My neck hurts.



Well, we did it again. For I think the nineteenth year of my life, (I missed it one year due to an ill-timed appendicitis), I successfully navigated another Interbike trade show with my well being more or less intact;
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One thing I will say, is that as ‘media, Interbike gives my email address out to manufacturers who then give it out to other varying interests, so when I came home I had approximately one billion emails from Taiwanese wheel manufacturers, and sports watch makers, and book publishers, and so on and so forth. So thanks for that Interbike. It’s like I booked a trip to Vegas and came home with the virtual clap, which most obviously didn’t stay there.

Anyway, it was the same old rigmarole as it ever is.

Lots of people arriving, setting up, spending money, bitching and moaning, breaking down, leaving, and ultimately making plans to do it all over again next year.

For my part, I don’t really necessarily need to be there for any other reason than because it’s just fun to slap hands and see what’s what. For me the show hasn’t been about trends, or bike technology or anything like that in many years, if it ever was.

Which I don’t think it has been…

So again, I lurked, wandered, got lost, swung by to see advertisers (except Bern Unlimited, because I couldn’t find them on the map, and emails regarding their whereabouts went unanswered.) I suspect their booth looked something like this.

But with more helmets, and other various protective gear.

Anyway, how I’ll probably break this down will be in two posts. One for today, and one for Wednesday. Today’s will cover the first day of the show, and Wednesday’s will cover the second.

And there might not be a post for Friday as I hear I’m supposed to be in Reno with a bunch of pro BMXers. How that came about is another post entirely.

Anyway- Let’s get down to business.

As I’ve noted today (as well as the last two years), the primary focus for the show is the nice people I get to see there, so in no particular order, here are some.

My first stop, as it always is, was to see friends at Sockguy;
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We chatted, told jokes, discussed product, as well as future joint projects, and then of course addressed Sockgate, which I will note Sockguy had no part in.

We agreed that while it was in fact an extraordinarily tasteless thing, all things being relative, wasn’t necessarily “disgusting” (as it’s been called), in comparison to say, Syrian refugees currently being murdered in mass by religious extremists with American made armaments.

So let’s just take a deep breath.

But just the same, they were pretty psyched not to have been the offending party.

And that was the first conversation in the show.

However things got lighter as the day went;
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This is Brian. He’s my neighbor and he also works for Knog. I took this photo of him last year but am posting it today because the two photos I took of him this year were blurry, and also because he’s a vampire who doesn’t age, he looks exactly the same anyway. It was there we discussed Knog product, Knog dreams, Knog hopes, and Knog schemes.

I stopped by Bianchi because I used to drive their stuff out from the Bay Area to Vegas every year, so I enjoy looking at all of the product that I no longer am responsible for.

Plus I like seeing cool stuff like this;
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Moving on from Bianchi, I ran into this guy, whose name is actually Christopher Cross;
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He didn’t sing to me about sailing at all.

And then we saw these people;
*Editor’s note. A small percentage of people depicted here are women, which really isn’t a fair overview of the general interactions I had. Basically I think this year I felt more comfortable about shoving my camera in the face of men. I apologize if my ‘reportage’ seems out of balance.)
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That up there is Michael. He’s the fella who designed the new AHTBM jersey which should be made available here real soon. We had a conversation about it and everything, and if that doesn’t make it etched in stone/written in blood, I don’t know what would.
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This here is the Endless Bike Girl, and she very graciously presented me with this küzie there in her hand. The deal with these is pretty neat. She gets them made by a company called Oowee Products in Asheville who has partnered with the Autism Society of North Carolina who employs adults on the Autism spectrum.

Clearly I have an allegiance when it comes to which cüzies I use, but in this instance I made an exception.

From there, we continued on;
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Now, this cat’s name is Tanner, and we’ve known each other for a while. I think we may have met at the exact moment he pummeled a fella for talking shit to his wife. So from that point forward we’ve been friends, and I made a point to never talk shit to his wife.

Anyway, he’s a smart bloke who all by himself has developed a new line of cable actuated bike stoppers;
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Naturally, when doing something like this you have to navigate all of the patents that the big companies have established, usually resulting in a product that sucks. Based on the interest of both the big companies, as well as established bike manufacturers, we’re going to be hearing a good bit about Rever in the coming year.

Tanner mentioned that he would get a sample of these into my hands at some point for like, a real live product review so keep your eye ball balls peeled here. He’s got a hydraulic brake in the pipe as well, so there are both imminently good things, as well as the potential for lots of stopping afoot for all of us.

This was just about the end of day one. Everyone was all a twitter about going to Cross Vegas, which I was not, so for a while, Demonika, this guy, and I did this;
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Eventually we got hungry so we decided to see if we could find a place that would serve us breakfast. Strangely, that was easier said than done. Along the way, we bumped into a former compatriot at Bianchi named Juan, and he joined us in the hunt.

