NAHBS 2010

When you can't ride bikes anymore, you go look at them. Snow was falling in and around Asheville again. Richmond is close enough to drive to, even closer when your girlfriend lives in Durham. And there was a strong possibility I'd be coming home with a shiny bike of my own. So off to Richmond.

This was my first bike related expo center style gathering. Thank goodness I did this one first, because I now know I never need to go to interbike. I'd like to see the cross race, but that'd be about it. Even at this scale, its overwhelming, and I had plenty of time to see stuff. I got into Richmond Thursday afternoon and waited for my friend/builder Dan and fellow Cicli Polito teammate/old messenger friend J.Karp to finish their snowy van fueled trip down from Cleveland. Waiting involved the men's curling semifinals and my first solo hotel bar dinner in quite some time. I need to get back to work. Its so exciting.

Their eventual arrival was a little chaotic. I met them with the van already unloaded, and then heard the story of my bike's non existence. I few little hang ups before going off to paint, and Dan didn't want to rush it for the show. I appreciated him wanting to tell it to me face to face, swallowed the news, and hopped in the van for a last minute run to Lowes. We had to build display boxes filled with; dirt for Jay's CX bike and gravel for the other customers path fixie. 400 lbs of landscaping material and a few screws later and we had a nice simple display, with bikes in their natural environment.
The rest of the show was a blur. With the private exhibitor's hours on Friday and Saturday, I had pretty much seen everything I wanted to see by Saturday at 10 am. The rest of it felt like long days of work at a very fun job, but still work. We hooked up with a bunch of Dan's bike building friends throughout the weekend, and hung out with our booth neighbors, Noah and Suzanne from Velo Colour, and the two guys who became "The Danes," Rasmus and David from Cykelmageren for some Ethiopian food and bad college accoustic music at Comfort.

Here are some other shots, slideshow style, from NAHBS. Point and Shoot camera's don't do NAHBS justice, nor do my photography skills.

Back in asheville now and figuring out how to stay active. The new bike is probably a month out at this point. It'll be done prior to that, but team Cicli Polito is gathering in Asheville at the end of the month, and why risk a FedEx or UPS incident?

I did walk away with new Ti Luv Handles from Groovy Cycleworks, so I can sit in my chair and pretend.