Less Day Light, Longer Days

This is not the droid you are looking for...

Ya know, I can only clean that tool box so many times before it seems to make me look "OCD". But.......it is that time of year. The bike shop gets to be a pretty lonely place in November.

When I had my first shop job I remember days in November when the only person through the front door on some days was the mail man. We would spend the time sprucing up the place, cleaning the nooks and crannies that had been neglected when summer was around and we were too busy for such trivial details like dusting and cleaning in places no one ever looked.

Or we would be doing things like re-arranging a tool chest, like I was doing yesterday.

Of course, I've been at the shop long enough now that I have a routine for this. It goes something like the following...

Throughout the spring and summer months, I am doing repairs, putting on accessory items, and swapping out parts on lots of bicycles. Assembling bicycles sometimes too. All this activity would produce a plethora of spare fasteners, parts, and used parts too good to just toss. So, they get tossed in the little receptacles surrounding the work top of my tool chest, or inside of it. By the end of the season, those little receptacles are brimming with bits and pieces that run the gamut from small screws, nuts, bolts, sealed bearings, head set parts, pedals, all the way to rack parts and even things I can no longer identify, nor remember the reasons why they were saved in the first place.

Then comes the day in November when I run out of stuff to do. I then go through the entire mess, sort things out, store them in "proper containers" for later use, and clean up the underlying filth. So, now that this yearly task is done.......come visit your local bike shop!

We could use the company.