vegas still sucks...

As you may know, Dear Reader, my job allows me to dip my toes into the grungy edges of the bicycle industry without actually getting wet. This is advantageous in some ways - I get to go to interbike; but sucks in others - I have to work (almost) the whole time at interbike. Either way, it's fun to be around bikes.



Last Sunday I headed out to the City of Sin to pay penance for my shitty performance at Charm City Cross. I hate Las Vegas. Yes, you can have fun, but for the most part I see Vegas as a gigantic scam designed to make idiots feel like they are getting something for their money. That being said, it is fun to act like a big man-child in the streets with little fear of reprimand from the man after one gets out of work. This was my intention.

So in the spirit of Venn Diagrams, here are the goods and the bads from my interbike 2008 experience:

bad: 5 days of trade show work (14 hours of being "ON" and smiling and standing and schlepping and wanting to punch every asshat looking to score free shit from your booth)
good: getting a chance to sneak out and try to score free shit

bad: the dust at outdoor demo
good: getting a chance to ride for 2 hours at outdoor demo and borrowing a Spot Brand 29er singlespeed belt drive bike

bad: breaking the belt on a Spot Brand 29er singlespeed belt drive bike while climbing a steep hill and tearing your jersey as you crash due to belt breakage and feeling like an asshole for ever trusting Spot Brand again (no they did NOT have a good explanation for failure)
good: getting a free Dale's Pale Ale after crashing and hiding it in a coozie to drink while you work

bad: working hungover
good: drinking miller high life and offering dollar bill preems at cross vegas with Nathan

good: having my own big comfy bed at the end of the day
bad: having a drunk sleepwalker nicknamed "Mancandy" climbing into my bed at 4 am

good: getting George Hincapie's scrawl on my new copy of Paris-Roubaix: A Journey Through Hell and hearing first hand the story behind the picture
bad: George Hincapie not answering Mark Cavendish's phone call so he could keep chatting with me, seriously, what a dick.

good: Running into Brent from TwinSix who generally rocks and gave me his Miller High Life wrist band.
bad: Seriously, Brent is cool shit and TwinSix makes some really nice stuff.

I can't say for sure if I'm looking forward to interbike next year. Hopefully, my product survives another year and I have the choice. Realistically, I'm sure I'll be somewhere in the middle on whether or not another trip is a good thing.

Picture from PezCyclingNews.com

a little R & R & R...

Red Rock Rendezvous is an annual gathering of dirtbags in the eastern reaches of the Mojave desert. Some good friends, now living in the West, convinced me to join them in an attempt to shed the soggy ups and downs common to Mid-Atlantic spring weather. The weather was interesting, but we'll get to that.

Silas and John TP.

Like a rock star, I decided to do this over a long weekend - using only a day of vacation. Fly out Thursday night after work, taking the red-eye home Sunday night in time for work on Monday. Unlike a rock star, I slept in a tent that would eventually be blown over in a strange 70 mile per hour wind gust.

Awkward.

To sum it up, we climbed on some sandstone, climbed on some limestone. We led, followed, and top-roped. We hit the Ultraman Wall, the Rescue Wall, the Black Corridor, and some other crap. We drank some beers. I made some loud, drunken disparaging remarks about what activities I would do if given the choice between solving world hunger and doing said activities. We learned from some PROs. We climbed a little sandstone/limestone laminate. We laughed. We drank some beers.

JF playing rope gun on the hard stuff.

The weather was great. Sunny and 70 during the days. At night the mountains would cool and wind would rip out of the canyon over the campground. Between that and the burros braying, sleep was in interesting proposition. It started raining Sunday afternoon, so we had to bail on the climbing and we headed to the Vegas strip.

Desert weather is more fickle than a 7th grade girlfriend.

Heh... lion balls.

And I ran into my dad on the way home.

[open curtains, Monday morning, Just getting off the red-eye with 3 hours of sleep, I'm walking down the ramp from the plane to the airport gate. I turn on my phone. As I go to put it in my pocket it rings.]

ME: Hello?

CALLER: Hi Robert it's Dad.

ME: Hey Pop.

POP: I'm sitting here in the Philadelphia airport and thought I'd call to say hi. I always think of you when I come through here - I know you're in and out of here like food in a bulimic's gut.

ME [look of surprise and amusement on face.]: What gate are you at?

POP: I'm in the Philly airport...

ME: I know. At which gate are you located?

POP: A5, why?

ME: I'm at C24. I'll meet you at Terminal B.

POP: What?

ME: Just walk to Terminal B, wait at the Dunkin' Donuts stand.

[End Scene]

Family resemblance.

Turns out the old man had a layover on his way to OK City. We had about 5 minutes to catch up, laugh, hug, and head on our merry ways. The world is a small place indeed.

PHOTOS HERE.

move interbike to colorado!

We're rolling down the Philly runway last Sunday night. An hour late, but that's Philly right? I'm listening to some tunes on the iPod. Yeah turn the electronics off... righhht.

The pilot throttles up and I start to press back into my seat. My post race body is happy, my eyelids are heavy, the music is just right. This is so routine now. Get on plane, fall asleep, wake up somewhere new.

Halfway down the runway, my eyes are wide open, my knuckles are white, and Broken Social Scene is drowned out by the sound of screeching tires. The whole plane is shuddering to a halt from 100 miles per hour.

Five minutes pass. No one on the plane is even breathing. The pilot comes on in his practiced voice: "Well folks, we lost engine 2 there, and I thought it would be better to stop the plane on the ground than mid-air." I swear the metal of the plane itself sighed a breath of relief.

24 hours later, and countless minutes of bad customer service, and a stay at the hotel airport, and 8 hours of sitting in an airport chair, I hit the skies, albeit a little less relaxed, for Vegas. Yeah, I missed the Outdoor Demo. Yeah, I gave up 1.5 weekend days. Yeah, I hate Vegas. Yeah, I missed home, and I missed cross practice. But the good trips I get more than make up for the shitty trips.

The good:

I got a sweet backpack from Crumpler! Those guys are super cool, their product rocks, their booth was awesome.
I ate a lot of food!
Our product launch was pretty successful!
My picture was on cyclingnews.com!
I got upgraded to first class flying back from Vegas.
I got a round trip ticket out of US Airways for my troubles.

Tomorrow I will race Lilypons cross with mystery legs. We'll see.