Minus Ten Review- 32

Seeing my words in print was pretty crazy

Ten years ago on the blog there weren't many images, once again, but one that did pop up was about my first time getting published. Actual printed on paper published, that is.  I was pretty floored by the entire experience.

Thanks go out to Mike Varley for that. Mike Varley? The Mike Varley of Black Mountain Cycles? Yes. That Mike Varley. He was once on the inside, so to speak, doing work for Haro Bikes. Mike was in charge of many things, but one of those many things was getting the next year's printed catalog set up and ready to go. Printed catalogs. You might remember those things.

Anyway, Mike asked me earlier in the year to write up two paragraphs about the 29"ers Haro was going to introduce for the 2007 model year. They were going to be called the "Mary". The deal with the name came from the Creedence Clearwater Revival song, "Proud Mary" which had the lyric "Big wheel keep on turnin' Proud Mary Keep on burnin'". Of course, that was in reference to 29"ers being called "big wheelers" by some. That wasn't cool for me to reference, you know......copyright and all. So..... Mike gave me a bit of guidance and off I went.

Honestly, I recall when writing all that up that I felt it was kind of a surreal joke. Here I was, barely one year removed from being a never heard of before shop mechanic in a bicycle shop in Iowa, to a guy writing catalog copy for an important model release. Really? It wasn't quite computing in my mind. So weird!

I sent off the two paragraphs understanding that one of them would be thrown out. Then I waited...... A couple months went by, I think, maybe three. Then Mike sent me an e-mail saying that I should expect that I would see the results of my work very soon, and that he was pretty stoked on how it came off. Lo and behold, when I opened the package, it was the catalog for 2007. I quickly turned to the page about the Mary, and I couldn't believe my eyes. They used both paragraphs! 

Other news was about my first upcoming GTDRI and some more on Trans Iowa v3 rider feedback. But for me the catalog I got in the mail was a bigger deal than any of that.

Of course I still have it. It's around here somewhere.........