Bienvenue en Enfer!

April is the best. Springtime, birds chirping, snow melting, longer days, the mountain bike trails become clear of snow, bikes get dusted off, roads become clear of debris. April showers bring May flowers and all that stuff. It is a glorious time. 

Sometimes in past years, I have thought of one last ski trip or an early trip to Fruita or something like that. But this year I have been completely preoccupied with Paris-Roubaix. This year I have been all about that one thing. April rivals July for bike racing excitement, especially with the combination of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix on successive weekends. There is a bone-jarring, cobbles-induced, glow that takes you all the way through the month. And although there are a lot of Belgians and Dutch that would argue about which of those races is more important and a bigger deal, for me Paris-Roubaix is the mack daddy. Paris-Roubaix is the baddest bike race of all time. L'enfer du Nord. But for this year, I have a new twist on that behemoth. Oh baby.

It all started for me last fall. I had the opportunity to meet with the people from ASO about Trek continuing involvement with their citizen events during the Tour de France as we had been for the previous 3 years. During the course of those conversations about the July events, the ASO informed us that they were going to put on a Paris-Roubaix citizen race the day before the pro race.

It was going to be hard. After all, Paris Roubaix is for the hardest of the hard. If you win that race as a pro, you are THE MAN. ASO had the goal of showing a bunch of citizens exactly how hard it is the day before the race. All the banners and barricades would be up and there would already be people in the forest preparing for the pro race the next day. We made the decision for Trek to sign up with that bad boy. Holy cow!  I made the decision right then and there that I was doing that race. After all, I kinda like a challenge.

So since that day in October I have been planning to be there on the start line, with a few thousand other people preparing to go into hell. I have been riding crappy pavement roads, looking for dirt roads, riding the trainer, etc. I have been soliciting advice from teams and mechanics all over the world. What do I ride? How do I prepare? How do I ride it the day of? My mind is swirling with all of that advice. Double handlebar tape, big tubular tires, keep your pace and your cadence up, do not under any circumstances slow down and down shift (downshift equals death), no watches or wedding rings as your wrists will break and you will have to cut the ring off as your hands will be so swollen after the ride, ride the path on the side if you can, stay on the crown, do not change your line. I already have butterflies in my stomach.  The great gang over at Rapha did a recce of the course a couple of weeks ago. You can see that here.

If you are a cyclist, and anywhere near my age, you have grown up watching Fabian Cancellera, Francesco Moser, Gilbert Duclos Lesalle, Bernard Hinault, George Hincapie, Sean Kelly, etc. tackling the "Hell of the North."  When I was just getting into cycling, I remember watching A Sunday in Hell featuring Eddie Merckx. Now, I am going to ride the same roads and the same cobbles. Wow.

 

 

Just returned from the future - It's really cool there!

This past week was one of those weeks that remind me that I have one of the coolest jobs ever at a great place to work. Sorry to flaunt that if you really did not want to hear that Trek was not a great place. If that was the case, you probably would not be here reading my blog.

I have been lucky to be involved with a lot of great projects while I have been here. Some have been trailside experiments that have made a huge difference in our mountain bikes. Some have been more subtle. And some have been the kind of thing that makes you say later, "Wow, why did it take us so long to think of that?" 

Sometimes a new project is best done by one person and at other times it is best done with group. The group thing can be really cool when everyone in the room really gets it. There is a sort of group mind share thing that happens and it can be really exciting. Everyone sort of zigs and zags at the same time in unified directions. Do you remember the scene in Jurrassic Park, where the dinos were running and turning all together and what's-his-name (you know, the scientist guy) notices that they do not really communicate - they just do it - it's sort of like that.

Sort of like that!  Although trying to avoid the high pants.

We have divided our product development efforts along the lines of final users. Seems obvious, but we can all relate to mountain bikers being different than road riders and urban riders being different etc...  If you live in one of those worlds, it is hard to think like a member of the other worlds. Also pretty obvious, eh? I am pretty smart that way. 

Getting us back to this week and how good it was, we did a cool group excercise this week with the "Town Bike Group". We had all the designers, product managers, and marketing people together from that group and took things all the way back to square one and rebuilt it. Who the rider is, what they like to ride, where they like to ride, how they ride, what they want to ride in the future etc... Good stuff.

It never ceases to amaze me how a group can come together through these exercises. They all live the Town category of bikes and bike stuff every single day of their life. There probably are not a dozen people in the world that are closer to that cycling lifestyle in the world. They commute by bike, they shop by bike, they go out to dinner by bike... 

