Jon checks in from Interbike and gives his tips on winning free swag:
Most trade shows give away all kinds of things to grab your attention and to win you over to their brand. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Interbike is no different.
Jon ready to win some Swag.
There is an amazing phenomenon that occurs when you throw someone a free shirt in a crowd of people. Friends become enemies and strangers become intense competitors. People will push, shove and trample over whomever necessary just to get their hands on a simple shirt. The most amusing spectacle of all, though, is that once you fight off everyone to get the shirt and finally realize what it is and what size it is, you can’t beg anyone to take it from you. After all, it isn’t the shirt that people are after, but the battle. And everyone loves to be the winner.
When it comes to winning swag, the one thing I have learned is that you always have to stay positive. My grandma has been telling me for years that the most important thing I can have in life is a positive attitude. When I was young, discussions on positive thinking were about as much fun as eating some of her whole wheat pancakes. She always told me to be grateful for the things that I didn’t yet have but was soon to receive. I thought nothing of what she had said and just went about my life as normal.
Then a year ago, a friend won a sweet GoPro HD helmet camera at Interbike. My initial feeling was jealousy. For some reason, my grandma’s words came into my head and I thought, “I can’t be jealous of him but be happy for him.” So I put on a positive attitude and went to the show the next day grateful that I would be walking away with a free helmet cam for myself.
My group wanted to head out at about 2:45 to make the trip back to Salt Lake, and they would be giving out cameras at 3:00. I knew that I was winning a camera and had to stay till 3:00, so I delayed as long as I could. When the guy got up to give out a free camera, he looked at me and I told him in my head, “You want to give this guy (me), a camera.” After a while, guess who walked away with a free camera?
This year at the show, Kyle got pretty jealous after I told him about a rack that I had won from Yakima. I told him that getting jealous would get him nowhere, and that he needed to use positive thinking. Guess who walked away this year with a free camera from GoPro? Now it doesn’t always work, but after a few raffles, contests and more than a thousand dollars worth of free swag in 13 months, I think that positive thinking has been going pretty well. So thanks, Grandma, for the important lesson, but I am still not going to eat your pancakes.
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, New products, News | Tags: Interbike, Interbike 2010
The day started off with a less-than-satisfying Las Vegas breakfast buffet. But besides one guy almost losing said buffet later in the day, we didn’t let the bad food keep us down. There is always plenty (maybe too much?) of cool stuff to see at the nation’s biggest bike trade show. Here are few of the highlights for us. Look for them in the not-too-distant future on the mothership (that’s bikewagon.com, in case you’re wondering):
Ritchey’s got some sweet new red and silver handlebars coming out:
Crank Brothers continues to expand their beautiful lineup with their latest addition, carbon stems:
Ergon’s coming out with some cool platform pedals, as well as gloves to match their grips:
And Fizik is releasing some custom heat-molded shoes. Unfortunately, their 1st-year production will be very limited, but they look awesome, so you have something to look forward to.
The buzzword at Interbike 2010 is “urban,” and the bike fashion show certainly reflected that movement:
At the end of the day, we stumbled upon the air guitar competition Yakima was holding. Jon, Nathan and Paul all jumped in to try and impress the crowd. They rocked it, if we do say so ourselves. Check out the vid:
Unfortunately, another conetstant had a few more compadres in the crowd, so his cheers were a little bit louder. But Yakima still hooked us up with some sweet consolations.
For more updates, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. And check out our Flickr pics, too.
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, Touring | Tags: adventures, touring, touring Europe
More from Dave, road trippin’ in Europe:
So, we’ve been following the Danube. If you’re thinking you know where that is, but are like me and really don’t, check the map. We’ve ridden through valleys, plains and cities. I’ve seen more in the last three weeks than possibly the twenty-five years before it.
