I took over 400 photos last night at the Las Vegas Criterium, and this is the only one that turned out.

I was standing directly underneath Ken Conley, who’s much better at this than I am. Thank you to JT of Bicycle.Net who let me borrow his camera last night.

Jim Langley is looking over my shoulder right now and he’s asking me to post to his blog: So here’s the link. Jim’s been a bike mechanic for over 20 years and he freely gives his bike fix advice on his blog. He’s a really nice guy that lives and bikes not from where I live, so it’s really ironic that we meet in Las Vegas for the first time. He also has an ebook for sale (you can find the link at his blog) on the home bike workshop that looks very very good.

Ryan Trebon won the first Cross Vegas cyclocross race this evening as thousands watched. The main draw for many spectators was, of course, Lance Armstrong, who flew in from New York on a private jet and finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. I’ll be at his press conference in the morning.

I’m leaving town in the morning for Interbike. You can expect a few hundred photos of good bike porn and the people of Interbike over at my Flickr photostream. Most of my updates will be posted to Commute By Bike.

You can expect to see coverage about Bianchi’s 2009 lineup, the new “Ascend” Iso Truss bicycle that Delta 7 will introduce Wednesday, the Lance Armstrong press conference on Thursday, the small players such as Handsome Cycles, Momentum Magazine’s “Urban Legends” fashion show, CLIX quick release, a quick meeting with Specialized, a meeting with the inventor of the Safety Illumination light for cyclists, and tons of other goodies.

In the meantime, check out these sites and page:

• The Fredcast: David talks with Civia Cycles among others.
• Carlton has posted some beautiful bike photos over at Quickrelease.TV. See much more at his Interbike 2008 photo set.
• 29 inches: Salsa Selma.
• Bike Radar: Chris King, WTB and Rotor.
• Road Bike Review Virtual Tradeshow Booths; ditto for Mountain Bike Review.
• Silly photos from Masiguy.

Watch this space for more!

Tim Grahl posted a video of Tim Parr (owner of Swobo), Brad Quartuccio (Urban Velo) and Tim Jackson (Masi Bikes) in which they talk about how the bike industry is encouraging people to use bikes for transportation. Watch it here.

The Bicycle Leadership Conference started this weekend in San Diego. Trek chief John Burke will talk about increased industry involvement in advocacy in his keynote tomorrow morning.

Rich Kelly of Interbike is there, as well as somebody from SOAR Communications (which does marketing for Interbike). Tim Jackson of Masi is also there and says he’ll try to post news from the conference if he can get Wi Fi access there. He already posted his thoughts on Rob McSkimming’s talk. McSkimming is VP of Business Development for Whistler Blackthorne, and he talked about what the bike business can learn from the ski industry to improve business.

One of the things that came out at the Conference was a new Bicycle Owners Manual that meets new European standards for bike sales. The new manual focuses on actual product usage, riding and includes a lot of how-to. It also takes owners through topics such as “What happens if” and includes instruction on suspension, disc brakes, materials, torque, and maintenance.

Anything would be a big improvement over most of the owners manuals I’ve seen that come with bikes. The best I’ve seen comes from Breezer Bikes — besides going into detail on basic bike maintenance, Breezer Bikes owners’ manual covers fit, general riding tips, braking technique, flat fixing and so forth. Instead of the usual CYA lawyer speak, Breezer manuals include specific and useful information on how riders can ride safely. Most manuals, for example, caution that riding at night is dangerous and should not be done; Breezer’s manuals advise riders to use their lights and give instruction on how to adjust the lights. The manuals also give tips on wet weather riding.

Besides the general riding tips in the Breezer owners’ manual, each Breezer Bike also comes with John Allen’s Street Skills pamphlet on riding legally and safely. You can download PDFs of the owners manuals at Breezer’s resources page.