Monday location: Seven | 8:15 am – 7:25 pm
- Time Marker: Seven Winter Session not happening this week. Apparently snow is a thing that prevents normal life for occurring. The suppliers with which we’re working – Harvard Square Hotel, Bloc 11, and Diesel Cafe – have been very understanding and have rescheduled with Seven – without onerous cost incurrment. We’ll see what happens once the plane ticket changes start piling up.
- Press: On a more positive note, Constance Winters of Lovely Bicycle posted a piece about Seven’s Cafe Racer. Still one of my favorite bikes.
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Constance Winters of Lovely Bicycle! does some work with bicycling.com; she just posted thoughts about one of my favorite bikes: Seven’s Cafe Racer single-speed belt drive travel bike. The bike’s description is a mouthful, but it’s one of the purest bikes on which I’ve ever worked.
A few of her words from the review:
“the Café Racer […] commuter from Seven Cycles […] can give any road bike a ride for its money. […]
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Sunday location: Studio | 9:10 am – 5:40 pm
- Time Marker: Four fittings canceled today. Not surprised. A three hour journey to get to the Studio; I was only 90-minutes late.
- Overhead at the Studio: Said in a thick German accent to the Berliner Bike on display at RSC, “You can make an offer… but they’ll just laugh and say no.” He said it in an endearing way because he liked the bike so much.
- Overheard at the Studio: I was talking with a traveler from Belgium today; we were discussing how some American brands co-opt Belgian culture, particularly for cyclocross bikes. Specifically, he was talking about a US brand with a Belgian name that shows bikes that you might think are from Belgium. He said, “Not even the Belgians like themselves that much.”
Saturday location: Shut-In | 9:20 am – 8: 40 pm
- Time Marker: 24″ of snow last night. No plows in Somerville apparently. Worked from home today. Patria managed the Studio solo today!
- Management: Move the dates of the Winter Session. I really don’t like capitulating to the weather. Actually, it’s really just about the airlines capitulating All the other elements were good to go. Harvard Square Hotel is working with us, as is Bloc 11.
Friday location: Seven | 7:45 am – 3:50 pm – home – 8:40 pm
- Time Marker: The government just told me I have to be off the road by 4pm or I’ll go to jail. Time to go home. Perfect timing because I’m – and Seven – am down to the wire for the Winter Session. No need to work; actually, I can do this stuff at home. So far we’ve got about 6″ of snow; not too bad. Supposedly we’re getting 24″ before morning.
- Bikes: In preparation for the Seven Winter Session we’re pulling together some bikes as examples of the ways in which Seven can, and does, customize. We felt that a good category of bikes that represents this is randonee and gravel road bikes. We’ve pulled together a great range of them for Monday. Here’s a post I made that includes most of the bikes Seven will have on display next week.
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Thursday location: Seven | 7:35 am – 9:35 pm
I feel like that flying arrow today – moving fast but still motionless.
- Business Development: Down to the last aspects of the Seven Winter Session. Apparently, it’s all about food. Of course, I agree. And a few clinics. We’ve been talking about the Seven Process Methodology – Seven’s manufacturing process – and it threads through every facet of Seven – from sales, service product development, and on and on. It’s a unique system that I’ve not seen implemented on the Scale at which Seven works. More on this later.
- Time Marker: Apparently it’s going to snow tomorrow. May be the largest storm of the year. Hoping it won’t cause too much trouble for the Seven Winter Session. At least the term “Winter” will hold true.
- Business Management: Had our first Seven company meeting in a while. It was good to get back to it – it was about 45 minutes focused on one very specific topic – and I now remember why it’s a challenge. More coming soon. The next meeting is Seven’s 2012 year in review. Yeah. All good stuff it’s just a lot for which to prep.
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Dean Phillips of Fit Werx 2 wrote a nice piece about his new Seven Cycles 622. Dean’s ridden a lot of great bikes over the years so we really looked forward to hearing what he thought.
Here’s a few excerpts from his writing; it was difficult to choose just a few quotes because he really seems to like the bike:
“Expectations can be exceeded… I knew within a couple pedal strokes that this bike was going to be a lot of fun… […]
“[…] my ride that ends with a gradual uphill climb that I frequently sprint up trying to maintain as much speed as I can. I set my all-time 20-second power high right there and then on my first ride on the 622. This was an unplanned and unexpected surprise that left me riding home with a smile.
“[…] it’s a testament to how remarkably stiff, responsive and inspiring this bike is.
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Wednesday location: Seven | Studio || 7:40 am – 8:00 pm
The Theater and Exhibits Are Also the Toilet; That’s Convenient
- Business Development: Working on Winter Session – it’s pretty much going to consume all my time – and many people’s time from Seven – for the next five days. It’ll be worth it but it might sound a bit boring.
- Time Marker: I worked on 14 sets of specs today. Some were a ‘simple’ review; most I developed from scratch. Not a record day but a wide ranging day. Everything from a tandem to a mountain 29er.
- Business Development: I held Seven Cycles’ first company meeting in too long. I used to hold them twice a month. It’s a lot of work to hold the attention of 30+ people for 30-60 minutes. Today’s meeting focused on the Winter Session that’s coming up next week. People at Seven seem excited about it. This Session is a big deal; we’re hosting 40 retailers from all over the country. They’re investing a lot of time and money to come and see us. The stakes are high and I’m confident in what we’ve put together – so far.
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Chip Baker posted on VeloCB about Honey Bikes today.
Honey and Hup United have worked on a few projects over the past couple years. Chip manages Hup New England. Honey recently worked on a project with Hup to design some limited edition Hup bikes:
Here are some highlights from Chip’s writings about that project:
About Honey Bikes:
These are the types of bikes I love. Simple. Steel. Yes I love steel. Bikes to be ridden. And raced. […]
It was one of the best cross racing bikes I have ever ridden or raced. It was also one of the best offroad bikes I have ever tried. In New England we don’t limit our cross bikes to the race course. […]
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Tuesday location: Seven | 7:50 am – 9:10 pm
- Perception and Framebuilding: In working on the Seven Cycles Winter Session, it keeps me realizing how interesting is the work Seven gets to do every day. One of the topics we discussed today was how familiarity affects perception. Of course, nothing new there. But, it’s striking to talk about how if you’re a framebuilder and you’ve machined the fit-up between a pair of dropout and chainstays five-thousand times, it may seem a bit mundane. If you’re a new framebuilder – or a visitor to a bike builder – it’s pretty cool how this process works. It’s really complex because we’ve got more than a dozen dropout types – disc, road, etc, – and well over one-hundred chainstay types; in fact, the number of chainstays is really infinite at Seven Cycles. This presents a really fascinating puzzle – if you’re new to it. Of course, if you’ve done it thousands of times it may seem simple – follow these twenty-plus steps and you’ll have the right fit-up. Somehow it’s natural for me to get excited about these details – probably because I have a terrible memory so everything always seems new and interesting to me.
- Project Management: Today we worked on some of the presentations for the Winter Session at Seven Cycles. Too much to pack into two days. The challenge is figuring out what we won’t have time to cover.
Post title: A letter from Philip K. Dick.