Coming up with nothing, we finally settled on finding a place for dinner that served dinner, where we got our fill.

Post-food we took off to see if any Cross Vegasers had returned when we ran into a fella named Rod who has long been the president of Bianchi USA. It was late, he was carrying a briefcase, and said he needed a drink. We pulled off into some bar or another and there we sat with Demonika as a witness. At the very minimum it’s been a decade since the four of us have been together, and the reunion was sweet. Juan wasn’t stressed out about wearing his multitude of sales hats, Rod wasn’t stressed out about wearing his multitude of presidential hats, and neither of them were stressed out about whether GenO and I would successfully return home with what most likely was over a half a million dollars worth of bikes and hardware.

We just sat and enjoyed each other’s company as bike nerds and people who are maybe even a little bit surprised at the fact that after so much time, we’re still in one another’s lives.

It felt good.

The hour grew later and later and we finally pulled the rip chord.

After all, I had a bunch of post-it notes I had to pay attention to the next day;
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And there was something about an Underbike party that had to be addressed.

The strain upon my shoulders was light, but that on my neck was about to get a whole lot greater.

Tune in on Wednesday for the conclusion of whatever it is we’ve started here. I promise it’s better than today.
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10 Responses to “My neck hurts.”

  1. Joe September 21, 2015 at 8:50 am #

    Sorry you didn’t come by our Arkansas booth this year. It was virgin trip to Interbike and was not at all surprised that all I wanted to do was go home and ride my bike. (My normal reaction to being trapped in a large room with an even larger group of people). Anyway, made a bunch of new friends including Mr. Sockguy who dropped off some sweet Washington State 420 socks. Now I have to choose between wearing those or my AHTBM FU socks. Damn you Interbike!

  2. JP September 21, 2015 at 10:35 am #

    shanna is rad as hell

  3. woody September 21, 2015 at 11:00 am #

    Hmmm, unless TRP actually licensed the brakes from your boy seems like they have the exact same thing for sale. But of course, probably more cheaperer.
    I hope they paid him if he actually came up with the design first, they look great!

    http://www.trpbrakes.com/category.php?productid=1199&catid=206&subcat=0

    • Stevil September 21, 2015 at 11:04 am #

      Dunno. Maybe he will happen through here and speak up on the matter.

  4. Bobo Clown September 21, 2015 at 12:46 pm #

    Always an honor to see Stevil and Demonika at the show and to be featured on the blog! I brought a crew out to the Underbike party, but did not see you in the mass of folks.
    #morekidsonbikes

  5. Tanner September 21, 2015 at 6:03 pm #

    The TRP Spyre although looks similar is rather different. The REVER MCX1 and the MTN1 are a dual piston mechanical caliper as is the TRP Spyre. The differences however are in the subtle details. We spent months and months talking and listening to mechanics, riders, dealers all across the board wanting to hear what they like, don’t like and what they dream of. We (REVER) who is made up of an amazing crew of passionate bike nerds, wanted our calipers to be easily serviced, easily installed and maintained no matter where you are in the world. We wanted all of this and better braking power and modulation. The MCX1 and MTN1 use a Shimano G Type shape pad so you can find replacements in any shop. The pads are top removal so that you don’t have to remove the wheel nor do you need to undo the cable to remove them from the top. We designed our own retaining clip to hold the pads in place when removing them and reinstalling them. There are multiple points of adjustment and a tension spring that allows you to adjust the throw of the actuator arm. It’s packaged as a single wheel system with all the small parts, housing and cable. The one pictured is the MTN1 which comes with a CNC’d lever.

    The REVER crew although small is made up of some wicked talented people and I am honored to work along side them and offer up some rad parts.

    Stevil will without a doubt be getting a set so he can share even more with you!

    Love,

    Tanner

  6. Joe September 22, 2015 at 7:39 am #

    Waaaa. Attitude is everything. Yet even Vegas will crush the most lofty soul. Sorry I missed you man!

    • Stevil September 22, 2015 at 10:57 am #

      The strain to which I was referring was the result of an hour of head banging. No complaining, just observing.

  7. Mr Anderson September 22, 2015 at 1:20 pm #

    Thanks for the earworm, (cretin!) which was buried in the recesses of my mind for the last three decades like some tropical virus waiting to inflict me with a debilitating disease. I spent a lot of time at my therapist’s office in order to wipe songs like that from my harddrive.
    Let’s not overlook C. Cross’ ominous warning from that same dark period in US history:
    ‘if you get caught between the moon and New York City…’
    Take that! And may you carry it around your earhole for the rest of the day.

  8. Crank September 22, 2015 at 5:08 pm #

    New water bottle technology. Water jet shoots bottle to mouth saving your arm precious energy to bring the bottle to mouth. Note the open mouth of surprise at how well it works. Saw it on Bikerumour last month. Only draw back is you have to use Campy water. They changed the molecule sizes so a regular water wrench wont work.