I had such big plans for interbike this year. I was gonna take lots of pictures, do some blogging during the show, and generally try to be on top of that.

Then I realized two simple items:
1 – There are a million other sites trying to be the top dogs on what’s latest and greatest from the show with a lot more motivation than me.
2 – It’s vegas, and that means that other priorities (like staying up past 4 am both nights) come into play. Big time.

I walked the show, I had a good time, but a reporter, I am not.

The Turbo AC, Withey and I rolled into vegas wednesday night and headed straight for the cross race. After smuggling in well over 30 beers between the three of us (they were checking bags) we proceeded to track down Rob and found Bryan Antol along the way. The plan was to continue last year’s debauchery in the form of handing out motivational speeches, free beer, and dollar bills on the runup.

Our plans were cut short by “the man”. Evidently last year’s display of debauchery resulted in some annoyed race organizers, and so the runup was deemed “VIP Only” (and we are far from VIP). We got as close as we could to the runup, and proceeded to be loud and obnoxious and try to hand out dollars and beers again. We got a few takers, but I heard a rumor that the organizers had threatened disqualification if people took our incentive.

Here’s what Rob thought of that.

We proceeded to drink a lot of beer, give away a lot of beer, and generally have a good time. I’ll say that I’m not sure who won, and not sure I care either. We also got to see Lance go down a few times in slippery grassy turns on his way to a 20-something finish. Good on him.

I walked the show the next day and did see a few things that were worth mentioning, and am also trying to keep my promise on priorities from the plan.

Dirt Drops
Dirt Drops were all the rage. Voodoo had a ‘monstercross bike’ with dirt drops that looked like something straight out of Randy’s design book, and a couple other companies had dirt touring bikes which were 29ers with drop bars as well. Most of them were rocking bar end shifters with road-style brake levers. One of the best thought-out ones that I saw was from Salsa called the “Fargo”. I got a pic for ya on this one. It’s got 5 water bottle mounts, a multitude of rack mounts, and a nice beefy frame for your touring enjoyment.

LEDs
One of the other big trends that is coming through all the lighting is all the cool new high intensity LED technology. Princeton Tec was there, and the guy we chatted with said all the new princeton tec lights (starting immediately) are getting upgraded to a newer LED which will double the lumens output by their current LEDs. For comparison, that should bump their switchback 3 over almost any HID out there.

Speaking of HID, Light & Motion no longer makes any. It is (I quote) “dead technology”. They had their new “Seca” series there, and I have to say, as much as I drooled over their HID lights, I had to change my shorts after playing around with the new seca 700.

It will be mine, yes it will be mine.

The burn times are comparable on the high setting to what the HIDs used to be, but the kicker is that it’s got 3 levels of brightness. The mid-level of brightness with the big-mutha battery will kick it for 20 hours on a single charge. Damn.

Also worth mentioning is that the Princeton Tec guy said that there is a new standard light test coming out in the next year the everyone will be using to test actual lumen output of their lights. I know people frequently use lux vs. lumen vs. candlepower to rate lights, and the Princeton Tec guys have been whining about actual versus theoretical since I first met them two years ago, so hopefully this will bring some sanity to the scene (and I can talk to them about their lights without hearing about it next year). We shall see.

I also saw a new company called Niteflux from australia. Can’t say I like the form factor of anything but their highest end lights (the low end ones look like a maglite), but I had a great conversation with the guy who runs the show there, and the engineering and experience they poured into those lights leads me to believe that they may be one to watch out for. He also went through the effort of setting up a section of his booth with an actual light meter (like the ones photographers use) and doing a little demonstration for me on light output. It was so cool, I almost stole a Seca 700 to take it back there and do a direct comparison.

Two Speed Cranksets
One of the big talks at the SRAM booth was the new Hammerschmidt crankset, which was basically an internally geared crankset which allows you to switch between two gearings without an external derailleur. It was pretty neat, but pretty heavy, and Schlumpf has been doing it for a couple years now (they actually make a two-speed unicycle hub as well, totally bad-ass). I applaud them for taking a bit of a risk with it, but I’m not sure it’ll catch on. I will say, though, I rode one on a trainer, and it does actually shift under load, unlike the i-motion 9 on my big dummy (as claimed).

I do say, though, there is something elegantly simple about the method of shifting on the Schulmpf compared to SRAM’s system. It’s simply a button in the center of each crank where the crank bolt would go, and you hit it with your heel to shift. Tap the right and it shifts up, tap the left and it’s back down.

Xtracycle Stuff
Stopped by the xtracycle booth and chatted with those guys for a bit. They had the new centerstand there, and yes, it WILL be available in the next couple weeks. They also had an aluminum snapdeck which is a bit shorter, a snapdeck pad for passengers, and couple little clamps that hold your frame in place if you don’t have the freeloader bags on. The ‘whatchamacollars’ also serve double duty for keeping the water out of the inside of the frame when it rains (definitely a good thing on the dummy).

If you want to see pics of all of them, xtracycle’s got their new catalog up on the site.

Those were the major highlights for products for me. I’m sure there were a ton of other little cool gadgets and new bikes that you probably can’t live without, but honestly, you can probably find them in a lot of other more detailed reports. In fact, I know you can, because I got pushed aside at the Phil Wood booth by an obnoxious lady with a video camera who was narrating a guy spinning some bearings.

Hope you win an emmy or a bloggie or whatever for interrupting my conversation on that one. Thanks, really.

I got more stories to relate, but you’ll just have to wait on those, as I’m pretty exhausted.

To whet your apetite, I leave you with this beautiful picture of Ben.