Whats new...

Ok, so it has been a while since we posted, but there has been a lot going on at the shop (which is why the blog is getting neglected) So here is what is new in a nutshell.

New Sign out front.
So it only took a year, but the sign is hanging and looks good. People seem to be able to find us a little better which is nice.

Home repair taking off... Our mechnics have been keeping themsleves busy working on repairs, we still have some room to grow the home bicyle repair side of things, but people are starting to figgure out that it is easier for a mechanic to come to them that for them to load their bikes up to get to us. We are also running weekly special deals for our home repair customers that adds a little value to the service for them. If you haven't checked it out, you can get details here: http://www.goosecreekcycle.com/ServiceForm.htm

Little ones go mobile- The munchkins of GCC have gone mobile. Lane has discovered the Adams Trail-a-bike and often reuses to get off. This works to our advantage as he now helps out with post office and bank runs. When he is not on that he is terrorizing customers on his Free Agent Lil Speedy. The coaster brake is his new best friend, so I am going to have to buy stock in Cheng Shin Tires. Landon has taken the first step now and he and his mom went on their first ride in a Adams trailer.

New products- As many of you know we have had some supply issues with our road bikes, but we are working to resolve this. We do have one new brand in the pipeline (deatails later) and we are starting to build up some frames that we have always had access to but never stocked. Look for some Pakes and Somas to start hitting the floor next month.

The holdiday order fo Dekline Shoes came in a little early so we will have our shipment of new shoes soon. Along those lines, look for in store sale pricing offered first to our local cutomers that will go live online as soon as our new shipment gets here. all our casual and skate shoes are marked between $34 and $50 in store right now.

Online inventory expanding at a rate you won't beleive. We have restructured a little so that some of our online inventory is stored off site (it wouldn't fit in the shop) so while this is a little bit of a bummer in that you can no longer look online to know exactly what is in the store, our online customers will be served with a better selection of parts and still have shipping within 1 business day of their order. And hey, if you are local you can always just have it shipped all orders ship for only $3 and they arrive pretty quickly. The first expansion push was in the trainer department, check out the selection here: Trainers and Rollers

Anyway, thats it for now we have been so hectic at the shop that I am sure I have forgotten something, but stop in and see us and see all that is new.

Bicycle Service to your Door

Those of you who have been with us since the beginning... no the VERY beginning. Remember when we operated out of a small room dubbed "the ugly room" and the entire inventory was stored in a couple of Tupperware containers? Yeah then.

Well those of you who remember that will remember that at that time the logo we had on the business cards was "If you are going out, it should be to ride" At the time the concept was simple. The customers needed parts, I wanted to go for a bike ride, so I would get on my bike and ride the parts to the customers. It was win win.

The problem with all this is that I forgot to take into account one simple truth about cyclists. People who can install their own parts are generally people who like to hang out in bike shops. While they will grumble about wearing out a tire or breaking a spoke, they enjoy going to the shop to look at the new toys and put their hands on parts. What we realized was that we were not saving our customers the chore of going to the bike shop, we were impersonalizing what should have been a fun time out to see the gang at the shop.

So now, a little over a year since, canning the delivery service, we think we have fixed the glitch, and we are bringing back the "to your door" service from Goose Creek. To do this we have had to recognize that not everyone is the die hard, eat, sleep & breath bike stuff fanatics that we are. There is a portion of the population for whom going to the bike shop IS a chore. These are the people trying to shove a bike into their backseat, or borrowing a friends pickup so they can get both of the kids bike in to go get a flat tire changed. For these people we are now offering to your door repair service.

As of this week we are launching our pilot program for Buckner, La Grange, Crestwood, Prospect, Goshen, Skylite and certain Lousville Zip Codes. Basically the east side of Louisville and all the little towns between there and our shop. Customers will be able to contact us either by filling out a form on our website or by just calling the shop. We will set up a time and then come out for their bikes. Simple repairs will be performed on spot, for more complicated or time consuming repairs, we will actually pick up the bike, bring it to the shop, do the repairs, and return the bike when it is done.

There is a small premium, between $5-$15 depending on location, but considering that our normal labor costs are lower than many of our competitors anyway it all comes out in the wash. For instance if you live in St. Matthews, a tune up would be $25 + $15 for the pick up, so your total tune up cost would be $40 which is about what you would pay if you took it into your local shop anyway.

