Finally I’m having a cup of tea, my first since arriving in Germany, terrible; it’ll be my last here too since I’m about to fly to London for Norco’s ‘09 launch with their new UK distributor. The tea should flow more freely over there!

The Eurobike show is huge, to give you an idea, the number of trade visitors was 36,800; their were 1430 journalists; and 18,000 consumers. Whew! It will only grow as well, the convention space is expanding next year because 300 exhibitors were turned down for booth space this year. So this is a total of 56,230, and to put it in to perspective, the InterBike trade show in Las Vegas has 23,000 visitors. I guess I’m partial to this show because I’m not a fan of Las Vegas; I have to admit thought that InterBike puts on a killer dirt demo demo day, which actually isn’t in Vegas, but in the delightful suburb, Boulder City.

One of the growing markets in the bike biz is the electric bike, check out my upcoming video blog for some clips; yah I’m a nerd on this kind of stuff, but if it’s going to be a positive for the environment, then you can bet I’ll be preaching it. A large part of the population won’t consider commuting or even recreational biking for fitness reasons(too many hills, to far to go, etc.), but with the electric bike, it’ll give them the head start they need while still improving their fitness, especially with the new pedal assist standard.

Norco had a great presence at the show, their best yet. With 56 bikes on display, they’re  striving to make their brand name commonplace. In Germany for instance, they’re ranked fifth for bike brand recognition in the mountain bike sector. I gave a quick highlight video on the ‘09 line at this popular German website.

My standard job at these shows is to shake hands, sign posters, and be a face for the media, such as the video mentioned above. This year my posters were lost in the shuffle, but fortunately Norco had the file on their server, so we downloaded the file and had new ones printed up. I blasted through a couple hundred, and had to get another 50 photo-copied at the show the last day, with still a few riders leaving empty handed. My conscience won’t be happy if I don’t admit something though…for those that received posters, they aren’t printed on recycled paper like it states on the poster, sorry!!

Talking about recycling, man, trade-shows are “burning the planet” as Chris H. from Norco would say. I won’t get in to the details, but it sure is a dirty business.  Check out my upcoming video blog, I’ll be highlighting some green products from the show. Cheers folks….      

My Blog has been fully restored, the server was corrupted, then fixed, and now my blog is fully up to date and back in full. Phew!

The third day of the EuroBike Trade Show is underway, with one more tomorrow, which will be open to consumers. 

I am staying in a small town called Tettnang, Germany, which is a few miles from the tradeshow venue in Friedrichshafen, home of the first Blimp.

I have stayed fairly active in the mornings, with either a run or some yoga. Today I went out with three others for a longer run through Tettnang, and soaked in the beautiful farmlands which are full of hops, apples, and berries. With the huge hops industry, it’s no wonder the local beer, Tettnang, is so tasty. We past a farmers market on the way back to the hotel, so I managed to pick up some fresh berries and carrots for the tradeshow booth today; it’s a good thing because at restraunts around here it’s hard to find anything on the menu that’s not meat, cheese, or bread! Staying any length of time here would be a vegetarians nightmare.

On the meat note, you may know that most mountain bike parties are known as sausage fests (I won’t elaborate). So it was pretty ironic that the party Norco held at their booth yesterday after the show was literally a sausage fest, with some pretzels and beer on the side, funny.

I am increasingly observant of things like solar panels, and Germany is littered with them. Perhaps it just takes a few people to instal them, talk to their friends about how awesome they are, and all of a sudden it spreads like wild fire. This along with the fact that bikes and bike lanes are everywhere, farmers markets everywhere, and a healthy lifestyle in general, it makes me ever more sad about progress in BC, and Canada. Their government has been fairly fast to introduce environmental regulations, thanks to the competent Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. Mrs. Palin on the other hand still believes that climate change can’t be attributed to humans, yikes!!! Wake up America! Vote Obama!! Sorry, I digress…

One other odd ball note, I’ve installed a Friendfeed column on the right hand side of my blog page, this is a great way to share highlights from my web surfing habits, with articles, websites, and videos. The latest name for this style of blogging info is “lifestreaming” or “(hyper)streaming”, a name that one of my favorite bloggers, C4Chaos coined.

Just hanging out at the airport lounge at YVR, my friend Chris, from Norco is an Elite member, so he got me in for free snacks and wireless, nice! We’re about to fly to Germany for the EuroBike trade show.

Sitting on a plane for 9 hours is always a bit hard on the body, so the day of a flight I always try to sneak in a yoga session, which I found time for this morning. It seems to get the blood and energy flowing through the body and limber it up just enough to make it through a long flight.

While I’m trying to snooze on the stuffy flight, Caryn will be in Seattle soaking up Xavier Rudd’s sweet sound from the Bumbershoot festival. Gotta admit, I’m a little jealous. Germany will be beautiful though, we’re staying in a town called Friedrichshafen which is at the extreme south end of Germany beside Lake Constance, with the Swiss Alps in view. 

Well, gotta go board now…I’ll be back soon with updates on the latest bike news from the trade show.