The $799 Bianchi Campione is a steel gran-fondo bike that comes equipped with an eight-speed cogset, toeclips and straps — and downtube shifters.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Some things never change. I always think I’m going to have a ton of time to post fresh snark about this and that during Interbike, and then I find myself caught up in the flow, like medical waste in the California surf.
The Adventure Cyclist folks are a great bunch — we’ve spent some hours trolling for toys, drinking, eating and bullshitting, which beats the mortal nuts off being chained up in the Sands basement, cranking out word count for the Show Daily.
The crowd has gotten a tad weirder since I was last here. Fewer booth bimbos, but enough tattooed, shaven-headed, multiply pierced, fat honky bastards to outfit three Aryan Nations chapters and a pirate fleet, for starters.
But what the hell? If they’re all about the bikes, then I love them all like the ugly, surly ADHD children I never had, thank God.
I’ve stumbled across old friends and made a few new ones, drooled over some toys, and even rode a bike to the Sands once — a Bike Friday New World Tourist. That was educational. You want a rear-view mirror for that high-speed run along Sands Avenue to the expo. Maybe some body armor, too.
Late for the Train in Flagstaff. Grab a newspaper, a scone and a cuppa, then watch the daily parade of cyclists, regardless of weather conditions.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Apparently I just missed all the fun in Flagstaff. A hailstorm beat me to town — and also beat the mortal shit out of a whole bunch of stuff with giant ice bombs — and after I departed, the flooding commenced. Good times.
I did get a light paddling from Ma Nature, however. After enjoying the traditional java stop at Late for the Train, I hauled ass westward into some of the wettest high-desert weather I’ve ever seen in many a hard road mile in service of the bicycle bidness.
The rain started bucketing down long before I hit Kingman and it didn’t stop until just short of Searchlight, Nevada.
Somewhere in between, outside of Laughlin around Christmas Tree Pass, I saw some poor desert rat tricked out like some sort of Blade Runner Bedouin, pushing a shopping cart full of Christ knows what eastward through the deluge. Welcome to Nevada.
It wasn't the usual hotter-than-Hades trip across northern Arizona into southern Nevada this year.
Bugsy Siegal’s Fun House looks a little shabbier since I last visited in 2006. The unemployment rate in the Silver State is pushing 13 percent, and it’s even worse in Vegas; the class war’s body count was shambling zombie fashion along Flamingo and Paradise as I rolled into town.
And there’s not much hope for a speedy return to the good old days, according to Jennifer Robison of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, citing a Brookings Institution report.
She also spoke with a local economist who thinks the report overly pessimistic, but I note that he only expects the unemployment rate to dip once jobless construction workers find gigs elsewhere and flee Sin City like tapped-out gamblers skipping out on their hotel tabs.
The fine folks from Santa Fe's BTI uncrate the magic on the Sands floor Tuesday afternoon.
If that’s good economic news, you can have it.
Meanwhile, the Strip was hopping last night as the Adventure Cycling crew and I went out for dinner and drinks to get acquainted. The service-industry folks we encountered seemed to be weathering the economic storm with equanimity, but then they still have jobs.
Me too. And on Wednesday I have to get busy. It’s showtime.
Your Humble Narrator, courting sunburn at the 2005 Outdoor Demo.
The Vuelta a España wraps up this weekend, and come Sunday I’m off to The Big Show in Vegas for the first time since 2006.
This will be my 14th Interbike, and my first under the aegis of anyone other than Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. I started out doing medium-heavy lifting for BRAIN, first in Anaheim and then in Vegas, pitching in on straight news coverage for the Show Daily. But as the years passed I gradually scaled back to compiling the Grapevine column and drawing a special Mud Stud strip for the Daily; I also lent a hand with headlines, photo captions and page-proofing, having done plenty of all three in 12 years as a copy editor for various newspapers.
When money got tight my annual trip to Sin City got nixed. It didn’t help that my post-show column was usually a variation on the theme “Interbike sucks,” which must have become tiresome to the publisher, editor, Interbike and the readership. I contributed Show Daily cartoons from a distance for a year or two, and then bean-counting saw the plug pulled on that, too. In a trade magazine comedy is an option, and occasionally more bug than feature.
No worries. I wasn’t enjoying myself, and it was time to take a break.
Now I have the chance to visit the show as a tourist, thanks to the fine folks at Adventure Cyclist magazine, who have yet to see the worst of me. Editor Mike Deme and I will wander the floor of the Sands Expo and Convention Center, looking for bikes to test-ride in 2012, and I should have plenty of spare time to unearth interesting bits of this and that, not being tethered to a Show Daily deadline.
So stay tuned — that low rumbling sound you hear in the distance is the DogMobile warming up for another high-speed run across the desert to Bugsy Siegal’s Fun House.
There are no easy stages at this year’s Vuelta a España.
Today’s finale appeared to have been designed via collaboration among P.T. Barnum, M.C. Escher and Owsley Stanley. It’s a miracle that the final few meters weren’t greased with human flesh.
I arose just in time to catch the last 50km, my evening’s repose having been less than refreshing thanks to Buddy the Wonder Dog, who is a restless bedmate. Like Turkish, who stretches out next to me like a hot, furry sack of traction sand, the Budster is a fan of body contact and spent the night glued to me like a decal, occasionally snuffling through his abbreviated snoot, rolling over or sighing.
Herself finally caved around 5:30 or so and got up to deal with the little tosser, and I tried to go to sleep. Miss Mia Sopaipilla slipped in through the open door, taking up residence under the bed; Herself corraled her, too, and clicked the door solidly shut so the Turk’ couldn’t join the party.
Long story short, I finally got up around 8:30 feeling like someone had unplugged about half my RAM and poured a beer onto my motherboard. I contributed some weak snark to Charles Pelkey’s LiveUpdateGuy, prepared a late breakfast and now I’m at Heuberger Subaru waiting for them to find something wrong with the rice grinder as I prepare for my triumphant return to Interbike.
There will not be any dogs in the bed in Vegas. Just sayin’.
After what seemed an eternity of hot, damp weather the furnace clicked on this morning.
“It’s not even Labor Day yet. Am I gonna have to start wearing pants already?” I thought as I pushed pixels for investment capitalists who think “velo” is the French for “EBITDA.”
Nope. I closed a couple windows and surrendered to the urge for socks, but the pants remain in the closet for now. Real Coloradans don’t pull on their trousers until the snow flies, and sometimes not even then.
The heat was on during today’s Vuelta stage, too. It always is when the peloton tackles the Angliru. Bradley Wiggins collapsed like a cheap clincher full of goatheads and Juanjo Cobo peeled the red shirt right off his back with a performance that some skeptical types quickly dubbed extraterrestrial.
Who knows? As many dipshit fools as there were lining the climb today, Cobo could have been getting Madison slings that entire last 5km. At least two motos went down in the melee, including the camera bike watching the GC group, and Eurosport’s house Limey was peeing his pants trying to get word of Wiggo’s whereabouts as Cobalt blew up the Vuelta.
Meanwhile, Boom-boom Boonen hit the deck again and broke his left hand, which probably means there will be one less Belgian at the worlds in Copenhagen. Dude must think some ex-girlfriend put the mojo on his ass. He’s spent more time on the tarmac lately than the entire Euskaltel-Euskadi team, guys who are spastics without peer on anything other than a solo flyer up a 28-percent grade.
I bet Boom-boom could fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking his thumb. Only way he’s gonna see a rainbow anytime soon is if Monaco hosts a gay-pride parade.
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