A Note from Your Author: Looks like my scheduled post for Thursday never posted, which I guess is as good as any way to take a day off, but here it is anyway:

I’m writing this one the night before it posts. By the time you read this, I may be divorced, dead, or even the owner of a new home somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. My wife, sick with a killer head cold, arrives in Portland around 11:00pm Pacific, which is 2:00am Eastern. When healthy, this woman tends to be a “morning person,” waking up at 5:30am every morning, but borderline comatose by 10:00pm each night. So this should be interesting.

Bright and early tomorrow, she’ll go off with one real estate agent while I go to work. Then, after work, as I’ve done twice this week already, I’ll head out with another real estate agent. Possibly later we’ll meet or something. Tough to say.

The plan appears to be spreading out across as much of the Northwest as we can, thereby increasing the number of homes that just won’t work for us exponentially. It’s possible we’re going for some kind of viewing record, though my inability to quit my job(s) to turn professional house hunter will no doubt thwart everything.

You may have noticed I rarely type words like “bike” or “bicycle” these days, but this shouldn’t be construed as an indication that they’re not on my mind. In fact, I’m helping launch one new company while experiencing the onset of “catalog season” at another. So I’m still ass-deep in bikes, as they say (they don’t actually say that, I think), and I’m paying attention to what’s going on out there.

Speaking of which, how ’bout Steve Domahidy’s new project! I knew Steve and Chris from Niner years ago while I was running Speedgoat, and I’ve gotten to know both guys a bit more over the years, and it’s no wonder Niner became the company it’s become. I have a small sense of the time and energy Steve’s put into helping develop that bike, and it’s hard to overstate the kind of focus it takes to pull that stuff off. Making bikes happen is a job, pure and simple. Like any other job, there’s shit you have to put up with, constraints, personalities to work with and around–it’s a job. It looks–at least anyone involved in making bikes prefers it to look–as if these things just spring to life with pixie dust and whimsy and somebody’s trust fund, but in fact there are deadlines, rules and regulations and endless reams of crap to track, and there’s accountability, which is like the opposite of whimsy.

The Factor bikes definitely rub some purists the wrong way, but the funny things is that they’re almost always the same purists who like to bitch about the UCI. And hipsters. And DH guys. Bitching’s easy. I nearly managed to make a career of it. Actually bringing shit into the world is hard. I emailed Steve to congratulate him today, because he definitely deserved it. The designs he’s creating fly in the face of convention, and I really think we should have more people doing that.

And more cheap five bedroom homes in the Portland and Vancouver areas.