Stark Raving Mud

Like any good Mainer, my Mom has a lot of great expressions. “I’ve never seen luggage on a hearse,” and “It would take a hell of a man to replace no man,” are two classics. One of my favorites has always been “uglier than a mud fence,” which she uses when describing people and objects that are simply too ugly to look at. “That statue is uglier than a mud fence!” she’ll proclaim. I’ve seen a lot of fences in my 38 years, but I have never seen a mud fence, and I’m not sure she has either, but judging from that expression, a mud fence must be pretty darn ugly.

When my time comes to build a fence, I’ll be sure to look into other types—picket, wrought iron, wattle, palisade, split rail, or maybe even chain-link if money is, as Mom would say, “tighter than the skin on a hotdog”—but definitely not mud. Although I have never seen a mud fence, I have seen a lot of mud, especially this spring, which has rolled in on the coattails of one doozy of a winter. Let’s not forget, Old Man Winter has a mom too, and apparently she came to visit this year to show her reprehensible son how they did things back in the day.

When I was a muddy-kneed little kid, I used to make great mud pies. I would fill a pie pan with wet soupy mud and pat the surface with my little hand, maybe sprinkle some grass on top, and it was done. My lovely wife had a different method. She would find thicker mud and shape out a mud pie on the driveway, let it bake in the sun, and then feed it to her little brother.

Imagine the mud pie you could make with the muddy dirt roads that are out there this spring. “Home of the World’s Largest Mud Pie” could become a distinction for your town. I consider myself an exceptionally good driver, but having grown up surrounded by paved roads, I was never taught how to navigate a vehicle on the open sea, or down muddy dirt roads with huge swells and tall waves of mud crashing down, all of it working to swallow my Mazda like a leather boot. We recently went to a dinner party at Uncle Robby’s cabin, which is located on a very muddy dirt road at the bottom of a very long hill. For most of the drive, all was going well, and we were almost there, when suddenly the road came alive. My lovely wife did her best to instruct me, telling me to go that way and that way, but that no matter which way, not to stop! Fortunately, we were going downhill, so we had gravity on our side, and by the skin of our clenched teeth, we made it down. I was convinced, however, that when it was time to go, we’d never make it up.

The image of the Mazda sunken in a muddy ditch, and the prospect of being marooned at Uncle Robby’s cabin preoccupied me throughout the evening. You might say I was a stick in the mud. My lovely wife however, who was born on a muddy dirt road, wasn’t concerned in the least. When it was time to go, she turned the ignition key and put it in drive, pulled out of the driveway, and headed directly into the belly of the beast.

There was no turning back.

The journey up the road was tense, harrowing, and perilous. We were yelling and hooting, “Go! Come on! Yes! No! Yes! Oh no!” At one point she skirted the very edge of the road and it looked like we were doomed, but she held on and never stopped, never gave it too much gas, never kept the steering wheel turning in one direction, never stopped believing, and we made it out. The Mazda came out covered in mud pies, but it was nonetheless a triumphant, exhilarating moment.

Monster truck enthusiasts aside, I can’t think of too many people who particularly like mud. Most people complain about it, make efforts to avoid it, or try to get rid of it. That is, until they get on a mountain bike. Why anyone who generally avoids mud would suddenly aim for it, just because they’re riding a mountain bike, is beyond me. Mud is gritty paste that, like sand at the beach, gets everywhere. Short of tying an anchor to your bike and throwing it into the ocean, or placing it beneath the wheels of a monster truck, riding in mud is the single worst thing you can do to your bicycle. Mud is great for making mud pies or mud fences, but it wreaks havoc on every part of a bicycle: the braking pads and braking surfaces, suspension seals and suspension pivots, bearings and bearing races, chain and chainrings, and cables and cable housings. It drastically decreases the performance of your shifting and braking systems while exponentially enhancing the performance of your creaks, squeaks, and chirps. Riding in mud, of course, has also been shown to promote trail erosion, but that is another argument for another day.

I’m not saying that you can avoid mud entirely, but you can cut back by simply waiting until the trails are dry enough to ride, which around here, is usually not until May. During riding season, if it is still a little wet out there, choose the trails that are the least wet, and when you come upon a giant mud puddle or muddy section, stop and walk around. If what I am saying is as clear as mud, or you just plain can’t stay away from the stuff, at least clean your bike after your ride. If you don’t, so be it, but when your creaky, mud-caked bicycle isn’t working so great on your next ride, please don’t drag your bike shop’s name through the mud.

