Chapter 5: Draft 22
August 5th 3:14 pm 672 bikes built
To Avoid the Shriners, dangerous rush-hour traffic, and appease the constables we finally decided that we would utilize the major investment the city of Madison has made and utilize their bike trail system. Only took 22 drafts of the route to arrive at that conclusion but at least we got there. This route will also take us under the highway through a tunnel so no worries of bodily harm there. There is something I'm still a little concerned about. The powers that be want the dealers to ride back from the event to the Terrace where all the bikes will be staged. My concern with this is that some of our dealers like to hit the town after the events. I can't really blame them. As a UW alumnus I frequently took (could also be read as "take") full advantage of Madison's great bar to buildings-with-no-booze ratio. This is a town where liquor licences are handed out like "Obama in 08" flyers. I had horrific visions of broken Limes and even worse, broken bike shop employees scattered throughout the downtown. I was assured that things would be ok but I was still skeptical.
With the route mapped out I decided it was time to secure some trucks to transport these bad boys. I estimated it would take about six 53' trailers to haul all of the bikes from Waterloo to Madison. It turned out to be ten. So ten trucks with ten drivers. Nope, with summer being a particularly busy time of year here I could have the ten trucks but I could only have two drivers. Sweet.
If you're keeping score at home, that's 1000 bikes, 1000 lights, 1000 helmets, 10 53' trailers, 5 whiskey sours, 2 drivers, 2 weeks left, and 1 stressed out Trek employee. Looking at the numbers, this is going to be tenuous. Sorry about the clipart for the post. Sometimes, it's all ya got!
Comments