And so it begins

I have spent the better part of my life enamored with the bicycle.  In my younger years, it was more of a boyhood crush, but as I grew older it turned into a full blown love affair.  I got my first job just to buy a bicycle.  My friends were busy trying to get the car keys from their parents while I was dishing out chicken at a fast food restaurant, trying to earn enough money for a 1984 Trek 660.  Every paycheck was devoted to freeing that beautiful red machine from the confines of the bike shop.  My mom would drive me straight from the chicken joint to the bank, and then to Bicycle World, where I would ecstatically give them my weeks earnings. 

Recently I was back east visiting my folks.   Dad had put aside some boxes of random things that I apparently could not part with.   I began to go through the boxes, time capsules comprised mostly of  trash that just needed to go away.  But in one of those boxes I found the receipt for the Trek, paid in full on May 2, 1985.  Take in mind that I would have no idea where to begin looking for my High School diploma or my English degree.   I'm sure my mom knows, but in reality, I don't really care.  That receipt means more to me than possibly any other document I own.  It chronicles the beginning of my 25 years in the bicycle industry.  In some ways it's a representation of when my life really began.  Little did I know,  but those two wheels set everything in motion for how my life would unfold.