Gonzo and Me

When I was in fifth grade, after years of pleading and fussing, I finally got my first puppy. And it wasn’t because Pop finally gave in to my impassioned requests for a canine nor was it intended to comfort my grief after having found yet another one of our poor felines on the side of the road flattened, stiff, and stone cold dead. It was because my Mom, who was an ally in my fight for a dog, took advantage of a situation in which Pop himself created, and in which he could make no protests when we brought the puppy home.

Pop decided one day, despite Mom’s clear refusal to do so, to purchase a motorcycle. It was a foolish thing to do, but even more foolish was that instead of driving it to our neighbor’s house and parking it behind their tool shed, he drove it home and parked it directly in front of the garage, audaciously drawing attention to his manly triumph over repression. I can still hear the unmistakable sound of the motor in the distance getting louder and louder as it came closer and closer, but unlike all the prior motorbike noises that would pass by and then fade away, this one grew louder still until our windows vibrated. When the motor cut out, there was a quiet stillness in the air that hung like a quilt as my sister and I exchanged glances with Mom, who instead of storming outside and berating Pop, calmly told us to get ready to go for a drive. There were no words exchanged as we got in the car and drove away, leaving behind a bewildered and somewhat deflated Pop standing next to his shiny new Honda Shadow with its orange gas tank and 750cc, liquid cooled, 52 degree, V-twin engine that was still warm.

Forty-five minutes later, we arrived at a farmhouse at the end of a long dirt road with a sign out front that read “Free Puppies.” After playing with the litter for a while, we chose the one that was the most bashful and least rambunctious. The owner tried to convince us to take two, saying that our chosen one was most certainly a bit shy and would most certainly adjust better with a sibling. Mom replied that she didn’t want to push her luck and that if she were to take two dogs home, her husband would most certainly be gone. At least that is how we remember it, and that is how we came to name our new pup Gonzo.

Gonzo was my best friend, he was my hero, and he was my trusty companion who led the way while I delivered newspapers to the neighborhood in the cold dark early mornings before school. I grew up with him by my side, and even though he wasn’t in the car when I got my license, or with me in the auditorium when I graduated high school and college, his dog hair was. He loved us unconditionally and never let anyone down. Finally, when he reached nearly 100 dog years, he traded in his collar for a halo. I haven’t gotten a dog since, but will someday when I finally have a backyard to let it run around in. In the meantime, there are a lot of dogs in my life who I’ve come to know and love and I’d like to mention a few of them, as well as rate them using the following scale:

One Skunk: This is the rating given to a dog that smelled strongly of skunk when adopted. The former owner mentioned that it had recently been sprayed by a skunk and that the odor would eventually dissipate but it never did. The dog was never one to obey any commands and never really bonded with anyone and when it was finally brought to the vet, it was discovered that it was in fact a skunk.
Four Stars: Greatest dog ever.
Five Stars: Greatest dog ever plus one.

Gonzo: A Malamute Husky/Border Collie mix and my first and only dog to date. Rating: Five stars.

Gus: Mom’s current dog whom she rescued from a shelter. The jury is still out as to what the heck he is, but according to a few good sources, he’s a Border Collie/Whippet. He has a wide white stripe on his head and a stare that will melt your heart. He loves to sprawl out on your lap and as long as Mom doesn’t leave the house—he has severe separation anxiety—he is as mellow as a cup of mulled cider. Rating: Four stars.

Chui: My mom-in-law’s four year old Yellow Lab. His heart is huge, bigger even than his brain, and sure, he may eat one of your socks or a frozen “poopsicle” now and then, but he is super sweet and we all love him to pieces. Take him for a walk, scratch his behind, and give him a marrow bone and he’s a good as gold. Rating: Four stars.

Levi and Cady: Levi is Land Beaver’s “full blooded Puerto Rican scrounge hound” who is most likely a Border Collie/Golden Retriever mix. He enjoys chasing frogs, eating garbage, and canoeing. Cady is Scotty’s Border Collie/Mutt-next-door mix who likes barking, wallowing in the mud, and running away from you. Levi and Cady regularly join us on our mountain bike rides and backcountry ski adventures and even though they almost always disappear, after thirty minutes or so of yelling their names, they always come back. Levi rating: Four stars. Cady rating: Four stars.

