Let's Ride: Slowing Down & Speeding Up
Picture by Jeff Ambrose Words by Chief Cyclery
Detox and fasting are a part of life. They help you cleanse your body and mind, a way to free yourself and better yourself. Unfortunately, building Chief Cyclery for 18 months, while balancing a family with 3 kids and other aspirations burned me out on cycling. I was in bicycle overload, between bicycle social media, building a cycling website, building a cycling brand, riding my bike, buying and selling bikes. It was a 24/7 mind f*ck of cycling. I wanted Chief Cyclery to be successful so bad...
And in a way it was and still is. I was able to support my family and get a needed sabbatical from "corporate" work life. BUT it didn't enable my family to go where we needed to go in life next. Being an entrepreneur is a difficult task and I have a ton of respect for those that do it. Those that do it while balancing a family, even more.
Life has thrown some unique challenges our way and to meet those challenges I needed better, stable health insurance and steady income. Sometimes you plan for the future but your plans don't meet reality. In 2017 I jumped back into corporate life and "shut off" almost all cycling outlets. I didn't post on this site. I logged off instagram. And stopped going to beloved sites like theradavist. I even slowed way back on the amount of time I spent on the bike (for better or worse).
All of this was in a way, a detox, a fast. It was healthy and my family and I benefited from the change. After a year away, I have slowly begun to post my old inventory in the web shop. I've got tons of goodies, but it is going to be slower to get stuff up. I slowed down my buying a lot but still have my eyes out for those rare and vintage items. Although I slowed down, other areas of life have speed up. Now trying to re-balance and push forward.
What has me really excited is getting back on the bike. Last year I didn't even hit 500 total miles. The lowest number of hours on the bike since 2011-2012. I have been riding again (and running) which helped me lose over 10 lbs since the end of 2017. I have some fun builds in the works: 650b rando conversion, 29er MTB upgrade, CXbuild, Commmuter, etc. All this has me excited to review products I will be handling as well as some of the items that go back up in my store.
Let's Ride.
