Everbody now......It's a small world after all!

Occasionally, this big old ball of dirt seems impossibly small.

A couple of years ago, a girl stopped in the shop to check it out. They were traveling from Ohio to Florida. Since I am originally from Ohio as well, asking them from what town, is a good way to start a conversation. She says she is from around Mansfield (know for its ski "resort" and prison which was used in the Shawshank Redemption movie). I replied that was cool since I was from Lexington which is just a handful of miles from Mansfield to which she replies that she is also from Lexington but says Mansfield since more people are familiar with the larger town. We compare notes as to graduations years and figure out that she graduated with my sister and played softball with her. This was from a high school of around 800 students (all grades) that is 8+ hours away.

Last weekend a guy came in to look for a bike. I helped him choose a Trek 820 as a good choice for his 3 mile commute to the gym. He mentioned that he was living out of an RV and was a traveling nurse. While adding accessories to his bike we discuss the nursing profession since my wife is also a nurse. Once again, it is a series of questions that gets us there: where do you work? Charlotte, about an hour away. Oh yeah, what department? Oh, the children's hospital. Levine? Yeah. What department? Emergency room. That's where my wife works. Then we proceed to figure out that they have worked with each other.

So here is the most recent, and most convoluted, one. In our collection of mountain bikes, we have run across a couple that have belonged to the same guy out in Oregon. They have all been high end custom bikes and most have had little wear. I had looked up his phone number a year or so ago but always hate to cold call people. I feel like some hated guy trying to sell them new insulated windows. Anyway, a month ago, Jeff Lindsay (the true father of Mountain Goat) calls up and asks about an older Mountain Goat that we have on the web site. We get to talking and Jeff is going to Oregon and is visiting with the former owner of our bikes. He encourages us to call and tells us what a great guy he is and that he has bought quite a few Goats over the years. So I call him up and leave a message only half expecting a return call.......which came just a day or two later. We talked on the phone and discussed a few of the bikes that he has had over the years. A couple of weeks go by and a good sized box appears from the state of Oregon. OOOOOH, goodies! It is 4 Tyvek envelopes jammed full of old correspondence, pictures, magazine articles and catalogs. This is the kind of stuff that allows us to post more details on our web site and is always appreciated. I call him up to thank him and tell him that we'll get it copied and back out to him. He then tells us that it is ours and as he cleans out the filing cabinet, there may be more heading our way.

OK, this isn't that weird yet? No big deal. As I sort through the literature, there is one hand written note discussing the introduction of the Raven bike and it is signed with a name that starts with a "J". Through our research, we knew that John Olsen had designed the Raven. Putting 2 and 2 together, I figured the signature was Johns. I email John and mention the note. He asked if I was going to scan it and I said probably not since it wasn't that interesting and we didn't have a Raven page on the web site yet. I was scanning some other stuff and just stuck the note on the scanner to send to John. After he received it, he emailed to tell me it wasn't his signature and was actually the signature of Jim Zorn who was the QB for the Seattle Seahawks back then (and now coaches the Washington Redskins). John told me that Jim was friends with the shop owner who was selling the Ravens and helped him sell stuff during the off-season. It was kinda funny to me that a professional starting quarterback was a bike salesman during the off-season. Guess he needed to supplement his income?

When you pull on the end of the thread you never know where it will end up. Makes me wonder how many of these stories we miss by not pulling on every thread that comes our way?