Home again!

Writing this after dodging a potential nightmare of a trip via Chicago this evening. My visit to Ohio and the Pittsburgh area was great in large part to Trek guy Bob Myers. He has got a great relationship with his team of dealers though he still has things he wants to do more of.

That is what it is all about, continually challenging yourself to do better with what you have.

So following my visit to the two Trek stores in Columbus, we started out with breakfast at the Bob Evans in Stow, OH and then headed to Eddy's Bike Shop. A 4 store family owned operation that has a fantastic main store from which Jim Ruggles and his team do some great things.


Their operation is housed in an old supermarket that has been converted in to a really big and still really neat bike shop. Jimmy, PT, Chuck, Arnie and the rest of the team do some great things to grow business in general.

Since my last series of notes, I have been to Columbus, Stow and Youngstown, Ohio. Buckeye football is the big topic of conversation in the State. Don't plan on looking for anyone on the evening of the 8th of January. They will all be watching the game from out in Arizona.

From Stow, we headed to Youngstown , which is the home of the De Bartolo family that owned my beloved 49ers! Actually drove past the DeBartolo Corporation HQ's. While I do not know what it is they do, it was neat. Ron Glove and Cycle Sales have a huge location with lots of upside potential. They do a great job supporting our product sales and we actually had some fun selling an MT220 bike for a young ladies Christmas morning surprise.

Drove some familiar roads from past experiences in my life. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was pretty much wide open with no delays, but those infernal tolls! Uck!

Cranberry, PA and the search for Panera and settling for Applebee's led to connecting with TJ, Janet and Tanya at the brand spanking new Trek store in Cranberry. Even met little Alex who just loved the Trek Trikester.

Don's team has got one heck of a location and right around 5 PM things starting rocking with a steady stream of interested customers and potential customers. It was fun.

Dinner at "On the Border" with Shanya, who also works at Best Buy, getting the business from Bob for "employee theft" after I busted her for the abundances of Best Buy pens she had. Lots of laughs and a great time with Don. the design it yourself burritos were good but not up to Zapata's standards.

The wrap up call of the day was Dirty Harry's in Verona, PA. Will have to check a map to see where this place is, but it was one awesome shop. Barry Jeffries and his team work out of fantastic facility. He does the coffee thing and had great graphics in place with lots of pop color. This place was just a really neat shop that I would want to shop at.

Did the Robinson Trek store and got to meet Chris Palodino and his team including Mike. they do some great things and will sort through some additional photos and post those on tomorrows notes. A really neat store with some subtle elements that I hopefully caught on camera today.

So tonight, I am back here in Madison following visits to some great bike shops in the East. Had 3 days of solid calls with Bob and got to see more of America. The conversations had a similar thread of people trying to get more people in to riding, rails to trails, people coming back to the sport and the hybrid/FX categories are growing, MTB is making a comeback and road bikes have leveled out. The sport is in good hands with the people that I met this week! That's for sure.