We did a group customer ethos excercise this past week. The results of which were super exciting. I cannot tell you all the details, you will just have to wait. Sorry to do that to you. I can tell you that the new products that will come from that group going forward will be beyond what anyone expects in that category of bikes. 

I have just returned from the future - they still have burritos there - and dang are the bikes they ride there really cool.

Out.

Joe

 

 

Spring is here - sort of!

We do a weird thing. "We" would be referring to us humanoids. We futz with our clocks and move them around based on how it makes us feel. We want daylight later in the day, after we are done with work, so we created daylight savings time. You might be thinking now, "so what, I adjust my clock because I can - I do have these opposing thumbs after all..." Still, that does not explain why.

Why do we do that? Someone must have the answer, so I have looked into it. There are a lot of theories about why we have daylight savings time, most of which are not valid. An early belief was that it saved energy costs, with lighting and heat, but most of the research on that has been inconclusive. There have been theories that it made people healthier or a bunch of other theories, but none of those really pan out. Almost all of the theories have proven to be vaguely accurate at best, and inaccurate at worst. (If you do not believe me check Wikipedia, after all we all know that is the source of all wisdom.)  

So what is the gig? I pulled this right from the Wikipedia entry on Daylight Savings Time "DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, whose shift working job gave him leisure time to collect insects, and made him aware of the value of after-hours daylight." Mr. Hudson was from New Zealand, and he proposed this to the New Zealand government in 1898. And go back and reread that quote, he proposed this to allow himself more time to collect and study bugs.

Now I do not really care much about bugs. In fact, my favorite times of the year are those times when the bugs are dead and the weather is warm in the middle of the day. I mean, when you are sitting on the deck in the evening after a great MTB ride, with an after ride beverage, do you really have respect/fondness for the mossies that are attacking you? But, I can identify with Mr. Hudson and his desire to have daylight to pursue his passions after work. I have also never been to New Zealand, but the fact that Mr. Hudson was from New Zealand reaffirms for me that it must be a great place. Plus, that is where Frodo was from.

March 13 is Sunday, that is the day that the clocks will turn over to DST. That means that on Monday, at my home latitude, the sunset will be at approximately 18:56. For all of us that are challenged by clocks counting beyond 12, that is 6:56PM. 7PM! Just think about that. That is 3 hour more daylight than when we were at the very bottom of that pendulum swing! On December 21, the sun was setting here at about 4pm.

That will allow an after work two wheeler ride. A road bike ride, or a ride in the woods on a mountain bike or... That thought just gives me a glow today. (It's the little things). There is still snow on the ground, and it was dang cold riding to work this morning for me and the 20 odd other people here at Trek that I see also rode to work. But, in a small way, the time changing means spring is here - sort of.

(In all of this, I just thank that I do not live in Saskatoon. They do their own thing with time, that really doesn't line up with others around them and has them 67 minutes off always from Mean Solar Time. I do not even know what I would do with that whole thing.)

Now, if I just had a thicker pair of gloves to ride home with today.

Joe V.

Unfortunately, that is still the view out the window of the office. But, notice that it is melting!

 

 

Suddenly Seymour! - I Really Dig Bikes.

One day you wake up, and there it is staring you in the face.  It is a little bit like when Audrey from the Little Shop of Horrors movie realizes that Seymour has been right there the whole time.  (That would be Audrey the girl, not Audrey II; the man eating flower.)  The flower is banished, and they live happily ever after.  It is a bit like that. Bam! There it is. Spring. Right around the corner.  And don't even tell me that you do not have the song in your head now, unless you have the song from the dentist office in your head.

I really want to ride my bike, real bad, and tomorrow I am going to do that.  Wow, it is going to be 45 and then the next day 50.  There is still snow on the ground, but only off the roads now.  I am sure we are not really done with winter, but I will take this brief respite.

Ever wonder how you got here?  You know, here with your bike jones?  Well here is my story.

When I was a kid, I rode a bike.  We all did, right?  Mom and Dad got us bikes when we were little.  You know a trike was under the tree at Christmas, or a little bike was handed down from our older siblings or Grandma and Grandpa brought a bike or the cousins had an extra one or probably about 50 other reasons that the first bike would show up in the garage. 

A major milestone was when you first learned to push the pedals around and get down the driveway.  The hill back up the driveway was too big, so you would push the bike back up and then do it all over again.  Back in those days we didn't wear helmets. But I have photos of my kids doing the same with their helmet bouncing down over their eyes as they pushed their way back up the drive. 

