The theft of my tool box, from my truck parked overnight on the street in Berkeley, California, was a good opportunity to learn.
LEARNED
Know what’s in your box and know your insurance. Homeowner’s insurance would have covered some of the loss had the loss not been entirely related to my profession. Does your ‘business’ (presumably your DBA) have separate insurance for theft? Possibly not worth it, so I remain ‘self-insured,’ which is UPS and FedEx’s term for uninsured.
I spent a good chunk of my annual GDP replacing things that should never, in the course of normal use, need replacing. Those PBMA discounts came in real, real, handy.
That happened on a tight timeline, since racing is never far away on the calendar. By Sea Otter, I had only to pick up the final touches. And what a great get-together Sea Otter is. I had three athletes racing the road events, and all of Saturday to chill and chat with PBMA members and the curious at our shared space with VanDoIt.
The team got a W on Sunday’s circuit race at WeatherTech Raceway, which capped the week off nicely.
Monday after Sea Otter found The Team in the wind tunnel built by our equipment sponsor in Morgan Hill, CA. Not my first tunnel, but the fact that this one is run entirely by cyclists and for the betterment of cyclists (and their equipment), makes it head-and-shoulders better than the rest. It also incorporates fitting (with the same professionals that attended our earlier training camp) and a Human Performance Laboratory for integrating threshold testing into the process. The biggest ‘test,’ of course, is of the mechanic, having to re-configure a tricky cockpit in a fish bowl with the bike attached firmly to the floor while many highly-paid technicians look on. And again. And again. For added fun, while working, you have to be either entirely on or entirely off the plate that the bike is secured to, since the entire thing is a calibrated strain gauge…
Next up was Barrio Logan, a long-running San Diego criterium, where The Team showed that they were learning to race together and communicate, going 1, 2, 3.
The following morning, we set off in all vehicles for Silver City, New Mexico, and the 33rd Tour of The Gila.
NON-BIKE WORK
The Team were considerate enough to award their ‘Rider of the Day’ belt to myself and my two part-time staff for some work done on a tight deadline before and at Gila. That didn’t reflect, however, the bulk of the job; sponsor relations (both happy and more challenging), inventory management, logistics, and truck driving. The big diesel that The Team own was taken to the shop for a warranty issue just before ToTG and could not make the journey. It isn’t easy to rent a truck that can tow, but we found one and hooked it up. It was a new F250 with all the correct bits, but it had not been programmed to use them. No EBC and no trailer lights. It took 3 trucks, plus one that never left the rental lot, to get us to Silver City, and the one that got us there spent 3 days in the dealership’s garage.
This ‘job’ isn’t really about dialing race bikes, although that is at its core. This is constant lateral thinking and problem solving. To that end, I am very grateful to have the support of my staff mechanics and some great Team Management behind me. China is next, for two races during a two-week trip. Hopefully, problems will need solving there, too.
Between this writing and China, I will be at the Women’s Tour of California in a non-mechanic capacity and hope to see the global diaspora of truck-driving 4mm-hex-spinning Professional Bicycle Mechanics© and maybe coax some stories from more of them for you.
