Interbike ‘09

Nick and I drove down Monday morning and got into town just in time to catch the tail end of the first day of the Dirt Demo. We drove out to Boulder City and started wandering. The original plan was to ride road bikes monday, and then ride mountain bikes tuesday. We lost a little time not knowing where or what we should be doing. We got checked in and hit the tents. For some reason we headed straight over to Specialized and tried to get on the new Enduro's. I struckout and ended up riding an S-works TriCross. Which was sweet. Not quite what I was looking to ride but sweet anyway. Then I realized that I should ride stuff that the Bike Peddler doesn't carry since this may be my only opportunity. I strolled over to the Rocky Mountain tent and jumped on a 29" Altitude. I won't bother with reviews here. I was mostly just trying to see cool stuff. In fact, as day one was ramping down, we just wandered around. Which is how I ran into this machinist. The next day we hooked up with Ryan and Parrish. Day two at the dirt demo was a little chaotic. This is the big day when everyone shows up. The result, is that it is tough as hell to get onto the bike you want. We actually got so caught up in the Cannondale giveaway(Ride a bike from C-dale,Mongoose,GT, and Schwinn, and get a free pair of Oakley's) that we didn't get much actual ride time in. But I got a free pair of Oakley's. By lunch there were so many people it was hard to walk let alone get in on a bike you wanted. I rode a Spot touring bike with a belt drive and a Rohloff internal hub that was the epitome of bike geekdom. That was probably the coolest thing I rode. Then it was just watching people and checking out booths. Good thing I had on the bib tights. That's okay, they gave me a little street cred when I wanted a photo with this guy. Tinker looks like a Brooks Saddle up close. All brown and leathery. He is the first racing star I remember knowing about when I started reading the magazines back in the nineties. It was cool to see him even though Oilcan Larry thinks he's washed up.

Once it got hot, and we got hungry, we bailed on the dirt demo. The only other really noteworthy thing that we did at the Dirt Demo was plow through the pizza that filled this box. It was huge, and we killed it.The next day was the actual beginning of Interbike. We made our way to the convention center and soon discovered that due to a mixup and our badges reading exhibitors from Lizard Skins instead of highly important decision makers for the Bike Peddler. We were shunned like lepors by the exhibitors. No schwag, no respect. We remedied the problem by ganking some "attendee badges" from Timp Cyclery and were soon getting shoulder rubs from beautiful models. Not really, but we were loading up on schwag and were actually allowed into the Specialized booth. We only got a few weird looks because our badges said we were Brett and Ashley Edwards. Nick took one for the team and claimed to have the girls name.