Country Views: Rough Ride

Escape Route: Sergeant Road bike trail

The Labor Day weekend started out well with weather and work on Saturday morning. We sold a bike to a really nice woman and her friend that brought her in was very complimentary to us. It's really great to have such a radical difference in customer experience than I have had for the better part of the last two decades where customers looked at me more as an adversary than not. 

I was reminded how bad it was back in the day when I was reading the Professional Bicycle Mechanics forum on Facebook Saturday. A mechanic was showing what a customer was complaining about- backpedaling a 10T cog on a road bike and expecting that it wouldn't make any noise at all. 

This is, obviously, unreasonable, but the mechanic related that this customer insisted that it should not happen. This sort of nit-picky, unreasonable attitude is something that happens a LOT in retail bicycle shops, and it doesn't matter how nice you are, or reasonable you are, or how much proof you can show from unbiased sources that you are correct. The customer keeps saying "the Sun isn't shining" at noon and you are wrong.

I've been there and lived it. So, when I- the same individual I've been in bicycle shops for so many years- have an interaction like I did Saturday, because we are non-profit and seen in a completely different light than retail bicycle, I am reminded how blessed I am to NOT be in retail bicycle repair anymore. 

And the next day the Sun shines and I get to go on a bicycle ride. 

Yellow prairie Sunflowers greeted me as I reached the gravel

I chose to ride South of Waterloo. The gravel was thick and deep again.

I really didn't know which way I was going to ride. I just headed South and was thinking that the gravel couldn't be bad again. I mean, not after two months of seeing some of the worst gravel conditions I'd seen on a consistent basis. By now, surely, things wouldn't be so chunky and rough. 

Well, I was wrong. It was as bad as it it has been all Summer long. Unbelievable. Just crazy. My hands were going numb again, and things were so rough that I was a bit dismayed. 

 

But I was out on a beautiful day, riding my bicycle. No cars were harassing me, and I had things going my way, really. What more can you ask for? Yeah, more "things" and more "money" might  be nice, but I had all of the previously mentioned nice day, empty roads, and my health. I was witnessing the season starting to change. The prairie Sunflowers were singing the last verses of Summer. How could it get much better than that? 

The fields are drying down. That corn on the right is nearly all brown already.

The Good Life

So yeah....the roads were rough. It could be a LOT worse. I was trying to savor as much of the experience as I could Sunday. Pretty soon I'll be seeing another Fall, colder temperatures, and you know Winter is not far off. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day today, (if you observe it) and thanks for reading Guitar Ted Productions!