I find it easy to get in to journal and blog mode when sitting in an airport lounge. Whether writing about an upcoming trip, or reflecting after one gone by, an airport is the perfect spot.

My alarm went off at about 5:30 this morning; the idea was to give myself some extra time for traffic getting to the airport, and or getting lost. Neither of those happened, but when I returned the car, the guy said the bar code on the rental wouldn’t beep with his little remote check-out device, so he sent me inside to the Budget counter to get my receipt and check out manually. So I left the keys with the guy and made my way in to the building and to the registration counter. After waiting in line I was told that I rented from Thrifty not Budget!! So I ran all the way back with my luggage in hopes that they hadn’t driven it off to the car wash already…. fortunately it was still there, and I managed to find my way to the correct drop off area. Sheesh!

Two days of riding in the desert was a blast. The trails are so different in Bootleg Canyon. Not a tree in sight of course (makes it hard to find a pee spot), the air is hot, the sky is blue, and the dirt is bone bone dry - the complete opposite of Caryn’s compost dirt at home.

My role for Norco was to hang out at the booth, meet up with dealers and media, and go riding with them. Nice gig eh! I rode a couple short cross country loops, probably 20 minutes long each; but most of my riding was up the shuttle. They had two flat deck trucks hauling bikes and riders up the dirt access road. I always seem to think that the drive up is more dangerous than the ride down, and it certainly seemed like it on one ride up. After one of the two shuttle rigs broke down, the shuttle I was one (after waiting over an hour for it) stalled out half way up the steepest hill. So the driver did a sketchy back up job down the hill, and proceeded to try his restart a few times on the hill unsuccessfully, rolling backwards quickly each time. We eventually were backed down to the flat and managed to get going with enough oomff to make it up (helped that he didn’t up shift at the steepest point this time though).

I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face on all the rides down. The trails are so much fun! My favorite was a fairly simple trail called Girl Scout because it was full of beautiful berms, natural whoop de doos, and little boulders and features to goof around with and pump through the whole way down. The trail isn’t so steep that you have to brake the whole way, but you could coast down no prob without much effort, but if you want to have a lot of fun, then powering a few pedal strokes along the way makes it a roller coast ride, good times!

I’m packing up and getting set to fly to Nevada today, it’s InterBike time again. I’ve been doing this yearly trip for about a decade now. Fortunately I don’t have to expose myself to the radiation of Las Vegas for long since I’ll only be present for the dirt demo days, which takes place up in Boulder City, a cute town about 45 minutes SE of Vegas, and just a few minutes from Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam.

The Outdoor Dirt Demo portion of this trade show is showing some green signs, such as:

• Biodegradable concession ware
• Organic Food options
• Recycled bins located throughout Demo
• Carbon offset program for shuttles
• Recycled/recyclable Demo bags

Trade Shows in general are very waste abundant and energy intensive. I’m glad to see that the InterBike show is taking steps in the right direction with their “Green Steps” initiative.

The headline on the Green Steps page of the site reads as follows:

“The Interbike Expo is 100% wind powered and uses 25% recycled carpet. And we are just getting started.”

At first glance, I had the vision of electricity used to power the Sans Convention Center with windmills located down the valley from the trade show. A little more digging and you’ll see that they bought carbon offsets for the equivalent power used at the show from an offset company that invests in windmill plants - which is great! They’re moving in the right direction.

They’re also encouraging visitors and exhibitors to buy offsets for their travel, I’ll have to encourage Norco on this one again; personally, I’m still Playing it Cool.

Alright, better get to the airport….

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….