You Had To Be There (Or Maybe Not)

This issue is on The Plan as being the “Interview” issue. For such an apparently straightforward feature they always seem to end involving a surprising amount of work/hassle – both beforehand and afterwards! Trying to “synch” diaries with people in the bike industry seems to be a bit like herding cats. Actual face-to-face interviews are invariably fine – good fun in fact – and it’s an easy task to get some decent photos taken at the same time.

But quite often I’ve had to resort to doing interviews via email. With mixed success. Some folk are “good” at email. Some aren’t. And you can never really tell beforehand who will write interestingly, succinctly and entertainly and who.. er.. won’t. And then getting hold of some relevant and interesting pics is then another job in itself.

As it happens I’m interviewing quite an array of very different people for this issue (ages, experiences, jobs, attitudes etc etc). I don’t have the time (and/or logistical nouse) to go and visit them all in person so I have to decide which interview candidate to “do” via email and which to “do” face-to-face. It’s tempting to just go and visit the ones that are geographically closest… But in my experience taking the easy option never ends up with the best results.

I hope my car passes its MOT this week.