ROAD Magazine inquired this morning, “So what’s the full day entail for you?”
As the 2009 ToC Team Bus supplier to the Fly V Australia pb Successful Living team, the Powered:By fi’zi:k crew has been fortunate (and grateful) to have hotel accommodations at the Team Hotel each evening. Here, a Depart Addendum indicating a ‘luggage out by’ time and the vehicle departure time, is distributed. It is the responsibility of Powered:By fi’zi:k to ascertain the petrol and water tanks are full when we’re ready to roll. And even when all appears to be dialed – the occasional monkey wrench is tossed into the mix.
A MONKEY WRENCH:
Part of the Fly V Australia pb Successful Living management crew, as well as fi’zi:k marketing, departed for the Stage 6 Solvang Time Trial at 6 am to join Road Bike Action for a 60-strong industry ride. In the meantime back in Paso Robles, the Powered:By fi’zi:k home-on-wheels was turning over a whole bunch of nothing - its battery life having been sucked dry. To the rescue was Fly V Austrlia’s veteran cyclist Curtis Gunn – no stranger to finding his way around a motor home. After a few failed attemps, moments of panic were tempered with a trusty pair of jumper cables and off went the Fly V Australia caravan consisting that morning of two team vehicles, a team bus (Powered:By fi’zi:k) and the two remaining Fly V Australia pb Successful Living pro cyclists: Ben Day and Curtis Gunn.
VIRUS’s – ANOTHER OCCASIONAL MONKEY WRENCH
Down to three riders before the start of Friday’s Time Trial - five having already succumbed to an evil energy sapping virus - Bernard Sulzberger was hit so hard that he fell asleep in the bathtub. That left Curtis Gunn and Ben Day to represent the team at the Time Trial. While other teams it appears, have also been hit by the virus, none have been it quite as hard as the Fly V Australia squad.
Fly V Australia Director Sportif Henk Vogels
“It’s really a shame,” commented Director Sportif Henk Vogels. “Our business managers Chris White and Brett Roland worked really hard for the invite and to be down to two guys…one might get the impression that we didn’t deserve the invite. But we do deserve to be here. There’s nothing that can be done about it - if you’re sick – you’re sick.”
Outside of managing the occasional monkey wrench, a typical day usually involves a morning transfer to the race start - ranging anywhere from about four to one hundred miles. The guys load into the Powered:By fi’zi:k team bus where they lounge, stretch, tune-out or integrate their preferred pre-race rituals. The Powered:By crew makes a quick exit off the bus upon arrival at the race start to give the guys their space, gather dotdotk.blogspot.com story ideas and images, check in with fi’zi:k sponsored teams and to stock up on Jelly Belly’s.
About ten minutes before the gun goes off, the team bus sides are retracted, the vehicle leveled, and the engine is purring. As soon as an exit path is cleared, the team busses roll out in their own organized assembly, following course deviation directions for the non-peloton sect. Required travel time from stage start to stage finish is generally an hour or two and thus the writing of a dotdotk.blogpost post begins.
In the finishing town the team busses jockey for position in the Team Parking areas. Orange cones are set out demarking parking spots for respective team cars and vans. Once settled, team bus sides extended and the vehicle tidied, it’s over to the Expo Festival to restock Mini BlackBook2 catalogs, straighten displays and check in with Scott USA’s Marketing Director Adrian Montgomery and Jim Pheil from Edge Sports who have been transporting and managing our displays.
If there’s one consistent comment from both Adrian and Jim it’s that orange is hot and fi’zi:k, if doubt were there, is truly a recognized saddle brand. Trivial though it may sound, it was not so long ago that 1. consumers were unable to correctly pronounce fi’zi:k 2. our sponsored pros were also often unable to correctly pronounce fi’zi:k and 3. the most common response was are these saddles comfortable?
Today’s most common response however is not ARE these saddles comfortable? but I have a fi’zi:k and it is sooo comfortable! Yes…we’ve come a long way baby.
*Many thanks to Scott USA’s Adrian Montgomery and his marketing team, and to Jim Pheil and his crew at the Fly V Australia expo booth featuring Edge Wheels, Parlee Bicycles, Sock Guy, and fi’zi:k.
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