wESd here, since Jeff has been spending any spare time on the new www.mombat.com website I figured I would check in and let everyone know what has been going on at the shop.
We measured up Matt's beloved Rock Lobster to get its geometry for his Ti Goat and will hopefully place the order once we go over the details with him next week. Its finally just about to cold for a night ride on Tuesdays so we started our trainer ride tonight and It has reminded me just how bad riding the trainer hurts.
Russ called to let us know that Mark's frame should be headed our way very soon. I can't wait to see how the flames look in another color to compare to Sinjin's.
I called Swobo to order some more wool jerseys and we will have them stitched up as soon as we get them to fill in stock.
Thats about it for now, more soon
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Pinewood Derby and "Do your best"
As a few of you know, I am Cubmaster for Pack 171 here in Mooresville, NC. For those not familiar with the program, Cub Scouts is for boys in Grades 1-5 and our pack has about 75 boys in it. The flagship event each year is the Pinewood Derby.
The Cub Scout motto is "Do your best" but as I have heard, that changes to "Have your dad do his best" when it comes to the Pinewood Derby. Each boy receives a small chunk of pine plus four plastic wheels and four nails. The idea is to sculpt the wood into something that travels down a 20' track as fast as possible. The cars have a maximum height, wheelbase and weight. The wheels and axles can be "smoothed" but not really modified. As with all racing, the winner is th one who can bend the rules the most without actually breaking them.
Dads armed with cordless drills hover near the weigh in area ready to drill out that .005 ounce in order to hit 5.0 ounces exactly. In gravity racing, every ounce counts. Being in the heart of NASCAR country, it seems like half the dads work in race shops and the cars reflect it. Some of these things are works of art with paint work that would put a Mercedes to shame and polished axles gleaming with some unobtanium lubricant.
To try and channel all of these creative juices, I started an adults/siblings race last year. We changed the rules to allow axle and wheel modifications and upped the weight to 10 ounces. There ended up being 15 adult/sibling cars which was great but there were still a lot of "adult" kids cars. Not everyone got the memo! It's tough to see the kids who actually built their own cars (as evidenced by the hand painted racing stripes on the asymmetrical body) get whooped on by kids who had no part of the building process (as evidenced by the look on the kids face when he sees his car for the first time at check in). Not sure who the "winners" and "losers" are in this process?
It is a tough process to sort out and we generally get a pretty short time to do it. Typically, a Cubmaster serves two years and the first one is spend trying to learn the system. The second year you get to improve on the mistakes made the first year and then it is time to pass it on to the next generation of leaders. Maybe, some future leader will figure out the Pinewood conundrum, since I wasn't able to.
The Cub Scout motto is "Do your best" but as I have heard, that changes to "Have your dad do his best" when it comes to the Pinewood Derby. Each boy receives a small chunk of pine plus four plastic wheels and four nails. The idea is to sculpt the wood into something that travels down a 20' track as fast as possible. The cars have a maximum height, wheelbase and weight. The wheels and axles can be "smoothed" but not really modified. As with all racing, the winner is th one who can bend the rules the most without actually breaking them.
Dads armed with cordless drills hover near the weigh in area ready to drill out that .005 ounce in order to hit 5.0 ounces exactly. In gravity racing, every ounce counts. Being in the heart of NASCAR country, it seems like half the dads work in race shops and the cars reflect it. Some of these things are works of art with paint work that would put a Mercedes to shame and polished axles gleaming with some unobtanium lubricant.
To try and channel all of these creative juices, I started an adults/siblings race last year. We changed the rules to allow axle and wheel modifications and upped the weight to 10 ounces. There ended up being 15 adult/sibling cars which was great but there were still a lot of "adult" kids cars. Not everyone got the memo! It's tough to see the kids who actually built their own cars (as evidenced by the hand painted racing stripes on the asymmetrical body) get whooped on by kids who had no part of the building process (as evidenced by the look on the kids face when he sees his car for the first time at check in). Not sure who the "winners" and "losers" are in this process?
It is a tough process to sort out and we generally get a pretty short time to do it. Typically, a Cubmaster serves two years and the first one is spend trying to learn the system. The second year you get to improve on the mistakes made the first year and then it is time to pass it on to the next generation of leaders. Maybe, some future leader will figure out the Pinewood conundrum, since I wasn't able to.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Goat Ti
A month or so ago, Mark Lynskey stopped by the shop. Some of you might recognize the name from Lynskey Performance Bikes but most would remember the name as the founding family of the Litespeed brand. After the family parted way with Litespeed (and after serving an appropriate non-compete sentence)they are back building titanium bikes. Mark had a blast going through the archives and looking for ideas. The talk then turned to building titanium goodies for Mountain Goat.
