Friday location: Studio | Seven | Studio || 6:25 am – 11:20 pm
Management: I think we’ve found an important next hire for Seven Cycles today. I’m hoping I’ll know in the next couple weeks. Big changes afoot. All good. Change is always good. Wait, what?
Brochure Quote: “What have I learned from my years as a gear hound? Well, once the shine comes off and after you give up on cleaning every bit of dirt from between your cogs, the best bike is the one you ride the most and think about the least.” Who wrote this beauty? Get the brochure to find out.
Product Design: Worked on Seven’s 30.9 seat post and seat tube sleeve standard today. One of the “new” items for the 2013 season. I’ll post images soon. It’s a cool set up.
Thursday location: Seven | Studio || 7:00 am – 9:10 pm
Process: Paying attention to details that are not easily measured or codified. One measure is, “is that good enough for your bike?” Unfortunately, even if the asnwer is, “yes” it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically good enough. In fact, with the trajectory of what we’re doing now, I expect our work standards to exceed our personal standards universally. I can’t speak for everyone but I know that we’re already working above the waterline for some people here. It’s a difficult point to discuss. Ever higher standards means never high enough standards.
Project: Worked on some long overdue Honey Bike aspects. I’ve got some cool products coming up soon. Just trying to squeeze time to get them finalized. I’m hoping I’ll have some long-term help on this soon.
Management: Working on getting our company meetings back in order. It’s been far too long that I’ve avoided our bi-monthly group meeting. I’m looking forward to getting back to it.
Wednesday location: Seven || 7:35 am – 8:15 pm – then working at home ’till 10:40 pm
Design: Brochure, brochure, brochure. More pages designed. More focused on text right now. John L. managing 90% of the words. I’m destroying the other 10%.
Project: Getting some projects wrapped up for Interbike with Seven Cycles. The never-ending project. The 2013 Program is complete – in draft from. This the last step that’s a doozy.
The Work: We met today at Seven Cycles to work on some complicated standards for accuracy, detail, recurrence, and some other overlapping aspects of framebuilding. We’re deep into some territory that’s difficult to map. We’ve agreed that we’re plateauing on some key success measures. We’ve agreed that a plateau is not the right place. Forging ahead and up.
Project: Ride Studio Cafe – Patria – is working with Molly Hurford on a book signing. Molly’s got a new bike that’s just been published: Mud, Snow, and Cyclocross – How ‘Cross Took Over US Cycling. It’ll be great to see her at RSC!
Product Development: Chainstay design of the day. Stef A. is working on some SolidWorks training so we can expedite, organize, and track our endless design updates. We’re already seeing good results on the reorg but we have a ways to go. Stef is taking the lead.
Graphic Design: Seven brochure 2013: About a week to go for printing deadline – actually it’s less than that. I can’t get my head around it at 9:30 pm right now. We’re tweaking the colorways; cooling them down a bit; and, of course, making them a bit more complicated. Trying to figure out how we’re going to get all the photography completed on time. I estimate that we’ve got 230 image placeholders. We’ve got about 30 confirmed images. Only 200 more to go. That’s 90% complete, right? I can’t even ponder the writing portion; I’m thankful that John L. is on it.
Training: I did training with San at the Ride Studio Cafe today – RSC’s newest employee. He’s rocking! He’s already a great barista so I focused on drink recipes and some Studio particulars. San’s only going to be helping for about a month or so before he starts his own business, but it’s great having him help out while Sal P. is on his month long honeymoon. I’ll post more about San’s business once it becomes pubic. It’s coffee related and I can’t wait.
This morning we had a double event, although it felt like a triple.
Ride & Spanish Breakfast with Ride Studio Cafe in celebration of the Vuelta a Espana
The Vuelta is one of my favorite races. Not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s the time of year. Maybe it’s because not so many people are consumed by it. Maybe it’s because it’s the underdog of the three Grand Tours. Maybe it’s because most people don’t seem to know what to make of it.
For the Studio event we chose the Vuelta’s Queen Stage: Stage 16.
Here’s an excerpt from Inner Ring‘s take on the Monday’s ride:
Testing, testing; one, two, three. Spanish Hot Chocolate | Photo: Rob Vandermark
Sunday location: Seven | Studio || 6:30 am – 7:10 pm
Event: Finalized plans for tomorrow’s Vuelta a Espana race vieweing at the Ride Studio Cafe and the pre-race ride. Rolling out at 7:30 am. I’m tired just thinking about it.
Project: Tested and finalized Spanish hot chocolate recipe for Monday’s Studio breakfast and Vuelta ride.
Project: Tested and finalized egg recipe for Monday’s Studio breakfast. Patria and Ariela are managing the breakfast while I’m out riding around town.
Event: Working a bit on a cyclocross opener party at Ride Studio Cafe. Patria is doing 90% of the work. Kurt J. and Jeremy K. are doing the other 90% of the work.
Today was a blur. Busy day at the Studio. Listened to great music for most of the day – as always, including some old standbys.
I had a conversation today with someone regarding how music affects my mood. It’s amazing how good music – at least as I define it – can make a very grumpy me into a very engaged and energetic me. Apparently music doesn’t affect everyone the same way. That made me sad, and then this came on:
Management: Month end for Seven Cycles. As I mentioned yesterday, we missed our goal badly. It’s challenging to talk about production goals sometimes. We focus so much on each individual frameset for each individual customer. Many times my only interests are building the best frameset for the customer, and building this latest frameset better than any that we’ve done before. Meeting production targets sometimes gets lost in our focus on meeting craft expectations. However, shipment expectations are super important, too. Always a balance and a tension. Usually good tension – although not everyone at Seven would agree with that.
Design: Photo shoots for Seven Cycles 2013 brochure. Natalia Boltukhova was behind the camera; lots of people in front of, and in the way of, the camera. It all started with a 7am ride and ended with a 7pm beer at Seven Cycles. She took well over 700 photos.
Ride & Spanish Breakfast with Ride Studio Cafe in celebration of the Vuelta a Espana
