JCS CYCLES – Living on Two Wheels

Our addiction to automobiles is taking a terrible toll on the average household. Nationally, we will spend over $490 BILLION dollars this year filling our gas tanks – nearly equal to the trade deficit. The Department of Commerce estimates that a household earning $50,000 – $60,000 per year is spending $7,000 on gas purchases. But if you look at the total cost of automobile ownership, it’s more like $10,000 per vehicle. In many cases, even more.  And for individuals in outer suburbs, or rural areas, higher still. Darren in the video above is stuck working two jobs, and in large part just to pay for his automobile to get him to those jobs.

Every bicycle shop in the US is used to seeing individuals look at well-equipped commuting bicycles that cost $1,000 and gasp at the price, shake their head, and leave the store. And they inevitably hop into automobiles or trucks that cost $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, or more. The same vehicle costs about $1,000 per month, or more, to maintain. Buy the well equipped bicycle, with baskets and bags, and you recover that cost in 30 days or less.

This is a classic pattern of addiction. 100 years of cultural conditioning in the US, and particularly the Southeast, have brought us to this situation – you need to have an automobile, and you need to drive it everywhere. Run out of room on the highways? No problem – build more highways. No room for more highways – no problem – start excluding people if they can’t pay a toll. Can’t afford to keep supporting the system? No problem – slash mass transportation spending. Just keep the cars running.

This is all sad, and seems like one more step down the road to creating an ever-greater divide in the US between the so-called “haves” and the “have-nots”. This sort of solution completely ignores the fact that growth is what created this problem – growth in automobile ownership, and consequentially growth in highways. Trying to solve the problem by doing more of what created the problem, is just not the solution.

As a society, we need to get away from this model. However, changing the mindset of an entire culture is difficult, and time-consuming. And politics are involved.  As individuals, we can make the change far easier. Cutting back to one car – and even better – no car families – is a change we can individually choose to make.

The first step for anyone interested in eliminating their automobile use is overcoming the “cultural momentum” of  automobile ownership. We have all been indoctrinated – intentionally so – that we all need to own our own personal cars, and drive everywhere. The structures of most of our cities and suburbs have been designed – or redesigned – to this ideal. Mass transportation funds are cut, or eliminated. Bicycle riding is marginalized as just a sport, or only a leisure time activity.

The first step is to realize this situation is going on, and then resolve to make the change. Just like in the movie “The Matrix” -  you have a choice. You can take the Blue Pill, and keep driving you car everywhere, spending more money every year, contributing to a System that is on overload and ready to fall apart under it’s own weight. Or you can take the Red Pill, ride a bicycle, learn to live more locally, spend money smarter, reconnect with the world, and  – just maybe  – insulate yourself against a collapse of things.

It's Your Choice

“This is the night, of the expanding man”

                           -Donald Fagan

Getting Larger, But Not Wiser
A recent article in a bicycle trade journal related a story about training wheels that reminded me of something I also encountered four years ago. A bicycle shop owner in Missiissippi was, well, frightened by what he saw last year.

Parents who had bought bicycles at “big box” stores were coming to him after Christmas, and asking him for help with their 6 and 7 year old children’s new bicycles. They wanted heavy duty training wheels mounted on the bicycles.

Their kids were so fat they had flattened the original training wheels.

It reminded me of something I ran into when working as a weekend mechanic at a bike shop in Atlanta. A parent came in, with a “Wally World” children’s bicycle, and wanted us to do the same thing. His child couldn’t use the training wheels.

They were crushed.

People, how did we all get this way? I grew up riding a bicycle to school, unless it was snowing. In that case, I would walk, or on bad mornings – below zero degrees farenheit – we took the school bus.

Nowadays? The line of cars driving their children to the local school near our old store threatened to block the road for good. And this wasn’t just an isolated school in car-crazy “Hotlanta”. It’s everywhere.

According to the National Household Travel Survey, in 1969, nearly half of all kids ages 5 to 15 walked or biked to school  By 2009, the number had fallen to 13 percent.

We are literally training ourselves, from the time we are old enough to walk, that an automobile is the only method of transportation that can, and should be used. The results? Frightening, and a national epidemic.

Since 1970, the number of obese children ages 6-11 has quadrupled, while the number of obese adolescents has tripled, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 20% of children were clinically obese, and 35% more were overweight in 2008.