I used to live on my bike. I used to know how to get across town using only the bike trails. You know, the ones that run through vacant lots, past crazy dogs and behind fences. The trails the kids use. My bike was my car. But then the car came and I didn’t have time anymore. On this trip there has been a reconnection with my bike. How can you not feel connected spending so much time with something? Actually, I think the reconnection came when I couldn’t get the clip of my shoe to fit in my pedal and jammed the pedal into my shin. I don’t think you ever forget that kind of pain. To put it in the common tongue, this trip has been rad.
The People's Palace in Bucharest
If you’re wondering about the title of this post, I’m referring to the book by Herman Hesse. In it, Sidhartha finds peace in the river. I think the Danube has done similar things for me. Read that book, it’s a treasure.
We rode around Budapest for a day. This place is a close second to Vienna. Oh, sweet Vienna. We grabbed some of the local goulash right next to the parliament building. Another amazing moment of food on this trip. Really, anything that isn’t cold bread with some kind cheese and a slab of salami is amazing now. Sadly, Jon and Melissa had to jet early, so it’s just the Majors crew and me. Kimball is still eating my gummy bears.
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, Touring | Tags: adventures, touring, touring Europe
Dale and Kimball takin' a break in Slovakia
More from Dave in Europe:
I’ve learned out here on the trail that I don’t know a lot about a lot. It’s been hard but rewarding. The crew I’m with is filled with sharp tools. We rode into Bratislava, Slovakia. The buildings were grey and efficient. It was cloudy, which seemed fitting. The people seemed guarded and reserved. At the local super market we got our usual regiment of yogurt, bread, cheese, salami. I got some gummy bears. Kimball, the one-and-a-half year old who’s leading the trip, likes to share them. It took me a second to warm up to that plan. Those gummy bears are gold out here on the trail.
Slovakia street
We made our way through town. A lot of tourists were there. We took a trip to the train station (the next step in our trip is the train down to Budapest), but it ended up that they had sold out of bike spots. That’s where the day’s fun started. We figured out that we could ride 25 kilometers to another town to catch a train. The problem was that we only had an hour and a half to do it. This was possible, but we had to push it. We were all sweating. Moving that packed bike is nothing easy. What I noticed was that the path was straight. We figured it was a retired railway line. Maybe it was the communism that had been here, but people here are 20 years behind, because I had never seen so many rollerbladers.
We rode our bikes into Vienna. We were staying just outside at a camping spot. The bike paths were smooth and planned out. Vienna has beautiful streets and friendly people. We got chicken schnitzel for dinner. I hadn’t ever had chicken schnitzel.
Michaelerplatz
Right as the sun was going down we rode past the national library and into a place called Michaelerplatz. Michaelerplatz was alive. People were gathered around a cellist playing some standards in the middle. We gathered the stripped bikes together and I watched them as the rest of the crew went to see the inside of a cathedral. I had some time to reflect.
Life seems to come at us like a bike tour does. Hear me out. Here on the tour you’ve only got a few things in your control. You’ve got a jacket and tent for the rain. You’ve got some extra tubes for flats. You’ve got a couple of friends for security. The rest is just in your attitude. Some people never have rain, never have flats, never need friends, but their attitudes are trash, so being prepared with the rest doesn’t matter. In life it seems we have almost the same number of options: a house for the rain, some insurance for the flats, some friends for security. But even with all of it, if our attitude is trash, the other stuff doesn’t matter so much.
I walked the streets leading to the plaza. People were smiling. Louie Vuitton was selling some clothes along with Mr. Gucci and Hilfiger. I was wearing a shirt that smelled like too much Old Spice and jeans. We rode to Slovakia the next morning.
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, Touring | Tags: adventures, touring, touring Europe
Brittany, Dale and their little dude Kimball chillin' in the trailer
Dave checks in again from Europe:
The crew pulled into Vienna this morning and finally gave the tent a chance to air out and get some laundry done. The weather has been perfect. Everyone has been in good spirits. John made a blend of spitzel and onions for lunch. It was good. We ate it with bread. We had a guest with us for this meal: Stellen Johannson, a nomad biker.