But, somewhere along the line for most of us, bikes were lost their cool.  That first set of keys the car in the driveway opened up a whole new world. Cars were a big deal back then.  Everyone had one, gas was cheap and a car got you a lot further along the way.  Some of us never made it back to the bike.  What a shame.

In my case, I still wanted to be on 2 wheels, so I ended up with a motorcycle.  Got me just about as far as the car would get me, a little tough in the winter, but even after a few icy road crashes - I made it work.  I never lost the feeling of freedom and the feeling of being so much closer to the elements that only 2 wheels can give you.  When I got to college, I actually could not afford the motorcycle either.  So, back on a bike I was. 

 

In case at this point you needed to see what parts made up a bike.

 

In reality, I was back on a bike for the obvious reason of the broke starving college student, but I was also back on a bike because I had developed Adult Scoliosis and had a pinched nerve in my back.  My plan of being a runner was not working out as I had hoped (thank God).  The bike helped all of that, and I remembered that I was really more of a cyclist than I was a runner. 

So, I moved to Colorado and started racing bicycles.  I went fast here and there, but was generally pack fodder.  You know the type, train and train and train and still battle for 10th place in the 3-4 race (back then there was just category 1-4, and often times there was not enough people to fill out the groups so we raced together.)  I learned within a couple of years that I was not going to be winning the Coors Classic. 

I got married, I got jobs, I had a family, etc...  but, I never lost my bicycle jones.  I was lucky that way. 

Somewhere in there, mountain bikes happened.  I was back racing in the dirt, rediscovering skills that were dormant from my time as a child motocross racer.  Mountain bikes allowed my lack of natural motor to be masked by my ability to ride a wheelie, skid, and go over the rough stuff.  What a great deal. 

Now, I know that I cannot have enough bikes.  There is always room for another one to have in the garage. I am fortunate that I have the job I do.  It allows me to have a lot of bikes.  You really cannot have too many, can you?

Here are a few of the bikes I have around right now, and a word or two about them. 

 

Remedy

This is probably my absolute favorite bike these days.  It is almost a do-it-all bike.  I can ride the dirt jumps if I change the pedals, I can race the thing and it is the absolute best bike I can imagine for a huge trail ride.

 

Ticket

This is my little jumper bike.  I use it at Rays MTB park, all winter.  During the winter it gets outfitted with some slick-type tires.  In the summer, I will mount up some knobby tires to run at our little dirt jump park out at the trails.  I am a crummy jumper, but I am trying to learn.

Floor is kinda dirty there, but that is the Ticket.

 

Custom Fuel EX SS

It gets fun here.  I have always liked singlespeed bikes, but I just cannot do the hardtail thing for an offroad bike (other than a jumper hardtail).  I know that probably means that I am getting old.  But, WTH.  I have been working on this little project bike.  The guys in the race shop started it up for me, and I have been massaging it into something.  It is a new Fuel EX carbon frame, DRCV rear shock, Kashima coated 140mm Fox fork and a YESS singlespeed device.  I have only ridden it yet at Rays on the XC loop, but it appears to be working pretty well so far.

Pretty psyched for spring with this one.

 

Madone Livestrong Team bike

Back in the summer of 2009, there was a risk that the Astana team would not have the budget to get the team through the season.  There was a back up plan, and these were possibly going to be the frames for the team.  It did not happen, so the sample frames needed to go somewhere.  This is just the 5 series frame, that was painted as a sample.  Built up with a mix of DA and Ultegra.  It is my back up bike.

That is an "I Ride For Chris Funk" sticker on the chainstay.  Miss you Chris.

 

Madone 6 SSL

This one is my new Madone 6 series.  I am on a plain bike kick lately.  I am also really into black.  This one is a full Shimano Di2 Dura Ace model, new team LEOPARD TREK team wheels - all completely blacked out. 

Black, all black.  Looks sinister.

 

Commuter bike

There is a commuter bike in there.  Used mostly to ride to work.  It is a single front ring with a 9 speed rear.  There are not many hills on my commute. 

 

Session WC

There is almost no bike that is more fun than the Session is.  You can make yourself feel like a DH champion, just by pointing it downhill.  It is light, it jumps well and it will make you smile every time you ride it.

The Session in Action at Whistler 

I need a bigger garage.  There are still so many more bikes that I need. A few on the list:

- RadioShack Madone

- LEOPARD TREK Madone

- District

- and many more.

And don't even get me started about the bikes that we have not come out with yet.

