Tomorrow Is Already Yesterday

Saturday location:     Seven  |  Studio     ||     6:35 am – 10:20 pm

• Ride Event:  Two great rides with Mary and Mike.  About 30 people; lots to manage  while mountain biking but it all worked out well.
• Party:  Perfect evening with Mike and Mary and our closest friends.  Thanks to everyone that came out to the party.  When the food was gone the party was over.  It was the last big public party for RSC through the end of the year.  I’ve heard that one before.

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Friday location:  Studio  |  Seven     ||     6:20 am – 9:10 pm

The full cover and back cover image from the 2012 Seven Cycles brochure; officially retired today.
Photo: Skunk

• Time Marker:  Officially retiring the 2012 brochure.  For me it was a demarcation in the sand.  An important brochure because it marks the first time we broke from the tradition of a bike catalogue.  If you haven’t seen it, you’re out of luck because it’s now gone.  The 2013 brochure goes many steps further – either off the deep end or into better waters.  Time might tell.

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Thursday location:  Seven     ||     7:35 am – 10:05 pm

• Product Development:  Met with Mo Bruno Roy and Matt Roy today to work on Mo’s latest bike design:  PRO 2.0.  As Matt put it, the original prototype Mudhoney PRO was, “more prototype than pro.”  I know what he means.  We’re working on 2.0 right now.  Taking all of Mo’s feed back – and even some of Matt’s – to create the next generation bike that Mo will be racing all around the world.
• Ride Event:  Mary ride is shaping up.  Already about 30 riders on board.  Expecting more soon.  Trying to figure out how to manage them all.  It’s a fun project for a change :).  Two rides mapped out.

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Wednesday location:  Seven     ||     7:40 am – 8:10 pm

• Product Design:  Matt O’Keefe has been working on a new Ride Studio Cafe community table.  We’ve been working on making it out of repurposed materials:  the legs are from an old lathe we had and the top is from a spare workbench.  It weighs a few hundred pounds so we have to put it on wheels.  Working on an unusual setup for that.
• Process Improvement:  We’ve been having some interesting discussions at Seven Cycles about water bottle placement.  Super exciting, I know.  But it is really engaging to me – but probably not really to anyone else.  One of the reasons it’s worth mentioning is because it’s a perfect example of the tension between solutions that are technology driven vs. solved with simple-technology.  In this case it’s about a software solution vs. a hardware solution.  I rarely choose software.  Nearly everyone with which I work – and all consultants – prefer software answers.  This water bottle challenge is great because we’re actually going to do a hybrid of both.  Sacrilege for me.

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Tuesday location:  Seven     ||     7:45 am – 7:55 pm

• Business Planning:  I see a clear path that will get Seven Cycles to our year end goals.  Most of the path is uphill and we might require crampons but  at least we can see the trail and the terrain.  I wish I could find shoes with integrated crampons.
• Management:  Managing people is impossible.  Managing anything is impossible – at least for me.  The shear between performance and humanity is endless.  I find it fascinating but I can’t say that people appreciate being ginea pigs with my fascination.  I want all three in the way Seven works:  free, fast, fun.  I haven’t found a way to have all three at once; it seems that when we lean toward one, the other two suffer.  When we lean toward all three, all suffer.  It’s like a three-pronged radar chart, but I keep thinking it’s a venn diagram or a flow chart.  My brain tells me it’s sequential or combinant, but my experience is radarish.  And those aren’t even real words.

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Monday location:  Seven  |  Studio     ||     6:10 am – off – 3:10 pm – 9:20 pm

• Field Trip:  Visited Tripyramid Structures today.  An amazing engineering firm.  Mentors of mine for more than 20-years.  I took a bunch of great photos and my camera tells me they don’t exist; angry.
• Engineering:  Fatigue testing of some titanium materials at Seven Cycles continues.  The work is slow and sometimes tedious   But the results are some of the most important work that we can do.  Most results are predictable.  Some are not.  Working to track down some of the chemistry on a few test pieces.

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