On the floor @ InterBike 2006
by Rob Blue on September 29th, 2006
The big show. Just walking from the parking structure to the Sand’s convention center is an adventure. If you don’t know where you’re going you could wander around for hours. I guess that’s what the casino designers want you to do.
First stop, Evomo’s booth of course! Mikel and I are not only here to say hello to our sponsors, we are also going to help Bryan thoughout the day. The booth turned out really cool. A 12 foot high custom welded rig showing off all of the latest designs.
Right next door to Evomo we found our friends at Stan’s NoTubes. I personally have been using Stan’s sealant for 3 years without a single flat during a race. I also recently got a set of Stan’s ZTR Olympic 347 Wheels. These wheels are fantastic. Super light, very durable and mine are especially cool looking with the silver rims and black hubs and spokes. Stan and Mike were filling us in on all their latest offerings and surprised me with some new thinking on tire pressures. I told Mike and Stan that I was running 28 PSI front and rear and they said it was too much! Stan suggested I try running 20 in the front and 23 in the rear. Mikel and I are planning on riding Saturday so I will have to give it a try.
Since we were on a roll so to speak we headed over to the Kenda Tires booth next. I was glad to run into fellow racer Jim Rolff who I used to race against here in the California State XC series. Jim now lives in Colorado where it actually snows! I have been running Kenda Karmas with the dual compound all year and love them. I might switch tires though because Mikel has been runnning the Small Block Eights and he’s faster so that must be his advantage 
Working our way up the bike I stopped by my favorite designers Crank Brothers. Lucky for me I stopped by at the same time as Mary McConneloug and Mike Broderick. I had a nice chat with Mike about, of all things, blogs. I love reading Mike’s race reports and told him he needs to step it up next year with more photos so the fans like me can see more of what it is like to race in the World Cups. Mary and Mike are about as nice as people get. It was great to see them. The Crank Brothers booth was full of jewelry like components including their new Cobalt cranks. I have used the Egg Beater pedals for years now and really couldn’t imagine a better setup in both form and function.
When the show was over our day was not yet done. Packing up gave us a chance to relax and reflect on the show. I believe that we all had a good time and felt that a lot of good things came from the experience. Unfortunately, it took forever to get out of the convention center and we pretty much gave up on doing any crazy Vegas stuff with Bryan driving straight back to Los Angeles and Mikel and I heading back to my friend Scott’s to prepare to do some riding in the morning at Bootleg Canyon.