Now, what should I ride tomorrow?  I sure hope that Audrey II plant didn't make it through the winter. I do really dig bikes.

Joe V.

 

 

 

 

The new phone book is here!

Yeah I know, what is a phone book?  Got your attention at least.

You know how it is, you wait and wait for something to happen, and then when it does it seems like it blows right by.  It was that way when you were a kid with Christmas and your Birthday.  It is that way now with vacation plans and the cycling trip that you just cannot wait for.  You spend months preparing, sorting gear, planning each day and step.  Then, all too quickly it is done.

Unfortunately, it is never that way with winter.  Winter kinda blows in somewhere in November, settles into something that is not so bad for the month of December.  That makes you say something like, “this is not so bad.  I can handle this winter thing.”  But, if you live here in the upper Midwest, winter is just toying with you.  Somewhere along the way, winter slams you down to the ground and then drives right over you with the snowplow blade lowered.  January comes and the blizzard of the century smacks you in the face (again).  February comes and the weather just settles into a long grey period of cold.  March comes and you get taunted with a warm week and then winter laughs at you with a 10 inch snowstorm. It is just not fun.

You spend lots of time in the garage, cleaning your bicycles and motorcycles, marking the days off your calendar that you are still not riding.  You ride the stupid trainer, you go to the gym and do your workouts, you go back out to the garage and clean your bikes and motorcycles again.  You mark more days off the calendar.  You watch mountain bike videos, you analyze your training log from last year to find out where you went wrong, you go back out to the garage and clean your bike and motorcycles.  You ride the stupid trainer and go to the gym.  You put new cleats on your shoes, you go to the bike swap and sell your old clothing (that is another story in itself, people will actually buy old cycling clothing), you go back out to the garage again and clean your bikes and motorcycles.  It gets really long.

But, then Rays MTB park announces that it is opening in Milwaukee.  Winter mountain bike goodness is coming to your back yard.  Finally, you will not have to drive all the way to Cleveland.  Woohoo!  Then you start the long wait and marking the days off the calendar until it opens.  It is a bit like the Christmas and Birthday calendar from your childhood.

In my case, I started counting towards the opening of Rays all the way back in the summer.  Ray was over there in the old Menards building, throwing up ramps and skinnies and jumps and, yep.  You know, just making us all salivate.  Then, the wheels came off and we hit the skids and ran into problems getting all of our permits etc..., and we did not open.  Ugh…

But, I am proud to say, finally we did.  And wow, what a grand opening it was.  The place is incredible.

This past weekend was that grand opening.  I was there on Saturday.  I am super excited to say that there were about 375 other cyclists there.  375!  375 cyclists that normally have been sitting in their living room in January, waiting for spring.  Marking the days off their calendar, riding the trainer, sorting their old clothing and complaining about living in Wisconsin. 

Not any more though.  From now on, they are riding skinnies, jumping their bikes, ripping around on the XC loop and just enjoying being on their bicycle.  Eventually, we will have to build more new things to ride on, eventually there will be an expectation that things will change between your visits there.  But for now, it is just great to see that if we build it, they will ride it.  Thanks for the opportunity Ray.

We had a bunch of cycling media there.  We had pro athletes there.  Ray was there.  It was crazy amounts of fun.  I cannot wait to be back there next weekend.  See you there.

 

The new phone book is here!

 

 

That is the preview video that we posted before the park opened!

 

That is the park on opening weekend, but before the grand opening party!

 

That is my daughter Hanna with Heather Irmiger from the Trek Subaru team. (Yeah, they are not quite the same mountain biker)

That is Jimmy Mac from Mountain Bike Action enjoying enjoying the G's in the middle of the turn on the sweet pump track

 

Lest we forget... There is Cleveland, and it really is a fantastic place to ride.

 

It had to be built

It's Sevilla, not Seville

Espana that is, not Spain. I think it is pretty silly that we change the name of a country or a city that is in another country. Think about it, Espana is said Spain in English. Deutschland is called Germany in English, etc… The list goes on and on. It would be a little like your calling your neighbor Bob, even if his name is Kurt. Or, just deciding that your wife should be called Cookie when her name has always been Liz. And, before we start the "English is just silly" thing. Before we think that we English-speakers have completely cornered confusion, brace yourselves, we are not alone in this insanity. The French call London, Londre. The Germans call America, Amerika. The French call Germany, Alemagne. (The French also do not have a word for weekend, but that is a different story altogether.) Looks like we're all in it together.

I happen to love France, by the way. 

