My Interbike wish list:

2.5 WTB Dissent 29er tire:

Fifteen G Crankset:

New Hope V2 brakeset:

Light and Motion Seca 700 and Stella 200L

My favorite things from the show (in no particular order):

Big Dumb Pug (custom built Big Dummy with Pugsley wheels):

Belt Drive with Rolhoff hub:

Spooky Bikes Prototype DH bike:

Metrigear Vector Power meter:

Lenzsport PBJ 7” travel DH 29er:

Sub 26lbs carbon Comencal:

Carbon Ellsworth Enlightenment 29er:

Calfee Bamboo Bike:

BMC Team Machine:

Intense Tracer 29er:

Well it’s Sunday, I got a nice long road bike ride in Saturday and some time in the dirt today.  It was a welcome break to the hectic schedule that was kept over the three day Interbike trip and sure beat all the walking around Vegas.  On my rides I had some time to reflect on what I saw and to really appreciate Hammerhead Bicycles for asking me to tag along.

I suppose I should recap day three since I didn’t get a chance to do that Friday.  For the most part it was relatively uneventful as I was pretty exhausted from sheer sensory overload of all new goodies that I wanted when I got home.

As I wondered around with no agenda, I stumbled upon the White Industries booth.  If I were to ever build up a single speed I would certainly want to rock these cranks on it.  They were just so good looking.  I particularly liked their double double crankset rear cog combo that would allow you to run two different gear ratios.

Goodies from the White Industries booth:

Next up was something pretty sweet, a belt driven Ventana.  This was at the Gates Carbon Drive booth.  The Ventana lured me in but it was the belt drive / Rolhoff combo that really impressed me.  I’m not sure when it’s due out but talk about a super clean set up.

Belt drive Ventana:

Belt drive Rolhoff:

As we were starting to run out of time, we made our way over to the Hope booth.  If you haven’t tried Hope brakes consider yourself lucky as you’re likely saving quite a bit of cash.  However, once you do you’ll be trying to figure out how you’re going to afford them.  They’re that good.  They had some new redesigned levers and a new lightweight race brake set that was going to be coming out soon.  What was cool with the new brakeset was that if you ran the new Hope hubs you could use the three bolt rotors to save some weight.

New offerings from Hope:

Close up of new rotor:

So that wraps up day three of my first trip to Interbike.  Once again I’d like to thank Cody and Justin at Hammerhead Bicycles for inviting me to go.

Day two is done, in the bag.  My already sore feet are really sore, so much so I almost considered picking up a set of the Skins Recovery tights to sleep in.  It certainly seemed that things slowed down a little after my lunch courtesy of Clif Bar but I was able to check out a few things.

First up is a really sweet set of cranks from The Hive.  They are a relatively new company that also sell the Chubb Hub and the Fifteen G cranks:

Fifteen G crankset:

Fifteen G single speed crankset:

The Chubb Hub:

This thing was pretty cool, I can see it making a really stiff rear wheel for a 29er.  It’s got 3 pawls with two engagement points each.  60 engagement points total and 6 degrees of engagement. It had a carbon fiber body and had replaceable caps for either9,15, or20mm axles.

I managed to make it back over to the Salsa bar to check out some of their new handlebar options.  They have the new Whammy bar which comes in at 30.5” wide with an 11 degree sweep.  They also had a pretty sweet drop bar setup too that would be great for a touring ride.

The Whammy bar:

Their drop bar:

This may look like a Speedplay pedal but I’ve actually had quite a few folks ask about this.  It’s a new power meter called the Vector by the folks at Metrigear.  It measures power at the cranks literally.  Once installed on both the left and right cranks it auto calibrates and they said that there should be little to no impact in measurement should there be any pedal strikes.  Each side can be measured independently and the data can support the amount of power and the direction of power for each pedal.  It will even measure productive power and wasted power so you’ll know if you’re pedaling in circles or not.  Right now it is fully ANT compliant and they are working with other manufacturers to develop better metrics that can combine the left/right data.  The sensor is permanently mounted in the spindle but does not impact any servicing of the pedal and they mentioned that it only comes in at 50g per pedal.

The Metrigear Vector:

By the time I finished up talking to the folks at Metrigear, it was time to head over for the free beer and raffle at the SRAM booth.  I know there have been lots of jokes about it but the beer they were serving was, you guessed it, Dos Equis.  While I didn’t win the XX equiped mountain bike, I did get two beers.

I met back up with the rest of the crew over at the WTB booth where Cody and Justin were checking out the new tires that I had posted earlier.  On our way out of the booth I mentioned to them that I had been handed the dealer price list for all the WTB tires and realized that Cody won’t be feeding his family anytime soon with the profits from tire sales.  I was really impressed that we all get such a great deal on tires from Hammerhead.

After dinner we headed over to watch the USA Crit Finals.  Those guys are just silly fast.  Standing near one of the corners, I was afraid to stick my head out for fear of getting clipped!  We all had had a pretty long day so we made our way back to the hotel via cab.  I heard that Justin, Cody, Rob, and Sergio had a pretty wild cab driver but Darren, Kelly, and myself had hopped in the car with the Park Tool guy who paid our fare.

Start of the crit:

So that brings to conclusion day two of Interbike and now I leave you with a photo of Justin protecting his junk with none other than Dave Zabrinski: