INTERBIKE

presently Jill and Yo are still in Vegas. I am sitting in the Houston airport for 4 HOURS! figured I might as well provide people with an interbike update:

There's a lot to swallow so I'll spread it out over a few days.
Tuesday Morning: Outdoor Demo.
I entered with a fairly comprehensive list of bikes that we want to sell in the shop and I wanted to evaluate them to see if they are something we might carry or not. I soon discovered that the companies didn’t bring those bikes with them. I immediately switched gears and started riding fun bikes. I was able to check out:
from surly: the pugsley, the karate monkey, the big dummy.
from kona: the hei hei, and something else but I don’t remember
from Jamis: the XAM1, the super nova
from Van Dessel – gin and trombones
and a few more, but I don’t remember them all

they had the following areas set up:
a road loop with a long gradual descent, a flat and a long gradual climb.
a really cool BMX/pump track type deal (I rode this a few times on the mountain bikes, even the pugsley).
good mountain biking with narrow sandy singletrack. Riding in the desert felt very strange to me.
and THE MOST HORRIBLE CYCLOCROSS COURSE EVER.

the last part is particularly relevant because I got a chance to go to a cross clinic with National Champion Tim Johnson. we rode through the demo cross course and then decided to ride down the hill to a big flat hardpack dirt area instead. we made hurdles out of really old discarded mountain bike tubes that were sitting on the ground. The clinic was good, I am already very aware of all my mistakes, but I learned some new strategies for trying to fix them. I made plans to try out my “new skills” at Cross Vegas.

A couple of the more interesting moments of the clinic:
-He is an advocate of pushing the bike on some hills.
-Doesn’t really bother with the step-thru dismount
-does ZERO running training. he actually said “I walk my dog. That’s my cross training.”

later, some info on the show and a write up of the CROSS VEGAS RACE.