Today was the first day of the big show…and boy was it busy! So busy in fact I never even had a chance to sit down and write really anything…well, except notes from interviews. And there were a lot of interviews today. Here’s the recap of folks I spent considerable time with:
1) Quarq
2) Polar/Look
3) Saris (CycleOps, maker of PowerTap/Joule)
4) Cateye
5) Barry Redmond from Brim Brothers
6) iBike
7) Power Meter seminar featuring: ANT+, Garmin, SRM, Training Peaks, Saris and a few others
And that doesn’t even include all the sidebars I had with folks like HED, PedalBrain, and many more. Tomorrow brings a bit more stability to the schedule and some more big names like Timex, Garmin, Tacx, and RacerMate, among others. Plus I should have time to actually spend a bit of time walking the enormous show floor. I can’t even begin to count the times I got lost today.
In order to keep you busy and distracted all day long, I’ve got posts automatically publishing every few hours from Wednesday’s efforts – so keep checking back for the latest. In the meantime – while criss-crossing the show floor today I saw all sorts of things that caught my eye. Here’s a random compilation of those…
The first thing you’ll notice upon walking onto the floor is it’s massive. Like, bigger than my bedroom massive.
So naturally, you’ll want to hit up that directory to figure out where you’re going…and where you are.
However, upon arrival you may notice a lot of people standing around the directory scratching their head. That’s because for whatever reason, they appear to have assigned numbers to booth via random lottery – so matching the name to the booth to the actual location…takes more time than just aimlessly wandering and hoping to find the booth.
But it’s during this wandering process that you stumble into all the goodness. Take for example, this Italian designed bike bath system. This certainly beats bringing your bike into the shower with you.
Sometimes though it’s just stumbling upon something that makes you cock your head a bit and smirk:
Or, perhaps just cock your head and stare…proving that there’s apparently always room in a convention floor for partially dressed models (Oh, and for those curious, The Girl is scouting out the partially dressed men on the show floor…she’ll report back on that).
But after a bit of searching, it appears the real trick to having an awesome product is including the word part ‘Gon’ in your name – take for example, the below two bikes from totally separate companies:
It’s pretty hard to deny that the bikes with the word ‘Gon’ look way cooler than those without:
But naturally, everyone’s taste differ. And depending on how much your taste differs – a set of bikes like these might be in your future:
And, with a bike like the above, you certainly won’t need any of the 100 or so shoes on display here:
But, I think it’s certainly feasible that you’ll want to upgrade that lame black chain – for something very stylish…like pink, or neon green:
I think The Girl was already trying to con them into giving her the chain’s at the end of Friday.
Now, if all these pictures have you’re head spinning – just think about how I felt when I saw this wall of pictures:
Many of the positions depicted above would only result in serious injury to self or others should I attempt to reproduce. That’s why I took the bike bus up…and back down again at the Outdoor Demo Downhill Mountain Bike Course.
Speaking of injury to self and others – you can all thank me for not riding in the Cross Vegas event on Wednesday night. Though given I only have my tri-bike with me…the odds were looking pretty slim on that one.
But I did go out and enjoy it…so I’ll leave you with this brief teaser pic from the start like of the Pro field…
More on that later this afternoon…stay tuned!
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taste has nothing to do with it. I have the “taste” of Craig Alexander, but the budget of… alas, I have no budget :-)
I REALLY wish I was there, so much to see…so little time