Grizzly Adams: Chuck and Chinch Bug’s brand spanking new puppy. Supposedly, he is a purebred Chesapeake Bay Retriever, but I’m convinced he’s an Ewok/Buffalo mix. Rating: Four stars.

Well, it looks like we have a five-way tie for second place and a clear winner. Congratulations to Gonzo.

Superstars of Outdoor Retailer

I’m not a big fan of air travel, but for retail junkies like me who get the privilege of attending industry trade shows such as Interbike in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada and Outdoor Retailer in scrupulous Salt Lake City, Utah, it is a necessary evil. I understand that life isn’t always a day at the beach, so when I’m flying coach wedged between a loud passenger with a long story and a large passenger with a pointy elbow, I know that I just have to suck it up. To better deal with the inevitable unpleasantness, I head to the nearest airport bar before boarding and chase a Dramamine tablet with three beers. This works great for eliminating motion sickness, which I am prone to, as well as blacking out a good chunk of the ride, assuming I make it to my seat.

With a Dramamine tablet and three beers in my system, I was on a plane this past January with two of my favorite fellow coworkers, Bart and Phlip. We were flying to the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in glorious Salt Lake City, Utah, a place so glorious, the beer doesn’t need to be any stronger than 3.2% ABV and the urban sprawl and brown layer of smog hovering in the valley doesn’t need to get anyone down. We went out there for four days of very hard work and came back with a vast amount of knowledge and wisdom that is paramount to the ongoing prosperity of our business. Usually the boss is with us, but this year he couldn’t come along, which was a shame and we missed his company greatly. Fortunately however, his credit card did come along, so we were reminded of him every time we used it. It suffices to say and I’m sure it warms his heart to know that we were reminded of him quite often.

The first day of very hard work was the On Snow Demo at Solitude Mountain where overnight, fifteen inches of fresh Wasatch powder had fallen making it ideal for the very hard work of testing multiple pairs of brand new tele skis. Unfortunately we don’t sell a lot of brand new tele skis to our customers anymore, but it is still important for us to test them so that when we are selling a pair of ski socks to our customers, and we are asked how well they perform when skiing in fresh Wasatch powder on a brand new pair of tele skis, we’ll be able to provide a knowledgeable answer. Forming the necessary knowledge required to provide a knowledgeable answer to questions such as these doesn’t come easy, so we had no choice but to take many runs on many different pairs of skis, which, as you can imagine, is very hard work. So hard in fact, that by mid afternoon, my legs were so tired that I was unable to ski another run and by the following morning, my back was so stiff, I was unable to put on my socks without an epic struggle. That morning, my feet had never seemed so far away from my hands. Reaching them to slip on my socks felt like standing on my tiptoes with my arm fully extended, fishing for a spare key hidden on a tall shelf.

Bart and Phlip, who worked even harder at the demo than I did and skied until the lifts closed, mentioned that the disgraceful state of my body after the demo day may have had something to do with my current lack of fitness. I disagreed, declaring that is was completely due to my current lack of fitness. I hadn’t managed to squeeze in a lot of epic powder days before the trip and on top of that, I’m not 36 anymore. But, as stiff and sore as I was, there was no time for whining as there was a lot more hard work ahead at the show which continued for another three full days.

If you’ve never been to an outdoor industry trade show, imagine hundreds of vendors with elaborate booths displaying their amazing products while similar looking outdoorsy folks stream in and out. Imagine 80’s extreme skiing legend Glen Plake, with his signature Mohawk standing tall, schmoozing. Imagine the Hot Chilly’s long underwear model strutting back and forth on a short catwalk. Imagine a dude cruising around the show floor on small boards with two wheels, called Freeline skates, under each foot. Image me trying out Freeline skates and failing miserably, tweaking my sore back, and being told by the Freeline skate dude that the Hot Chilly’s long underwear model was a natural at it. Imagine a guy wearing an abominable snowman suit, a lousy cover band playing current pop hits, a PR rep with a microphone, a long line of dealers leading to a keg of beer, and a dealer frantically pulling pennies one at a time out of a fish tank full of ice water in hopes of winning a sleeping bag.