We had Paul, of Rock Lobster fame, build us some bull moose handlebars out of steel. We had them made to fit the now-standard 1 1/8" thread less set up. We have a couple extra sets that we sell for $175. The bars are raw steel so they need to be finished. We talked about plating them and someone suggested that we could do them in titanium for not a whole lot more. When Mark got back to the shop, he drew up some bars. As soon as we finalize the drawings, we'll get some made up. Looks like $399 for the Ti bars.
We've contemplated the "stock" frame and came up with a couple of great ideas. We wanted to keep as much "goat-ness" as possible. The wishbone stays are pretty easy. Next was the head tube reinforcing rings and that is where it got tough. About the only way to make them work was to carve up a head tube to the tune of about $600......think we'll pass on that one. Next up was the finish. To me, there is something inherently wrong about painting Ti. Part of the appeal is the durability of the finish (no chips!). Fortunately, Lynskey has a really nice etching option that we really liked on their sample frame. We spend some time on the phone with David Cash, from Lynskey, and worked out a really nice scheme. We are going to duplicate the panels using the etching process. It will be like the team paint with top tube, down tube and seat tube panels. The top tube panel will feature the model name, the down tube will have the Mountain Goat logo and the seat tube has the goat head.
We are currently working on nailing down the details and hoped to have one ordered in the next couple of week.s Once we do, we'll check it out to nail down the final details and pricing. Expect somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,500 for the frame.
We had Paul, of Rock Lobster fame, build us some bull moose handlebars out of steel. We had them made to fit the now-standard 1 1/8" thread less set up. We have a couple extra sets that we sell for $175. The bars are raw steel so they need to be finished. We talked about plating them and someone suggested that we could do them in titanium for not a whole lot more. When Mark got back to the shop, he drew up some bars. As soon as we finalize the drawings, we'll get some made up. Looks like $399 for the Ti bars.
We've contemplated the "stock" frame and came up with a couple of great ideas. We wanted to keep as much "goat-ness" as possible. The wishbone stays are pretty easy. Next was the head tube reinforcing rings and that is where it got tough. About the only way to make them work was to carve up a head tube to the tune of about $600......think we'll pass on that one. Next up was the finish. To me, there is something inherently wrong about painting Ti. Part of the appeal is the durability of the finish (no chips!). Fortunately, Lynskey has a really nice etching option that we really liked on their sample frame. We spend some time on the phone with David Cash, from Lynskey, and worked out a really nice scheme. We are going to duplicate the panels using the etching process. It will be like the team paint with top tube, down tube and seat tube panels. The top tube panel will feature the model name, the down tube will have the Mountain Goat logo and the seat tube has the goat head.
We are currently working on nailing down the details and hoped to have one ordered in the next couple of week.s Once we do, we'll check it out to nail down the final details and pricing. Expect somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,500 for the frame.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Birth of a MOMBAT
We've been looking to "formalize" the bike collection for awhile now. It wouldn't change a lot of what we do but a "museum" sounds a little better than "bike shop" when we go out looking for donations, help, grants.....so the search was on.
The first step was to check into 501(c)(3) non profit status. We have had several folks willing to donate bikes to the cause but they were also interested in the potential tax benefits. The call went out to several different lists trying to find someone who could give us an idea of what we would be getting into. By accident, we were talking to a fellow with a cool old Moots bike who happened to specialize in setting up non-profits (like your neighborhood bike shop......unfortunately!). It appeared that there were a couple of issues: first,how to separate the collection from the shop, and secondly, the ownership of the bikes. The separation issue would be tough but it could be solved. The ownership issue pretty much killed the deal. To set up the non-profit, I would have to give all of the bikes to the non-profit entity. Since we have been using the bike collection as something of a stand-in for our 401k, that wasn't really a viable option. The only way around it would be for the non-profit to purchase the bikes at a reasonable cost from the shop which sounds great until you realize the non-profit has very little way to raise money. Oh well.