Official advertising for this service will start in the next couple of weeks, and we will have to get the vehicle painted up and some official uniforms for the guys so people won't think we are going to steal their bikes, but a temporary service request page is now up and functional and you can view it here: http://www.goosecreekcycle.com/ServiceForm.htm

I realize that if you are reading this blog you are probably the sort that likes to come into the shop yourself, but spread the word to your friends and neighbors. Thanks and see you out on the road.

Dirt Sweat and Gears.

Ok, so our trip down to Dirt Sweat and Gears last weekend was a bit of a milestone for me. Not necicarily a good milestone, but lets call it unfortunate timing on a change that was three years in the comming.

For a number of years I raced in with the pros in the hyper-endurance events. To me it seemed a bit silly to travel around the continent to compete for a secondary prize like a age group award or an amature tite. On a number of occasions I have sat back and compared lap times to discover that a race that left me back in the double digits somewhere in the elite race would have put me on the podium or winners jersey had I only been competing for one of the lesser prizes.

At the beginning of this month we celebrated my sons 3rd birthday. This marks roughly three years since the last time I went out on a ride that I considered a "training ride". It also marks the first time that I fealt comfortable registering for a race as an amature rather than a pro. Although I have only got about 12 hours of time on the bike logged this year I was still really concerned what might happen if I actually did well in the amature ranks? As I said to one of my friend going down. "I will feel like a schmuck if I do well here"

The ultimate irony is that the training I did for this race was actually better training than most of the seasoned racers who showed up. For those of you who haven't heard the details of the race, the rain started while we were on the start line. Rain made the trails sloppy, but the rain stopped soon after we started. Most of us turned the first lap in about an hour and a half, and then everything turned to peanutbutter. Mud clogged every aspect of the bike every time the wheels turned making almost the entire course unridable. Without a doubt this was the slowest and most demoralizing race I have ever done.

My second lap took around 4 and a half hours. The picture above was taken sortly after I discovered that it was faster to carry the bike than to push. Pushing the bike was nearly impossible because the wheels wouldn't turn, so most people moving forward had their bikes in the air. Sortly after this picture was taken, I walked past my friend who is a much stronger rider than I am. It was then that I realized that my training for this race was better than most. While everyone else had been out riding bikes, I had been carrying a 40 pound toddler around all day. You tell me, if you are going to carry a 50 pound mud coverd bike through the woods, which is better training?

So I walked. Lap two took roughly three hours longer than expected so I was low on fluids, but I took on a lot of energy and fluid in the pits and went on out hoping that it would either start raining again or dry up so the third lap would be more reasonable.

My third lap took 5 hours. At one point I got stuck. I tried to ride down a hill to a gully, and my wheels locked up and I almost made it to the bottom. Three of four steps dragging my bike to the bottom left me in a ditch trying to get out the other side. My bike was so caked with mud that I couldn't lift it and the wheels were so clogged I couldn't push it out the other side. I was stuck. Eventually I took on some fluid and cleaned enough mud off the bike that I could lift the frame and carry it out the other side.

What I didn't realize as I was slogging along was that only two amatures actually went out on the third lap. So with a 2 mile and hour average, I walked my way to the podium. The leading pro did four laps and my three laps would have put me in 4th in the pro catagory.

So while I do feel like a schmuck for taking a podium in the amature I have to think that this race was an outlier. As we return to the racing season I thing the advantage will again return to those who train by riding their bikes.

Don't get a Flat...

Ok, someone forwarded me this picture. There are times when i complain about narrow shoulders here in Kentucky, but my days of complaining are over....

DNA Shoe Show

Ok, so on Monday we all went up to Ohio to check out shoes and play with the pros. In additon to getting some new product orders in to get new skate stuff, Bobby got to skate the mini with Josh Kalis, Seth got to get whooped in a game of skate, and Will spent a long time hanging out with Omar Salizar and working the broken leg angle to get a lot of free swag out of the reps. Thanks to the guys at DNA for taking care of us. Below is Will on his big wheel with Omar. - Jon

Going throuhg the Drive through

I wonder if I am alone on this, but it seems to me that I have not seen a lot of bikes using drive throughs at fast food restaurants. Until today I figgured that this was simply due to the low volume of people using their bikes as transportation and the higher probablility of a person who rides frowning upon fast food.

