Review: The Big A## Calendar
(2026) Progress is best achieved when charted. Call me old fashioned, but after reading a massive haul of pages, I like to peek at the progress made by stepping back. Book mark in, mental note made, achievement award logged. Garmin Connect’s monthly comparison gives me a view of my progress by stepping back and offering bars longer, shorter, or the same amount as the previous four weeks. The charts are what motivate me.
Last year, the creakybottombracket.com office added a gigantic calendar to the wall called The Big A## Calendar. Almost immediately deadlines were written down. Events were outlined. Trips were added with sticky notes. Progress through 2025 was recorded with strikes through the days completed. One does not realize just how many confirmations are made within a year until they are written down and visible from a distance.
Speaking of distance, this calendar is visible from far away. The dimensions are fantastic. The dry erase calendar measures four feet (1.2 meters) across and three feet (1 meter) vertically. It’s easy to see the approaching engagements that can be recorded via dry erase marker or with one of the 100 adhesive labels provided. Locating the weekends from afar is easy, too. Big A## Calendar has gone ahead and shaded the weekends for ease of sighting.
This year’s calendar is just as convenient. Birthdays are already noted. Races are increasingly scribbled into the weekends. Perhaps we will ride that event; maybe we won’t. But we sure won’t forget to consider registering on time with it on the Big A## Calendar. At the end of 2025 it was a neat little time capsule to see all the progress of commitments kept. With a 2026 calendar of this size, it’s already an enjoyment to record anticipated events. Unfortunately for us, last year two races were DNS and had a reverse cross running through them. Hopefully this year fate will be reversed and both races can be crossed off as having been completed.
In the days of digital recordings, there’s something to be said for the place of an analog oversized calendar adorning our office wall. Readers might have thought, ‘Why not just put the event in your phone?’ But that’s been tried before. Those events are forgotten: out of sight, out of mind. It’s hard to ignore events when every single one is listed in front of the viewer. Somehow, an analog calendar made the digital age easier.
The Big A## Calendar is going to be leaned on even more this year in our office. Go ahead and order one up and see if you commit to a few more races this year solely because you remembered them. Or better yet, you performed better in races because of the adequate lead-up to the event that gave you a reminder each time you looked at the calendar. How much progress does a gigantic calendar provide? Call me old fashioned, but analog is still a great way to get fast.