As some of you have realized, I have been in Europe for the last 5 weeks. Yep, you read that right…5 weeks. Started off last summer when I was in Chatel, France. I thought, "Dang, this is a good place and I could come back for a ski holiday, then base myself here for a while and get some work done." So we did.

My wife, Liz, and I came over mid December. Our daughters joined us just before Christmas and we spent Christmas in the Alps in France. We skied, we bought baguettes, we ate Pizza (Euro style) in Chatel, drove 2 hours away to Italy because that is the home of the best pizza in the world. We became regulars at our favorite restaurant in Chatel, Le Fiacre. We went to Geneva, we did more skiing and, well, bought more baguettes. We did not get as much skiing in as we had hoped, as the snow was not great. But, It was a good time, and I have been able to get some of my French speaking ability back. 

New Years came and went, the world did not go down in flames, and then I started doing some work over here. I did a few days in our office in Zurich, I went up to London for a day for a meeting, I went down to the new LEOPARD TREK team intro (thank god I got the format right on how I used the team name) etc… 

This week, I was in Sevilla, Espana for one of our regular managers meetings. We have a few of those a year, normally based in Wisconsin as that is where most of the managers in the company are. But, one of them per year is held somewhere else in the world. We work on a lot of the things that it takes to run a global company. My part in that is the product development part and the marketing part. It means that I get to talk about the fun stuff and show product development plans etc... Last year we were in Zurich, this year Sevilla. 

Ok, so one of the things that I need to come clean on right now, Sevilla is a great little city. If you thought that it wasn’t, you're wrong.  Just sayin.

Below is a partial list of the things that I did while I was there.

Flamenco Dancing.

Flamenco dancing school.  Clearly I was the best

Until the little guy got up and danced.  errr!

1. Flamenco dancing at the Flamenco museum. While there I saw a real Flamenco dance. I can tell you now that what I was doing bore no resemblance to what I saw. Despite one 10 minute Flamenco dancing lesson.

2. Dinner at the Flamenco museum. That's John Balmer, Aftermarket Product Manager, hoarding all of the stuff in those little glasses.

3. Our Meeting was held each day at an old Palace inside the old city. Way cool.

4. Drank fantastic Café con leche (you're right Ali, Spanish coffee is really good). But, the size of the cup at the old Palace where we held the meetings, was silly. It was the size of an espresso cup. So, being practical, I took the cup from breakfast and used it at lunch time. (I brought it back afterward – jeez.) They looked at me like I was American or something.

This little place above, I stopped and got coffee a few times. Not sure what the meat hanging above was all about.

Takes a few bikes to get all the company managers around town for the evening.

5. Rode all around town on a bicycle with the rest of the management group one evening. Saw a bunch of the city. There is no question that the best way to see a place is on a bike. That's me in the foreground, part of the Trek group strung out behind.

6. Visited the Trek store of Sevilla

7. Had Tapas. I figured that while I was in Espana, I had to do that.

8. Ate dinner each night at 9 or later (ugh…, Spanish people really do not even go out and eat until at least that time. Really, I thought that my daughter was kidding me.) And yes, that is a pretty spectacular view out the window behind the table.

We had a bunch of really great meetings, and picked some directions for the company and products for the next years. If you are thinking right now, that I have an alright job… you would most likely have your head on straight. Either way, I hope you will not be disappointed at what we have coming for next year and beyond.

When my kids were little, we used to play a game a dinner called Best and Worst. Everyone had to tell the best thing that had happened to them for the day, and the worst. It was a great conversation starter. Here is my version of that game for the blog.

Best of the Week

Choosing the best was tough, it was a close tie between the bike ride in the evening around the city and the event below. But, since the bike ride is pretty standard fare, I am going with this story. 

I stayed in a little hotel in the oldest part of the city. The buildings were stone, dated from before the USA was even a colony and were incredible. The streets were almost too narrow for a car to go down, sometimes they were too narrow. The streets were mostly cobblestones. (And almost every day they were wet. I never figured that out, I also was not the only person to notice that.)

The courtyard in front of our hotel was labeled Plaza de Jesus de Redencion. There was a picture of Jesus up on the wall. One day, there was a guy going by on a scooter. I saw him get off the gas on the scooter, coast by the plaza, cross himself, then get back on the gas… hard. It was classic, and qualifies as the best thing I saw all week.

The plaza.

The Jesus picture in the plaza in front of the hotel. 