In other words 55% of children were, well FAT.

As grownups, 68% of Americans -2/3 of us are overweight. FAT. In 1991, again according to the Robert Johnson foundation,  no state had an obesity rate over 20%.

Today, only one – Colorado – has a rate BELOW 20%.

The costs are staggering. According to the Society of Actuaries, the US and Canada are incurring a nightmarish cost of $300 Billion dollars a year in excess medical and disability expense. Yet, our  “fiscal conservatives” regularly attempt to cut programs such as Safe Routes to School that promote cycling and walking for children.

Other programs, such as Sustainable Communities, an effort to counter community “sprawl” and promote real-estate development planning for mixed use and transit orientated communities, has been completely eliminated. The  “fiscal activists” are proud of the fact that they cut programs that promote things such as ‘sustainability,’ ‘livability,’ ‘inclusivity,’ and ‘equity.’

It doesn’t – or shouldn’t – have to come to this. Sacrificing our health and our lives – in the name of saving a buck. We are literally killing ourselves – and worse, our children – all in the name of convenience in terms of a single transportation choice – automobiles. And ignoring anything else in the name of fiscal expediency. Especially that $300 Billion a year it costs us and our neighbors to the north. Cut that cost, you get back over $1 trillion in less than 4 years.

Getting healthy and fit doesn’t take fancy exercise programs and health clubs. Or expensive carbon frame bicycles with exotic components. That trusty steel frame bicycle gathering dust in the corner can be spruced up, and used. Not just for fun and exercise, but also to get around on. And carry things. Leave the car in the garage. Save some money. Sell the car, use a bicycle and public transportation. Save a whole bunch.

Dr.Mark Manley, of Minnesota Blue Cross and Blue Shield summed it up in a recent article describing the way to combat the nearly $3 billion dollar a year cost of obesity to the state:

“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on trying to build physical activity for people’s everyday lives. So we’ve been less about having people ride 100-mile bike rides,” Manley said. “It’s more about how we get more normal people, regular people, out doing their commuting or running their errands or getting their kids to school on bikes.”

Or as we say in the shop “Ride Every Day – Ride Everywhere”. It’s not just a matter of saving money and the environment – it’s your life you are saving.

Coming Soon...

“I think a change, Would do you good!”

- Sheryl Crow

As with everything else, when you run a bicycle shop, you need an online presence. Right from the start we put up a website, and started our humble little blog. It was based on things that happen around the shop, in the world of cycling, and in the cause of alternate transportation here in the USA. We used WordPress, had some faithful followers who posted comments, and it worked well the first year.

And then the spammers arrived.

What used to be a few comments turned into hundreds of posts with links to everything from catfood sites to stuff that you wouldn’t want grandma to link into. So we bagged the blog for a while, and then reposted everything over to Blogger.

It worked for a while, but all of the visibility we used to have disappeared. All of our old bloggers fell away, and even the spammers left/forgot about us.

So with Spring on the way here in Central Florida, we decided to make a few changes here in the shop. The first one is to bring back the old WordPress “Living on Two Wheels” blog, and roll posts for Commuter’s Corner and Cargo into just one blog.

Less work for the Head Mechanic, who had to try to come up with new stuff, fix bikes, and work on our “Skunk Works” projects. And brew the beer for our perpetually thirsty mechanics.

Hope you like it. Check in, and comment away. We usually answer. Eventually.

Ride safe.

With gas prices heading out of sight, budget cuts threatening our infrastructure, and monster storms born from global warming demolishing our roads and landscapes, the time is now for considering a turn from use of automobiles to use of mass transportation, bicycling, and simple walking to get around. Some analysts are predicting $6 – 7 dollar per gallon gas prices, which is more typical of Amsterdam than Atlanta. And unfortunately, our mass transit is far inferior to what the Low Countries have for their citizens.

I have had several people in my office inquire about bicycles for commuting use. And, sadly, there is a lot of education needed in the US on relative value and pricing in cycling. Thanks to BS ads by TARGET and other big-box stores, the average consumer thinks it’s possible to get a good bicycle for $100 – $200 dollars US.

What utter crap!

