Monthly Archives: November 2007

Yes, I know it’s not a word. My wife is always telling me to say “more fun,” instead. I can’t help it: “Funner” is just more fun to say. So I wanted to report that I took the second CX ride of my life with Pete today. It was way more fun than the ride I took by myself the other day. We went out for about 45 minutes over lunch, and didn’t do a single errand. Two pieces of good news:

1) We went onto an actual trail, and I did not break my neck.
2) It was cold out today, and I managed to stay warm without putting on everything I own. This means I can ride in even worse conditions.

I’ve never been an off-road cyclist, so I definitely need to gain both skills and some guts as well.

(There’s a funner way to say say this that’s also probably more realistic, but gender is a construct and we’re a family-friendly, politically-correct blog.)

Now, go play.

Lately, I’ve been completely enamored with toys. Naturally, I mean of the grown-up variety (which is something altogether different than “adult” toys.) We’re talking bikes, skis, ice tools, fly-rods, and various types of performance footwear and clothing. I’m lingering in stores, surfing the web, pawing through catalogs, calling in favors and trades, all in search of the latest, greatest, fastest, best, and – oh yes – more.

It’s really gotten out of hand. I don’t have money to be shopping like this, and I certainly don’t have time to do half of what I’m imagining I’ll have time to do in the coming months. I have both a budget and significant time-constraints. I do – after all – have young kids. So why do I have visions that suddenly and soon I’ll have a lot of time for backcountry skiing? You would think that I could go every single day with the amount of attention I’m giving to backcountry skis (and boots, skins, bindings), lately. I live in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. This isn’t exactly a backcountry skiing mecca. What is going on in my brain?

Obviously, I’m not playing enough. This has to be it. Like a lot of folks, when I can’t play, I shop. This is the reason why there are often more skis sold per capita in Michigan than there are in Colorado. Here in the midwest, we purchase gear to keep our head in our game, whatever that game may be. By contrast, in areas where outdoor games are more readily available, they more often go with what gear they’ve got.

The other night, I sat on the kitchen floor with my young boy. He’s two, so his idea of fun is launching toy cars across the room, and fetching them. It’s such a simple thing, and he certainly doesn’t need new cars to have fun chasing them. He gets smile-cramps as it is, and a new car would just push him over the top. The boy just plays the way we all should, or would if we had the time.

I play too, in my way. Even as I assert this, I’m reminded of last spring when Pete asked me to go for a run. I’m an endurance athlete (a very slow one, but I plug along), so running is a prescribed activity. I said: “No thanks, I can’t: I’ve got to run [X] distance at [such a percentage] heart-rate today, and I really can’t do this and run with a partner, especially somebody as fast as you.”

Pete said,”You spend all this time TRAINING! Don’t you ever just run for fun?”

Running is a really satisfying and somewhat necessary activity for me, but “fun” is not a word I would use to describe it. For me, everything to do with running involves metrics such as time, distance, speed, and heart-rate. Generally – sadly – I won’t even run if I don’t have my heart-rate monitor, because it just wouldn’t count. That said, I miss it when I don’t do it, but not because it’s “fun.” So, no, I don’t just run for fun.

This seems to be my problem. I don’t do much for fun, lately. I rarely just play.

Pete’s enthusiasm for play is infectious, though. You’ve probably caught his posts here about cyclocross racing. He’s had a CX bike for over a year now, and he’s been steadily working on the rest of us to join him out in the mud and cold. This is a secret, so don’t share it with anybody, but I’m a small man with stubby little legs. There are two things I have trouble buying off the rack: Pants, and CX bikes. But Pete’s been diligently forwarding me leads on both new and used CX bikes. The other day, he sent me a link to a used bike that was on the market, right here in Madison. It was a unique size for a grown-up’s bike (small, with small wheels) and it had more than decent components. I went out to look at it the other night, and it was perfect. So, of course, I bought it.

Hey, at least I can do this right outside of my door, year-round, in any weather. No snow or terrain is required.

