BLOGS? You want, like, insider stuff? Musings? Twitter-like and all? OK.

April 13, 2009

I invented the modern day blog every bit as much as Al Gore invented the internet. Some of you long-timers may remember the Progress Report in the early Readers. It was a daily journal of hold-nothing back, and it went on for five years or so, stopping only when--none of you, but other online Monday morning quarterbacks would publicly second-guess decisions that I'd already admitted were dumb or financial failures. It got to the point where I'd say (in the Prog Report), "Man, I shouldn't have done that," and then somebody would go online and repeat to the world that I was stupid to do it.

On bad days and in bad weeks that are stressful enough without public chastisement, it just got to be too much. I have opinions about bike things, and I state them succinctly, and that combo sometimes suggests I'm a tough jerk who ought to be able to take a good lashing, but I hope I'm not a jerk, and I know I can 't take the lashing...so I stopped.

Having a Forum is stressful enough. I go onto it every now and then, and sometimes post something, but I still find that I lack the intestinal fortitude for it. The same fellow who likes my writing sometimes, doesn't like it other times. I tell myself, "That's  only natural, what are you--nuts?--you expect everybody to like everything?" And of course I don't. But I wonder what he likes and what he doesn't, and then I wonder whether it's even good to know, whether I should write to the audience or just write, just say what I sorta feel I have to say or whatever.

I got a lot of criticism for "spilling my guts" and one guy accused me of not being manly about it. One remembers those things. One problem, or feature, inherent in bloggy junk, is the danger of thinking people care what you're feeling at any given time, that it matters. I know  people care, because I know people--and by this I certainly mean 99.9 percent of our customers, of you guys--are good people who care. But bloggy stuff can take on a life of its own. It can be reinforcing in a dangerous way, or a pathetic way, to watch one's own musings slowly fill up the page. It's like filling up Shea Stadium, but without the nervousness, and it can go to your head.

The Progress Report days were generally less busy than a typical day now. Early early, it was just Spencer and me and a part-time helper, Maggie. The first year we started with about $80,000 in the bank, but I hooked up a fire hose to it and started siphoning it into the sewer with lots of bad decisions, but there were some good ones, too. Still, at the end of a year we had minus $3,000 in the bank, and I had to borrow it from my dad. He died a few years later (I wrote about that in a Reader) before I could  pay him back, which bugs me still.

There's a plan here to collect and consolidate and publish a "Best of the Rivendell Reader," and so the other night I was going through some of the early issues trying to find things I liked good enough to put out there again, and I was not coming up with much. Some of the stories are good, but the photos were lousy, and I don't even have the original photos they came from, so we'd have to use a dub of the lousy printed photo, and I'm not sure I have the stomach for it.

We'll still do something. It feels odd to put out a self-praising "Best of...", but it would simplify life here if we could do that. We don't have all the files anymore, or even every issue.

Another thing, related, is that we'd like somebody to make a Reader-by-Reader list or some kind of searchable database for old Reader stories. Nobody  here has time, but if one of you, somebody who knows himherself to be a fastidious, meticulous, detail-oriented follow-througher wants to tackle it,  please do so and we'll give you a $250 credit. On the outside chance that this offer gets ultra-pounced on by too many, we're going with the first taker before Wednesday. That could be today, it could be tomorrow, and maybe nobody will jump on it. TAKEN CARE OF at 3:10 PM.

This post replaces one Spencer or John or Mark put up, about the Tweed bags coming in again. That reminds me--about tweed mudflaps, one thing one of my favorite Rivendelles groans about.

They were always tongue-in-cheek. A response to mudflaps made of thick, oil-stuffed English bridle leather. One one hand, it's just a mudflap, so what the heck, go hog-wild with it (hog leather?). On the other hand, there's a lot to be said of duct-tape mudflaps, and mudflaps made from recycled junk. Why not one of each?

But the tweed mudflap makers---they've been hurt badly by both the economy and the horrifying trend of today's British, youth not caring about their old, traditional bags. Our bag maker had to shut down for most of a year a few years back, and resurfaced reorganized and greatly shrunk.

Some of what we do here...is buy from makers who really need and appreciate our business. Most of the time, the stuff costs a ton to buy and a lot to ship here. Nobody here makes much money (me  included, yes) for what they do and the contribution they make. So...when I read that people are bummed about this or that selling for more here than at VO or some place else, it really bums me out. Let me tell you: There is NO FAT here. We try to make up for things with free freight on $150+ orders, and the 5% credit rebate, but we don't price-shop our competition.

Who is our competition? We must have some. Many of you think many of us think VO is our competition, because it sells some of the same kinds of things, and some of the same exact things. I don't consider them competition. It is challenging, I admit, to discover they have something we have cheaper; and to think that we're being whittled away at by VO or Kogswell or SOMA or SURLY or Acorn, Carradice, VBQ, Berthoud, WallBike, or something...but these are good businesses run by good people. My overriding concern here is to keep my fantastic co-workers employed. Those other fine firms have the same concerns for their employees. And think of how disingenuous it would be for me to tout lugged steel and canvas bags and all that stuff...and then yelp like a whiner when whaddya know, other people start getting into it, too?

It is a personal battle for me to think of these guys as on our side, on our team. I'm winning the battle, but it takes diligence. I know we're in a niche, or a small pond. There are two ways to deal with that. One is to think, This pond: Not big enough for more than one fish! The other is: Welcome, new fish! We got a good kind of pond. Let's make it bigger.  That second way is the way I think about it, but as I said, it's not always a cinch. I have turned the corner, though, and I think it's good for everybody's business, including ours--on a practical, money, cold-hard business level that goes way beyond karma points or whatever.

The competition, if anything is really our competition, is --- well, two things. One, my own emotions, which sometimes steer me down paths that aren't all that profitable (you'll read about one of these in RR42, and I will be strongly criticized...but I know all that now, before the fact, and I am resolute in this stupid-seeming thing we're  about to do that's not worth guessing at). It's still not smart, but it's not as dumb as it seems, and not every decision here is made with the bottom line in mind.

And the other is the racing community, which is tricking lots and lots of people into a way of bicycle life that .... ummmm, isn't all that fullfilling. Not for all of them.

G
The "I invented blogging" is a joke, by the way. Not a good one, maybe a dangerous one. A bad, dangerous joke!