The Madison Bicycle Shop Blog!: Sandie and Peter's Waterloo Adventures!

Hey again folks!

So this month we finally get to tell you all about that exclusive Trek event that we hinted at back in August when we first found out that we'd be in attendance. It was called Trek University on Campus and a very tired Sandie and Peter returned from it just last Friday. It was billed as three days of unprecedented access to the heart of Trek, its headquarters, its employees, its bikes--and it certainly lived up to the invitation.

Come along for a little tour of all that they saw and did out there!

Our story begins with a direct flight from Newark, New Jersey to Madison, Wisconsin...

But before we get too far underway, did you know that the interior of Newark airport has become a haven for chilled-out pigeons? Here's a shot that Peter took of the pigeon that had been just chillin' under the seat across from him at the gate...

...just strolling around picking up Cinnabon bits like gate A27 is just the hippest place to be. We saw another one down at baggage claim on the way back! Haven't seen this phenomenon elsewhere. What's with this pigeon invasion? What's going on here? Anywho...

We landed in Madison (having traveled from Madison to Madison would be the little joke of a lot of conversations over the next three days) and were whisked away by bus to our hotel. After checking in we registered with Trek in one of the conference rooms where we were generously treated to armfuls and bagfuls of awesome new Bontrager gear almost conveyor belt style just like celebrities at one of those awards shows pre-parties. After that, we pretty much only had a few minutes to kind of glance at our rooms and dump our stuff before we were back on the bus and heading off to have dinner at the private home of John Burke...

...as in THE John Burke, the really really nice guy whose Dad co-founded Trek in 1976, who currently runs the whole show. It says a lot about a guy when he's willing to welcome 250ish near strangers (bike weirdo near strangers) over to his house for beer and tacos like it's no big deal.

As we approached, the cynics among us expected to roll up on some kind of ostentatious mansion, but were instead welcomed into a pretty handsome but modest old home, tastefully decorated with some real choice cycling memorabilia (and there were some pretty choice Treks hanging up in the garage too).

As we gathered out back for the festivities that would ensue, the desire was there to turn around and snap a few pics of the house and Facebook our bike buddies back home or something like that, but the respect for our host's privacy prevailed and we settled on a nice shot of the sunset over Lake Mendota instead.

After we'd spent some time mingling with all the other bike shop people from around the country and select Trek employees, Mr. and Mrs. Burke made the rounds and chatted with each of the little cliques that had developed around the property. Just as with most Trek events, there were a lot of Wisconsin based micro brews involved and instead of taking this opportunity to deliver important suggestions straight to the CEO or possibly receive some key bike biz wisdom, we talked about Wisconsin vs. New Jersey and how while Peter lives in "Sopranos New Jersey", Sandie's more country-ish town looks quite a bit like what we'd seen so far of America's Dairyland. Mrs. Burke and Peter then bonded over the fact that both of their old homes have little basement rooms that were once used as coal chambers back in the day. Finally the short conversation came to a close with a quick discourse on how and why freshwater is better than saltwater, but hey we were all having a good time and that's what it was supposed to be all about, right?

As we leaned deeper into the night, we broke off and became better acquainted with the sub groups that we would spend the rest of the trip with. Then we ate some cookies. After the cookies, we found our way back to the buses that took us back to the hotel. Just as each following night would end, this first night ended with an after party in the hotel lounge that carried on far, far too late for our overwhelmed bartender, but to her credit she single-handedly handled the onslaught of bike weirdos with amazing poise and skill.

At 6:45 the next morning, let's repeat that, at 6:45 the next morning we were back on a bus heading out to Waterloo (pop. 3333) where Trek's offices and factory are located. When we got there we were treated to a hot breakfast in the parking lot.

Here's a very important shot of the meal tent and the food queue for posterity:

Afterwards we broke off into groups. Some of us went off to ride bikes at our leisure for 4 hours while the rest of us attended the lectures, Q&A sessions and lab tours. After lunch it would switch and the next day was in turn a switcheroo of the previous one, so by the end of the trip we all had an even amount of access to everything being offered.

Here is a picture of every size of every one of the best, most interesting, most talked about bikes that Trek has for 2014 just lined up and ready to ride whenever and wherever you want to ride.

Some of the best road riding pretty much in America can be had by simply turning right out of Trek's parking lot. Trek's employee's have access to this stuff day in and day out and that's how pretty much everyone employed there spends their lunch hours. They have bike storage and locker rooms on site and little reminders to "log your miles" are posted up all over the place inside the building.

For you mountain biking fans, Trek owns something like oh, 10 billion acres of wilderness across the street from their Waterloo facility where they have established a network of private world class trails where all their pro riders come to train and test their products and skills. There's singletrack, fire roads, North Shore style ramps and teeter-totters, a cyclocross sand pit, you name it, it's there. If you think it's missing something and tell somebody at Trek about that something that's missing, they'll probably build it in no time. It's very cutely called "The Farm" and yup we had access to all that too!

Oh, and here's a picture of a Trek truck because, well, it's pretty cool:

While waiting for one of our classes to begin, we snapped these shots of Trek's newly redecorated front entrance...

These walls used to be festooned with all the different race winning bikes of a particular Tour de France victor but sadly all of those historic bikes are now just simply tucked away somewhere. The new look tells the tale of Trek from its beginning to present day.

