LeftyBassist.com

Wow. There's some diverse stuff here. I completely missed this thread when it was new.

I've pretty much only ever done two things in my life. Music related and bicycle related. I started touring with bands pretty early when I was about 18. (Which was - ahem - 28 years ago....) In those days I worked as a bicycle courier here in Toronto or in retail bike shops when music wasn't happening. I was a downhill and XC mountain bike racer for about 6 solid years seriously between 25 and 30 or so. All the while grinding it out in music and bike shops. (I learned early on, if you work hard and make yourself indispensable in a bike shop, they will always take you back after a tour.) Eventually I ended up working at a big Canadian racing bike manufacturer called Cervélo. I worked my way up from the warehouse, to warranty guy, to customer service, to eventually being the technical & dealer services guy for Europe. Spent a lot of time in EU at different events, races etc. Been to the Tour, the Vuelta and the Giro. Been to Paris Roubaix and lots of other spring classics etc. When the company was purchased by a big Dutch conglomerate they quickly realized that it would be cheaper to hire someone in Europe to do my job rather than flying me back and forth. So they made me train my replacement in Germany and eventually paid me a bunch of money to go away. That's when I bought my Sprinter van and started touring as a driver and tour manager for other artists as well as my own band. One thing led to another and a buddy of mine needed help buying his partner out of the bike shop he owns and I bought in. Now I only tour with my band and actually own part of a bike shop here in Toronto that actually keeps me busy in the day times. I just got back from a six week tour in Europe with my band (33 shows in 42 days) and it's hard to tell where music guy ends and bike guy begins. That's my story.

That's amazing. I fight for my three hours of music and three hours of exercise per week. And here you are doing both all the time. I need to rethink some shit

PS: my new toy:



Picked her up in the spring after riding a loaner for three years. I hadn't bought a proper new mountain bike in 15 years. Boy has technology changed. @#$%ing thing is a spaceship.

Cool to see other MTB’ers here

The joke in Tahoe is that most people's mountain bike cost more than the car they're driving. It is like 1990 Toyota 4Runner with a $5k Santa Cruz MTB around here.

@Matt, you probably need to drive quite a bit to find a MTB trail around Huntsville..

What New England lacks in quality skiing it more than makes up for with the mountain biking and climbing.

Yeah. I hear ya. Until I bought into the shop last year, I'd been riding MTB with 26" wheels. (It was probably $6k new but WAY dated.) This is my "demo ride" for this coming year. Specialized Camber Comp Carbon 29. It's a rocket compared to my old bike.

Hotness!

She's a beauty alright!

(Man I love a good thread derail.)

My loaner was a 26'er, too. A Cannondale Rush with a Lefty fork. Sounded good on paper--great specs, not cheap--but it loved throwing me over the bars, forcing me to keep the fork pressure unnecessarily high. The owner had the same issue, which is why he didn't mind parting with it for so long.

For a living.... Well, I "retired" (yeah, right) from public schools after 32 years. Fifteen as a teacher, seventeen as ass't prin and "acting" principal a couple of times. I thought I would sleep till 8 every morning and do anything I wanted to do. But someone kept throwing money at me, and now I still go into schools and train people (secretaries, counselors, teachers, principals, etc.) on a computer program that makes their lives easier. I started out part-time, but for three years I have been back full time. It is a private company - I no longer work for the state. But I am still heavy into public education.

I played music all of those years, after playing through high school and college.

I do tile work, this is one of the projects I've just finished for a retired MIT architect.
Glass tile on top, porcelain at the bottom.
The glass tile varies in color and most are frost but some are clear.
The shower pan and the wall boards are made by Schluter and it's some sort of fancy styrofoam.
In the center there is a picture printed in aluminum, it's a place in Cape Cod they used to go every summer.
Sometimes it get's a little crazy but it's nice to see the final product.

Great reading so far folks!.... sorry I’m late to the party. I am also a nerd by training, after spending 10 years in academia in England (Physics and Engineering), I moved to the US in the early 2000’s, and ran an electron microscopy lab at UConn for a few years. I then worked at Johns Hopkins for a bit, and then spent ten years at FEI, a microscope company out in Oregon (for our Netherlands pals, I spent a lot of time in Eindhoven, as we were part of Philips Electron Optics for a while).

Now I work for Nike as a footwear engineer. Here’s a nerd pic from many years ago..