Double Dotting the Ares k

Alas, that time of year when dung smacks head on, straight into the fan, splattering back at us in a fountain of delusional grandeur. The dung is that throng of pressurized emails from team managers inquiring, "Where for art thou is our product?" It happened yesterday. It happened today. It happened last week. It happened the week prior. And it will continue to happen until all seven of our Pro Tour road teams, our Pro Continental and Continental road teams, our World Cup and National XC & DH teams (not to mention our global triathletes) receive all the necessary product required for team training camps, preventing them from starting such training, riding their seat poles (yes, we know it’s a post, but it’s truly a pole; we’re a multi-lingual group and tis how it’s coolly stated in the ghetto).

The delusional grandeur is l’enfant terrible aka team manager with the loudest stomp. Though they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, a reminder that the product had a requested delivery date of the 5th when today is the 6th will make that product move no faster. In Italy, a holiday by any other name would still be a holiday and would still carry with it what could be called to those outside the Euro-sect, ramifications. As long as there has been a bike industry, there has been a populous that has had to learn to plan and compromise around those Italian holidays. Kick, scream, dramatize, traumatize, tantrumize, do the double stomp…and send a pig’s trough of emails; the holiday song remains the same.

Here’s a nice one from Team Ouch/Maxxis:

Hope you had a good holiday. TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK NOW!!! Put the
xmas cookies away.
Just checking in on status of saddle and delivery time?
Mike Tamayo

And one from Jelly Belly:

I was just wondering if you received my team order for seats. If so, do you think they will be here before camp.

Take Care

Danny Van Haute

And today’s beauty:

I'm sorry. What does "deliver in time" mean? You communicated to Eric and I that January 5th we would have the saddles?

Regards,
Matt

And so it goes…
Come February 14th, when the boys roll off the TT ramp in Sacramento for the start of the Tour of California, let’s hope all cartwheels were flipped in a timely fashion, and what you see in the dust of DZ's Nuts will be a fully concentrated effort, supported not by a ghetto pole but by the proper platform – the baited breath of wait – the new :k Ares.