My Week in Review; Fall in PDX

Portland's Steel Bridge as the Sun Sets Behind Skyline

It’s been a busy week.  I feel like I’m torn in 1,000 different directions which in some regards is refreshing since I’m off the bike.  But even that’s getting better recently.  I’m able to very tentatively un-clip my foot to the outside.  The inside has been okay for weeks which is why I’ve been riding multi-directional release SPD cleats and my Cyclocross bike, but the “normal” un-clip has eluded me for a long time.  Although this is positive the fact is that I wasn’t able to get back on the bike before the feeling of muscle atrophy set in on my legs, so Cyclocross season can kiss itself goodbye.

Back to the “real world,” away from the bike and on to my busy week.  I’ve been working on several projects for Pat from Oregon Cycling Action.  One of them includes his new blog that will be hosted on WordPress under a slightly different domain.  This is exciting news and will signify the next beginning of the next step in our process of building his blog up.

Onto Fairwheel, which is doing an amazing job of retaining the traffic from Interbike.  This year I set up a plan that involved months of Email marketing and the process of archiving our past custom bike builds.  After Interbike ran we used the “buzz” to increase our newsletter list by 30% and our traffic by up to 28%.  The traffic is staying steady and it looks like we might retain at least 20% as a permanent increase because of this publicity.  This is the biggest single jump in traffic that we’ve had since I rolled out their new (at the time) template in January 2009.

Combining both these projects I’ve been able to secure a set of wheels (Kinlin Rims, DT Swiss 240 Hubs) from Fairwheel for local riders and racers here in Portland to test. I’m going to edit the reviews into one post for Oregon Cycling Action and will accompany that review with links to every testers full review of the wheels.  For the most part, so far the wheels have been getting great reviews above all the value for both weight and durability of the KinLin rims has been praised.

The foot is now getting full ice baths after riding and Physical Therapy

What a switchback... Moment of silence, please.