Trek Allant On CBS Early Show

So the mass media's been giving us some mad love lately; which is nice. The latest was this morning's CBS Early Show featuring the Trek Allant in its "Perfect Gift" series. A killer bike with standard rack and full-cover fenders for that are standard for $540! This bike just so happens to be in stock now and there are probably a few at your local Trek Dealer. If not, ask them to order one for you. If you're looking for the fairer of the sexes, we have a women's model too. If you're looking to start commuting and green your routine, this is a fantastic place to start.

Let's Get Ready To Rumble!

You can keep Breaking Away. Pee-Wee's Big Adventure was pretty good, if not a little creepy at times. For my money, I'll take Lady is the Boss as best bicycle movie of all time. Remember when Elliot and ET silhouetted the moon? That's got nothing on the Drago v. Apollo-like beat-down that ensues in this clip. I have totally gotta pitch this idea to our Women's Specific Design Brand manager: 6 chicks on bikes, taking down evil, on bikes. With the total lack of original material coming out of Hollywood these days (Random Tangent: Saw 5? Are you kidding me? Well, it must be close to Halloween. When is Final Destination 8 coming out? How many Final Destinations can you really have? Not so Final if you ask me. "The Final Countdown"? That song is awesome) I'm thinking movie-goers would totally dig on a remake of Lady is the Boss. Maybe Trek puts up the money for the remake and we get to go to a sweet premier party. Call the actors from Final Destination. You know they're not doing anything.

Not trying to encourage bicycle fighting here but this clip was just too priceless not to post. I love the bad guy in his khaki suit. That guy was way ahead of his time in the suit department for 1983. He's even got the skinny tie and low-top white kicks. Like he reached into a J Crew catalog 25 years in the future. If you are going to bicycle fight make sure you do it with six of your buddies. And be sure to fight evil. Bicycles are a vehicle for positive change.

Thanks to "Marketing Ninja" Sam for the clip. Now get back to your training. For you are still just a student of the most deadly of Marketing Arts.

Mini-Bike

I have to give the Olympics some props. 

After two consecutive yawners in Sydney and Athens, I was ready to write the Olympic games off. To me, it had become overly self-important and it's social relevance had taken a slip-and-slide-style nose dive. Forgive me, but it's just hard to get jacked up for a Tae Kwon Doe match. The fact that the stars and stripes swept the sabre fighting event? Next. Synchronized diving? What, there was no thumb wrestling tournament to televise? The Scrabble World Championships get the cold shoulder while rhythmic gymnastics takes center stage? The only shining light at the end of the games was that baseball pennat races and football would be coming up next. Oh, and that NBC might televise some more episodes of The Office instead of giving me highlights and results that I was already aware of thanks to the internet.

That being said, I have to show love to Beijing. I told myself, along with everybody I told that I was an Olympics detractor, to give the Olympics another shot. "You have to love swimming!" Why? Swimming is boring. But at least it's short. Down and back. I can handle that. Beach Volleyball? I've played my share of bar-league sand volleyball so I can appreciate that. "The Re-Deem Team"? You're telling me that D-Wade comes off the bench? I've gotta see that starting five. I even got into the US Water Polo team. Apparently we took down mighty Turkey? Awesome. Count me back on the bandwagon.

China represented and the companies that sponsored the games found all kinds of ways to slap their product in front of the world. One of the more creative ways came from one of my favorite companies, Mini. If you've never done it, there's few options for transportation that are more fun than rickshaw. Coincidentally, there are few cars that are more fun to drive than a Mini Cooper. During the games, Mini tricked out some bicycle rickshaws to resemble the back end of the traditional Coop. This photo caught my eye for more than just the obvious reasons. I love the look on the other rickshaw guy's face as he looks at the Mini driver. Comedy. He's either jealous of his now outdated traditional rickshaw or he feels sorry that the other guy has to pull a rickshaw that weighs 5 times more than normal.

Making Sausage

One of my favorite sayings in the world is that "How the sausage tastes is more important than how it's made". It's like Wisconsin's version of Machiavelli. The greater lesson is that in the pursuit of a goal or working towards a project's completion, the process can often be strenuous but the end result is what it's all about. This is how we're rolling here in the marketing department working towards our respective catalogs that will live throughout the year. This year's lifestlye catalog has taken us from the willows of South Carolina and Georgia to the gorges of Oregon and back to the bright lights of Chicago. We've lived, learned, and loved every minute of the journey and I felt it appropriate to share with you some of the items I personally picked up along the way.