Imagine Bart, Phlip and I in this scene, with a clear mission of gathering vast amounts of knowledge and wisdom, walking from one end of the show floor to the other, making appointments and meeting appointments, discussing sales strategies with sales reps, product flaws with product engineers, marketing ideas with marketing directors, all the while searching for free beer. It is very hard work, and the boss would be happy to know that we didn’t slack off that much despite his absence. When it was all over, I was so exhausted from all the hard work at the show, and so sore and stiff from all the hard work at the demo, that when I got to the airport bar, I only needed to chase my Dramamine tablet with two beers. And as a gesture to the boss of my appreciation and understanding of the significant expense of sending all of us to the show, I bought the two beers with my own credit card.

Klister and Waxing Philosophical

I thought that Bertha was a fine name for the tall and curvaceous snowwoman that my lovely wife and I built in the middle of the field at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center on New Year’s Eve. It was she who suggested the name, and it just stuck. Bertha is my grandmother’s name, but only a few people know this to be true, so please keep it a secret. I’ve always called her Grandma. My mother and her siblings have always called her Mom, and everyone else has always called her Beth, which is her middle name. As far as her given name, Bertha, she hates it, and if she knew that I was sharing this sensitive information with the seven or eight people who read this column, she would be quite unhappy with me. But I personally feel that Bertha is a perfectly nice name, in that traditional, old fashioned kind of way, and it is a name that has gotten a bad rap over the years, if you ask me. Bertha the snowwoman didn’t seem to mind it, nor did Bernie or Bert, her snowman and snowchild respectively, who we built to keep her company.

Building a snow family in the middle of the field at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center on New Year’s Eve was not something we had planned on doing, but as is the case with a lot of families, it just sort of happened. We had instead planned on reliving our prior New Year’s Eve, when before the big bonfire at midnight, we went snowshoeing around the lake with shiny headlamps and a sparkling bottle of champagne. Last New Year’s Eve was a cold and snowy night, and the lake was as frozen as the look in a frozen fish’s eye, and our trek around the lake was as safe as it was wonderful. This year however, the weather was totally different. It was unseasonably warm, well above freezing anyway, and after a few slushy steps beyond the perimeter of the shoreline, we decided that trekking out on a lake that may or may not be completely frozen on a night that was as dark as a pocket wasn’t the best way to end the year.

The warm weather and the rain that fell overnight didn’t do great things for the conditions in the morning, but fortunately, thanks to enough of a base and a lot of good strong snow harvesting work performed by the Craftsbury trail crew, there was still enough snow on the trails to go for a nice ski. Thankfully, they didn’t harvest the snow from our snow family—they were still standing—although not entirely intact. Bertha had lost an eye and Bert’s mouth, made of a twig, had started to droop a bit. It only took a little bit of work to fix them up for their first full day together as a family. With our parenting work done, it was now time to head out for our second annual New Year’s Day tour.

Unlike last year, I thought I was prepared for waxing my skis, having brought all eight of the Swix kick waxes with me. I was determined to avoid last year’s frustrating situation, where I had all of the Swix kick waxes except for one, Violet Special, which of course turned out to be the wax of the day. I had no choice but to buy, at full retail, a container of Violet Special from the Craftsbury ski shop. For a retail junker who works at a ski shop, buying a container of ski wax at full price from another ski shop is a painful and shameful thing to have to do, and not something you would want to do twice. Thanks to rain and 40 degree weather, I was once again unprepared for the kind of snow that we were dealing with, which was soft and wet and evaporating in a dense low lying layer of fog. When the snow is like that, hard kick waxes are useless, even if you have all eight of them. The only stuff that works when the snow is in such a dreadful state is Klister, a nasty, messy substance that comes in a tube and needs to be spread on your skis like fine pâté on a baguette. I of course didn’t have any Klister, but because I am an expert ski tech with expert skills and a vast amount of expert knowledge, I was able to form the expert conclusion, based on my years and years of experience with waxing skis, that not having brought any Klister, all I had to do was simply purchase a tube of Klister from the Craftsbury ski shop. Despite reaching this conclusion, I refused to shamefully buy another product at full retail and decided to just head out with the kick wax that was still on my skis from last winter, whatever it was.

