We've made the decision to shutter the GamJams Racing teams for 2012. And by "we" I mean the people principally responsible for keeping the teams going - myself (Mike), Dave and Gus. There are a couple reasons for the decision. If you're interested in them read on. If you're not, know that it's now open season on poaching former GamJams riders for your own teams (but not all of them, as you'll see below).
Dave and I, some of you may know, are also the guys behind November Bicycles. We're wicked busy and about to enjoy even more work as the business keeps growing. How busy? I met Dave for a ride yesterday and he was too strapped for time to go downstairs and find a matching jersey, so he showed up with a Raw Talent Ranch jersey paired rather grotesquely with the new November team bibs. I got so tired of sitting behind him looking at the mismatched colorways that I even started taking pulls. Short ones, but still.
Anyway, because we're fancy pants bike executives now, we're kind of obligated to have our own team. But because our business model is to eke out a living with teeny little profit margins, we can't support a big squad. So we've brought about half a dozen guys from GamJams over to join us for 2012, which - not coincidentally - is the maximum number we can fit in my minivan. 3 of them are going to have to hold wheel bags in their laps on road trips.
The other reason the GJ team is climbing into the broom wagon is because I made some mistakes in forming the team that were hard to recover from. The biggest is that the team wasn't locally focused. That made team rides a rarity, and building camaraderie a real challenge. My advice to people looking to start a team: create a tight radius for membership. It's just better to race with the guys you train with, even if that dude who lives an hour away is really honkin fast. The other big mistake I made was getting injured and losing the first half of the 2011 road season, and then getting injured again on my first race back and missing the second half of the 2011 road season. Teams need leadership and this year I wasn't it. I had no succession plan in place for someone else to take over. I knew better but just didn't put it together (see "wicked busy" above).
The GamJams site rolls on, however. Gus has stepped up as Editor-in-Chief and has the ideas and passion to make sure the site doesn't suck (which has always been its principal ambition). And we're staying in the sock business, in part because we've got a couple hundred pairs left (including a lot of wool ones for cross, going up soon in a new Selling the Crap Out Of Some Socks Sale).
If you subscribe to the GamJams Newsletter, that's going to take on a new life as the November Newsletter, likely keeping the Beer of the Week and Dirty Trick of the Week features, and publishing other bits too racy for either the GamJams or November sites. You'll get a preview of it and a chance to subscribe to it soon.
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