This article in Bike Europe about Interbike 2007 has some interesting tidbits about the show and the future of Interbike:

• Attendance: 22,515 unique badge-holders, of whom 11,054 were buyers. This is up from 21,682 and 10,378 respectively in 2006. 3,787 unique businesses (retailers) represented at the show, up from last year’s 3,239.

  

• Vegas sucks? On a possible change of location after 2008, the Interbike team will gather research and feedback in the coming months and put forward proposals to the industry at the Bicycle Leadership Conference in January.
• Public days: Officially a trade-only event, Interbike is clearly infiltrated every year by many enthusiasts, begging the question of instituting public days. “We’re moving towards a majority that wants this,” said show director Lance Camisasca, “but retailers are still resistant to the idea.”

Tim Grahl addresses the question of Vegas in his Crooked Cog blog, in which he notes that “just like the women, Las Vegas is cheap and easy. The major airport is five miles from the event and the hotels/flights are to expensive. The city is built around large events and large amounts of people.” Interbike uses 600,000 square feet of floor space and draws over 20,000 attendees.

While several people want to move Interbike to Colorado, the Colorado Convention Center in Denver has a 500,000 square foot exhibition area and can only provide about 10,000 hotel rooms in the immediate area around downtown Denver. Other contenders might be Interbike’s previous home in Anaheim, or Chicago, which boasts the largest convention center in the world. The Morial Convention Center in New Orleans might be worth consideration with its million square feet of exhibit space.

Some more worthwhile Interbike wrap ups are available at Quickrelease.TV, Masiguy, Bicycling Boulder Report, Guitar Ted, BRaIN and WIRED magazine.

Mountain bikes

Everybody has 29er bikes. Even low-end vendor Dynacraft has full suspension and single 29er bikes for the mass mart market. Read Guitar Ted’s Floor Highlights at Twenty Nine Inches.

The Ibis Tranny hardtail mountain bike was an interesting concept. The rear triangle can be completely removed for compact packing for travel. You can fairly easily convert this bike from geared to singlespeed operation through it’s adjustable length chainstay.

Does anybody remember the Brigham Young student who created the “isotruss” carbon fiber frame with the open design? Well, a production frame with that technology is now reality in Delta 7 Sports. A complete frame (sans fork) comes in at just over two pounds and is rated for “any rider weight.” I can’t gush about how amazing this frame feels.

Road bikes

I was there to cover “utility” bikes and didn’t get a chance to look at these beautiful bikes a lot, but I did gawk just a little. MTBR covered some of the road stuff here.

I caught some of the action at the night-time Las Vegas Criterium — night time race crashes are spectacular, with sparks flying high and bright as metal and plastic bits disintegrate while grinding across pavement. At least two of the crashes I saw occurred when a Specialized tire literally exploded on the track, which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of that brand.

I watched the Industry Cup Criterium with Byron from his Bike Hugger tent. Read Byron’s race report here.

City bikes

Urban bikes, utility bikes, performance cruisers — whatever you want to call this large category, just about everybody has something to offer in this huge category. See much more about this at Commute By Bike. I have a couple of more updates on this category coming up, so stay tuned.

There were some very nice utility and cruiser bikes at Interbike — you can read about the Civia and Breezer lines at Commute By Bike — but there were also two titanium bikes I saw. The first is the blue bike pictured here — a wonderful wonderful titanium cruiser that is an absolute dream to ride. The Lynskey rep didn’t have a price for this bike, but he told me they’re willing to build it up for any customer with the cash.

The other is this titanium commuter from Seven, complete with a titanium porteur rack on the front. The complete bike is a work of art.

Other Interbike tidbits

I’ve been harsh on Montague’s CLIX quick release before, but I tried this out on a real bike and it actually works really well. I like it, and if it was available for the aftermarket I’d replace all of my QR front skewers today. Montague has licensed the CLIX to Trek, Cannondale, Kona, Excel and Pacific. Pacific’s GT people in particular were excited about the CLIX quick release and will introduce some bikes next year using Montague’s technology.

The Japan Bicycle Promotion Group was there sharing a booth with Sugino, Nitto, MKS and other well known Japanese bike parts vendors. The Japan Bicycle Promotion people run and regulate the Keirin races in Japan and approve the NJS designations. They all told me the current popularity of NJS parts and boutique parts for urban fixie riders has been very very good for the Japanese bicycle industry.

The five people from Planet Bike will introduce at least a dozen new colors of bar tape, brighter lights — including 1W and 2W ultra bright headlights, some moderately priced “performance” saddles, and these new lightweight gloves for mild temperature winter riding (that I absolutely LOVE). These tiny “micro” pumps pictured here looked very useful. They’re designed to fit in a bottle cage bracket with the crazy frame geometries that are available now.

I tried the famous NuVinci CVT and I gotta say I kinda like it. Easy to use, easy to shift, and it feels nice and smooth.

Stay tuned for a post on what Brad @ Urban Velo calls the “Clown Corner.”