End of the year post

It's been over ten days since I bored anyone with a post here. I don't know that there was any particular reason, other than I've not thought to post anything for over a week.

Yes, there was the legal holiday, er, holly-daze last Fried-day. Today is something of another noteworthy day--we flip the calendar over to the teens decade from the aughts decade tonight.

It's customary to have and share year-end thoughts, or plans for the coming year, or something. I kind of like the attitude my cat takes on the topic, though--it's just another trip 'round the sun, another time the sky outside gets light, another day to enjoy watching birds. Cats have much to teach us.

I didn't ride to work much over the last ten days--not at all this last week, in fact. Temperatures have been below my thresholds, or the combination of cold and wet has been outside my range of "willing to be out in it for an hour on a bicycle."

I've been working on improving some practices at the store over the last couple weeks. I've implemented some inventory-control measures that will help us be more profitable this year, and better serve our customers in the process. It will take time to get all the staff "up to speed," but we are already seeing benefits. We started carrying Specialized as a brand a couple months ago, and I think it's going to be a great help for us--Specialized has a great range of products, with full-on race bikes, time trial bikes, kid bikes, and the Globe line of urban bikes, not to mention the Body Geometry lines of gloves, helmets, shoes, and saddles. We get to drop some lines of bikes that were not doing well for us. We will get to be a destination store instead of "Oh, yeah, there's a bike shop in Oldham County, now, too. Wonder what they sell?"

Oh, and we are the only shop in the Louisville area selling Specialized's "S-Works" products.

We've got a couple of Park Tool School sessions coming up--one this month, and another in February. The January session is over half-full as of this afternoon, and the students seem like good folks. I know of a few others who are interested (which reminds me that I need to call a couple folks this weekend...).

Tomorrow will see the Club have its annual Polar Bear Ride, pot-luck chili dinner, swap meet and club meeting. It's going to be a bit chilly during the day, so I don't know who will be riding. I plan to ride over, since the party is less than a mile from the house. We'll have to figure out what we are going to carry and how, but unless we ride the tandem for the first time in over a month, I can easily haul whatever food we take in the trailer.

See y'all next year!