Fall slows me down, almost to depressed status. But there are some things to write about this week. Take a look-see.

First of all, we've been back in the office a lot lately. We don't work out of Bro-Cal. This is a Southeastern city. Our office building consists of mostly small corporations or ATL HQs of medium-size corporations... so my favorite thing to do is step into the elevator every morning. The looks are priceless. Jeans, flip flops, hoodies and hats are the norm in our office, of course, and I empathize with the people stuffed in mediocre corporate garb that was thrown on solely for the sake of the dress code and not chosen for any style merit (I've just about blocked that out from memory). You can almost feel the jealousy. Or is that condescension?

I like playing the underdog. We're all stereotyped as surfer-dudes and Roxy-girls. I don't think anyone realizes what kind of operation we run. Not that it matters, but it's fun to smirk about when conversations stop if tone of us walks in the building with a longboard or a bright plaid DaKine backpack.

What else to muse/bitch/laugh about? Thankfully the unacceptable heat and humidity of Summer in the Dirty Dirty has relented and good hair, top-off-the-jeep weather has followed. It's good skating weather so that stuff has picked up around town as Doog's & Cullen's blogs can testify. But I miss snow. Planning some riding trips. I admit I can't wait until they build that indoor snowboard park (check out the article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle here) so I can meet some snowfriends. I feel like I can count the number of people who snowboard that live in ATL on two hands and maybe a foot. Which makes sense. It doesn't snow here. The guys at Ambush might disagree. But let's not get crazy. This ain't Tahoe.

Fall means we're also neck-deep in January Surf Expo. For the sales team it's floor-plan hell. The amount of rules and points and politics in drawing a map is insane. But what a job they do plotting out the madness. Our biggest challenge overall  this time is the three-day/four-day show thing. I can write a hundred blogs about this but just know this: we don't make rash decisions over things like this. It has been a pushed and pulled, debated and surveyed issue. The resort side of the show is four days. The boardsports side is three days. Resort has an extra day to crank out their busy January order-writing. Boardsports gets an extra bonus of a third move-in day. And for all the manufacturers who close up shop early (um, we saw you in September and we know who you are, lol) we've bumped the closing time up to 3PM on Sunday, similar to last January. Don't forget about the people on the Surf Expo show floor, you know, the retailers? They actually expect to write orders on a Sunday--imagine that?!

Ah, Fall in ATL. Fall at Surf Expo.