I survived another series of alcohol fueled days and nights in Las Vegas at Interbike this year. Dash and I flew out on Wednesday morning. I got us some cheap flights and Dash scored us a room on the strip. The room met our requirements of 1) cheap ($49/night), 2) semi-clean, and 3) within a 15 minute walk to the Sands Conf. Center. It had the added bonus of being at the home of Big Elvis!
After getting our credentials all lined out, we hit the show. When you walk through the doors, the first thing you see is a huge ass MAVIC booth. I immediately went into the booth, walked over to the R-SYS section and looked for a chalk outline of Ben Delaney's corpse on the floor. Trust me when I tell you folks, there is a whole lot more to that story that what Velonews put in print. It is going to be interesting to see what comes out when it is all said and done. Alas, no chalk outline and Mr. Ben wrote several Interbike based articles so I am guessing he did not set foot in the MAVIC area. Before I get off of this topic, if any of you are going to take Delaney's advise and dump your R-SYS wheels, let me know. There are a bunch of us that will take them off of your hands.
One of our primary tasks was to escort Red from Ride the Rockies for the weekend. What Red does not know about bikes, she makes up for in ability to consume alcohol. And trust me, my liver now knows that Red does not know shit about bikes. We made it to the show about mid-day and started gawking at the toys. At 3pm, the first of the kegs were being tapped and it quickly became a game of finding as much free beer as possible. When the free beer was all consumed, it was time to strap on a feed bag real quick and then head out to the CX races. We hit a burger joint in some huge-ass hotel. A quick scan of the menu and Dash notices that they had Hoegaarden on tap. Well, hell! We had better have a pitcher then. Beers hit the table and we are part way through explaning to Red how only the Belgians really know how to make beer when Dash asks...."Holy crap, is that guy wearing a Snuggie?" Now, a more sober eye might have been able to discern what this get-up really was. But to our drunk asses, This dude thew down $19.95 to score the perfect garb for dinner at Vegas. Please pardon the crappy pic..... it took it with my Blackberry.
Performing the Paul Rubens tent pitch in Vegas!
We finished off the pitcher of Hoegaarden and burgers and grabbed a taxi out to CX races. Dash leveraged some connections he has with one of the few guys who had drank more beer than us and scored wristbands for the VIP area. First thing I learn about the VIP area...... the beer is free! Yippeeee! By the time the pro men's race came along my vision looked like this....
Erwin V. was a blur to us....... literally.
The evening ended up watching Karaoke of all things. I saw one of the funniest renditions of Billy Idol's White Wedding that could possibly be produced. I finally collapsed and left Dash and Red to finish the night off correctly.
The next day we were back at the show. The day went buy pretty much in a blur. If you want to see a review of the products, feel free to roll over the Velonews and read all about what Zinn and company found interesting. Speaking of Lennard... I got a question for ya. He is something like 6 foot 20. So, when he goes to demo days at Interbike, how many bike manufactures really have a frame that fits him?
I will tell you that I observed first hand that this wheel has more lateral flex than any carbon wheel I have ever encountered.
But to me, Interbike is much more than creating buzz about a product or buying friends with free beer. It is the lengths they go to in order to create said buzz. Here are a couple examples..... #1, you take a high school kid who weighs a buck 40 dripping wet and have him don a Shocker get-up.
But.... where is the midget in the gorilla suit for a side-kick?
Or better yet, since half of the attendee at Interbike are 20 something shop mechanics, you can just market directly to what they usually think about.
Are those erasures, our are you just glad to see me?
And finally, the true dichotomy of Interbike. Cyclocross is on the move in the states. Why do I think that..... well, #1, nearly every major bike hawker at the show had a CX steed. Half of them made out of the same carbon factory over in Taiwan no doubt.... but a whole butt-load of bike manufacturers were showing off a CX bike or two. #2, for the past 3 years I have attended CrossVegas and there have been at least 5000 in attendance. Much more that the Crit races draw the next night. #3, this year, the pull was enough to get a 3 time world CX champion to come across the pond and run with the junior league. But is sure is a slow growing movement. Said 3 time world champion and his Belgian National champion team-mate were at the show on Thursday to sign any and everything put in front of them for an hour and hardly anyone dropped by to take advantage of that. I kid you not. Dash and I walked up, had Erwin and Ben sign several items and then proceeded to stand there and talk with them for 5 minutes about topics ranging from course preferences (Hint.... as a mudder, Mr. Vervecken is not a huge fan of the all-grass CrossVegas course), to travel in the US to getting Erwin to admit that if he could have, he would have chased down Chris Jones no matter what kit he had on. If you tried to spend that much time yakkin' it up with (Insert Pro Roadie Name Here), you would have been assaulted by the 50 groupies in line behind you before you got to your 2nd question.
Ben Berden a pro cyclist that sports some bad-ass tatts. David Clinger, eat your heart out.
One other really cool thing about both Erwin Vervecken and Ben Berden, they actually cared to be there. After years of going to Interbike, I have gotten used to riders having that "Jesus, I absolutely fricken hate being here" look on their face as they scrawl some indecipherable scribble and claim it to be their signature. A couple years ago I started trying to combat this by asking special requests in order to make them wake up a bit. For example, I once got Floyd Landis to sign a poster as "Floyd Landis, Mennonite Porn Star". That was totally unnecessary with Vervecken and Berden. They each took the time to ask for the spelling of your name in order to make sure it was correct and even better, they took the extra time to make sure each signature was carefully done. No scrawl that looked like someone had suffered a back spasm while their pen was sitting on a poster..... a carefully done signature. Very cool.
The rest of the night was spent drinking more beer with Red and hawking product for one of George Hincapie's new sponsors out at the crit races. They changed the course a bit and widen turn one. The cut down on about 95% of the crashed. Two booths down from us, the Go Fast guys were sampling product along a marketing partner of 42 Below premium vodka. Nice paring.
By the next day, Dash and I were well done with Vegas for another year. Each year we talk about not coming the following year. Then around the beginning of September, something happens that entices us to go..... this year is was Erwin Vervecken and Ben Berden...... totally worth the trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment