Another extended stint in the VeloBarrel has come to an end. Tomorrow, the off-season begins — it’s back to the usual two days a week playing editor at large for VeloNews.com, with two weeks before I have to crank out some nonsense for Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Livin’ large, folks, livin’ large. Why, I may even ride a bicycle.
We had a “Wild Kingdom” moment here last night. Miss Mia Sopaipilla was watching one of the kitchen windows like it was must-see TV, so I took a peek myself. I had my reading glasses on, instead of my seeing glasses, but detected a couple lumpy shapes waddling through the back yard to a gap in the fence. Porcupines? Skunks? Really small Repuglicans?
Nope. Raccoons. I put my seeing glasses on and stepped out into the alley just in time to catch one of the masked devils scrabbling up a neighbor’s latticework, behind a climbing vine. No camera handy, alas, so you’ll have to make do with this midafternoon ‘coon-free shot of our own vine.
Mad Blog Media 
Just got back from the armpit of the world post Interbike. Usual crappy hotel at a bargain price which will go un-named here but wanted 12 bucks for 24 hours of WIFI! The old nickel-and-dime scheme’s are still very popular in Lost Wages. The show itself seemed very busy though I didn’t get there until Thursday and folks told me opening day was packed. Friday afternoon slowed down as usual and the typical deconstruction of booths and wild frenzy of buying up show samples seemed to commence a bit earlier than I remember. Don’t know the volume of orders written but the general vibe was just like last year when the world’s economic systems were still working more or less. Just proves the bike-biz folk are an optimistic bunch I guess. 2010 has to be better’n 2009, right?
One of the local bike shop buyers here in Santa Fe mentioned to me that his 2008-2009 buying season was horrific as the plummeting dollar value vs. Asian currencies coincided with credit drying up, hence it was hard to buy any 2010 stuff.
Maybe Patrick can comment on the present situation relative to last year in his capacity as BRAIN correspondent in residence.
Sheeyit,
If I knew anything about business I’d be making some poorly designed, shabbily built product that nobody wants to buy and getting wealthy off gummint bailouts. I write about what I know, which is not much and helps to explain why the columns are so short.
Attendance was down slightly at Interbike, according to an uncredited piece in BRAIN that says exhibitors cut back on staff. Tech editor Matt Wiebe tells me there were fewer shop rats, too, though Old Town Bike Shop here in Bibleburg sent its usual two staffers.
The mood has been generally described as “upbeat,” in part because expectations going in were low. Lots of folks predicted a big dip in attendance, and were pleasantly surprised when it didn’t occur.
I’d be interested to learn how many exhibitors downsized their booth spaces. Cannondale was back on the show floor with a 30×30 space, a fraction of its formerly massive footprint.
Alas, the cycling press was too busy slobbering over the usual bling-bling to provide much in the way of solid news. VN tech editor Zach Vestal took note of Oakley’s new “Elite” line of insanely priced eyewear, featuring the $4,500 carbon-fiber C-6 — and no, that’s not a typo. Forty-five hundred smackeroos. Anyone who buys a C-6 should be blinded, tarred and feathered, then dropped by parachute into the middle of Death Valley, handcuffed to the numbnuts who came up with this grotesque exercise in bloated consumerism.
Better off them critters Patrick. I lost two cats this year to raccoons. Not to mention they foul the water bowl.
Mike Chapman (proprieter of The Broken Spoke, just down the street from 2nd Street Brewery) just got back from the Interbike in time to build me a new set of wheels (basic stuff– XT 6 bolt disk hubs and Delgado Cross rims) for the Orange Contraption (a 2008 Salsa La Cruz) I am now riding to work. Those will probably be shod with Richey 700-32 cross tires for winter commuting. That bike sure is comfy compared to that boneshaking Redline and probably hard to miss as you are about to T-bone it.
But $4500 for a pair of sunglasses? Yikes! That’s more than I have ever spent on an entire bike. My last pair of shades cost me about forty at Costco so I bought a spare, and was heartbroken when I lost one pair at the airport returning from Buffalo. With both parents having grown up with single moms during the Great Depression, I still have a hard time parting with money that frivolously.
So is anyone actually buying this crap, or is that irrelevant? Seems some of these bike guys are as out of touch with the public as those Detroit honchos flying their Lear jets to D.C. to ask for bailouts. Sorry, fellaz, but all that Ponzi-scheme wealth of the last few years has evaporated faster than an ephemeral lake in Death Valley, to continue Patrick’s allusion. How about some stuff the public can afford to buy on a reduced budget, and which has down-home uses, such as getting your kids to the local school?
Matt at BRAIN is interested in functional machinery — he’s been fiddling with various utility bikes and recently bought an Xtracycle Radish with rear rack and panniers. He says it can carry “eight bags of groceries, a case of beer on top of the rack and a child or two.” And if he says this, it’s because he’s done it. Dude gets around Santa Fe on two wheels for the most part because none of his cars will start and/or run reliably.
The Radish itself without the add-ons is under a grand, and I’ll bet this is the first time a bunch of us has heard a word about it. Meanwhile, I’ve seen at least two reports on the tarantula and monitor lizard adorning the SRAM XX display in Sin City. Ay, Chihuahua.
I’ve seen a couple of those (or something that looks just like it) down in Santa Fe and one up in Bomb Town. I think Rob and Charlie’s sells a working bike with similar geometry. People actually took a welding rig to bikes back in Honolulu and stretched them out so they could accommodate a surf board.
$5K for “eyewear”, $15K for a bike weighing under 15 lbs, $way-too-much.95 for Swiss-made clothing. As they used to say, “if you can’t go fast you can at least look good”. Or as we used to say at the bike shop I managed in SoCal, “we sell everything here EXCEPT the legs…those ya gotta earn.”
Back when Kestrel first came out and I was racing a Cannondale Boneshaker, one of the first Kestrels I saw out on the road was under some old guy with a gut the size of Kilauea. Was pretty funny to behold.
I’d be willing to bet that the Oakleys are just for show. And if enough buyers out there decide they are worth it, then Dana’s New Boys will have some poor sods in BFE-wherever build a few. Of course, I could be wrong, but since Oakley’s trading at a miserable share price, it makes no sense to mortgage the farm for $4,500 shades.
Khal, around here we call them ‘aerobellies’. Nature’s own combination slipstreaming and gravity accelerator device.