Hello,

We have options this weekend. I'd originally scheduled this ride:

Saturday March 20th, 1999

When: Meet at 10:00 AM for a 10:30 AM departure

Where: The velodrome parking lot in Marymoor Park in Redmond

What: A ride to be determined by group consensus. Possibilities include a ride along noth along the Sammamish River trail (perhaps going as far as the U-District in Seattle) or a country ride out on Route 202 to Fall City or Carnation)

And Nick Hein scheduled this event:

What: Vision Recumbent Bicycle Factory Tour

When: 1:00 PM this Saturday (March 20)

Where: (At 410 Terry Ave - 2 blocks west of Fairview).

What else: Call me (Nick) at 425-255-7560 for driving directions

The Seattle Area HPV builders are once again proud to present the annual factory tour this Saturday at 1:00 PM of the Vision Recumbent Bicycle factory near Lake Union in Seattle. (At 410 Terry Ave - 2 blocks west of Fairview).

Vision was founded in 1991 by Joel Smith, then a Boeing mechanical engineer, but also a longtime builder of various HPV's. Joel's first model, the R-20 was built in his garage in his spare time. The next year he got together with Grant Bauer, another HPV experimenter. Together they began the Vision recumbent business with the goal of producing high-quality bikes for cyclists who are looking for the comfort and safety of recumbents and the best performance and utility possible with modern technology. Vision now employs about 30 people to build several thousand bikes per year. Although small by bike industry standards, their business has nearly doubled each year since founding. This is due in part to the strong resurgence in popularity that recumbents have enjoyed recently.

Vision is an example of a small manufacturing company dependent on aggressive product development, customer satisfaction and a budding but uncertain market.

There will also be the traditional garage sale after the tour where we help Joel and Grant dispose of excess and unwanted inventory.

Please RSVP to me at this e-mail address Nick Hein (heinhpv@juno.com)

See you there!

Nick

So if you want to go on the Tour (it's pretty neat, I went last year) Email Nick. If you want to ride, email me. If you want to ride to the tour, it's doable if you are a zippy rider who is not afraid of urban Seatle riding but I'm not sure that's what everybody want to do for a ride starting at Marymoor.

Now we have Bob stepping down from organizing the rides and Nick stepping back from organizing the home-builder activities. I will see what I can do to fill in, but I'm out of town for the first half of April, so we need somebody to step of for next month to coordinate things. Also, as the season progresses, I'll be stepping up my training for various ultra-distance and race events, so I'll probably be having more scheduling conflicts with the social rides so if anybody wants to help out, please speak up.

We've got a really good group of HPV enthusiasts here and I know we'll have a lot of good rides and events this season.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent Peterson

Issaquah, WA USA

425-392-3123