I had a little fun shooting the video of the Jones bike. There’s plenty of room for gadgetry on that 66cm H-bar; I was going to add a flower vase, but ran out of hose clamps.
I haven’t been on a bike of any type for a week — a terrorist wasp nailed me in my left ankle during a hike last Wednesday, the sonofabitch swelled up to the size and shade of a ruby-red Texas grapefruit (the ankle, not the terrorist wasp), and I have whiled away the hours since full of Benadryl and bad ideas, trying to get a metric shit-ton of work done with my shoeless left leg propped up on a box.
And the weather has been picture-postcard, Chamber of Commerce, fall-in-Colorado perfect, too.
Gah.
The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff got its closeup today.
I did get out for a short while today. The ankle looks more or less like an ankle again, rather than a botulistic bratwurst, and I needed to shoot a bit of HD video for an online review of the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, having just wrapped production on a Jones video. So I spazzed around in Palmer Park for an hour, playing Quentin Ferrentino with a couple of dusty old Hero 3 Black Editions.
The Adventure Cyclist gang and I met with the GoPro people at Interbike, but only editor Mike Deme walked away with one of the new Hero 3+ dinguses, though I thought I batted my eyelashes most fetchingly at the product guy. Bitch.
So I had to make do with obsolete technology in my latest projects, and as usual it is the little people — you, the viewing public — who must suffer.
Still, that makes two videos in two days. Stick that in your hobbit-pipe and smoke it, Peter Jackson.
Check out the South Greenway Trail, or what remains of it, down by Circle Drive and Janitell Road.
This is part of the estimated $6.5 million in damage to area parks and trails from September’s flooding. And anyone who thinks they’re gonna get fixed soon has been smoking too much of the fabled wacky terbacky. So-called “friends” groups — to wit, volunteers — are doing a lot of the work while the evil ol’ gummint concentrates on socialism and whatnot.
Of course, with the feddle gummint sending everyone home while the Baboon Caucus redecorates the Capitol in an odiferous brown hue, we may soon have more volunteers than you can shake a shovel at.
The Klatch is an all-day endurance machine, made of Reynolds 853 but with a carbon ENVE disc fork.
BIBLEBURG, Colo. (MDM) — Selling shit is what Las Vegas is all about.
There are no drinking fountains, just $6 bottles of water, and the only chairs to be found sit in front of slot machines and gaming tables, or in bars and restaurants, where thunderous “music” discourages unproductive conversation while encouraging speedy consumption and departure, thus clearing a space for the next sucker … er, customer. What stays in Vegas is mostly your money.
If you’re not spending, Sin City has no use for you. Move along, move along.
My room at the Luxor was unexceptional, though I will say that unlike Mike Creed’s squat at the Excalibur it lacked burglars. It also lacked HBO (“Quit watching “Breaking Bad” and buy a ticket to Carrot Top!”) and wireless Internet (“Quit downloading porn and rent a hooker!”).
As befits a shopping-mall food court, the eats were overpriced and underwhelming, and I never got out of Starbutt’s for less than 12 smacks. (that’s the tab for a grande Americano, a fruit cup and a tip, in case you’re wondering). A short chat with Scot Nicol of Ibis Cycles added value to one of those purchases. For me, anyway. I’m never sure how the other side of a chat with me dollars up on the hoof.
But bitching about Vegas is pointless. Anyone stupid enough to bunk in a casino hotel deserves everything he gets and then some, as I learned back in 2006 while rooming at the Riviera on Bicycle Retailer‘s dime. That pushed me over the edge, and I skipped the show for the next four years.
The Cinelli Bootleg Hobo just jumped out at me on the last day of the show. If the price is right, we should all buy at least two of them.
I’ve enjoyed myself more since returning to Interbike under the aegis of the Adventure Cycling Association, mostly because I no longer have to help produce BRAIN’s Show Daily. Instead of cranking out the word count in some windowless concrete cell I get to wander the show floor, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all the toys and asking may I play with same, please.
Of my top three, the Klatch may be the bike best suited to the type of riding I do here in Dog Country. It’s a gravel grinder — or as we oldsters might call it, a “bicycle” — with a Shimano drivetrain. The Reynolds 853 frameset is capable of running 40mm rubber, and Co-Motion’s jet-black show model was nicely spec’d; among the goodies was TRP’s dual-piston Spyre mechanical disc brake, a stopper I have yet to try but have heard nothing but good things about, if you happen to like disc brakes, which I don’t, much. Expect to pay $2,195 for frame and fork, $4,460 for a Shimano 105-equipped bike, and $4,995 for an Ultegra machine. Co-Motion is taking orders now, and lead time is six to seven weeks.
