Happy Anniversary to Hoff's Bikesmith

As I noted, I first saw Little Red at Hoff's Bikesmith, home of the least obnoxious bike people I know. This includes owner Tim Hoff, the man who was primarily responsible for this whole state of affairs by being the one to sell me my bike.

This weekend Hoff's had their grand re-opening party to celebrate Tim's first year in business. I stopped by because he was also having a sale, and I kind of want a bike rack for my car. I spent about five minutes perusing racks. I spent about two hours drinking PBR and hanging out.

This is a basic idea of what part of the party looked like. These are mostly road bikes. Mountain bikes were behind me.

Now, I'm pretty sure I bemuse Tim a little. I don't blame him for this reaction, since in the world of bike folk I am the tourist in ugly shorts asking if anyone speaks English.

However, he's pretty great about working with me when I come in. I made two or three trips to his shop before finding a bike I wanted, and Tim never tried to sell me a bike that didn't fit my specifications or my body. He didn't use painful cycling jargon when I asked him questions. He also didn't give me shit for my price point - it's easy to drop $1,000 or more for a good bike, it turns out, but I was pretty firm that $300 was my upper limit.

So, pretty much I heart Tim Hoff, and I am comfortable in his shop. There's no question that the guys there know their stuff. They have definitely had whole conversations about a bike wheel that never actually used the word "wheel" - I am a witness.
They're also good about having beer around, letting you use their tools if you need them and not taking themselves too seriously.

 You can see (sort of) that PBR was a theme here. I ended up going home with a PBR t-shirt that has pink elephants on it, courtesy of a random guy who won a girl's shirt in an event that involved tossing  an ancient steel-frame bike as far as possible. I definitely had only the vaguest idea steel was used in making bikes until I asked, so hey, I learned something out of this part

And there were bikes. I still liked mine the best, but there was a white road bike there that, if I were the sort of person to go for skinny tires and pay $1,000 for the privilege of always riding on a smooth paved surface, I would have bought.

Someone else did buy it, however, and she looked pretty happy about it. In fact, you had folks from all the walks of the bike scene around here, which was very cool. I can't say this was strictly speaking a bike event, except for the fact that everyone there likes riding one. I can say it was an example of why I like Hoff's so much - it feels so much more inclusive than the bike world tends to feel.

Hell, for all I know, they hate me there, but at least they don't give me that "oh, you bike in jeans" face that I get when I'm actually out riding.  And celebrating a good bike shop was a good way to spend part of a Saturday.

So Happy Anniversary to Hoff's, and here's to another year of me walking in and asking stupid questions.