Hello and welcome back to the peteryan.com website. It has been a week since I last wrote you but much has happened.

First I must say Hello and Happy Mother's Day to my Mom! Second I have to say Happy Birthday to my nephew! He is so damn big now! I have a sweet present for him I will have to drop off soon, oh and one for Mom too! Here is D-Money with his future career outfit.

Here is my recap of early last week:
Monday: Work.
Tuesday: Work.
Wednesday: Work and drive to Madison.
Now it gets fun...
Thursday: Wake up, eat breakfast muffins that Anne made. We start making our way out to meet Ben from Trek to give us a personalized tour of the Trek HQ in Waterloo, WI. How did I get a personalized tour of the Trek HQ you ask? I am friends with his step-mom. :) I work with her and she was nice enough to offer that Ben give us a tour. So the original plan was to do the tour and then go for a ride. Ben had a 56cm Trek Madone 5.2SL all set for me in the cube next to his but we had to put that on hold because of the 15mph wind, downpours of rain, and it being 38 degrees. We still got the inside tour of the place. :)

The building looks new on the outside, it has just been remodeled recently. When you walk in the receptionist is right in front of you, we walked up and asked her to call Ben for us. While waiting for him we walked around to the left and on the wall was Trek's history. They had a few older bikes and then the Lance gold leaf bike. It was very cool to see the history on the wall there. On the wall there was a plaque that showed that Penn Cycle was Trek's first customer. I knew that Penn was a big customer but I didn't know they were the first. I guess that is why there are so many Trek's in the metro.

Ben greeted us and we started the tour. We got into the manufacturing section of the building, it looked much older and much more worn. Ben said it was because they just keep adding on to the building because they keep expanding. Trek has only been in business for 30 years so it makes since that they may have went from a barn to this much larger HQ.

We first got to look at how they stressed the bikes. I wish I had the job of destroying thousands of dollars worth of equipment everyday. They have a ram that destroys wheels by firing a chunk of steel into a bike wheel with a tire on it. It had one on there and it was destroyed but it passed since nothing flew off of it. The spokes looked like the letter J and where it hit made a V in the wheel. In the end the wheel looked like pac-man. They also had cut-aways from other bikes forks and frames. Many of them still had the bladder material still in them. Cough, Orbea, Specialized, Cough.

We moved on to where they assemble the highend aluminum bikes and anything with carbon. It is amazing how they build these things. They really do build the higher end stuff in small batches and do a lot of QC on these. We then moved on to the carbon stuff. We got to see the difference between real carbon and the cross hatched machined carbon everyone is used to seeing. It really is amazing how they put these together and make them strong enough to hold my fat butt.

We walked past a rack of Bontrager Race XXX Lite VR bars. These suckers retail for about $400.00 and don't weigh anything. Seriously. 166grams. That is like 166 paperclips for sweet bars.

After moving on to the finish area we got to look at more assembly and paint. Their painters have to have 2+ years of school to paint a frame. They are all really good. One lady was applying decals on an older fisher that was in for warranty work. They really do take their time and do the job right. It was cool to watch her.

Ben then took us over to see the Project One bikes. Wow. If you ever get a high-end Trek make sure to get a Project One(P1) bike. They really do put a ton more time into them and don't let anything pass QC. One of the Madone frames we saw hanging had a minor paint bump (like a needle point and less than .03mm high) no one would notice and will be sold that way. This on a P1 bike won't pass. It will need to be repainted. The P1 project hand picks the best frames and parts for the bikes and it shows in the final product. Ben is one of two people who deal with all the P1 stuff so we got a really in-depth tour of the P1 process. It is very cool to see how this stuff is painted, the P1 painters need another year of school (3 years) to become the P1 artists they are. I also have to note that I saw the ugliest bike I have ever seen before being painted by the P1 folks. I guess being able to customize a bike doesn't mean everyone is going to be a masterpiece. :)

After the plant tour and instead of the ride Ben took us to the Trek store in Madison to get me fitted for a bike. I got all my sizes and where everything should be so when I actually get to the point of purchasing a bike I know exactly what to get. It was cool to get fit properly so I can now see I need my seat forward a bit more and my bars wider since I have wide shoulders. Other than that I am pretty normal. Well at least that is what they said.

On another note the Trek Store in Madison East has this huge touch screen TV that you can use to customize your P1 bike right in the store. It sounds like there will be more of these Trek stores popping up all around the US in the near future. So if you are ever in the Madison area make sure to do the Trek Plant Tour. It is really cool.

After the Trek-fest we took Ben out to the Great Dane near the capital for a beer and some dinner. We had a good time and BS'd for about 2 hours. The Dane has great food and a good selection of fine beers, mmm...so that was Thursday.

Friday: Wake up, eat somewhere, do something. Take pictures... I don't really remember. Oh, watched Waiting... It was eh...
Saturday: Anne and I did a little shopping, some misc other crap, then had dinner at Lao Laan Xang. mmm...the #24...mmm. Awesome food, just as good reheated the next day. mmm.... Then watched Just Friends. Better than Waiting...
Sunday: Do some shopping, hang with the Fred and Anne, then go home.

The pictures are from Anne and I's day out taking pictures when it wasn't raining for 20 minutes. :)

Linky3:
Flood Maps - Man I love MN.
$599 - Blow me Sony.
Best Buy - Improv Everywhere

Later.
-pete