Feeling a bit like I fell down the well this week.

The past few days have been long ones, in at 7 and going full tilt till late, late at night. You have no idea how many hoops one must jump through in order to obtain, make and transport 500 pounds of finished rope and a crew of 5 to Chicago. I swear I need to just tape my phone to the side of my head and start sleeping with my banker. If I’m not on the phone to the east coast or Eastern Europe, I’m talking to that guy. In the past 3 days I’ve seen him more than I have seen my own wife.

If you have not already guessed it, the Shibaricon 06 death march has officially begun.

Yeah I know, I always write a post like this when we start gearing up for a big show. A post about how hard we are working and how many miles of stock we are trying to make and how daunting it all seems. Yeah, and we always seem to pull it off and make scads of money in the process. This one should be no different no?

No, this one is different. This show will be the biggest we have ever mounted. Bigger than Folsom, Christmas and Kinkfest combined. This is the one where, when I first laid out my projected production goals, the rest of the crew looked at me like I was insane. Perhaps I am. This year I want to bring 3 miles of finished rope with me. This is over and above all the rope we currently ship out every week to customers around the world. Long story short, in 7 weeks we need to make something to the tune of 6 miles of product. Yeah, maybe I am insane to even want to try this. However if one does not try, does not stretch themselves beyond what they know they can do and try for the impossible… then what is the point of getting up in the morning? Ambition is a drug and I’m a mainline addict, baby.

Ok, self pep talk over. Long story short. Monk is now if full on “overload mode” and expected to be this way for the next 7 weeks. Approach with caution, speak slowly and have caffeine on standby.

There is an upside to this. My crew is the best in the world. The Abbey is now swarming with help, each one doing their part to make this all happen. What was once just Griffin, myself and a few friends is now a small army of employees, contractors and friends. Nerdy, bless her heart, should have stabbed me in the eye with a set of safety shears by now, but she keeps the coffee on and the work queue up to date (thanks kiddo). The new raw stock was delivered and it looks wonderful. Coil after coil of honey brown hemp, just waiting for us to do our magic. Shipments from exotic places like Italy, Germany and Ohio arrive every day.

I tell folks that every foot of rope we sell is an orgasm waiting to happen, a brightly colored bundle of good sex in a coil. We are dragging 15,000 ft of it with us to Chicago next month. There is lots and lots of work left to do, but this show will be one for the history books.