How it's Made: Intense Bikes and Pro Margaret's

Two fun/exciting things happened today. First, I submitted my petition to upgrade to the pro class this morning :) I'm pretty excited/hopeful about that. I wanted to do it while I'm still ranked number one since I'm not doing many more races. I have a feeling by the end of the summer I won't be #1 anymore since I can't afford to travel afar to hit up the USA Cycling sanctioned events. Traveling with your bike sucks. I mean, the actual trips are fun, but shipping/traveling with your bike is brutal. Sooo... hopefully I'll get approved to race pro next year and then I can start saving my pennies now to hit up more races next year. Who needs to save for houses when you've got bikes to eat up all your money?

The second fun thing that I did today was to go pick up Russell's new Tracer from the Intense factory. Russell keeps apologizing for making me drive all the way down there, but I actually had a great time! Andrew and Neil from Intense met me there and Andrew gave me a tour of the factory while Neil pressed the bearings on Russell's bike and put the stickers on. It was really cool to see how everything was made right there. I may not be very good at understanding how things work or how to fix things, but I'm kind of fascinated with how stuff is made. They make everything right down to the bolts right there in this building that from the front you would never guess was home to a bike factory. Pretty wicked. Russell had wanted to leave the Handmade in America sticker off his bike, but I felt like kind of an asshole asking them to take it off after I just was given a tour of how they actually hand made the bikes, so I made the executive decision that Russell should keep the sticker. It's frigging cool that they made it right there, the sticker stays! They also hooked me up with a couple t-shirts and some socks, so I can sport the Intense logo at least on my body if not on my current bikes... sorry guys... My next bike will be an Intense! And that brings us back to the theme of the day...more penny saving.
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A girl can dream...