It was a foolish bull-headed decision and I of course had absolutely no kick at all and one thing you especially notice when your skis have absolutely no kick at all is an uphill climb. Skiing downhill feels the same, but trying to ski uphill with no kick at all is like trying to roller skate up a waterslide, only not as much fun. We did an 8K loop, and although it may be impossible according to the law of physics, I am convinced that the entire loop, from point A to point A, was uphill. This reminds me of a common metaphor for life, where at times it can seem like an uphill battle. To extend the metaphor, one easy way to gain traction in life is to not be too bull-headed. My Grandmother would agree.

Get to Know an Unknown Rock Star

I once mentioned to Bart, my hands-down favorite fellow coworker, that I am a rock star. I wasn’t kidding around; I was being serious. Being rooted in logic and reason, he of course went into immediate argument mode, disputing my claim with piles of tangible evidence that proves his contradiction to be sound. He was being literal and I understand that. No, as Bart pointed out, I am not a successful performer with millions of dollars nor am I a celebrated talent with legions of adoring fans. And no, I am not a heralded axe man with racks of Gibson Les Paul guitars piled in the back of my black and gold colored tour bus and I am certainly not a bestselling artist with racks of multiple Grammy awards piled in the trophy room of my rock star mansion.

Yes, I do work at a bike shop and yes I am lousy at playing guitar and even worse at playing bass. And it is true that, not counting my lovely wife, I have zero adoring fans. My rock star mansion may currently be a humble abode and my tour bus may be a blue and rust colored Subaru, but that doesn’t matter. I am still a rock star. I’m just not a real rock star.

Maybe Bart could wrap his head around the idea if I had said that I’m a different type of rock star. I am an unknown rock star, and I am not alone. There are two other unknown rock stars—Crash Davis and Bash Baker—who also work at the shop. And the three of us are in an unknown rock band.

Any retail junkie who has ever attended a sales seminar and lived to tell about it has probably sat through the “Be a Rock Star” motivational speech. The motivational speaker is referring to another type of a rock star, the sales floor chart topper if you like, who welcomes customers within 20 seconds or 20 feet from walking in the door, who tactfully suggests and successfully sells custom insoles with every footwear purchase, and who embraces boring tasks that everyone else avoids, like making a compelling display for inner tubes or Presta valve adapters. Every shop needs these types of rock stars, and we have them in our ranks, but this is not the kind of rock star that I claim to be. (Although if the boss asks, please tell him that I am that type, too).

Most of us who work at the shop have a lot in common and we do a lot of activities together outside of work. We ride bikes together and then we drink beers together. We ski mountains together and then we drink beers together. When we’re not playing in the great outdoors, we go to the Three Penny Taproom together and then we drink beers while complaining about being broke together. We are coworkers, but we are also good friends, which is one of the things that I appreciate most about my job.

And then there are a few of us, the unknown rock stars, who do something else, something a little different together, something that doesn’t involve exercise or high speeds or anything having to do with the products that we sell or the active, outdoor lifestyle we promote. Once a week, usually on Thursday nights, Crash and Bash and I set up in the basement of the bike shop and rock out together. Crash plays the drums, Bash sings and plays the guitar, and I play the bass, and we all drink beers. For a few hours, nothing else in the world matters. No, we don’t have a record deal. No, we don’t a gig lined up. No, we don’t have a name, but when we’re playing music in the basement of the bike shop and we turn up the volume of our amplifiers enough to drown out the boiler, and I manage to play a few correct notes in a row, there is a magical feeling that only rock stars like us get to experience. The feeling is so intense, that I would break into real rock star poses and throw my arm in the air and jump up and down if I wasn’t worried about knocking over Frank’s repair stand.

This magical feeling carries over to the next day and stays with us. This is important, because even though there is no other job we’d rather be doing, work at the shop can at times be challenging, like when a customer wants to return long underwear because after a day of snowshoeing, they weren’t breathable enough. It can be stressful, like when you realize that you have more high-end racing poles in stock than you can realistically sell in a year, or three years for that matter. And it can be monotonous, like when you check the time and it’s a half hour earlier than when you checked it a half hour ago. All these things can grind you down, but when you’re an unknown rock star, you can strike a power chord in your brain and the challenges, stress, and monotony of the daily grind become a bit easier to deal with.

To all the unknown rock stars out there, keep rocking and rolling. To all the sales floor chart toppers out there, keep selling and restocking. And to all the real rock stars out there, look out. As soon as I learn how to play better and we come up with a name, we’re coming after your Grammys.