So it has never occured to me that that fact that I take my bike through drive throughs might annoy those businesses with drive through. I regularly use the drive through at the bank, and have been know to ride my bike through the drive through at fast food places when I am out running errands. Basically this saves me the hastle of trying to find something to lock my bike to when I go in to eat.

So it seemed like a reasonable plan to stop at Taco Bell for a burrito on my way home from the afternoon postal run today. I must say I do look a bit odd on the post office bike (a single speed with the largest basket we could fnd) and my Vigor Demise BMX helmet with the skull and crossbones guy on it, but whatever freaks eat burritos too.

I was contemplating the menu when the girl came on and told me that the drive through was for cars. "You Serious??" I replied. She must not have heard me that well becuase I looked at her through the window when I said it rather than talking at the little microphone on the menu board, and there was a long silence and then someone else came on the microphone.

"I'm sorry sir, go ahead with your order". So I started in with my order and by the time I finished, it was yet another person on the headset. "Sir, you are going to have to come in to pace your order"

I was a bit befuddled, so I just said "Thats okay, thank you" and rode back to the shop where I ate a Luna bar instead. Oddly enough I wasn't sure if I was more annoyed that I had wasted the time riding over there, or with the pricipal of the thing, perhaps it was just that I really wanted a burrito but I wasn't about to go in and buy one if they wouldn't let me use the drive through. In retrospect I probably should have walked in with my bike just to see what they would do, but I didn't feel like pushing it.

So for now it is just a "note to self" that if I want lunch while on the post office run it will have to be somewhere else. There is a McDonals next door where I have ridden through the drive through, but now I am just curious if there are other reastaurants where they won't let you use the drive through on a bike. Maybe tomorrow I will hit the Arby's and see what happens.

Thanks for bearing with us...

Some of you have been with us here at Goose Creek since the very beginning. Those of you who remember when our entire inventory was two tupperware containers stored in the back room of my house are true veterans and know how much we have grown.

You also know that after our first two years of slow steady growth the last year has been an amazing ride which has brought a lot of changes to our business. The biggest change was opening of our retail store in La Grange. The second and maybe more important change was that shortly after our doors swung open, some changes in my personal life pulled me to St. Louis and away from the shop.

As such a new venture I was concerned that this move would doom the shop, but I was determined there was a way tomake it work. As it turned out, what in my mind was just a way to survive a bizarre turn of events, turned out to be the catalyst that changed the direction of our business and has pushed us into new areas and new heights.

As I brought in new employees to fill the gaps that would necissarily occur when I was 4 1/2 hours away, not only did new bodies come through the door, but so did new ideas. After some gentle nudging, Ryan convinced me to start selling skateboard products as a sideline, and Will and Seth have now taken that enterprise from a sideline to a full scale operation.

Schoen has taken the reigns as shop manager and had the unenviable position of dealing with a job description written be me which basically stated "I'm out of here, your in charge, good luck figguring it all out".

On top of that I left him trying to keep the shop alive through the winter in a down economy. The fact that the doors still swing open every day is a credit to Schoens work.

Meanwhile Will has developed our new computer system and the new website went live January 1, and he is now developing our skate team. Luke is in the process of redeveloping our cycling team.

So what am I getting at here? Simply put, the manpower and brainpower that has been added to our organization for the last year was designed to replace me, but it has grown beyond me. And we are about to take another jump forward (I hope)

As of next week, I am back in town.

For many of you, the only difference you will notice is that I will be pulling a wrench at the shop again, but those of you who have been friends of the shop and who have continued to support the endevor through all our growing pains, you will also notice that the increased manpower will now allow us to again become active in the racing and touring scenes.

So as spring approaches, expect to see us back out at the races, faster turn around times on repairs, larger inventories, new BMX riders on the ramps at Ollies, New Skateboarders and some new MTB team members.

And from now on, If I am not at the shop, it is because I am out riding, not because I am 2 states away. Again, thanks for your support and I can wait to be back and see everybody. - Jon