This is JUS.
The Circles and All-City teams safely returned to Japan from the U.S. yesterday!
After NAHBS concluded, we moved from Sacramento to Portland, where I spent time visiting various shops with the All-City team.
We stopped by bike shops, of course, as well as restaurants and apparel stores.
As mentioned in yesterday's blog post, "Miumiu's American Adventure," every place we visited and all the people working there were truly wonderful.
What caught my eye during this tour was the "workspace."
In restaurants, that means the kitchen and behind the counter.
In bike shops, it's the pit area.
Regardless of the establishment, every workspace was impeccably clean.
Every single tool was neatly organized; even tools worn from heavy use looked beautiful.
These spaces weren't just simply large—there was purpose and reason behind their layout.
In every shop, the pit area was completely visible to the customers, as if to say, "Please, take a look," or even, "Let's work on the bikes together."
(In fact, many shops even offered rental pit services and workshops.)
The mechanics working in those wonderful pits were all serious, proud of their work, and, above all, seemed to be truly enjoying what they were doing.
The bikes born in those spaces, and the bikes that returned after repairs—
it wasn't about whether they were expensive or cheap; the bikes that were being fully integrated into the daily lives of the people who gathered there looked incredibly beautiful.
So that we can continue to deliver such wonderful bikes to all of you from our own pit at Circles, we mechanics are picking up our hex keys again today.