Thursday, June 26, 2008

Summer Time and the living is easy






Skis lean against a cabin with no snow. It can be done. Skiing is still out there. I'm not. Too much effort. Neil has been going to Mt. Hood. Brian is already up there- fighting fires. Except that as of the 15th there had been no action in the fire business so he was splitting his time between skiing and Mountain Biking.

John is in Hawaii (not skiing). Me? Tentative plans to hit Hood late July but so far nothing epic as far as skiing is concerned. I have graduated a daughter from high school (Rebecca-above). You may know her from the store. We then spent a few days in Chico for her freshman orientation (the best part was shad fishing the Sacramento river- we killed it!). Graduation week means Friends, family, parties. My dad was out from Colorado for a week or so. Graduation means good times! This took us through the middle of June.

Now I have ramped up the golf and bike outings and have been working at the shop about 15 hours a week. I'm chipping away at computer input for next years items and reviewing all the order confirmations for next years merchandise. Lot's of mistakes are found in this process. It's pretty much a dead heat in the competition for most mistakes, but I think I am slightly ahead of the sales reps at this point. Customer appointments and random drop ins have kept the cash flow pretty solid too. Lot's of insoles for things other than skiing. Plenty of golf shoe inserts. Next Wednesday I'm doing some for a pair of hockey skates. Some tune type labor and hardgood and soft goods odds and ends for the group that is still backcountry skiing too. A duke binding one day. A pair of socks "with good shin padding please" yesterday. It also always surprises me how many of you see the front door open and just stop by to say "hi!". It always makes my day when this happens...

Now I am turning my attention to the retail space. John and I cleared out the back shop and pressure washed all the mats and cleaned the floor as soon as we got back from Mammoth. Yuck, what a grungy job, but it's done now. Now we are in the sparkle and shine mode. Yesterday a new carpet was put down. Finally some relief for aching retail legs- we now have a pad under the rug! We had to clear the floor and the walls up to 5 feet install it. Now we will procede to finish clearing the walls and scrub, dust, scour, and polish it all back into a sparkly winter wonderland. After that we will re-do all the merchandising. Both daughters will be involved with this process. Neither would be interested at all except that gas is now bleeding them dry and they need extra income. I'll be glad to have the company. Once we get it cleaned up John will be back from Hawaii to help set up the sales floor with the girls. I will migrate back upstairs to work on next years signage and finish all the purchase orders by August 1st.

It has to be ready by then because after that it all starts to happen pretty fast. All the product for the year comes in the next two weeks. I call this the "Every day is Christmas" phase of my job. So there it is. Biding our time, prepping the space and waiting around for Christmas!

Monday, June 2, 2008

A Brief Spring Fling


Well, we have another Mammoth trip under our belts now. Good times! Six days of skiing consecutively- awesome! I had a really good time both on and off the slopes. A bit different than the last few years, we actually got normal spring conditions. It turned out to be that week in the Bay area when San Francisco hit record temperatures over 100 degrees. It was much better to be in Mammoth where it was only 80 degrees. Super soft snow. I sunburned my knees between my boots and my shorts. We would ski from 7:30 (more like 8:30) until 1:00 (more like noon). Then a quick tasty lunch and a beer on the deck of the lodge and back to the homestead for some hot tub action or a sauna perhaps. Maybe take in a museum in the afternoon or a hike or a bit of fishing. It was a very relaxing way to wrap up the retail year.
Interesting going's on at Mammoth centered around the US Ski team being there at the same time as us. Mens and Womens A,B, and C teams all seemed to be there. It was cool to watch them running the courses. Better still for me was hanging around with the tech's that support the skiiers. As we know many of the techs we got to check out the rooms they employ all the new tricks and tweaks they are using to help people ski really fast. Very cool stuff if you are an equipment geek. The downside is that John has another list of "must have" boot fitting tools that will be very cool to check out and will then maybe get used occassionally on customers boots. Worth the purchase every time! ;)
So now we are back and doing the summer thing. John, Todd, Erle and I golfed last Friday together. I shot a 92. Not bad for me right now. Erle shot an 82- nice! I am riding with Becky tomorrow. She wants to see some more East Bay mountain bike trails so I am happy to help out. John and I have been spending some time at the shop as well. A fair number of you have asked for appointments to shop for boots or skis plus we need to take care of the yearly maintenence stuff around the store.
So now it is graduation for my daughter Rebecca and all the hoopla that will surround this big event. Then...who knows. I have a list of things I would like to do. We shall see how many items I get to cross off over the next few months. I wil keep you up on my progress!