Yesterday, I took my new prize out for its maiden voyage. I’ve not ridden in awhile, and I could sure feel it. I felt sick to my stomach and out of breath, dizzy, and a little unsteady. Honestly, I thought that my heart was going to explode out of my chest. After that first painful block, I felt a little better so I kept going. I’m a grown-up, so even this ride needed to have a grown-up reason: Ostensibly, I was out running errands. Even so, I took the long way, across lawns, through puddles, and along the fringes of dirt lots. The best part about the ride was the whirring sound that the wheels made on the pavement. It sounded like the wicked strings that accompany Uma Thurman as she makes her gleeful rounds in “Kill Bill,” so I had my own soundtrack.

I left my heart-rate monitor at home, and didn’t even take a watch. There’s hope for me, yet.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Durability has the best green story. Buying (or selling) high-quality products that last (and not replacing them needlessly) is the greenest option of all.

This was borrowed shamelessly from The Mountain Culture. Check it out. We’ve got a link to it…

Here’s a little snippet from today’s paper:

75% of Dane County residents commute to work by driving alone in their vehicle.

Another 10% either walk or take public transportation.

Only 9% car-pool.

2% ride bicycles.

The remainder either work at home, or find some other way to get to work.

Dane County is basically Madison and the surrounding suburbs. Madison has more miles of bike paths per capita than almost any city in the country. We have an efficient and well-used bus system. We have decent road arteries that allow traffic to move rather quickly from place to place, so nowhere is really “out of the way” from anywhere else.

These statistics put some things into perspective. 75% drive alone, commuting to and from work? Madison is known to be a “green” city. If we lead the nation, the nation has a long way to go.

In this week’s mailbag, we had one explaining why a manufacturer decided to end relationships with rep agencies in two sales territories (neither one ours…) It says, in part:

“Many outdoor rep agencies are used to pursuing [business] which follows [a] pre-book, ship and clinic model. We think we all recognize that our industry landscape has changed significantly in the last five years and if anything, that pace of change will quicken.”

The tone and vision of this letter was similar to an e-mail that was in our in-box this week, too. Ostensibly a marketing piece for a national tradeshow, it was as direct:

“Reps are under fire these days and have to defend their position (and commission) to the brands they represent. In the meantime, brands will continue to push down on commission percentages and will continue to streamline processes to best serve the dealer directly.” This same document goes on to say that “Job security and repping [have] become oxymoronic.”

Just last week, I was talking with somebody who recently left an in-house repping job. This person was weighing the pros and cons of looking outside of this industry for a different kind of gig altogether, or of trying to put together a quiver of four or five open brands and make a go of it as an independent. I said,”Soon, there will be very few lone-soldier independent reps – the lines that hire them won’t generate enough income for the rep to make a living, and the lines that pay well will be needing services that can only be provided by agencies, or they will be looking at other options.”

Earlier this year, Pemba Serves was honored by the OIA as a finalist for the annual Innovator Award. To a degree, this recognition came to us because we have an innovative structure and an eye towards the future. It’s no secret that we’re trying to position ourselves so that we are better prepared to ride out the tsunami-like changes that are sweeping through our little corner of the industry. Ours is not a perfect model, but most people like it.

Not everyone gets it, though. We interviewed for a line in our territory some time back, and decided to walk away from the opportunity because the interviewer casually mentioned this: ”Since we’re talking, you should know that we want you to change your structure to something more traditional – we’d be more comfortable with you if you were more like our other agencies.” We might not be right about what’s needed from reps in this industry, but we do know what’s right for us.

As the Dalai Lama says, the secret to happiness is simple: “Just walk towards those things that make you happy, and away from those things that don’t.” Whether we walk towards happiness, or away from unhappiness, at the end of the day we at Pemba Serves are happier just to keep on walking. Walking always makes us happy, either way.

In times of great change, it seems that people in equal numbers cling to the familiar and the traditional, or go out seeking the revolution. A few take the middle path, also. What’s clear from history is that no conservative movement has ever saved its way guardedly into the future. On the other hand, revolutionaries are often martyred. In history, the “middle path” has often been the most successful option. This path frequently involves assimilating new ideas as they come along, and evolving old ones into new paradigms. In this way, the Greeks became the Romans, and the Romans became – well – us. Carpe Diem.

So, the takeaway for today is this: Mix the old with the new, always choose the better of the two options, and keep on walking towards happiness, however you define it. One more thing we know, also: We need to keep listening. To this end, we have a survey. Have you seen it? Drop us a line, give us some feedback. We like new ideas, and want to hear about your favorite old ones, too.