The Chris King Cielo Tanner Goods Edition is a lovely bit of bicycle. Total eye candy.
The Bootleg Hobo, meanwhile, looks like just the ticket for the adventure-cycling crowd. You’ve got to love PR copy that draws a pair of Jacks — Kerouac and London — when pitching a product. Columbus Cromor tubes, triple crankset, bar-end shifters, bosses for three bottle cages. Tubus racks, fenders, clearance for 45mm rubber, spare-spokes holder, and (gasp!) cantilever brakes! What’s not to like? Santa Fe’s Bicycle Technologies International (BTI) has ordered the Hobo in limited quantities, and I expect it will be an insanely popular piece of machinery with the go-anywhere, do-anything crowd, if only because of the price: $1,850 complete. Yeah, I don’t believe it either. But that’s what the man said. …
Finally, the Chris King Cielo Tanner Goods Edition (man, is that ever a mouthful) is a beautiful commuter-slash-bikepacker, with Tanner Goods saddlebag, handlebar bag and frame bag, the last of which doubles as a shoulder bag. The $2,895 price includes frame, fork, bags and Honjo fenders; the show bike was tricked out with Chris King headset and hubs (duh), Thomson seatpost and stem, and Paul’s Neo-Retro and Touring canti’ brakes. It’s a goddamn work of American art on wheels, is what.
Other bikes worth a look:
The Tern Eclipse S18 looks to be just the thing for the person who wants to hop a plane to someplace nifty and then explore it by bicycle.
As has become traditional in these outings, a storm chased me out of town, finally catching me in Santa Fe.
BIBLEBURG, Colo. (MDM) — After all these years you’d think I would know better than to try to blog from Sin City. I should just post a “Closed Until Further Notice” sign and save us all the aggravation.
I attend Interbike for three primary reasons: First, to gather salable intelligence for my various employers; second, to reassure said employers in our one get-together per annum that, despite all published evidence to the contrary, I am not a rabid dog hellbent on biting the hand that feeds me; and third, to reassure the reading audience that I am a rabid dog hellbent on biting the hand that feeds me and somehow getting away with it. Which I am, of course. (Don’t tell my employers.)
It’s quite a tightrope to walk for an antisocial old drunkard who has trouble navigating a wide sidewalk after happy hour. And it’s particularly sketchy when I’m bunking in a casino hotel with all the ambience of a Donna Summer retrospective in Hell. Never again. It was a 20-minute walk from my room to the show and I never left the building.
When I finally hit the door running I was very tired of the sound of my own voice and desperate for a smoke-free environment, proper music and the open road.
As I battled traffic on Flamingo a roadside political scientist announced via hand-lettered poster that Jewish communists control the media. He never met the crowd I work for; a variety of faiths, creeds and religions, but capitalists one and all. Racing the commuters through Henderson I saw a disintegrating paceline fighting a massive headwind on a gradual climb. Glancing at the dash I noticed it was 96 degrees outside. Who’s crazy here? I wondered.
Me, of course.
Editor’s note: Coming up — a few bikes from Interbike 2013 that an adventurous cyclist might find interesting.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (MDM) — Before FaceTime, there was face time, and now that I no longer help cover Interbike for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, that’s generally what I spend my first day of the show collecting.
Tuesday evening was the traditional pre-show meal with the BRAIN trust; on Wednesday, I was doing some light trolling for toys with editor Mike Deme of Adventure Cyclist and his trusty sidekicks Josh Tack and Rick Bruner. Tech editor John Schubert joined us later for dinner and drinks.
Mike and I also appeared briefly on Diane Lees’ Outspoken Cyclist radio show, to be aired later this month. You’l be pleased to hear that I successfully avoided the accidental deployment of my favorite monosyllabic Anglo-Saxonisms.
The change in venue from the Sands to Mandalay Bay proved something of a shock to everyone’s navigational systems, and so we spent an inordinate amount of time playing Where The Hell Are We Going And Where The Fuck Are We Now? As a consequence, I didn’t take any pix, an oversight I’ll correct today.
But be on the lookout for some new do-it-all steel bikes, among them the Klatch from Co-Motion (someone decided they wanted to do a gravel race and needed a bike) and the Straggler from Surly (don’t call it a gravel bike or they’ll hurt you).
More later from the show floor, or slightly above it.
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