So we went on to step two which was to set up a separate identity for the collection. I've always been a fan of making the name pretty obvious. If you sell cakes, have "cake" in your name. If you have a mountain bike museum, you damn well better have "mountain bike" and "museum" in the name. Once again, we leaned on our list of friends for some ideas. There were quite a few different suggestions and four or five of them would have done a fine job. Ross Shafer submitted the Museum of Mountain Bike Art and History. The first time I said it out loud, it just kinda rolled of the tongue. I also really liked the art and technology part. Looking at many of our bikes, the word art comes easily to mind. The technology part is pretty obvious and helps make sure we didn't end up being thought of as a place with pictures of bikes hanging on the wall! As a bonus, MOMBAT has a neat ring to it and it could even be seen as a very small tribute to Jacquie Phelan's WOMBATS (Womens Mountain Bike and Tea Society).
With the name out of the way, a logo would be up next. And if you haven't figured out the pattern yet, we put a shout out to our various groups of friends looking for suggestions. Captain Dondo has a couple up @ www.captaindondo.com that we have been working on. We've tried to include a few touchstones such as a Breezer Series I (SeeKays bike no less), a 1" pitch chain ring and the outline of the Schwinn Excelsior badge. Take a look and let us know whatcha think or even better, send us your ideas.
As the search goes on, we've been working on selling off a few bikes that might not qualify as museum specimens. This should give us a little more breathing room to display the remaining bikes better (quality over quantity). Other than that, a couple of idea brewing but nothing definite. Maybe a series of t-shirts in limited quantities to members? Vintage bike of the year? We'll see where it takes us.
And since you have read this, you are obviously in one of our groups of friends that we lean on heavily. If you have ideas or suggestions, please pass them along.
The first step was to check into 501(c)(3) non profit status. We have had several folks willing to donate bikes to the cause but they were also interested in the potential tax benefits. The call went out to several different lists trying to find someone who could give us an idea of what we would be getting into. By accident, we were talking to a fellow with a cool old Moots bike who happened to specialize in setting up non-profits (like your neighborhood bike shop......unfortunately!). It appeared that there were a couple of issues: first,how to separate the collection from the shop, and secondly, the ownership of the bikes. The separation issue would be tough but it could be solved. The ownership issue pretty much killed the deal. To set up the non-profit, I would have to give all of the bikes to the non-profit entity. Since we have been using the bike collection as something of a stand-in for our 401k, that wasn't really a viable option. The only way around it would be for the non-profit to purchase the bikes at a reasonable cost from the shop which sounds great until you realize the non-profit has very little way to raise money. Oh well.
So we went on to step two which was to set up a separate identity for the collection. I've always been a fan of making the name pretty obvious. If you sell cakes, have "cake" in your name. If you have a mountain bike museum, you damn well better have "mountain bike" and "museum" in the name. Once again, we leaned on our list of friends for some ideas. There were quite a few different suggestions and four or five of them would have done a fine job. Ross Shafer submitted the Museum of Mountain Bike Art and History. The first time I said it out loud, it just kinda rolled of the tongue. I also really liked the art and technology part. Looking at many of our bikes, the word art comes easily to mind. The technology part is pretty obvious and helps make sure we didn't end up being thought of as a place with pictures of bikes hanging on the wall! As a bonus, MOMBAT has a neat ring to it and it could even be seen as a very small tribute to Jacquie Phelan's WOMBATS (Womens Mountain Bike and Tea Society).
With the name out of the way, a logo would be up next. And if you haven't figured out the pattern yet, we put a shout out to our various groups of friends looking for suggestions. Captain Dondo has a couple up @ www.captaindondo.com that we have been working on. We've tried to include a few touchstones such as a Breezer Series I (SeeKays bike no less), a 1" pitch chain ring and the outline of the Schwinn Excelsior badge. Take a look and let us know whatcha think or even better, send us your ideas.
As the search goes on, we've been working on selling off a few bikes that might not qualify as museum specimens. This should give us a little more breathing room to display the remaining bikes better (quality over quantity). Other than that, a couple of idea brewing but nothing definite. Maybe a series of t-shirts in limited quantities to members? Vintage bike of the year? We'll see where it takes us.
And since you have read this, you are obviously in one of our groups of friends that we lean on heavily. If you have ideas or suggestions, please pass them along.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The status quo
Just a quick update on the current state of the Mountain Goat herd:
#20 is the 20" wheeled bike being done in a reverse team splatter (but in pink and white instead of green and orange)with a matching fork and stem. This one shipped from Russ and should be getting to us next week. We'll check it out, take pictures, attach the head badge and send it to its new home in Germany.
