Now is the time......

....to get cycling onto the governmental radar. I think we have a unique opportunity right now to raise the awareness of cycling. We have been seeing more people looking to bikes as an actual viable alternative to cars for some trips. Folks are buying hybrid bikes with racks to get to work. Most will site rising gas prices as the impetus for looking at cycling but are also attracted to the exercise, weight loss, reduced stress and general "green-ness" of riding. Several of these factors are colliding head first into each other and may give us the best opportunity in our lifetimes to push a cycling agenda. What we need is folks out there telling the money-holders that this is important to us.

The importance of this has been creeping up on me the last handful of years. When we build local trails, I am happy as a pig-in-slop just pushing dirt around. I seem to be much less inclined to sit in front of the TV screen with a keyboard but it seems to be at least as important as pushing dirt. When the IMBA Trail Care Crew visited in 2005, we were able to demo some trail machinery and I told bOb that somehow I was going to find a way to buy us a skid steer of our very own. In 2007 I wrote grants that bought us a Ditch Witch via Lowes Home Improvement, a Volvo mini excavator via Duke Energy and $5K worth of hand tools via the Adopt-a-Trail program. In our estimation, one machine hour is equal to 10 man hours which helps cut down on the number of volunteers that we need to coerce. I probably spent a total of 5 or 6 hours on the grants and they saved us hundreds of volunteer hours already which will increase every time we cut new trail. Sounds like a pretty sound return on investment??

Last month, I was invited to join the board of the Downtown Statesville Development Corporation (DSDC) which is in charge of keeping our downtown healthy and is funded via a property tax on downtown properties. Another project is the beginnings of the Carolina Thread Trail program that aims to tie together 15 counties via a system of greenways. It is a very ambitious program but it won't happen if we don't start somewhere. Because of our involvement with the state park trail, I was invited to join the citizens Park Advisory Committee. It seems like each of these organizations has some overlap in membership which means you see a lot of the same people in different settings. In each of these, I keep pushing cycling with an emphasis on the particular venue. AT DSDC meetings, it is using bikes to get people into town to shop which means more dollars for the merchants. At the LNSP PAC, it is building more trails to get more park attendance which means more dollars for the park. At the Thread trail meetings, it is pushing for more people to visit the area which means more dollars for the county. See a pattern here?

The last meeting we (Daryl, Shawn, wES and I) attended was the public forum for the Iredell County Park and Rec master plan. This is the plan that will guide the parks department for the next 10-15 years. We all gave up a ride night to go sit in and listen to the plan. They did mentions a couple of cycling related options in the plan and we just made sure that they realized there was interest in these activities and that all parks didn't have to be centered around stick and ball fields.

I guess the whole point of this is to go out and do SOMETHING, attend a meeting, push some dirt, call your county commissioners, buy some tools, write a grant proposal.....anything to help improve the atmosphere for cycling. If you don't get involved, you lose the right to complain about it! This is our time.

Bunny Rabbit v. Lincoln Continental

I've recently started doing a bit of commuting to work which gives me a couple of hours a day to ponder "stuff".

One of the things that I have noticed has been the large number of animals that appear to have had nothing left to live for. Maybe Mrs. Skunk was berating Mr. Skunk about his lack of motivation when searching out grubs for dinner or maybe the chipmunk just couldn't take the daily strain of nut gathering. Thank goodness we humans put a lot of roads through the woods to help with their suicide by automobile. Maybe it isn't that complicated. Maybe it is just the young groundhogs hanging around with nothing to do and playing "chicken" with the tandem axle dump trucks?

I was going to try and count the number of flattened animals on the way in to work but lost count pretty quickly. The early census revealed a chipmunk, two squirrels, a skunk, a groundhog, three birds, 3 snakes (although one may have been a fan belt),two turtles and a couple of unidentifiable fur mounds. I think I feel the worst for the reptiles. The poor old box turtle takes an eternity to clear the traffic lanes and has a couple hundred times the chance of getting crushed than say a hyperactive squirrel. Then you have the snakes. They are relatively slow but their main issue would be length. Most of the black snakes around here run 3' - 4' long which means they've got a high hit ratio when compared to the chipmunk. Now that I think about it, birds have issues too. Not only do they have to watch out for tires, they've got the rest of the vehicle to worry about. Might explain the high number of our winged friends?

If ya'll stop running over our forest friends, I'll have to ponder something else on the ride home!

T-shirt update, call for art work

If you've been following along, you know we've been doing a run of limited edition Mountain Goat Cycles t-shirts. Each shirt is a run of 100 shirts in miscellaneous sizes but just one color (except the first one which had a few orange shirts accidentally thrown in) .

The first run was the old traditional head tube badge from the original Goats in gray.


The second run was the original catalog artwork circa 1982 in brown. The art work was also used a decal on some of the early bikes.


The third edition was a new design drawn by my brother-in-law (who does newspaper design work and is an accomplished artist) and done in red.


The first edition sold out, the second is down to a handful in XL and XXL and the third is down to a couple of larges, XL and XXL. I guess that makes it time to design another shirt. If anyone out there would like to see their art work on a t-shirt, send it on. No $$$, just fame (and a couple of t-shirts!)

