way too slow. And there’s too many ideas to jam into one bike so the project will probably more likely end up being three bikes. That’s okay, but it’ll be frustrating for Matt. But he’s used to working with me – for 25 years. On this first bike we’ll be including about 10% of the total design ideas.
- Product Development: The three bikes for the RSC Endurance Team are moving along. They are diverging from each other every day. This is the actual design intent from the beginning: three bikes that can ride 1,200k but are all extremely different approaches to the same challenge. I’m excited about this one – or these three. More to come!
- Product Evolution: The past year has been interesting to watch how three wheel size options in mountain biking has wreaked havoc on bike industry product managers. Fortunate for Seven Cycles it doesn’t really matter what wheel-size is hot right now; we happily work with all three. And, because every bike we build is custom, we have some unusual insights into what’s happening on the front line. Lots of excited talk about a given design does not necessarily mean that people are buying it – at least at the high-end. It’ll be fun to watch how the true share of 26″, 650b, and 29er wheels evolve in the next year. It’s all good from where I sit – except for the marketing hype that says one wheel is infinitely better than all other wheels, until next week.
Post title: Me.
Parklet assembly for the Ride Studio Cafe
Thursday location: Seven | Studio || 7:40 am – 10:35 pm
- Product Development: Making some headway on Seven’s Tapered Carbon Road fork. Design phase is done; now on to testing and figuring out how to tune the ride properly.
- Product Development: I think I’ve found a good solution to Seven’s Carbon Disc Cross and Utility forks with multiple rakes. It’s tricky and time consuming but I believe it will work. Prototyping this in the next couple months. And it will be well worth it. Unique and purposeful.
- Ride Project: The Highpoint Ride with RSC is coming together really well. I think we’ve found the right set of individuals to help pull this logistic puzzle together. Details posting very soon.
- Future: The Ride Studio Cafe Parklet is getting assembled this weekend! It must be Spring! A parklet is a combination of bike parking and outdoor seating that takes up car parking spaces; in this case two car parking spaces. I hope that Lexington will survive. The town has been excellent in helping make this happen. As has Patria L.!
Post title: “Earth, spinning fast, proved sunrises and sunsets to be only dizzy local illusions.” – Howard Hendrix
Wednesday location: Seven | Studio || 7:55 am – 8:10 pm
- Product Development: Working on the Seven Cycles RSC Endurance Team bikes. Trying to come up with a fatigue-proof method for internal brake cable housing and hydraulic housing. Not so easy. Many years ago – at Merlin Metalworks we used to offer internal brake housing and nearly all those frames came back. Fortunately, internal electronic wiring is a completely different – and much easier challenge.
- Product Development: Working on the 2.0 version of Seven’s integrated fender mount system for carbon forks.
- Association: Had an interesting conversation with Chip Baker about Honey Bikes and my name association with the company. He says its a good connection. I sometimes sense that some people think Honey is a distraction from Seven Cycles. And therefore a negative connotation, in some ways. Chip says it’s all positive – but he’s always positive. I definitely find that working with both Seven Cycles and Honey Bikes reinforce and cross-pollinate – no puns please – in a very useful way. I’ve definitely had ideas from Honey that we’ve applied at Seven. And ideas from Seven that have creeped into Honey.
Post title: Me
Tuesday location: Scouting | Seven | Studio || 11:50 am – 9:20 pm
- Design: Making progress on the Seven Cycles video project. Natalia has been great. As per usual, she’s waiting on me for the next steps on getting the video completed.
- Ride: The Ride Studio Cafe Thursday night mountain ride is back on! Not for me this week. But it is my favorite.
- Note: 650b offroad wheels came out with 29er but got squashed. Yes, 650 has been around for a long time, but not for offroad. Just like 29er has been around for a long time – it used to be called 700c.
Post title: Frank Herbert
Monday location: Seven | Studio || 7:55 am – 8:45 pm
- Race: The 2013 Rapha Gentlemen’s Race is happening this weekend. Difficult to believe it’s already here. The team has been coming together for a while and it is a strong one. We’re expecting a good ride from the Ride Studio Cafe Endurance team – augmented with a few equally strong riders.
- Product Development: I’ve been working on the RSC Endurance Team bike project for a while. It’s now just about complete. Three unique bikes for three unique riders. Getting them completed in time for the Dirty Kanza. It’ll be tight but that’s how we rolls.
- Product Development: I’ve been working on integrating the upcoming 11-speed nightmare into Seven Cycles’ design process. The information I’ve received from the component manufacturers is preliminary so nothing’s set in stone. However, there’s going to be some problems doing retrofits onto existing bikes. Essentially they’re saying, “don’t do it.” Sweet.
Post title: “You set fire to everything you touch… and then you walk away as it burns.” – The Wire
Sunday location: Studio | 7:40 am – 7:05 pm
- Time Marker: A record at the Studio again today. The highest number of invoices per employee, to date. We shattered the previous record from two weeks ago.
- Time Marker: Today was a two tire iron shattering day for me at the Studio. That must be a good day.