Stellen is tall and thick. He has blond hair and blue eyes. Really, he looked a lot like what you’d imagine Thor would look like. He said he’s done about 57,000 kilometers on the bike he is currently riding, a Kona Lava Dome. It has a crack in it. We invited him for lunch. He said that he’s seen the world on his bike: Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. He only uses $2,500 a year to live. Something in the way he talked with me gave me hope like the plums had. We asked him if he’d ever been scared, spending nearly four years alone. He said he’d only been scared in Ethiopia. He’d had rocks thrown at him, one hitting him in the head. He was off the road for 5 weeks. His tone showed the love he has for being out here. He’d lost 80 pounds while in Africa, ’cause there wasn’t enough to eat.
“You can live off of tea and peanuts, but it’s not enough,” he said. I looked down at my spitzel mess. I looked at the roll in my hand. I looked at the empty juice container. I thought about how I was still hungry.
I asked him, now that he had been around the world, what he thought of it. “I think there are a lot more good people in it than bad. The news in Sweden makes you think that there are only bad people, but it’s just not true.”
Like I said, he gave me hope like the plums had.
Stellen has a website. It’s amazing, so give it a gander: www.sandstorm.se (It’s in Swedish, with some cool pictures.)
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, Tips for new riders, Touring | Tags: fixing tires, flats, touring
Here’s another update from Dave in Europe:
We haven’t gotten too many flats out here, amazingly, but today we got a little one. I was sitting on a bench next to Dale as he patched it. He says to me, “The key to fixing a flat is overkill.” Alright, noted. But out on the trail I got to thinking, why don’t I overkill more? I mean, when was the last time I overkilled talking to my mom on the phone, or overkilled on giving change to a bum, overkilled a workout or overkilled at work? If you’re critical, you’re probably thinking, “Well, obviously it’s because of the human’s desire to be lazy.” That does seem to be the case, but I don’t think we have to give up because we usually act a certain way. I think from this trip I’ve learned that when it comes to overkills I need to overkill.
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, Touring | Tags: bike touring, touring Europe
Here is an update from Europe by Dave:
When it comes to cycling, I guess I’d consider myself a novice. I still call a seat a seat, ya know, when everybody else is calling it a saddle. The point is, this post is going to have nothing to do with bikes or biking but more to do with what happened while on a bike.
Imagine for yourself, my body. It’s not a cut body, but not a fat one. I go to the gym but don’t live there. I just came on this bike tour because I hadn’t done something like this before.
A view from the road
Now, imagine for yourself riding 80 kilometers in the wind, in the rain, in a place you haven’t seen before, with people you hardly know. I think we had just moseyed through a town called, hmmmm, what was that called? Oh right, Melk. Melk, Austria. It was pretty and quiet. Someone had yelled, “Get out of the road!” just as a tractor had come racing through. We were supposed to be looking for a campground, but when we got there, the campground was gone. So we headed to the next spot, Aggbach, just 5 kilometers over a little mountain pass. But I had had it. After 80 kilometers with the wind in my face, I needed a coke and some Haribo gummy bears or it was nothing. I rode slow and noticed some mashed up plums on the ground.
Maybe I was looking for an excuse to not have to go up that hill, but the next thing I knew, I was reaching up into the branches looking for a fresh one. I ate and ate and ten minutes later felt like 80 kilometers weren’t stacked on my legs anymore. I flew up the pass. I caught up with the crew and, though we didn’t find a campsite till 30 kilometers after Aggbach, decided I want a plum tree in my yard someday.
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, Touring | Tags: bike touring germany, bikewagon.com, touring
After an all-nighter building bikes, a 3 a.m. visit to a burrito shop and a 24-hour big box store for bolts, we packed our bikes and belongings into the two cardboard boxes each of us was allotted. The Bikewagon crew was now ready to jet set to Germany.
Fast forward 10 hours….