Worst of the Week

Vegetables, or more accurately, the lack of vegetables. I normally have my largest meal of the day at breakfast, then I have a salad for lunch and then a small dinner. Espana is completely the opposite of that, small breakfast building to a large late late dinner. I find that hard to get used to. I normally can get on with whatever the local food is. But, the thing that I just cannot figure out is where the vegetables were. I had 4 days with 3 meals a day and have to say that I only saw 1 set of vegetables the whole time. Did I just miss them?

Most Surreal "The-World-is-a-Small-Place" Moment

The night we were riding around the city on bikes, I participated in a conference call from my phone with someone from the USA, who was on his cell phone while in Japan. It was weird, I was literally riding around an old cathedral, while working through a Shimano dealeo. Yep, it was like that.

My mother says that I was in Sevilla when I was a kid. I suppose that was true, but I am conveniently ignoring that and calling this the real first time I was there. 

That’s it for this week.

Joe V.

 
 

The New Team Is Here!

Oi, this has been a long time coming. You do not know how long Trek has been working on this.

It all started at Rotterdam for the start of the TDF. Ben (our team liason) and I, along with John Burke (our president), had been talking about if we wanted to expand our team efforts and racing presence. We started with the same way a lot of things start in business; with a spreadsheet. We built a big sheet of all the Pro Tour licensed teams, showing who their roster contained, title sponsor and how long that was meant to last, when their license expired etc... From that, it appeared there were 3-4 teams we should meet with. We did that, and quickly ended up narrowing that down to just the Luxembourg Pro Cycling project - as it was known then (more on that later).

Racing is really important to Trek. We like to race. Helps us to understand the highest end of our product usage and keeps it about riding a bicycle at the highest level, instead of the many other things that it takes to run a bicycle company. The Trek brand has been associated with racing at the highest level for a long time. These days, those efforts are spent with the RadioShack team, the KSwiss Tri team, and with Trek World Racing etc...  We dig it. There really is something cool about being associated with racing and races like the World Championships or the Tour de France are truly a spectacle. It kinda makes you a fan, no matter how jaded you are.  But, the world is a big place and Trek has distribution all over the world. We wanted to have a bigger presence with a European road racing team.

Enter the Luxembourg Pro Cycling Project.

Ok, so I got a little off track. Back to Rotterdam and the start of the TDF. That was the first meeting between Trek and the management of the Lux team. July wore on, and I was back and forth to France and to Luxembourg 2 more times. I was back there again, twice in August, and then finally was able to sign it all up at the beginning of Sept. Wow, it was an experience to say the least. Someday, I will write all of that down and it will be a story in and of itself. But for the mean time, suffice it to say, it was an ordeal. Sometime, if you can get me to tell you the whole story over a beer or 3, I promise you it will be worth your time.

Along the way, I realized how that team was going to be filled with a bunch of really really great guys. Jens Voight, the life of the party, the hard man of the group, Jakob Fugelsang the youngster with a huge future ahead of him, Frank Schleck who is almost the elder statesman now and just a all-around great guy, Andy Schleck who might be the skinniest kid i have ever known (really, my forearms are about the same size as his calves - and of course i am just that bulky), than of course there is Fabian Cancellera. Yeah, what can you say there - makes me want to bow down and do my Waynes World imitation: "We're not worthy..." As Kim Anderson said to me, "He is a special boy". That is probably lost in translation - you have to know Kim.

Team presentation and dealer event in Luxembourg this week.

So here i am in Lux again, for our dealer event with the riders, the press conference with the media, and the evenings big team presentation. It is a huge huge deal. Andy talking about the team, Fabian looking like a superstar, Frank and everyone else. Wow. Then there is me. The bumpkin from Wisconsin.

 

(I’m not sure, but I think I look pretty good in a jacket – NOT!)

I have been referred to as "Converse", for a while now. That is for my usual shoe attire. Yeah, I own like 20 pair. What can I say, I don't really do dressed up. I do own a suit, it is the same one that I got married in. But aside from that, I really do not own anything dressy. I have a sweater or 2, but not much more. I arrived here in Lux with one collared shirt, a few tshirts and jeans. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the event was really dressy. In normal Joe terms, I wouldn't care. But, Frank Schleck and his wife Martine looking out for me insisted that I could not be up on stage in a tshirt. So Martine found me a jacket borrowed from one of the riders that wears the same size as me. Lucky I had the one collared shirt...

(Frank Schleck and I on stage at the dealer event.  Yes, I have to pinch myself.)

