Ten Years – part 10.

2011

The year 2011 was the year that we joined the NAHBS circus in Austin, Texas. Being in Texas was a welcome reprieve from the cold of Montana and of course Austin is a cool town with a lot of music, life and energy. As usual flying out of Bozeman in the winter presented its usual challenge with winter weather but overall the trip went fine. This show was the first time I used my ‘Booth-In-A-Box’ and I have to say that it was a very good change.

Previous to having the “BIAB” I shipped bikes and display stuff in cardboard boxes to the show and then got there and had to unpack and remove bubble wrap from everything and assemble my the bikes and my stuff into what looked sort of like a trade show booth. Frankly it was a pain in the ass and I dreaded it………..and it didn’t look good. Worse than setting up was tearing down on Sunday evening at the end of the event when I had to take customer bikes and disassemble them on the floor and pack them for shipment without doing any damage to someone else’s bike. It’s not like you are tired at this point. No pressure then.

But the BIAB made life much easier. It’s designed to be loaded with fully assembled bikes and all the stuff to display them (photos, lighting, softgoods…etc) and then is closed up and shipped off to the show from my driveway. So when I get to the show I remove the pins and pivot a wall open and remove the ready to show bikes. I then take the rest of the pins out and the whole deal opens and becomes the backdrop for the display. BIAB made the whole thing MUCH, MUCH easier and was worth all the time it took to design and build the thing in my basement. The huge bonus was that at the end of the show the box gets folded up, the bikes are hung inside and then the final wall is closed and the shipping label is stuck on. Then it’s time for beer and pizza. In years past it took hours to tear down and pack stuff for shipping home but with the new crate it took less than an hour and was stress free. I wasn’t 100% sure it would work until I used it but it was just right in the end.

I had an interesting interview experience with the German cycling/lifestyle magazine Fahrstil. The process was interesting and was done 100% by email……the writer would ask me questions and I would do my best to answer them, he would then ask a follow up and I would answer that and so on and so forth. It took place over a number of weeks and I’ll bet it took a number of days in total to answer all the questions. It was a lot of work but fun and I have a good number of Kirk owners in Germany so it seemed like time well spent. It was only when it was all done did I learn that it would not be published at all online and nowhere in English. They were very nice and sent me a few copies of the issue and I have no idea at all what it says. The article focuses on my suspension work on road bikes and the work of John Castellano for off road bikes and the similar paths we each went down to get where we wanted to go. Beyond that — I have no idea. The funny thing was that the entire focus of the issue was the ass. Yep…….it was about butts. Lots of bare butts in there. My mother-in-law speaks and reads German so I asked her to read some of the article to me and she read some and then got an embarrassed look on her face and stopped reading to me. Not fit reading for a grandmother I guess.

Being a real cutting edge social media guy I joined Facebook in 2011. So I might not have been a real early adopter. I was a bit worried that it would take more time than I had to devote to it and I didn’t want it to be half assed but it has turned out to be easy and fun. You can find my Facebook page here —

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kirk-Frameworks/120251231360186

I had the pleasure of being asked to give a radio interview with Diane Less of the ‘Outspoken Cyclist’. If you’ve never listened to the show you are missing out. It was very cool to go through the process and Diane makes it very easy — she’s a true pro. You can find the audio of the interview here —

http://www.wjcu.org/2011/12/17/the-outspoken-cyclist-12172011

That’s it for now………..time for you to get back to work 🙂

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