What happened to the Blog?

For those loyal readers of the blog (and other ficticious charactors) you may be saying, what is it with the lack of updates and stunning commentary. Well, the deal is that as indicated by the last post, March happened. People have started to walk through the doors and we are getting busy. On top of this, new products are arriving every day. We just took a huge delivery of Rocky Mounts racks, and we have been keeping the folks at Wheels Manufacturing and Stans busy making product for us. At one point today I was staring at deliveries from three of our major distributors which had effectivly blocked the entry way to the main "showroom" and I just didn't know where to start. (The pile has now been cleared, so it is okay to come visit us again) At any rate, I will try to get some new pictures and stories up in the next few days, but your best bet is to come down and check out all the new developements. There is something new every day.

Three Cheers for march

Ok everyone, pull your bike out. It's March and the sun is shining. Since we kicked open our retail doors in February our mantra has been "get through February, make it to March". So now our last excuse for putting things off is gone. It is time to ride. The first race of our spring series is today so the roadies have been shining up their bikes and wiping the last of the salt away. And the mountain bikers have prepped themselves for the pre-season.

Here at the shop we are finally moved in to a point where we feel comfortable with the day to day traffic and no longer have to start every sentance with "when we get fully moved in..." Despite this, there is still a lot of work to be done until we get the shop exactly where we want it. We have yet to put in the "lounge" in the front room. And the office space is still just a computer on a card table, but with the arrival of clothing racks this week, the showroom floor is just about done.

The design work for our sign in being finalized and then it is a waiting game to get it approved by the historic committee and liscenced by the city. But people seem to be finding us without it. Sometimes a bike in the window is all the explanation that a shop needs.

So good luck to the racers today. Spring may be 20 more days away, but we are ready for it, and are going to start without it.

2008 Teams and Beyond

The Goose Creek Cycle team actually got a little press in the Courier journal last week, but since then a lot has happened. The roster will look a lot different in 2008 as we are adding riders quite quickly. We just signed a group of 5 new road riders who are already used to training and working together. The group does include one Junior who we should expect to see great things coming out of in the future. Also a couple of Cat 3's that should give us more of a presence in the local scene.

It looks as if we will also be adding a couple of mountain bikers for the 2008 season. I will release a full roster as soon as we get it all finalized.

We are also in the middle of releasing a "Club" team that is focused on local and natioal riders who enjoy the sport and ride a lot but would not typically be candidates for true sponsorship deals. By end of season we will convert that team over to the current jersey and you can look to see a new jersey design with a new list of sponsors for 2009.

All and all very exciting stuff. Even for February. See you all out there on the road.

Ahh the Joys

So it has been kind of slow at the shop customer wise, but there is plenty to keep us busy. It seems like we are hitting one fiasco after another. Our printer stopped working in the move, so we got behind a day in shipping while we went and got a new one. All of out gridwall shipped, but we found out after the fact that they were backordered on all of the mounting brackets, so once it arrives we will have no way to hang it. Our tire display shipped, but went to the old location and the moving company couldn't get the truck in there so I had to go pick it up in my station waggon, which was a trick considering that I just had surgery and can't lift anything over 10lbs. We still need to regravel the neighbors parking pad which we had to dig up when the water main broke. An issue with the citys new sign policy has caused them to suspend issuing sign permits for the next 4 months, so getting a sign up will be a bit of a trick and golly it would be nice if people rode bikes in February because customers walking through the door would make all this a lot easier to pay for.

Anyway, these are the joys. To pass the time we are going to start doing trainer rides at the shop which should be fun. See you all out there

It is starting to look like a shop

Ok, so it doesn't really look like we are open yet, but it is getting closer. It my gimped out, not allowed to lift over ten pounds state, it is going a little slowly, but thanks to some help from David we have gotten the shelves built in the stock room and more of the product is tagged and out on the floor. We did have a couple of firsts today that I was excited about.

First #1: The shop phone rang - Sure it was a telemarketer, but whatever. Really, how do these people get you numbers so quickly.

First #2: someone I didn't know walked in. Sure she was looking to find out what happend to the store that was in there before us, and she never actually got all the way through the door, but whatever it is a start.

So hang on to your hats folks, eventually someone is going to come in and buy something.

Open... Sort of

We have now moved most of the product from the internet end into the new shop now and we have the doors open. This by no means means that we are a fully functional shop. We are still short some things like a cash register and most of the diplay cases, but if you need a small part, or a repair we can do that. Once we move the computer system in we will be able to take credit cards, but for now we are taking cash and checks. Please feel free to come by and check us out, we don't have set store hours yet as we are kind of in and out picking up supplys as we need them, but after today someone should be out there most of the time. Once we get settled we will set up real store hours and we should have a grand opening in March sometime.

Oh how far we have come...

This almost doesn't look like the same building, but asside from some minor finishing work and installing racks etc. the inside of the shop is done. Now that the interior is safe for people to walk around in, we will be "open", and people can come in and hang out, check out the shop etc. As you can see the inventory is a bit limited, but as of today much of our online inventory has been moved in, and I have started to build some bikes.

Also note that Lane has been hard at it as well. If you look closely at the far end of the shop there is a pile of jackets. Lane is fast asleep in that pile.