1. When you book a model, ask if they've been to a tattoo parlor since their last photo was taken.
2. An "Obama in 08" bumper sticker on your Prius is a free pass to approach any girl living in the pacific northwest.
3. When somebody says "All ya'll" it means they are speaking to the entire group.
4. Just because a taxi didn't signal, doesn't they aren't turning. 
5. People boil peanuts. And they eat them.
6. If somebody tells you not to ride a prototype bike too hard, don't take it over cobblestones.
7. Before you eat tapas, make sure everybody at the table washes their hands.
8. Never leave an $8000 camera unattended on a tripod next to a bike that is not secured.
9. The 2005 white Dodge Minivan is perhaps God's greatest gift to a bicycle photoshoot.
10. Sometimes, there just aren't enough mocha lattes in the world.....

How the story ends? We'll see soon enough as files are due to the printer in two days. So far, the sausage is looking real nice. If you stop into a local Trek dealer near the end of August, pick one up and if you could just do me a favor, look at some of the photos and think good thoughts of your blog buddy. And never put ketchup on your sausage. Mustard and sauerkraut are all you need.

I love this photo. It's like the catalog proofs snuck up and just rocked me. I think I'll call it "Buried in Paperwork". Just a friendly sidenote, all Trek catalog proofs are recycled and all of our catalogs and print material are printed on FSC Certified paper.

Team Wonderbike

Direct from those hip Colorado purveyors of deliciousness, New Belgium Brewery, I'm bringing this little video to you. I'm doing it because it's a tuesday and every once-in-a-while you need something like this on a tuesday to break up the whole "Tuesdayness" of the day. While I may not feel as much guilt about driving an SUV as this video may lead you to think, I think it makes a very fun point.

I have to give props to the product as well. New Belgium, has an awesome line-up. My favorite is the 2 Below but there's a few others that I make room for in the fridge. A man's fridge (or as we call it in Wisco: "The place where I keep the beer and deer meat") is some of the most valuable floor space he occupies and it should not be filled with whatever's cheap at the Mobil station on the corner.

If you're into it, check out the Urban Assault series this summer. I'll be competing in M-Town in August so feel free and see if you can compete with me and my Soho. You may try but as all others who mess with bicycle ninjas like myself, you will lose.

Thanks to Sam for sending the link!

Trek Jetta

A couple of years ago (I think it was 96 or 97 - don't quote me on that) Trek and VW teamed up for a limited edition Jetta. Every once in a while you'll run across one of these bad boys and this might be the most pristine one I've seen. I cam across this hot little number yesterday as i walked out of the Weary Traveler in M-Town.  Weary's got the new Lake Louie Belgian, totally recommended. Anyways, I thought I'd share the Blackberry's photo skills with you and kick some Trek trivia your way. 

Beer Run!

I'm going to start this post by stating we here in "The Loo" DO NOT promote drinking beer and riding your bike.

I will go on to say that when you do choose to drink beer, drink good beer. Life is just too short to waste time on the cheap stuff. We lucky few that live in the home state of micro and macro brews are graced with the good fortune of an abundant array of choices when it comes to good beer selection. I know the haters are already reaching for their Fat Tire and Anchorsteam and blah blah blah but the fact of the matter is nobody buts it down like Wisco when it comes to the frothy stuff. Sorry California, sorry Oregon, sorry every other state that has a micro brewery that everybody there thinks is the greatest. You're a distant second at best. Got beef with that? Leave me a comment, I'll gladly hear your argument. One brewery close to many of our hearts is our very own Capital Brewery in Money Magazine's "Best Place to Live 2007" Middleton, WI. Capital's got everything from a delicious golden Amber, a light Island Wheat, and a jovial beer garden. One thing they didn't have though was their own custom Pure Trike. Capital helped us out last year with a couple local events and we had to come up with something that would truly show how grateful we are. Some spirited souls behind the curtain here in Waterloo took care of that recently and what they came up with is one of the best looking bikes that's rolled through this building this building since Alberto Contador's pink Madone.

Complete with matching custom cooler, this Pure Trike might just be the greenest beer delivery vehicle of all time.

