I have been bicycle shopping over the last few weeks. I have hit a handful of the local bike shops. It's becoming clear that the bike offerings are all similar - brands vary a bit, but in general, they are all very similar. Well, at least at the level of bike that I am looking for. The real difference is in the shop. In other words, its the support of the local shop that makes all the difference.
It is great to be educated by guys that are passionate about what they do. I sure learned alot in the last few weeks. One of the local shops sells Trek bikes. He was telling me stories about how focused Trek is on performance, not only on the structural integrity, but aerodynamics as well. Wow, finally we were now talking my language. I casually mentioned that co-workers of mine closely work with the Trek engineers to perform fluid flow simulations to optimize the performance of their bikes.
The tables were turned a bit, as now, the bike shop guy had a bunch of questions. After a few minutes of discussion, he said, "so, your software allows the engineers to do a bunch of 'what-if" scenarios before testing them out in the wind tunnel? That's really cool, they probably have the liberty to try all kinds of things." It was really cool to see a guy just get it. He related right away to something that he knew very well and was able to see the benefits of doing simulation early in the design process.
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