Madison

I have officially been in Madison for over a week now and so it's time to give a little recap of my first few days in the wild new place.

Natalie volunteered to help me move my junk up here and we journeyed up to my apartment last Saturday afternoon. It's a good thing she decided to help me because other wise it would have taken me twice as long to cram everything into the back of our mini van and then lug it into my apartment. We narrowly avoided disaster arriving at the front desk of the apartment complex at about 4:25 (unknown to us, the office closed at 5:00 after which we could not have gotten my keys), and piece by piece, hauled my junk up a flight of stairs into my new home.

I must say, somewhat proudly, that all my possessions fit into the back of one vehicle. I know I have a lot of junk but compared to most other Americans, I have next to nothing. My most prized possessions probably are my soccer ball, soccer shoes and a couple bicycles. After that, I really don't need a whole lot. The slight hypocrisy of writing this blog on my fancy, expensive computer is not lost on me, but I definitely am sickened by the amount of useless crap that people continually by in this country.

Ahem, back to Madison. Natalie left last Monday evening (which was definitely difficult) and pretty much since then I've been working at Williamson Bikes almost every waking hour. Willy Bikes, as it is known, is definitely a high end bike shop. It has more dollars of inventory on one row a bicycles than we have at the entirety of Skunk River Cycles. I was blown away by the selection of cool shit that they carry and I am still trying to wrap my head around the notion that a shop could sell all that stuff. Madison is most certainly an anomaly in terms of bicycle markets, everyone here bikes, but they're also willing to drop a lot of moolah on their bikes as well.

Anyway, I struggled a little initially to acclimatize myself to the ways of the store, but on the whole things are going quite well. I have already proven myself a capable sales person and the managers are both very pleased with my performance at the shop. I have been aided by the fact that Skunk River and Willy carry almost all the same brands (Cannondale, Marin, Schwinn, GT) and now, after a few days, I am settling into the rhythm of the store. Bike shops attract an amalgam of characters (myself included) and Willy is no different. The employees are eclectic but everyone has friendly enough to me so far and I am feeling more and more comfortable and confident at work.

I am in the midst of orientation and haven't worked for a couple of days. It has been nice to have a little more free time away from work and we'll see how many hours I can manage once classes begin. Alright, that's enough for now. Time to watch the Democratic National Convention... Obama '08!

Williamson Bicycle Works and Fitness http://www.willybikes.com/