- The TB ward -

No, I don't have TB, but I feel like I might as well.

As cyclists, we are quite familiar with loving something that causes us pain. In this case, it's my 29" Petri dish - my son Riis. He is the greatest little thing around, I really love the little dude. But, when he goes to the nursery at our health club he invariably comes home with some sort of gack within a week. Being a loving and generous little dude, he then shares it with the rest of the family. What that means for me is that I have been "not sick" for about 4 weeks since November. That sucks.

As is my luck, I have it in the lungs once again. The joy of a scraping cough that makes it feel like someone is removing layers of your lungs with the broad edge of a razor blade is something that I will not miss as we head into summer and hopefully a bug-free season.

We'll see how quickly I can recover from this and get back to training. As far as I know Crumpy has lost most if not all the weight that he is going to (I expect him to weigh in at about 160-165) and I have dropped possibly a couple pounds. Looks like I'm setting up for a busy summer...

- A little help from my friends -

The background: I weighed 140 pounds when I started this company. I was a fairly competitive cyclist (and though I don't like to admit it, triathlete also). I lived briefly (15 mos.) in the South where the average diet is comprised equally of fried things and beer. After 6 years of averaging 90 hour work weeks, I no longer weigh 140 pounds.

The more recent background: Maggy Backstedt is an instigator. Nick Crumpton is very grumpy and likes to take out his aggression on others, preferably his friends. At Interbike last year Nick was ragging on me non-stop about getting so far out of shape (growing business, 2 cross country moves, and a baby - let's see you do it Crumpy-pants). I pointed out that Nick was the same height as me, and weighed the same as I did, so he should shut his BBQ hole. Maggy took it and ran and somehow got a great dinner at interbike this year out of it - whoever is lighter at IB08 gets to choose the restaurant and the loser buys dinner with a bottle of wine, and that includes feeding a 6'3" 200 pound Swede. It's going to be expensive. I'm figuring something like $1,000.

Anyway - to the present - my friend Shane is helping me get back on form both for Cross season this year (more on the bikes in a couple weeks) and to smoke Crumpy. My goal is to be at about 140 to 150 for race weight, and that should put me well under what Nick can hit. In order to get where I want to be Shane is putting me on a bit of a specific diet to say the least. 1600-1800 calories a day and 130g of protien. It's crazy. I'm eating more nuts, beans and soy than you can imagine. Oh, I don't eat meat, so that makes the whole thing even more crazy. Fortunately I do eat fish - preferably raw, mmmmmm sushi - so that keeps me a bit sane. But having an afternoon snack of a protein bar with peanut butter on top is just plain weird.

Anyway, here's to my friends - Crumpy who is motivating me to kick his butt, and Shane for helping me get there...

- Littered with bikes -

There are three framesets and three full bikes sitting in my office. As one person said, it is "littered with bicycles." Off all the things that I could be surrounded with I think bicycles end up being about the best (and I'm talking about 'stuff' not friends and family, etc.).

At this time I have my fixie and my road bike, a Slipstream TT bike, a steel frame for a client that gets painted next week, a carbon track frame, and an old TSX steel Giordana that I refinished for a friend (damn, I forgot to get more chocolate out of him before he quit over at Chocolove - a neighboring company in the same complex).

There are, of course a number of other bikes in our office, I think 4 or 5 without checking. Then there are tubesets that have been pulled to be welded into framesets. I want to have a Ti number done - I have a carbon-Ti road bike, but no full-Ti road bike. I need to rectify that. It's going to have big, oversized tubes and a new AlphaQ GS40 fork. It will also have a raw Ti rear end so that I can attach a Burley without fouling the paint.

Actually, as soon as I get done with this post, I'm going to order a Chariot. They are a Canadian company that makes child carriers that are convertible so that you can ride, run, xc ski, etc with your tot. And for those that are wondering, I have a son that is about 17 months old. His name is Riis and I think he'll be ready to take over the company when he's about 8. The lad is frighteningly smart.

And finally, let's all welcome my brother Jared. He's not here yet, but should be here in a couple weeks. He is going to take over as our Operations Manager. I must say that I am stoked out of my mind to have him coming. He'll be leaving Champaign, IL on June 20th and heading out to Boulder. I'll say it now, the bicycle industry better watch out, because Jared is far and away the smartest person in my family, and that includes a top lawyer with BB&L in Chicago, and another brother that just finished two concurrent masters programs and is now completing his first year of a PhD at Emory (showoff).

More wild and cool things to come, so stay tuned.

p.s. send good juju to Mark, make him say 'yes' (more on this next week)...