The classes that we took weren't exactly picture worthy, just some power-point presentations and different speakers engaging with us in little meeting rooms. The topics covered: Women's Specific Design, Road, Mountain, Pavement and Wheels. Just little sessions to get us up to speed on the latest and greatest. What was really pretty neat though was how they actually shortened the original lengths of their presentations to allow for us to ask questions and make suggestions. We were constantly being begged by the product managers and even the designers themselves to gripe at them and let them have it. They kept telling us how much they loved our various complaints and how hungry they were for them. Trust us, there's no other bike company that welcomes our aggravated ventings more than Trek does.

Let's move on to some more of the really cool stuff!

Here are a few shots from "The Race Shop":

The Race Shop is basically a pro mechanic's dream shop. It's where Trek's top mechanics build up all of the Factory Team's bikes and ship them out to events all over the world. Every single high end tool and component that you could ever want is in here and there's plenty of space and light to get whatever kind of job you're doing DONE! And here's what all the bike people in the picture above are looking at...

...some of Trek's current top rider's very own frames. Note Katie Compton's blue and white "Crockett" cyclocross bike and Jens Voigt's Deutschland themed masterpiece.

As far as Trek's test lab (where all of their frames, components and wheels are subjected to excruciating looking torture) and the carbon lab (where Trek's carbon bikes begin as little scraps of carbon fiber and end up as the best frames in the world) we don't have any pictures or videos to show you because security and secrecy during our particular visit was somewhere between Lockheed's Skunkworks and Area 51. The carbon frame building process is so guarded that our smartphones were threatened with confiscation if they were to even creep up out of our shirt pockets! But we really were privy to some exclusive access this time. We got to see the frozen rolls of carbon come out of their freezer, get cut into lengths that are then subjected to their first lay up, the high tech rolling razors that cut out their highly specific shapes, the workers setting them into their molds, the lugs getting glued together, the completed frames getting baked, filled and sanded...everything that goes into making a Trek carbon frame right up to the paint job...and that's what brings us to PROJECT ONE...Trek's most amazing customization program. With Project One, you can basically build the bike of your dreams (as long as your dream is one of about 36 sextillion possible color and parts combos) and have it shipped to our shop for final assembly after having waited for no longer than a month's time.

There's a little sneak peek of what Project One offers hanging up in the main lobby...

...but it doesn't hold a candle to this promotional video:

whoa...nice right?

Here's another more in depth look at the Project One building process:

simply amazing...

To help spread the word about Trek's Project One program they built themselves an amazing transforming truck that has been touring the country and may be coming to the Garden State pretty soon too!

Check out the superbad custom Trek grille on that beast!

This thing is no Oscar Meyer mobile that's for sure!

And here are a few shots of the Project One paint lab in action!

There's someone's Project One bike getting finished up right there!

Towards the end of our seminars we were treated to a demo of Trek's new Precision Fit system and their high tech saddle pressure tests, which were pretty eye opening:

In real time we were able to watch what our test rider's saddle was going through and how extensively Trek researches saddle tech before coming out with a new product for a specific type of riding. Very awesome indeed, but let's get back to the parties!

On night two we were treated to BBQ at a crazy local ballpark where there were all sorts of games and prizes. Tricycle races, sack toss, klunker toss, even a mechanical bull...

These crazy Wisconsinites do not mess around when it comes to throwing a shindig!

Sandie of course took on every challenge and won some more swag as a result:

The third and final night of partying was a bonfire and night ride at the aforementioned "Farm" just down the road and across the street. We would find out later that this is how every Wednesday night ends for those lucky peeps out at Trek!

Here's a shot of the citronella torch lined walk up to "The Farm":

and here's what we found at the end of it...

Entertainment for the night was provided by the wait what? The Grammy nominated band Aaron Williams and The Hoodoo!?!? They were pretty cool, bluesy, Stevie Ray Vaughn influenced guys who put on a good show. If you're ever throwing a party in Wisconsin and you need some bluesmen at your event be sure to contact them via their website by clicking right HERE!

Here they are playing with another beautiful sunset as a backdrop (and that's our new friend Chris from Iowa chugging some conveniently named "SunDrop" soda in the foreground).

Here they are from behind and at night in case you were wondering what that looked like:

and here's some fire...

Fire!

FIYAHHH !!!

fire!

ahhh....fire.

and so ended our final night amongst the bike people.

Wrapping up, Trek's facilities are really nice and all...

...but there is a bit of a "middle of nowhere" feel to the place. Our only complaint if you could call it that would be that we didn't have any free time (heck we didn't really have any sleep time) to check out the truly amazing city of Madison where we were housed just a half hour away. The closest we came to exploring it was looking at it quickly through bus windows and rifling through our hotel's directory where we found a couple of ironic ads:

And even from our bus window vantage point you could tell that Madison is a premiere bicycle friendly city. You really can't drive through it for more than 10 seconds with out coming upon a decked out veteran bicycle commuter as evidenced by Peter's 30 seconds of bus window photography on the way back to the airport on the morning of day four:

Then again, isn't the sign of a good trip to a good town that you leave it only wanting more?

Well that's it folks! That was our trip to Waterloo. We've come to the end of our story. Roll credits.

Hey, if this were actually made into a movie wouldn't it be funny if the song that played during said credits was this particular selection from everyone's favorite Swedish palindrome?