At our dealer event in the afternoon, we had 22 of the riders at a private cocktail party. Can you believe it? 22 riders came and shook hands with 50 European Trek retailers, signed autographs, stood around and chatted the crowd up. I have been around this stuff for all of my life. That is a long time, and I should be over all of this. But, I cannot tell you how nervous I am to be on stage with a rider like Fabian or Andy or Frank. I have gotten to know each of those guys, but still cannot believe it. I mean, Fabian can put out something like 1400 watts. Holy cow!

 

(Yep, that is 5000 people waiting for the start)

On the day of the presentation, we did a run-through in the afternoon. Brian Nygaard (the team's General Manager) decided he would like to have Ben and I come out at the same time as Fabian, Andy and Frank with the bikes. In rehearsal, that seemed like a good idea. We went out, answered a few questions about Trek and our involvement with the team etc... All good. No trepidation on my part, as speaking in front of groups really is not that big a deal for me. 

The royal family is here. Press from around the world. All the cycling press. Phill Ligget. (I feel like I am all the way here from Kansas. No offense if you are from Kansas. Surrender Dorothy and all.) And, there are about 5000 people in the audience. This is a really big deal here in Luxembourg.

Fabian, Andy, and Frank were meant to come out on stage at the end of the presentation. The crowd had been there for 2 hours waiting for the 3 of them. When they were announced as the next riders, the crowd went crazy. I kinda thought they were going to storm the stage, like they were rock stars. The music thumped, the whole crowd was on their feet screaming, camera's were flashing etc... At that moment, I decided that Ben and I were not going on stage. We just stayed out back. The on-stage MC's did not ask where we were, and they adjusted. It was the right move, as the next day that shot of the 3 greatest riders in the world on the stage with their new bikes, arms raised to the crowd, was perfect. It was in almost every newspaper across Europe. It would have looked stupid with Ben and I just standing behind them.

Team Name

At this point, you probably have heard that the team name is LEOPARD TREK! Can you believe it? I still have to pinch myself. Trek is right up there at top billing on the team name. 

I have been asked about 1000 times, "what is Leopard?" (pronounced "Lay-O-pard"). Leopard is the name of the company that owns the team. That company was set up to manage the team, so it doesn't have any other commercial offering. The team will be building that brand name with the team, and believes that the team name should be something to aspire to. The team name, is a brand of its own. Kind of a cool concept that is really new and fresh.

I for one, am pretty excited about the whole thing.

 
(New Bontrager team helmet – more info coming soon)

 
(a beautiful site)

(kinda inspiring, eh?)

(@trek_ben adjusting bikes all the way up to the last minute.  In the normal attire for a team Liaison)

This team is going to be all about racing. They will be presenting themselves as serious about racing and hope to let their racing speak for itself.  I, for one, am super excited about a return to the purity of racing.

For the time being, we start the season as the number one ranked team. That may not last, but we plan to win a bunch of races with this team.

It is really going to be fun. Really fun.

Cheers till next time.

Joe V.

Most People Call Me Joe V

Hi, I’m Joe V. The V is for Vadeboncoeur, but no one ever really calls me that (except my business card). That card also calls me the Global Director of Product Development, Marketing and Creative Design. Yep, I am sometimes not really sure what all that means either. I do know, that I dig bikes, oatmeal, motorcycles, the weird things I see along the way, my family and my job. I get to travel the world helping great bikes happen so it’s a pretty great gig. 

So I am starting this blog entry (as well as my stint as an official “Trek Blogger”) while sitting on a plane in Tokyo, waiting to get going on the final leg of a flight to Taiwan. It’s not the first time I have been on this flight. This is not something that everyone who rides a bike does, but it is something that many of us in the bike biz do from time to time.
 
The bike biz, what is that anyway? I guess I never thought that I would be on a plane to Taiwan nor even in the bike biz. It's a crazy thing. I love bikes. I have come to accept, maybe even really like, travel. I should, this job gets me on a plane more in a year than most people will in a lifetime. Sometimes the travel is fun, sometimes not. But a lot of it allows me to ride a bike in some really great places. During dinner one night at a recent mountain bike test event in the Arizona desert, the gang of us were recounting all the great places we were fortunate enough to ride this year. I got in road rides in Tuscany and France. I should have gotten MTB rides in Chatel, France but had a separated shoulder from a previous mountain bike crash at the Whistler bike park. There were great XC rides in Colorado and northern Wisconsin, a bunch of big bike rides on the freeride trails in the UP of Michigan, Ray’s Indoor MTB Park in Cleveland; road bike rides in northern California, southern California mountain bike rides...  That was just my list in what was a mediocre riding year for me. I am very fortunate.
 