Another LBS owner wrote about the “Race to the Bottom” in quality in the USA. Cheap crap components on cheap crap frames. And I see this not just in manufacturing, but in other parts of the economy. we are in the middle of destroying our high tech industry by attempting to outsource critical jobs to third world country workers who are far inferior to our US talent pool.

The question I have to ask is – Why? No one is going to be able to build a new bicycle for daily use that costs less than $1000. That’s a fact. And if you think you can take a worker with over 20 years of experience and substitute someone who is one generation removed from dirt streets with no experience, strictly on the basis of salary, then you are mortgaging your companies – and countries future – for your stock options.

This is all pretty nuts, and it needs to stop. We will never sell cheap ass bicycles and components here. We only build rock solid bicycles that stand up to daily, heavy use,  in all kind of weather conditions. And they are battle tested over years of daily use. I just started my fourth year of commuting, and every bicycle in my personal fleet is still in use, with the original components, with the exception of chains and cassettes. On my fixies – one of them has nearly 20,000 miles of heavy commuting use in all weather conditions – I am still on the original 16 tooth cog and 48 tooth Sugino 75 chainring and bottom bracket. Come down to the shop and I’ll be happy to show it to you.

We have made the decision this week to go back to our basic principals – and that means nothing but steel frames and good solid components here at the shop. Yeah, they cost a little more, but dammit, they LAST! So in the end, they cost a hell of a lot less. That Sugino 75 bottom bracket outlasted 4 Shimano outboard bearing models on another frame. Food for thought, isn’t it?

Don’t buy crap just because it’s cheap – buy good value with the eye to it lasting through regular maintenance and repair. Especially if you plan on riding your bicycle every day.

Your Next SUV - $0.00 per Gallon

Well, here we go again. Price per barrel of oil is $125 again, it’s all over then news, and people in my corporate office job are starting to get frantic. As always, I just laugh. Since last week, we are well into early spring here in the Southeast, and I have put away the heavy duty cold weather gear. Riding this time of the year is, well awesome. On the way in today, a robin roared by me, twig in mouth, coming in at standard bombing run level. I hear warblers in the trees, and early season bulb flowers are poking through the ground everywhere.

I’m going into my fourth year of using a bicycle to get around, and it’s times like this that I wonder why more people don’t give this a try. If you are wondering if you can do this – don’t. You can. Yes, it requires a change in the way you live your life. You will probably, need to start doing more things locally. No running around at lunchtime, taking long drives to go shop. You will need to eat a better diet, get more sleep, get up earlier, go to bed earlier. No question.

But the payback – beyond words. You will be healthier. You will lose weight. You will feel better. And you will be more in touch with the world around you than you ever have been. As a triathlete, it’s my secret weapon. While everyone else in my age group is using indoor trainers, skipping workouts because it’s raining or it’s “too cold”, trying to substitute by cross training, I’m laying down a solid base by riding to and from work. It’s no surprise I had the top bike split every time I lined up in a race last year. Cycling as a blue color sport. Like the song says, “You get what you give”.

Now that we are seeing the upheaval in the Middle East, and the impact on our fragile petroleum supply chain, it’s time for all of us to
take a long hard look at our car dependency, especially here in congested, car-crazy Atlanta. What will you do when prices go to Europe levels? It’s not a question of if here -but when? What happens if Saudi Arabia topples next? What would you do if they were between $6.20 to $9.30? That’s what drivers over in European nations are faced with. Now you know why cycling is so popular “over there”.

Now is the time to start. Get your bicycle out, get it tuned up – we are offering a Spring Special – and start riding on the weekends. If you don’t have a bicycle, buy one. A good, sturdy one. Not from a department store, but from a bicycle shop. One that’s made from steel, with fenders, headlight, and taillight. Support the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition – come to some of their events – and start asking your representatives to push for cycling initiatives such as bike lanes and more bicycle paths. Let’s get the “three foot” law passed – demand that your representatives support this, and other, bicycle legislation. Demand that your local retailers put in bicycle racks. Sign up for the Ride to the Capital on March 22nd. Start by taking one day a week as a “car free” day where you use only bicycles, public transportation, or walking to get around.

Start now, and get ahead of the curve. This isn’t going away, and one of these days, you will wake up to find out the real truth about oil – there is simply not enough to go around anymore. It can be the worst thing to happen, or the best thing to happen to you. The choice is up to you.

