Travel Travel Travel

Well, I've been on the road quite a bit lately. I started off with flying to Florida and driving from city to city all over the state for a whole week. I got a lot accomplished, met with many dealers, made new friends and drove straight past many wonderful places I have only dreamed of visiting. I think that was the most painful part of the whole trip. Disney World, Dinosaur World, Busch Gardens, numerous museums, Daytona Beach (okay, I stopped for a quick peek), and many other places too many to mention. At least I know where everything is now, right?



Needless to say we now have a lot more exposure for our brand in Florida. I'm glad I made the trip. One thing I noticed about Floridians is that for the most part, everyone was so friendly. That includes when they are on the road. My hypothesis is that this is due to the "common disaster" syndrome. This is the syndrome where people who share the experience of a major disaster grow tightly together and sweating the little things isn't such a big deal. I guess after you've been through a few devastating hurricanes everything else is gravy.

So after Florida I spent a very short weekend with my family and then Marcin and I drove from Austin to Madison Wisconsin. From there we visited dealers and worked our way down to Chicago in time to set up a booth at the Chicago Triathlon. We picked up several new dealers on this trip of which two bought product from us to sell at the expo. This turned out well for everyone. We did not have to drive back with much stuff after the event and they learned how well our products sell!

Timing is everthing. When we reached the Chicago Hilton (where the expo was held) we unloaded our trialer in the loading area. No sooner did we get our stuff off the sidewalk and into the building did a major storm packing winds of up to 80 mph hit the windy city. That was close! I feel bad for those who were in the middle of unloading at that time. BTW, did you know that Chicago is not necessarily known as the windy city because of the wind? If you are at all interested in the history of this, you can read about it here.

I took Marcin to a Polish restaraunt my family goes to when in Chicago to help him get a little taste of home. The While Eagle is the biggest place you have ever seen! They have a huge banquet hall for weddings and other big Polish family events (I've only been there for family gatherings after funerals) as my relatives are all buried across the street. Don't let that turn you off though. The desserts are wonderful and the plates are bountiful! When we had our food brought to us we thought they had the wrong table. The amount of food we got was clearly enough for 4-5 people. Needless to say, we did our best and then rolled ourselves out the door and to the nearest hotel for some serious full belly snooze time.

So now we have a week rest (yeah, right!) in Austin, attend the Austin Triathlon on the weekend of September 2nd, and then Marcin leaves to visit our factories overseas one more time before Interbike the following Tuesday. Eunice will leave on Thursday to set up at the Ironman Wisconsin that Thursday and I will leave Friday for the L.A. Triathlon. Looks like I'll be spending the following week travelling California and meeting dealers, celebrating my birthday (Wednesday, Sept. 12th) and then possible setting up at the Malibu Triathlon that next weekend.

That should pretty much do it for travels this year...not! We have Interbike to attend at the end of September and then a couple of events in October including the U.S. Open Triathlon in Dallas
and then possibly the Escape from Bermuda Triathlon.

Cheers!