This week in Taiwan will be interesting.I hope to mix all the experiences that I have had this year, and to do some good work to set the stage with a bunch of suppliers to deliver the greatest Trek and Bontrager lineups you have ever seen. We have a bunch of things planned that will set the cycling world on fire. We are on a complete tear lately with product development and it gets better every year.
 
So I sit here, reading a Bike magazine on Zinio while listening to Michael Franti and Spearhead on my iPod. All around me are a bunch of business people. I am in my usual attire (Converse shoes, jeans and a cycling t-shirt). I definitely do not fit in here. When I climbed into the seat, I jammed 2 cycling magazines a ski magazine and a motorcycle magazine into the pocket on the seat. I have a trashy scary novel somewhere in there also. Something I picked up in the airport. It may be cheap and pointless but it has the uncanny ability to pass the time after I have exhausted the Bike and Moto magazines. The people around are all Financial Times and business books. I just cannot do that stuff.
 
I am going to help build really cool bike stuff. That is business, yes. But over and above that it is bike stuff. That is what all this is really about.
 
Just don't tell anyone around me.

Cruiser Season!

One of my absolute favorite bikes that Trek makes is the one that a lot of people don't talk about. It's got 0 grams of carbon fiber. It's wind tunnel numbers are absolutely horrible. It's the aboslute most fun you can have on two wheels. Our cruiser line represents everything that i love about summer. When you live in Wisco, trust me, you earn your summer. When the mercury starts to creep on up to above 55 on a consistant basis, you know it's time to break out the bermudas and Ray Bans. Lemonade. Fresh cut grass. Dippin' low and slow. Sandals. Can I preach on sandals for a second? Most versatile footwear available. I'm like the Carrie Bradshaw of sandals. I've got formal flips and casual flops. That's why I was stoked to see the Trek Calypso (Women's Ecru Pearl) grace the most recent Havaiana's ad in this month's Vogue. Get yourself a pair of Havaianas. They will make you smile. If you don't believe me, take our Cruiser Classic for a spin in your new kicks. If you're still not smiling, well, there's not much else I can do for you.

Yeah, I read Vogue and know who Carrie Bradshaw is. Deal with it.

Bike Lane Blog's favorite summer songs:
"Summertime" - Will Smith
"Vivrant Thing" - Q Tip
"Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog - Three Dog Night (Thanks Scoop!)
"Steal My Sunshine" - LEN
"Hold on! I'm Comin'" - Sam and Dave
"SpottieOttieDopaliscious" - Outkast
"In The Summertime" - Mungo Jerry
"Good Life" - Kanye West

Got a favorite summer song that you want included in the mix? Holla at the comments section. I'm working on my Summer 09 playlist right now and my ipod needs your help!

Bonty Bamboozle

  

Recipe for a great practical joke:
1. A Willing Audience
- Often referred to as "The Mark". The target has to be willing to listen to your message and willing to believe what you tell them. News about Lance in the bike industry is like Grey's Anatomy to middle-aged housewives. They crave it like oxygen.
2. Realism
- The farce has to have some meat on the bones that make you stop and think about whether it could be real or not.
3. The Pay Off
- The overall premise has to be ridiculous. The Onion has made its entire living on this fact.

All these ingredients went into Bontrager's April Fools joke. We fancy ourselves quality pranksters here in the Loo and when late March rolls around the wheels start to turn. Beef bouillon cubes placed under the shower caps in the womens bathroom was one idea but that seemed.....smelly. Then Lance falls off his bike and presents us with the perfect opportunity to tie-in Bontrager inForm technology.

Industrial Designer, Hans, was tasked with creating the replacement clavicle and went right to work. After a little research on the design of the clavicle bone and a little measuring tape action, he was ready to prototype. Some may argue that using our super-expensive prototyping machine to produce a fake bone for practical joking purposes is a misuse of resources but I'd argue that when you're about to get somebody good, no expense can be spared. Especially when that "somebody" is the "world".
After the bone was finished it was time to shoot it in a believable setting so we hit the carbon room with some rubber gloves in on our on-site factory to get the shot. After borrowing an x-ray of a broken right clavicle from the world-wide interweb we hit up the Photoshopping skills of our photo studio to take the giggle fest to the next level. The "implant" was added to the x-ray and a carbon weave was added to the picture of the actual piece. For the finishing touch, our copywriter put some words to paper with some "credible" sources lending quotations and we were ready to roll.

Consider yourself bamboozled! Big props to all of the Trek peeps who brought this together. If anybody asks, this was all done on personal time.