#21 is heading our way and is available for purchase. we have kept it unpainted so it can be done in your choice of colors. 17" w/ Paragon sliders.
#22 is being painted by Russ and should also be heading our way soon.Purple with Hot Rod flames should be very nice. This one has already been adopted.
#23 is now at the shop and is complete. 19" Route 29 single speed with Paragon sliders, finished in red powder coat. We have built this one up with a Bontrager Switchblade fork, El Camino disc brakes, Salsa rims, Thomson post.....I'll post pictures soon. If we built this one up for you, it would have been $3,300 but since it is a spec bike, $2,999
#24 is also available now and is awaiting your choice of finishes.
#25 is being built as a Surly Puglsey replica bike using the 26" x 3.7" tires on Large Marge rims with a Rohloff internal 14 speed hub. This should be a fun bike to play with.
There are a couple of bike that we will hopefully be ordering soon. Just finishing up the details.
Mark Lynskey, of Litespeed fame, stopped in the shop last week and we had a productive talk about titanium Goats. The Lynskey family has set up shop under the family name and is building bikes again. I think we have most of the details figured out so if you are ready for a Ti Goat, we can make it happen.
#20 is the 20" wheeled bike being done in a reverse team splatter (but in pink and white instead of green and orange)with a matching fork and stem. This one shipped from Russ and should be getting to us next week. We'll check it out, take pictures, attach the head badge and send it to its new home in Germany.
#21 is heading our way and is available for purchase. we have kept it unpainted so it can be done in your choice of colors. 17" w/ Paragon sliders.
#22 is being painted by Russ and should also be heading our way soon.Purple with Hot Rod flames should be very nice. This one has already been adopted.
#23 is now at the shop and is complete. 19" Route 29 single speed with Paragon sliders, finished in red powder coat. We have built this one up with a Bontrager Switchblade fork, El Camino disc brakes, Salsa rims, Thomson post.....I'll post pictures soon. If we built this one up for you, it would have been $3,300 but since it is a spec bike, $2,999
#24 is also available now and is awaiting your choice of finishes.
#25 is being built as a Surly Puglsey replica bike using the 26" x 3.7" tires on Large Marge rims with a Rohloff internal 14 speed hub. This should be a fun bike to play with.
There are a couple of bike that we will hopefully be ordering soon. Just finishing up the details.
Mark Lynskey, of Litespeed fame, stopped in the shop last week and we had a productive talk about titanium Goats. The Lynskey family has set up shop under the family name and is building bikes again. I think we have most of the details figured out so if you are ready for a Ti Goat, we can make it happen.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
The Humble T-shirt
Working around the shop is hard on the ole wardrobe. Over-lubed chains,greasy bearings, dripping hydraulic lines, Chinese food........all take their toll. This is probably why the t-shirt has almost become the business card of the bike industry. They get used until they are demoted to shop rag status and replaced by the next one in line. This is probably the reason that we have done literally every-color-under-the-sun in the First Flight Bikes t-shirts.
When we brought Mountain Goat Cycles back, it was time to work on t-shirt designs. The first one we did was the old style head badge shirt. After we designed the new decals and modernized the Goat, we did a two color design. This has become our "stock" shirt that we will keep on making. It was kinda fun to come up with new designs and we decided to offer the t-shirts in limited numbers, like Princess Di commemorative plates. We had done about 85 of the first design which seemed like a weird number so we decide to go with 100 for the second edition shirt. The original
Mountain Goat catalog art, circa 1981, was a great design so it became number 2 in the series. We ordered 100 of them divided amongst 5 sizes.
Number two was selling nicely so we wanted to have number 3 waiting in the wings. I talked to my brother-in-law, Gabi Campanario
artwork for number 3 and had a run of 100 shirts done in this design. We have only had them for a week and it has proven to be very popular already. Check it out If you like 'em, go to www.mountaingoatcycles.com and pick one up.
