Test Location: Las Vegas Strip; Hotel that looks like a castle; Boulder City, Nevada; Various casinos that we can’t find our way out of; Mandalay Bay Convention Center; Cinnabon Restaurant.
Size: 18,000-24,000 attendees
Overview:
- 75% People who should be riding with training wheels
- 19% Industry people looking for free beer
- 6% Random people who wandered in off the Las Vegas Strip
Wheels: Anything but 26”
Mileage: 6,408,264 steps
Test Duration: Who knows? There are no clocks or windows here
Blister’s Measured Wait: 18.9 minutes per free beer
Reviewers:
Noah Bodman: 5’9”, 155 lbs, aggressive rider, likes gummy bears, Tecate, and long walks on the Strip.
Cy Whitling: 6’1” 180 lbs, aggressive crasher, likes gummy worms, free Clif bars, and long walks through casinos.
There are pros and cons to attending Interbike:
Day 1: Outdoor Demo
Blister bike editor Noah Bodman and I kicked off Day 1 by getting lost on our way to the Outdoor Demo. The town I currently live in (Driggs, ID) has one stoplight, total. Vegas is a little different.
After being lost for a while, we finally made it to Bootleg Canyon for the Demo. Noah wisely stopped at the grocery store, and we loaded up on Gatorade, donuts, and fruit snacks. This will make up much of our diet for the next week.
Once at the demo, things went more smoothly. We rode a number of nice bikes, and you can find reviews of some of them here and here.
Unfortunately the trails of Bootleg Canyon very quickly became congested with hoards of … let’s call them “balance challenged” individuals. Fat bikes, E-bikes, Plus Sized bikes, regular old carbon fiber wonder bikes, you name—if it had two wheels and a stem, you could find someone embarrassing themselves on it.
The hordes of people, (including many who were clearly very uncomfortable riding rocky, sandy trails), led to a lot of crashes, frustration, and creative passing, all of which combined to make for a great testing ground for our reviews—you’ve never really pushed a bike to its limits until you’ve tried to avoid a confused couple on electric fat bikes coming up the downhill trail, without helmets, or any level of control.
Luckily, we survived the day without serious injury to ourselves or the bikes.
Night 1: Las Vegas Strip
Tacos, amoeba-shaped pool, wrong turns, review writing, photo editing, snoring.
NEXT: Day 2, Night 2, Etc.
Fun article, as all bike-related stuff should be.
“I also hucked my body to flat a few times…”
Perhaps the best line ever in a bike (sort of) review.
We need weight, geometry, and most especially, chainstay and stem length on the tandem!
And bar width. How could I forget bar width?!
Class writing and class bottom-out skills. The ski reviews need more of this irreverence toward gapers.