Fighting Maturity Since 1973

I was driving home after work through the Bolton flats corridor recently on a golden, sun-soaked late fall evening, flipping through the radio stations, trying to find a decent song to unwind to after a day that had wound me up. At 5:15 in central Vermont, finding a listenable tune isn’t always easy, and this particular evening was no exception. After scanning through the frequencies for a few minutes, dodging car commercials and mindless DJ babble, I settled on a classic rock station that had just started a commercial-free block of golden, guitar-soaked classic rock.

American Girl by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers came on. Even though I’ve heard that song so many times I can sing it backwards in French while standing on my head, and I don’t even speak French, it was better than Free Bird. I turned up the volume and set the cruise control. With that familiar opening riff blasting through my factory speakers, I settled into the drive home and got ready to sing along. Halfway through the song, during Mike Campbell’s guitar solo, I was feeling better, and when looking around, I noticed that the trees, which a week earlier were still brightly colored, had all turned to goldenrod, burnt orange, and rust. The lush green summer coat was a faint memory; it was the final stand of this year’s leaves, before fading into a flat, dull hue, while clinging desperately to their branches before detaching and falling to the ground. Winter was about to move in.

Before I knew it, I was on my way back to work the next morning, drinking coffee and listening to VPR. During the Writer’s Almanac, I looked around and noticed a totally different scene in the valley from the prior evening. The sky was gray, the fog was low, and it was raining. The temperature was hovering in the mid-thirties. A storm had settled in overnight, and according to the Eye on the Sky weather report, snow had fallen in the higher elevations. Although I couldn’t see through the thick valley fog, the rust colored treetops were now covered with a white frosting.

Snow in the mountains means that without a doubt, some folks made their first turns of the season. I wasn’t one of them, but I was sure that a few of my favorite fellow coworkers were. As it turns out, I was right. Bart, Phlip, Land Beaver, and Trimtram all made it out for early morning “dawn patrol.” When I got to work, they were all exuberant when relaying the story. Sure it was raining at the bottom, but it was sick! Sure only the top of the mountain had snow, but it was sick! Sure there was only a feeble layer of wet slop covering loose rocks, fallen rust-colored leaves, and dirt, but it was sick! That is the kind of unbridled enthusiasm ski shops need. I’m glad we have someone to perpetuate it.

There was a time, not too long ago it seems, when I would have been up there with them. I would have waxed my rock skis the night before. I would have set my alarm clock for 4 a.m. I would have immediately jumped out of bed when it went off. But these days, alas, it is a different story. I may set my alarm with every intention of getting out of bed at four in the morning, but as soon as it goes off, I immediately kill it and go right back to sleep. It’s a shame, I know.

So what happened to my unbridled enthusiasm? When did I lose my desire to get up at four in the morning, trek out in the rain, hike a mountain only to ski the top half, then hike to the bottom and go to work? I wish I knew. Concerning getting up at four in the morning, here is how a typical conversation with Bart goes:

Bart: “It’s supposed to snow tonight. If there’s enough, we’re meeting at Mad River at 5 a.m. Wanna come?”

Me: “Yeah, maybe. How much is enough?”

Bart: “An inch or two. You know, enough to slide on. But they’re saying it may snow up to five inches! Sick!”

Me: “5 a.m. you say? Sounds great! There is a 100-percent chance I’ll be there. But there’s only a 50-percent chance of that, so if it’s 5:01 a.m. and I haven’t showed up, don’t wait for me.”

My unbridled lack of enthusiasm might have something to do with that Tom Petty song. Back when I had a lot more enthusiasm, if any classic rock song came on the radio, I immediately turned it off. This was back in the nineties and 2K, when I was listening to modern music and couldn’t bear to listen to any dinosaur rock. Nowadays however, I’m not only listening to classic rock again, I’m turning it up. And I’m listening to the Writer’s Almanac on VPR and turning that up too, although not because I enjoy Garrison Kealor’s voice at a loud volume, but because my hearing is starting to go. Yes, I’m getting older, that is a fact, but I also may finally be growing up. I’ve been fighting maturity since 1973 and have been winning, but now perhaps, I’m losing. But I’m not ready to throw my hands up just yet, so the next time my alarm goes off at four in the morning, I’m getting up. It’ll be sick!