No real rules, I just have to like it and believe that we can sell 100 of them. Feel free to use any of the images from the www.mountaingoatcycles.com web site or make up your own. Send the results to jeff@firstflightbikes.com

July 4 Goat updates

There have been a few pretty cool developments of late here at Goat-central. I finally got our prototype Route 29 full suspension frame in. This one uses the 4" travel Ventana rear with a Fox shock. I think we are going to try one of the local motorcycle painters who recently painted a bike for one of our customers. It came out looking great and the price was reasonable. I've had a couple of ideas for paint but won't know until I talk to the painter. One possibility was to do a NC Yuppie which would have North Carolina images such as NASCAR, tobacco, Wright Bros, moonshine..........we could start one end of the bike at the beach and finish the other end in the mountains! The other possibility was to try some Goat skeletons. The painter does some really nice skeletons and it would be neat to do some Goats......maybe we could call it the Goatful Dead? Anyway, we are mocking the bike up and ordering some parts so look for the finished product soon!

$4 / gallon

I suspect the most common question that people in the bike industry get these days would be something along the lines of "bet this $4 gas is great for your business, isn't it?". On the surface, it might look like it but I am not so sure. Bikes are still typically a discretionary purchase. Most people don't "need" a bicycle like they need food. Since most folks have already succumbed to the urban sprawl, and moved 20+ miles from their chosen place of employment, most don't consider commuting a viable option. So $4 a gallon it is, thank you sir may I have another. There goes another $25-$30 out the tail pipe a week and there goes your discretionary, aka bike, funds. And even if your job is on solid ground, the constant background noise about the economy circling the drain works its way into your conscience even if it is just by osmosis.

What we have noticed is increased repairs and accessories. People that bought bikes in the last decade, and let them become garage ornaments, are dragging out the remains to have them rehabilitated. The margins are pretty good on this stuff but it can still be relatively small dollars when compared to full bike sales. Of course, bike parts are getting more and more expensive and it seems like tire/tube prices are tied directly to the price a a barrel of light sweet crude for September delivery (not really sure what that means but it apparently hits a new high on a daily basis now).

There has been the slightest hint of an increase in bike trips but it has mainly been folks who already used a bike for recreation ,which doesn't help the bike shop bottom line to any large degree. We have talked about the tipping point and wondered where it will be........$5 a gallon, $6 a gallon or the $7 they talked about on the radio this morning. What will it take to get more people using bikes for "work" as opposed to "play. Stay tuned, we may be finding out soon.

The 24 hours of Burn

This year marked the 8th year of the Source Burn 24 hour race which was held just north of Statesville, in Wilkesboro, NC. Since it is so close, we have a good local turn out for the event. The Dark Mountain trails work out nicely for the race and the big field, by the lake, is a great place for set up shop. The last couple of years, we have taken a herd of Goats and let them graze in the field. It has been a nice way to get a little local exposure. There seems to be growing interest in the custom frames and folks like something unique.


This year, Darrell rode his single speed Mountain Goat Route 29 in the solo category and completed 18 laps. Other FoFFB (friends of First Flight Bikes) were Ross, David, Paul, James, Clyde and Carl. They raced in various categories and had a great time. Matt, Sean and Wes hung out for the whole event and supported Darrell, David and Ross. I took the boys up after the shop closed to hang out for a couple of hours and ride the Over Mountain Victory Trail (nice berms!). Last year, Wes crewed for Darrell, Matt and Ross, who all rode solo (Matt and Ross single speed, Darrell geared). In 2005, Ross, Matt and Wes teamed up with Bob to do the 4 man single speed team.
It was good to see that Darrell upped his lap total even though he switched from a geared bike to a single speed bike. I bet Darrell will claim that he upped his mileage by training harder and riding more but I like to think it was Mountain Goat! (Gotta be the shoes)

Bike racing

I've never been horribly athletic so most competitive sports are not my cup o' tea. I threw discus, a some shop put, in high school but that was about it for actual scored competition. That may be part of the reason the bike riding has always appealed to me. I enjoy riding and can keep up a reasonable pace but have never felt compelled to "race" a bike. With kids, it is tough to find time to ride, let alone train. Fortunately, the boys (Sam 10 and Seth 13) are getting to the age that they can ride along reasonably well. Seth has even gotten to the point that he is probably faster than the old man. When we ride, he can pull away on the open runs but I catch back up on the technical sections (at least for right now).

Neal, who helps us with the Cackalacky Cup, puts on a fantastic summer series of mountain bike races, including a couple of kids categories. With Seth getting a little bit faster, I thought the race series might interest him. I checked the calendar and the race at the Fisher Farm trail was June 11. Fisher Farm is a great local trail that isn't terribly technical and,even more importantly, isn't on the other side of Charlotte (important when registration is @ 5:00 on a week night). We decide to give it a shot and wnet down the Sunday before to ride the trail and check it out. Mark Sullivan, trail boss @ Fisher Farm, was felling a decent sized tree so we stopped to spectate and then help. After the sixth cut or so, the tree was down and we were on our way again.

Wednesday evening came and we headed out to the trail. Seth got all signed up for the 8-13 year olds race which ended up being only one lap. To break up the start, Neal added in a long climb through a grassy field before going into the woods. The entry to the trail is a really quick downhill section so this strung out the field to reduce the carnage. The kids group had 5 racers in it and Seth was first tot he summit of the grassy knoll. There weren't a whole lot of places to pass so I had warned him about letting some of the older, faster riders by. Unfortunately, when one of them called the pass, another kid snuck by Seth along with the expert rider and beat him to the finish by a couple of bike lengths. The kid who beat him was named Anakin (insert, Luke......I am your father joke here).

Anyway, Seth was riding an old school Jamis Diablo with a 1" steerer tube and rigid fork! Looks like it might be time for a little upgrading. Wes had a pair of SPD compatible shoes so we'll start there. Couple other races this summer on the North side of Charlotte so maybe we'll give it a go. Might even see if we could get anyway interested from the Boy Scouts!