The fine folks at Voler are beavering away at our little Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter jersey project.
The original artwork for versions 1 and 2 has been unearthed, some minor alterations in design are being made, and before you can say, “No, really, honey, this is every bit as important as a donation to Habitat for Humanity, Greenpeace or Doctors Without Borders,” an online store will be up and running.
And shortly thereafter I will be doing my best Scrooge McDuck imitation, rolling around in my private vault piled high with greenbacks.
Well, you’ll have some jerseys, anyway. The vault project may take a little more time to get up and running.
Remember the large friendly letters inscribed on the cover of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”
DON’T PANIC.
The Old Guy jersey wheels, they turn.
Voler and I are setting up a Produce On Demand partnership deal in which they will do all the work, you will get all the jerseys, and I — I will get a couple pennies for my trouble, which should be hardly any trouble at all, which is just the way I like it.
At the moment it looks as though we will revive Old Guys Jersey v2.0 first, and then add Original Old Guys to the catalog shortly thereafter. Fabric will be AMP; the cut, club; the zipper, full hidden; and the price, around $77, which includes shipping direct to you (untouched by the baby-soft hands of shovel-leaning Irish-American artistes).
Once everything is ready to rock you’ll see a link to my Voler.com partner page up there at right, under the jersey pix. Click that bad boy, give the nice peoples your credit-card number and delivery information, and you should have fresh kit in your hot little hands about seven working days later.
While all these multicolored Lycra balls were floating merrily in the air I took a short ride down memory lane, better known as Old Route 66 (NM 333), to Tijeras and back. I hadn’t gotten my kicks out that way since I last raced the Watermelon Mountain Classic, maybe 1990 or thereabouts, and a very nice ride it is, too, especially if you’re not headed in the other direction, chasing fast dudes to Duke City after climbing seven switchbacked miles of unimproved dirt Forest Service road between Bernalillo and the Sandia Ski Area.
I thought about continuing past Tijeras through Cedar Crest to the Triangle at Sandia Park, but Mister Boo has been experiencing a bout of intestinal distress, and I wasn’t eager to come home to a house that smelled worse than me. And there was all this damn’ jersey stuff needed doing, too.
So, yeah, my suffering knows no bounds, etc., et al., and so on and so forth. First thing I’m gonna do with the proceeds is get a new shovel to lean on between poop-scoopings.
Old Guy kit: The original (left) and the second edition.
Attention, DogMart shoppers! Today’s yellow-light special is … new Old Guy jerseys.
I just got off the phone with one of the fine folks at Voler and we’re setting the wheels in motion, as it were. The general idea is that rather than do this the old-fashioned way — book a reservation date, set a production schedule, wait seven weeks to ship, etc., et al., and so on and so forth — we set up an on-demand deal that could have kit in your hot little hands in fairly short order.
Best of all, Voler will handle all the heavy lifting of order fulfillment, so you won’t be at the mercy of the notorious Irish work ethic. (“What’s a shovel for then if not to lean upon?”)
The op’ should be not unlike the one Drunkcyclist uses to get its kit to the people. I’m awaiting an email from the gent who makes all these Lycra dogs bark, so when I hear something, so will you. I’ll post an announcement on the DogPage and drop a permanent link into the sidebar at right.
And thanks to everyone who kept pestering me on this. It sounds like a win-win for all concerned, save the poor sods who have to look at us wearing this stuff.
Old Guy kit: The original (left) and the second edition.
No Chris Christie jokes, now — though we are gonna be talking about new Fat Guy jerseys.
Several of you have expressed an interest in reviving the Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter Racing Team kit, and yesterday I emailed the fine folks at Voler to get an idea of the process and expense.
They replied straight away, and it seems they still have at least some of my original designs on hand.
So, the question is, do we want to revive one of the old designs, or come up with something entirely new for the 25th anniversary edition?
We’re looking at an order-due date of Aug. 4 and a shipping week of Sept. 22-30. Price is unclear at this point — I’m guessing we’re looking at a cost of $55-60 per jersey, but that is a dramatically uninformed opinion. I’ll speak with one of the sales guys next week and should know more then. Obviously, the more we order, the less they’ll cost.
In the meantime, feel free to chime in with your opinion as regards design: yellow original, multicolored second edition, or an entirely new jersey.
The fine folks at Voler are beavering away at our little Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter jersey project.
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