Career Advice

I hate to give advice. You really put yourself out there when you do. If it turns out the way you put it down, great, good, grand. It will undoubtedly be forgotten as fast as it was given. The reverse side of advice is much worse. Should you give advice that doesn’t turn out, you may never forget it. The person who was wronged by your words can take their lumps two ways; they can blame themselves for being foolish enough to follow somebody who wasn’t personally invested or they can just blame you. They will undoubtedly choose the latter. That is, unless they ask you what you would do. Then you can advise them to forgive you and move on.

That being said, I think I’ve got something really solid here. Something along the lines of “don’t spit into the wind” or “make sure to pay all of your taxes”. Something that can’t fail. Here it is: If you choose to make your living with the aesthetics of your body, DO NOT get a tattoo. Case in point, we had a photoshoot scheduled for the Cruiser section in our 2009 catalog and had the model picked out, photographer and staff on location, and permits in hand . Picking out a model to ride a bike in a two-piece, while being a favorable thing to be tasked with, is harder than you might think. So when the model you’ve booked calls the morning of the shoot and asks if the big tattoo on her side is “going to be an issue” it tends to make a producer a tad irksome. Remember, this is the “big tattoo” that was not featured on her cards, any of her shots, and her agent failed to remember. So, I did what any guy in my position would do; I asked her to send a picture of the tat to my Blackberry.  I felt “big tattoo” was open to interpretation. A small Tweety Bird I could deal with (Hey, I’ve been on spring break before and Photoshop can do some impressive things) but dragons and skulls just wouldn’t fly. What showed up was an ink rose that wrapped up her entire left side. To be completely candid, I thought it was pretty cool but probably not the image we were going for on that particular category. Long story short, we called in a back up and hit the shots with a different gal in place. A good save but certainly not optimal.

I should probably have prefaced that little story with the fact that the author has a tat (bear paw, left shoulder) and is in no way biased against people who choose to adorn their bodies in such a manner. However, I was just never blessed with the aesthetics that somebody would pay good money to capture on film. Though if I had, I think I would’ve skipped the ink.

Feeling Drawn

With the oil execs on the firing range at Capital Hill today one of my colleagues at the salt mine threw this Jim Borgman cartoon into my inbox. I thought that its timeliness was well deserving of a post on the life blog.

Here's hoping your day is filled with bicycles and free of $4 gas.

Lance's City Bike

What you are currently looking at is the latest edition to a very prestigious family of bicycles. Personally handled by one of our pro team engineers,this slick new ride is headed to a certain someone down in Austin, TX. Hey, you win 7 Tour de France's you get some perks. A bit of a jump from the normal carbon fiber bedazzled gems that are usually crafted by our boys in the Loo, this incognito ride is all steel, sports a flip-flop hub (it can run as a fixed gear or freewheel singlespeed), and rocks a mustache bar that would make Rollie Fingers jealous. The bike now has deep dish rims on the wheels and an aero brake but I couldn't score a camera fast enough to beat the shipping guys.
Lance digs the urban scene (who amongst us doesn't, right?) and hasn't exactly logged much shuffleboard time since retiring from pro cycling. While stumping for cancer research funding and shooting a scene or two with the Hollywood types, The Man has also had time to open up a commuter-focused bike shop in his native Austin. Mellow Johnny's (a play on the word "Maillot Jaune" which is French for "Yellow Jersey") is probably one of the coolest names for any store be it bike shop or whatever in one of the coolest cities in the US. If you've never been to the capital of Texas, go. Hit up Sixth Street, stay at the Driskill, eat at the Hula Hut. The locals tell me that the Hula Hut is totally a tourist hang-out but it's a decent spot to eat, people watch, and enjoy the view of the lake. Anyways back to Mellow Johnny's. One of the first of its kind, a shop that focuses the lion's share of its attention on commuting is a real breath of fresh air. While the enthusiasts will keep the high end moving, it's the people that will use the bicycle to make real change.

Yesterday was Earth Day so I should probably say something about planting a tree or ride your bike or hug a deer or something. Fact is, I carpooled since the weather was looking less than friendly. There's something about passing all of your co-workers on their bikes while you're in the back seat of Kitty's, (retail merchandising girl) Subaru, that makes you feel bad that you didn't ride. Anyway, HR held a breakfast for all those who rode their bikes, walked, or carpooled and it was probably sweet justice that by the time I could go collect on that there was only a banana left. So my Earth Day message is this: If HR offers free breakfast, don't shuffle your feet.