Support the ABC - the Beltline Ride is May 7th.

Today was the coldest morning in the Atlanta Metro area since last Spring. The temperature was 28 degrees farenheit, with a light wind, humidity of 82%, and a RealFeel (whatever that is) of 12 degrees. It wasn’t just cool, it was cold.

So of course I rode a bicycle to work.

Hey – my TrainingPeaks workout today called for two rides, AM and a PM brick, so I did the AM ride. I pulled out my thermal hood, my Craft Storm Tights, Italian brushed riding jacket, and slipped some fleece gloves over my long fingered Ironmans. The toewarmers have been on my SIDI T-2′s for a month now, and I just used the wool hiking socks instead of the usual collection of “Cars-r-Coffin” and devil mask socks I usually wear.

Yeah, the cold gets your attention. No doubt about it. But it’s not uncomfortable after a few minutes, and if you don’t try to do a hammerhead speed, you get in great Base period ride without a lot of traffic. The car-wussie Soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads delay their drive until it warms up. And the only on other people out training are the serious runners.

After I lock my bike up in the parking garage I get a startled look from the Security desk on the way in. Mostly because I have my riding gear on. The guards in the old building told them how I ride all through the season, and even in the rain. So my notoriety and infamy has followed me to the new office. Most of them think I’m crazy, anyway, for riding a bicycle in Atlanta traffic.

If they only knew me back when. I have combined bike commuting with training ever since my days as a fledgling roadie in the 1970′s. What can I say? I like riding a bicycle. It just makes sense to me. The more you ride, the better you get at it.

Want a good bike split? Then ride a lot. Yeah, the intervals have their place, but if you do Ironmans, you need to put in the time on the saddle. That’s the secret. It’s been said that cycling is a blue-collar sport. And that is 100% correctamundo.

So I ride – no matter what. Pouring rain? Sure. I did an Ironman distance race in 2007 – that started in a pouring rainstorm. Pitch dark, couldn’t see the first buoy. It happens. If you ride in the rain, you let a little air out of your tires, and take it in stride.

Cold days can happen, too. Aurora Sprint triathlon, 1993. Colorado in September can sometimes get snow. It was just after Labor Day, and a freak early snowstorm hit the Front Range. I went out for a Noon training run from my office in Cherry Hills, and the first snowflakes started to fall. By the time I finished my hour run, it was really starting to accumulate. There was a picture the next month in “Inside Triathlon” of Mark Allen outside of the Boulder Recreation Center in his bathing suit in the snow. This was the week of the race, and the temperature dropped, and stayed down, after the front blew through.

Packet pickup was the next day – Saturday – and I drove out to the “Res” in Aurora to get my race packet. The sky was cloudy – unusual for Colorado – and the wind was blowing at about 20-30 miles per hour. There were a couple of windsurfers, and one came into the rec center when I was getting my packet. He was shivering uncontrollably, in a full wetsuit.

I was in trouble, because all I had was a sleeveless suit.

I called around, found a dive shop that had a neoprene cap, and I purchased it. I also bought a pair of neoprene socks (which I still have), and put a winter fleece riding jacket in my transition bag. I figured the ride wouldn’t be much better than the swim was going to be.

The day of the race dawned clear, with no wind. A big improvement. And the sky was back to the usual “sky’s are not cloudy all day” mode. But the temperature was, well, a bitch. The thermometer at my house in Englewood read south of 40 before dawn. We drove out to the reservoir, took my equipment to the transition area, and set up. There were a hundred or so people despite the cold, but most of us had winter coats and down jackets on. The water temp was warmer that the air, but somewhere in the mid 50′s. Not just cold, but ding-dang dangerous cold. The rescue divers had full neoprene dry suits on with gloves, socks, and hoods, and there were two hot tubs set up on the beach for hypothermia victims. Us tri-geeks had wetsuits that would let in water. I put on a pair of arm warmers I brought, and pissed in my suit before I went in.

The cold hit me like a slap in the face. It stung. Only a few brave-crazy soles did a warmup swim. I lasted about 20 seconds, and went back to the beach and the refuge of a wool blanket. Many of the spectators stayed in their cars with the engines and heaters running.

