Morgul Bismark Bicycles

Some of you know I've been working on Randy Gaffney's website "morgulbismarkbicycles.com". He and I collaborated on the site several months ago, got some content ready, got it published, and then waited around to see what other inspiration hit us the way Taylor Phinney hits the tarmac in a time trial.

I was recently on a bike ride with Mr. Big Guy in The Bubble and we started talking about the next steps with the site. That's when Randy dropped some bad news on me. Turns out the fellow who owns the website "morgulbismark.com" had his lawyer contact Mr. Big Guy. The bloodsucking lawyer claims his client owns the national trademark for Morgul Bismark and if Randy wants to continue with "morgulbismarkbicycles.com", then MBG needs to give him some money.

I call 'bullshit' on that one.

The trademark owner is acting like a panhandler looking for some money for another pint of Thunderbird. I mean, the guy didn't even set up a website with the morgulbismark.com domain name. How lame is that?

So the product that is "morgulbismarkbicycles.com" has been put on ice. There isn't any available funding nor any real desire to conduct the proper trademark searches and subsequent expenses to make this thing work. And that's too bad as we all carry the Morgul Bismark logo on our jerseys. I wonder if the lawyer will claim we owe his client a royalty?

Still, I have an idea about what to do next. If you look at Randy's website, you'll see the most important thing is the coaching menu. There's some other stuff that has good potential for fun, but the coaching part is the meat of the website. Coaching is what MBG does. That's where his interest lies. And we all know he's really good at coaching and training. He needs a website that is dedicated to THAT aspect of his life and profession.

And of course, if the lawyer and his cash-grabbing client contact Randy again, Mr. Big Guy might remind them that he can do anything he wants with the "morgulbismarkbicycles.com" website. ANYTHING he wants.