Colonel Jacob Davis Would Be Proud

There are some businesses, such as apple orchards and football stadiums, that are busy in the fall. Our shop is not one of them. On a given day in mid November, there’s a good chance the ghost of Colonel Jacob Davis, the original settler of our little city, will walk through the front door before a living customer will.

As a way of drumming up some business during this slow time, I’ve suggested planting a few apple trees outside our front door and installing a JumboTron on the side of the building to broadcast NFL games, but apparently, because both would compromise the historic integrity of our location – the JumboTron, for example, would need to be bolted to the building, which would compromise its historic bricks and mortar, thus rendering them unhistorical – the downtown zoning committee won’t approve it.

And even though we carry all sorts of fantastic merchandise that is geared towards the cooler weather, shorter days, and bone-chilling rain, such as cozy merino wool sweaters, shiny headlamps, and waterproof/breathable rain gear, we simply don’t experience the droves of customers, as we do during bike or ski season, that flow in like football fans at a playoff game.

There’s an inevitable gap due to a seasonal paradox where it’s too late in the season to buy a bike – even if it is a 70-percent-off crazy closeout super special – and it’s too early in the season to buy a pair of skis or snowshoes. So, as employees, all we can do is wait it out, which means a lot of organizing, reorganizing, taking long coffee breaks at the coffee shop, taking short naps in the camping section, etc., until the business kicks back in when the snow starts to fly, or three weeks before Christmas, whichever comes first. Fortunately this fall, there have been a few highlights that have lifted our spirits during these slow days. One was a milestone involving a beautiful baby girl, and the other was a milestone involving an 11mm wrench.

The beautiful baby girl is Indy Rae, the 13-month-old daughter of Bart, one of my favorite fellow coworkers. Indy Rae is an amazing baby who looks a lot like her dad, only with more hair. If she has inherited his staggering athletic talent, she’ll be tele skiing by next winter and winning mountain bike races to the top of Mount Mansfield next summer. She’s probably a natural at her dad’s beloved game of Beer Pole, but hopefully she won’t discover that talent for another 20 years. As far as her personality, I’m hoping she gets more of that from her lovely mom. Bart quite often gets irritated with certain people, namely me, and he’ll say it’s because I deserve it. I’ll admit he’s not the only person who has ever felt that way – I am special after all – but I don’t need another person around who shares this sentiment.

Whether or not I irritate her was probably the last thing on her mind the other night as Indy reached a milestone in her life while at the shop, which, according to the boss, was a first since we opened for business 35 years ago. Right on the sales floor, in front of a small group of folks including her mom, the boss, and Phlip, one of my other favorite fellow coworkers, who filmed the moment, Indy took her very first steps. She did a great job, and even though she was a bit wobbly, she managed to avoid knocking over nearby displays of cozy merino wool sweaters and shiny headlamps. After five minutes, she was already walking straighter and with more control than many of us do after one too many games of Beer Pole. A few minutes later, she was heading for the door.

Another glorious shop moment, which was also a first, as far as I know at least, occurred recently with Snack, one of our younger generation whippersnappers, and one of my very favorite fellow employees. While working on one of the 70-percent-off crazy closeout super special bikes that we recently purchased from a shop that went under, he discovered another use for the 11mm wrench. If you’re one of the six or seven people who have read this column before and are reading it again, you may recall a column I wrote last year where I described the glorious day when I finally discovered, after 25 years of wrenching on bikes, the purpose of the 11mm wrench, which is for tightening the fender bolts on a Columbia 5-speed tandem. Strangely enough, I wasn’t even at the shop when this breakthrough occurred. Snack however, was at the shop when he made his discovery, and even though it took me as many years as Snack has been alive to figure out the purpose of the 11mm wrench, he discovered, so early into his wrenching career, that it is also used to tighten the seat rail clamping bolts on a 70-percent-off crazy closeout super sale bike.

There may not have been as much rejoicing upon this ground-breaking discovery as was the case when Indy Rae took her first steps, but the moment was equally monumental, in my opinion at least, in the history of the shop. I like to think that Colonel Jacob Davis, may he rest in peace, would be happy to know that monumental moments like these are still occurring here today, 223 years after he built his log cabin on the west side of the North Branch. He’d also be happy to know that there won’t be a JumboTron or any apple trees coming to our historic little street, and therefore the historic integrity of the little town that he named, as was fashionable at the time, after a city in France, remains intact.