Getting out alive.

A couple weeks ago I managed to weasle my way into a business trip with Kevin and Phil of Suspension Experts to Interbike. It was in Vegas, which is a place I never really had any desire to go to in the first place, and am now convinced that I have no desire to go back, but not one to pass up an opportunity to weasle my way into anything, I decided I ought to do it.

My first thought flying into Vegas was "dang, that's a lot of lights." Then walking through the airport my thoughts we're "Why the heck did that Starbucks charge me so much for this goddamn coffee?" and "Holy cow, all the men have really nice shoes. Weird."

I managed to make it to the hotel, The Stratosphere, ooohhh!!, and called Phil, as directed, because he said there would be no possible way I'd be able to find my way through the casino to our room, which was numbered 3-08-16...of course, it was. There were a fuck-ton of rooms in that hotel. And there are a fuck-ton of hotels in Vegas. It doesn't make any sense. But nothing in Vegas does, and that's why I had to sit outside of the hotel waiting for Phil to direct me through a casino no mortal soul would be able to navigate themselves through, alone, the first time around.

Sitting there at 11:30 pm local time, 2:30 am my time, at the beginning of this little adventure that was to be a week at Interbike, I reached into my jeans pocket in a desperate attempt at comforting myself and making myself feel at home. What did I bring from home that I had forgotten about that was now in the deep recesses of my pockets? Oh, dang...a Miller High Life bottle cap. I strongly believe that all your favorite pant pockets should have a bottle cap in them. You should just keep them there and carry them around with you and replace them when they get lost to the washing machine. It's good luck or something, for its also fun to pull out a bottle cap at a random (or discomforting, in this case) time and try to think of where you were, who you were with, and what was going on when you were drinking the beer (or soda, for you U-21ers out there) that once belonged to that bottle cap.

Anyway, I couldn't remember where that High Life cap came from, then Phil came, and the week began.

It was a good, overstimulating week. And anti-vacation of sorts. Lots of bike products and bike people. Some really cool innovations, like inifinite-engagement hubs (by a lil' company called Stealth) which use needle bearings in crazy little ramps--no pawls at all. Dang! (But warning...I-9 hubs are still the best. Don't be fooled.) And the Hammerschmidt crankset. Planetary gears. Swoon. Neat. And this awesome Belgian (or you know, some other non-American country...) company that had the same sort of cranks, but the shifting was done by kicking a little button with your heel on the side of the crank. Beautiful! A dingle! I've fantasized about this for so long--zipping down to Bent Creek on a more appropriate road gear than the near 2:1 I ride off-road, then not having to adjust chain tensioners or anything--same chain length, just kick, and you're in a trail gear. Word! Plus, it makes it ok to kick your drivetrain, which previously had only been reserved for momemts of anger and frustration.

So anyway, there was a lot of looking at products and wanting and thinking and dreaming up awesome new bikes to build. But there was also free crap to grap and free snacks to eat and free beer to drink, and I ran into some folks I know and met some new folks and made some really great small talk and tried but didn't manage to sweet-talk my way into the Campi cycling cap, but so it goes...

Highlights were sneaking into the VIP area at Cross Vegas with Rebecca "Hot Shit" Tomaszkwiszkiekszwik and her cronies, and riding the heck out of some fun bikes at the Outdoor Demo. Phil and I quite half-way through the day on Tuesday because there were too many people demoing the bikes and it turned into a cluster-fuck, so we starting eating Chipotle chips and drinking Fat Tire, then we took out the most ridiculous "bike" we could find. One, a Da Vinci tandem, which was more race-oriented and agressive then my road bike, I would say--so scary! No me gusta! 74 degree head angle on a tandem!?! Get me off of this! And some recumbant tricycles! So hilarious. Phil equated it to being tickled...its aweful and you hate it, but you can't stop laughing. It was so funny. And some guy on a road bike past us, and we apologized to him for being on recumbants and said we hated ourselves and were embarrassed, and he said, "it's ok, with people on recumbants, to point AND laugh." But hands-down the best part of the show was going into the bike-check room, which was a room full of bikes owned by people at the show. Mainly their townies, and mainly, the most awesome looking, well-built fixed gears. Some awesome old-school, neon-era mountain bikes, some new-ish race bikes (disappointing to see amongst so many other bikes with personality), etc. I walked around there for awhile, drooling, getting ideas for bikes that I want to build up, and probably looking a little suspicious to the old couple checking peoples' bike in and out.

Lowlights were running in Vegas. Disgusting. And the price of food. Oh, and that, upon flying out Friday morning, from the plane I saw a wonderful desert sunrise, and I thought "oh yeah, we're in the desert." Whoops. They fooled me.

It was a good time overall. Met some characters, saw some bike products, experienced Vegas (though not all that all-out, which maybe is for the better...) only missed two days of biking, and made it back to Asheville and normalcy in one piece.

Ah, youth.

The next day I purged my system with a long road ride followed by a long-ish trail run at Wilson. And then promptly slipped back into the ol' daily grind. Did Vegas ever really happen? Where I'd get all these key chains and coozies and stickers? Oh, right...