As the old commercials used to advise "collect 'em all"
When we brought Mountain Goat Cycles back, it was time to work on t-shirt designs. The first one we did was the old style head badge shirt. After we designed the new decals and modernized the Goat, we did a two color design. This has become our "stock" shirt that we will keep on making. It was kinda fun to come up with new designs and we decided to offer the t-shirts in limited numbers, like Princess Di commemorative plates. We had done about 85 of the first design which seemed like a weird number so we decide to go with 100 for the second edition shirt. The original
Mountain Goat catalog art, circa 1981, was a great design so it became number 2 in the series. We ordered 100 of them divided amongst 5 sizes.
Number two was selling nicely so we wanted to have number 3 waiting in the wings. I talked to my brother-in-law, Gabi Campanario
artwork for number 3 and had a run of 100 shirts done in this design. We have only had them for a week and it has proven to be very popular already. Check it out If you like 'em, go to www.mountaingoatcycles.com and pick one up.
As the old commercials used to advise "collect 'em all"
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The donate porch
I am something of a pack rat which has become abundantly clear while cleaning up a couple of unused rooms on the second floor. I just can't ever seem to toss anything out since it might come in handy some day (if I could find it when the need actually arose). And I think everyone has tossed something out and find a use for it the very next week! So anyway, we had collected bikes for a local club and helped them fix them up four or five years ago. One year, they got a trucking company to haul a truckload up to NYC for distribution at Christmas time. For the next couple of years, we distributed them locally. Well, we still get people drop off old bikes or decide not to get a bike repaired so we accumulate stray bikes. We have a good sized shop but it's not big enough to store a bunch of random semi-usable bikes. On the other hand, I hate to see usable stuff get buried in a landfill.........enter the donate porch.
On the back of the building, there is a concrete cap over what used to be the coal chute which was used to deliver coal to feed the boiler in the basement. We decided it would be a good place to set a bike and allow it to find a new owner. Sometimes a bike lasts out there a couple of days and sometimes it leaves immediately. A couple months back, we rolled out a 24" wheeled girls mountain bike and one of the cooks form the restaurant next door was out back on his cancer break (I swear people start smoking just so they can take 15 minute breaks twice a day). He started asking what we were doing and we explained the concept. He kept asking how much we wanted for the bike and we told him it was on the donate porch to be taken by the first person who could use it. We must have finally gotten through to him since he rolled it into the storage room of the restaurant.
What I would really like to do is set a camera out and capture the "taking" on film. Do they just stroll up ,pick one out and head home? Like they were shopping at teh local ****-Mart? Or, do they stand there looking over their shoulder waiting for the non-existent law enforcement agents to jump out from behind the fence and yell "gotcha"? Maybe someday.
A pretty rusty 1960's era bike has continued to rust out on the porch for about a week now and seemed lonely so we added to the pile yesterday. A gigantic black Schwinn 10 speed World Sport, a cool gold Miyata mixte bike and a red Raleigh 10 speed were added after a fit of cleaning out the upstairs. Everybody was still hangin' on the porch this morning but around lunch time the black Schwinn had made a break for it. We'll watch and see how everybody else makes out but I am worried about the old rusty Western Flyer.
On the back of the building, there is a concrete cap over what used to be the coal chute which was used to deliver coal to feed the boiler in the basement. We decided it would be a good place to set a bike and allow it to find a new owner. Sometimes a bike lasts out there a couple of days and sometimes it leaves immediately. A couple months back, we rolled out a 24" wheeled girls mountain bike and one of the cooks form the restaurant next door was out back on his cancer break (I swear people start smoking just so they can take 15 minute breaks twice a day). He started asking what we were doing and we explained the concept. He kept asking how much we wanted for the bike and we told him it was on the donate porch to be taken by the first person who could use it. We must have finally gotten through to him since he rolled it into the storage room of the restaurant.
What I would really like to do is set a camera out and capture the "taking" on film. Do they just stroll up ,pick one out and head home? Like they were shopping at teh local ****-Mart? Or, do they stand there looking over their shoulder waiting for the non-existent law enforcement agents to jump out from behind the fence and yell "gotcha"? Maybe someday.
A pretty rusty 1960's era bike has continued to rust out on the porch for about a week now and seemed lonely so we added to the pile yesterday. A gigantic black Schwinn 10 speed World Sport, a cool gold Miyata mixte bike and a red Raleigh 10 speed were added after a fit of cleaning out the upstairs. Everybody was still hangin' on the porch this morning but around lunch time the black Schwinn had made a break for it. We'll watch and see how everybody else makes out but I am worried about the old rusty Western Flyer.
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