Court - Ordered Check In

No, not really.

Just using this blog as a useful place to chronicle day-to-day goings on for future reference, maybe someone, somewhere will find it useful or amusing (unlikely).

Quiet weekend, got pretty much all of the Xmas shopping done (by November 30, which I think is a new personal best). Not only completed, but completed in one trip, without the usual faffing about and dragging Els from shop to shop - which she loathes.

We're not a small family, but we have very little extended family, so the list is pretty compact. The 4YO nephew is apparently deep in a Spiderman phase at the moment, so I trawled the toy aisles at Big W looking for anything branded - one Transformer-type car, and a kite coming right up. Secretly I want to keep the kite for myself.

My folks have come crashing in to the technological age of late - which gave me very useful pointers where to shop for them. I don't think they know about this blog, but I won't spill the beans on what they got, just in case they have found it (are you reading this Mum?)

All in all a pretty successful mission.

Frickin' busy weekend at work, lost count of how many bikes I sold on Sat (they just kept coming, and coming...) but I seem to have broken my hoodoo of not being able to sell anything over $1k. In the last week I sold a beautiful Bianchi C2C Nirone to a very deserving owner, plus a 08 Giant Glory DH bike. I know it's not a sensible career move, but I really like playing with bikes on a daily basis.

Without blowing my own trumpet (I'm still very much a rookie, with alot to learn) I wonder if having an average type cyclist, with no particular talent or specialist knowledge, is an attraction for customers, who up until now have had to deal with either up-themselves wanna-be frustrated racers (DISCLAIMER: not saying all racers are up themselves, but there is a percentage of them that are, and a proportionately greater percentage that seem to work in bike shops, and thrive on making you feel inferior about your cycling ability, and heap scorn and disdain should you want to buy anything less than Record or Dura-Ace), or the 15 year old kid employed at $5.50 per hour.

The only reason I say this is that these are exactly the things that really annoyed me about bike shops when I first wanted to get involved in cycling.

As one of my fellow employees told me the other day - she enjoys getting people involved in bikes and cycling. She doesn't care if she sells them a $400 base level hybrid, or a $6000 carbon Bianchi. If the customer walks away smiling, and will spend enjoyable time on a saddle, then she feels she has done her job.

It might be a rose tinted way of looking at the world, but it's a pretty positive viewpoint.