Nowadays, the race would probably have been turned into a duathlon, but the promoter called us down to the beach, and we went off as a mass start. Which was bad. Everyone had to make a tight turn to the off of the beach, and it was a massive clusterfuck. I had my Ironman watch kicked off, and it was so cold that your face stung. (In one of life’s small, true, miracles, one of the divers found my watch and returned it.)

The first transition went like we were all moving through molasses. Mercifully, the promoter shortened the swim from 500 yards to 200, but we still all came out hypothermic. Most of us were staggering like drunks, and it took me forever to get the fleece jacket on for the bike portion. Some racers went right for the hot tubs, their day was over. T2 went better, as the warm Front Range sun was out, and I did the run without the fleece. I gutted out an age group win with a fast run, finished in the top 15, and got a tiny little ribbon for my efforts. My wife and I went to Le Peeps for a big breakfast, and I had a major fact about triathlon and life reinforced to me on that cold, crazy, morning long ago.

You can never prepare enough for what may come, but the way to win is to just keep going.

So when the cold wind blows, the temperature dips below freezing, be nice to the crazy old bum you see on the bicycle at 5:30AM in the morning.

It’s probably me.

It seems like it’s been years since we signed our lease back in March. So much has happenned since that day – getting permits,
remodelling of the interior,  lining up distributors, putting the service area togethor, putting up signage, decorating the shop,
and stocking it with the first meager offerings of bicycles and parts.

We planned on building our business slowly an carefully,
primarily doing repair work while we built bicycles we knew were good for our target markets of commuter, touring and transportation. We chose to build our bicycles up from frames and forks, adding parts that we knew worked well based on our experiences riding and working at other bicycle shops. We didn’t advertise, other than two ads in a regional bicycle organization’s magazine, and put up a small sign on our window.

We did a soft launch at the start of June, with my wife spending many days adding inventory to our shop computer with no customers walking through the door.

Then, something happenned.  People starting noticing our shop, and stopping in. They brought their bicycles back to get fixed, get the restored, and ready to ride. They told others, and spread the word. We started to have regular customers. We planneda and organized an official “Grand Opening” at the start of  August, and then it happenned. We had a business, and it was busy.

I took a week off from my day job at the office, and then started using my accumulated vacation time to work at the shop. We ordered more parts,
we sold bicycles, we built more bicycles. We added distributors, became dealers for new bicycle lines, and for lines of parts. We stayed and worked for hours after the shop closed. Where riders had passed by our shop, they now stopped and hung out for a while.

Now, as Autumn is upon us, like the farmers outside the city, we are harvesting what we sowed last Spring. Back on that rainy day in March, we had no idea what would happen to us, and we were caught by surprise at how fast it all happenned. We have rapidly outgrown our small little shop space, and are in the middle of reorganizing the layout of our shop to add more accesories, market our items ,and stock more bicycles.

That we need a larger space is a foregone conclusion, and one that we will address next Spring. But for now, we are just enjoying the fruits of our hard labor this year, and during the Winter we will give thanks, and look to the New Year as a time to prepare for the next riding season.

Our focus is first, and foremost, on our customers. We took a simple idea – provide a bicycle shop for the “Rest of Us” – and put togethor a simople, easygoing shop that reminded us of the best ones we frequented in Europe during our racing days.  Shops that catered to everyone, not just riders that put on numbers on the weekend.

The bicycle is more than just a fitness tool – it’s a way to get from point A to point B, move goods, make deliverys, a way to have some fun, a way to have some adventure. For us, it’s a been a way of life since we were able to ride one.  If we try to do anything with bicycles , it’s to pass on the idea of  “Living on Two Wheels”.

We have some major additions coming in the near future, with
a major area of expansion coming next year. We are excited by that, and plan on being successful in our new goals. 

However, we will always be focused on our original goal of being the Bicycle Shop where everyone, and every bicycle, is welcome.  The Shop where we don’t judge you by your race results, or what kind of bicycle you ride, or how you ride. We just try to pass on our love of bicycles, and the simple joy and adventure that comes from riding one.

We built it, and you came. Welcome to our shop, and watch us grow in the next year.  Big things are coming soon.

The world turns, the seasons turn, the bicycle wheel turns. Everything comes around,  in time. I started my working life in a bicycle shop, went into racing, then teaching, then the corporate world of cubicles.

Now I’m back in a bicycle shop,  where I started, truing wheels.

