New Year's Eve around 5:00 pm and the champagne bottle has been popped.  2009 was a great year and Chad, Reed and I had plenty to reflect upon.  Yes it is what you would expect.  We had some great rides, were fortunate enough to experiment with some very cool new equipment and shared more than our fair share of laughs at Chad's expense.  OK actually many of those laughs were at my expense, or Reeds or Abe's, definitely Max's and quite possible Laurel, Bryce or Brendan.  We didn't laugh at Kipp we all admire her too much.

We did think back on many of the folks that make Missoula Bicycle Works special.  The customers.  We are a community oriented bike shop so we are fortunate enough to enjoy all that Missoula has to offer.  The folks that come back to tell you how much they enjoy the trails now that they found the right bike.  The folks that are determined to commute by bike every opportunity they get.  The folks who test your knowledge or even the ones that test your patience.  Yes, we are in the customer service business.  The stories we just may have to keep to ourselves but the stories are out there.  Spend any amount of time in any bike shop and you will hear them.  I have never worked in a boring bike.  Bike shops attract all the interesting characters that a community has to offer.

None of work in a bike shop in order to get rich.  What we give up in income we get back in the opportunity to work in an industry that we all love.  We spend our days talking about geeky bike stuff, riding the new latest and greatest equipment, scrutinizing, criticizing and praising the parts and accessories that many of you will be asking about.  It can definitely feel like a job at times but those time are easily offset by the times that we get to ride, experiment and tear into new or exotic bike components.  Can you think of a better way to spend an afternoon that rebuilding a Campagnolo shifter or testing which lube works best on the pawls of a Mavic cassette body?  Yeah I didn't think so.

Inevitably we started talking about our favorite rides of the past year.  Amazingly they were all local rides and they are all rides that we are looking forward to riding next spring.  It is only January but right now I ma so excited for the riding season to begin.  I am doing all that I can to keep myself excited about the ski season.  It is not hard but I spent the evening tuning the suspension on one of our demo 29'ers and riding around the shop.  I can't wait to get back on that bike.