Hell yes, I made it to Interbike. I get to go to the world’s biggest bike shop and wander around for days… literally days. Frankly the prospect of looking at bike shit until i’m sick is awesome. As far as I’m concerned, Interbike might as well be AdultCon. So bring on the bike titties.

There’s just something surreal about maneuvering Giant’s new super high tech TT bike through a throng of people in a gravel lot. But I guess that’s just all part of the charm.

The indoor, wander-around-all-day part of Interbike starts tomorrow.
But today I went to the Outdoor Demo and got sunburned, wind-beaten, dehydrated and got my first glimpse into the real cycling industry. From what I could tell, bike industry pros–shop owners,
distributers, manufactures, reps, bloggers, inventors, investors, etc,
etc.–mirror cyclists in general, but then somehow magnified in
personality. The pros you see shmoozing are somehow impossibly fit and tan-lined. The overweight bike shop owners lazily test the latest e- bike, wondering what other overweight cyclists they can sell motors to. The engineers fret nervously and avoid eye-contact while
describing the improvements they’ve made to their latest seatpost.
There’s the eccentric, off-the-reservation inventor type with some
totally impractical bastardization of a bicycle he’s convinced will be
the next great fitness craze. And of course there’s the becoming-
ubiquitous urban/fixie/hipster guys, all skinny jeans and tats and
scraggly Portland facial hair, slinking around looking for rims that
will match their Converse. Throw all these folks into a dirt hole with
10 million dollars worth of bike shit, no water and lots of beer, and
you’ve got the Outdoor Demo.

(An Asian contingent in business suits walking toward the 100 degree dustbowl.)

Tonight we went to a party for bloggers and I won a sweet Lazer
helmet. I’m hoping to keep the winning streak alive tomorrow night at
Cross Vegas.

If you don’t have anything better to do, you can follow my posts on
Twitter @ritteracing, where I’ll be uploading pics throughout the day.

Party,
Lanolin.