I spin the rims, tighten the spokes, bring the wheel into as perfect a circle as I can get it. It’s good for the soul, truing a wheel. You focus on what you are doing. No answering emails, no phone conferencing, no flipping between windows on a computer screen. Just you, a spoke wrench, and the wheel.

Making the perfect circle.

It’s the middle of the summer now, every day another load of parts and bicycles gets delivered to the shop. We are getting ready for the big opening day, savoring the rare occasion when we get a few moments to ourselves. We started out in the Spring, putting the shop together, contacting the distributors, lining up  model lines, ordering all of the many parts and pieces that a shop needs. We planted the seeds of our business, now we are watching the fruits of all of our labors start to sprout under the warm summer sun.

The days go by and the world turns while we are busy tending our shop. The economy is not good, jobs are evaporating, companies that we grew up with are failing and withering away.We are facing a change in the way we go about our lives. Did we pick the wrong time to do what we are starting? Or is it the right time? Is it just in time?

But everything comes around, in time.

I take a break, and watch today’s Tour stage on the live feed from Europe on our shop TV. The cyclists are making the tight hairpin turns around roads that I used to ride, train, and race on near Lac Lemain in Switzerland, on the road to the end at Verbier, high above an alpine valley.

It all seems so long ago, when I was racing around those very same turns , on the same roads that the cyclists on the Tour  are racing on today. I go back to making turns of my spoke wrench, bringing the wheel into true.

A perfect circle.

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”.
   -George Bernard Shaw

I did something bad the other day. I called in sick, and went for a bike ride instead of going to work.

The seven days a week working had finally caught up to me. I was getting grouchy, tense, and caught up in the craziness of corporate
life during a hostile takeover. In addition, we are starting a retail business. I was working weekends at another shop until February, and after that it’s been every evening, every weekend, seraching for a location, writing emails, building this web page, talking to distributers, and finding time to work on bicycles. I planned on competing in April at a big race, so I started training last winter, and began riding one of my racing frames to work instead my  faithful fixed gear commuter.

I didn’t realize it, but I had become someone else. Someone I really didn’t like too much. So I called in sick to my day job. And left all of the items on my Bike Shop “To DO” list alone. I took my commuter fixie off of the rack in our bike room, and just rode out the door.

It was nice spring day, and the sun was just coming up. There were already lines of grim faced commuters locked away in their cars and trucks, some jabbering on cell phones, or texting, or just looking out into space with that “Thousand Mile Stare”. They missed everything that was going on around them – the robin that flew by with a worm in it’s mouth,the little rabbit that peaked out from behind a plant by th side of the road right off of Peachtree Street. They missed the sound of the cardinal singing in the poplar tree, proclaiming this was his turf. I pulled into a coffee shop, got a cup of favorite bean, and watched the sun light up the wimdows across the street.

I had missed all of this  the last month while I was screaming along the streets riding in the drops, putting in the hard miles that are necessary to build up my “form” for racing. And racing was what I was doing already – at work, at the shop, and on my rides. I had forgot something that I had discovered last year when I started commuting.

I had forgot all about having fun.

Here in America, we are now working more hours than any other nation. Everything in our society is geared towards working hard, working long hours, to “get ahead”, to be a “success”.  Start a business, grow it into something big, sell it, make alot of money.  Get ahead in the office, get the big promotion, work more hours, make alot of money. That’s the goal in our society that we refer to as capitalism. Nothing wrong with making money, right?  We all need it to live on.

But how much is enough, if you leave who you are behind?  If you forget how to have fun. I  was wrapped up in a trap that I had made for my self, and had made my life more complicated than it needed to be.  So, in a sense, I WAS sick. I needed to get better.  So I took my favorite bike, the one that just chugs along in one gear, and went for a ride around the city that I  love.

And I started to heal.

I had forgotten something a wise person told me a long time ago - “if it’s not fun, better left undone”. And I can honestly say, without reservation, that I have always had fun on a bicycle. Even in the middle of a long race, in the cold rain, when I was pushing myself to the limit, just trying to keep up, I still loved every second of it. It’s always been who I am.

It’s now May, and May is National Bicycle month. Go ride a bike. It’s good for the planet, it’s good for our society, and it’s good for you.

And above all, it’s just plain fun.