Eddie O

OK, so for now for the important news. I had a meeting scheduled for Thursday afternoon at Interbike with the Kona rep I have been working with for the last few years and the factory team manager at 4:00 PM. I pined way the time as best I could by hanging out with Danielle, Scott and Scott from Slingshot Bikes. We grabbed a beer at the Schwinn booth, but I was so preoccupied that the conversation bearly registered. I headed over to the Kona booth which was freaking huge…they have 67 models this year! Anyway, I get there and look around for Scott, my contact, and he is now where to be found. I look over all the bikes for like the hundreth time, ask for him again, and then finally wander away again to pass a few more minutes. Now I’m starting to think I may be brushed off and not even get the meeting at all. I find the little boys room and then return….this time Scott is there. He looks around for a minute, but the team manager guy is not around now. Scott says “well I know what’s up so let’s grab a beer, sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”

So now my head is reeling….what does that mean? Am I so unimportant that he can’t even show up for a meeting?….yeah,that’s pretty much the reality dude, get over yourself. Am I getting let down easy here? .…well they buy you a beer and say thanks for flying all the way to Vegas, but you’re not what we are looking for. “Would you like domestic watered adult beverage number one, two or three?” Uh, three please…. Scott and I find a cozy stair case to sit on and the talk begins:

No factory team slot, sorry but that was finalized back in June. OK, I can live with that… So what we can do is supply a couple bikes to race on, some clothing, a canopy, & a travel and entry budget. Holy crap, I think my head is going to explode! What do you think? I think I’m going to run through this buidling naked and scream the praises of Kona bikes! You’ll be working with the team manager now too, which means your results will get in front of the Kona owners, Dan & Jake, which means next year when it’s time to discuss the factory team slots again you already have your foot inthe door. You mean there really is a chance I’ll get on the factory team? How freaking cool is that! Cool, then get me a schedule of races and we’ll get the bikes out ASAP. Did I mention my head was going to explode….this is so cool, someone else is going to pay for me to race a bike? Wow….can you pinch me please.

I’m not sure, but think I skipped away.

So that’s the deal. Scott went to bat for me and Kona stepped up in a big way to support my racing efforts. I am absolutely psyched for next year and training begins now! With few modifications this will be next years race machine:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 10:35 am and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.