We spent some quality time at the Munich airport putting our bikes together and our belongings into panniers. After asking around we found out the only way to Munich was by Auto Bahn or train. Since we weren’t in any vehicle built for the Auto Bahn, we caught the S-Bahn, or subway, to the outskirts of Munich to begin our journey to Friedrichshafen via the bike path we had been informed about. To our surprise, the bike path was right outside our metro stop, no navigation needed to get us going in the right direction.
Dave and Melissa in the dark forest
We made our way through the hills, grove, farm land, and into the suburbs of Munich where we stopped for doner kebab, something Germany is known for. The architecture, rivers, and foliage were the best scenery we could have asked to ride through.
After riding for an hour and a half in the dark, through a Forrest that we suspected Hansel and Gretel took place in, we pitched our tents and prepared for the torrential down pour that took place only hours later.
We thought it was 9 a.m. The sun didn’t look too high in the sky, and it was still pretty cold. After riding into town we discovered it was actually 11. The Hansel and Gretel forest was so thick, it blocked out the sun for the first half of the day.
Although it was cold and raining, everyone was in good spirits — laughing, joking and letting out a howl of joy at every downhill we had.
And then the flats began….
Jon fixes a flat
A few kilometers outside Wolfratshausen we experienced the first flat of the day. It was a pretty bad flat so we are stopped for 20 minutes. As we mounted our bikes to make our way into Wolfratshausen there was another flat on someone else’s bike, no less than 15 feet from where we stopped for the first flat! We were all cold, very wet, and hadn’t covered enough distance to even pretend like we had made a dent in our journey.
It was determined that we had to stop in Wolfrstshausen to find a bike shop to pick up a few sundry items. As we entered Wolfratshausen we saw a sign for a bike shop 200 meters from where we were. When we got to the shop we discovered it was a house with a sign on the front gate that gave the hours of operation for the shop. We waved the German man out of his garage and explained our situation. He invited us into his shop and got us exactly what we needed. He asked where we were riding and we told him Friedrichshafen for Eurobike. He told us he was headed there the next day as well, but he would be driving with his camper.
After our visit to the bike shop we determined, due to the lateness in the day and the riding conditions, we needed to stay in the night in Wolfratshausen. After finding a hotel for the night, we watched copious amounts of German MTV and slept while the nice German innkeeper dried all of our wet clothes for us.
We took the train to Friedrichshafen the next day.
Filed under: Bikewagon Trips, Touring | Tags: bikewagon, Eurobike, Lapierre, Lapierre Passport, touring
Bikewagon is a company of people dedicated to bikes in one form or another. We have our roadies, mooseknucklers, commuters, fixie lovers and bike tour bums.
What unites us is our love for adventure on the bicycle. We have decided to test that love at Eurobike this September. Going to a bike trade show doesn’t make any sense if you aren’t going to ride a bike while you are there. So we are going the extra mile, literally, and biking through Germany to get there, then biking wherever the wind takes us for two weeks after that.
Armed with an arsenal of Lapierre Passport bikes, panniers, a couple of euros and some lycra, we intend on free wheeling our way across (part of) Europe. Follow us as we take the plunge into the gray and navigate our way through the biggest bike expo in the world and the beautiful scenery of Europe.
You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter or check back here every other day for new photos, essays and vlogs about where we are and what we are doing.
A note on our bikes….
If you have a basic knowledge about bikes and are wondering why we are touring on a bike that boasts its foldability and full suspension, don’t think we are crazy. We have methods to our madness.
When packed into two standard size wheel boxes, the Lapierre Passport frame and wheels are well below airline standards for luggage size. This means no extra fees and lots of room to cram our panniers.
Because the passport is full suspension, we switched out the Fox suspension fork it comes with for a standard 26-inch fork that would allow us to attach a front rack. We tightened down the rear suspension, switched out our knobby tires for slicks, attached some racks, and called it good. We now have ourselves five sweet touring machines that are ready to make their way across the bike paths and city streets of Europe.
