Friday, August 29, 2008

Cackalacky Cup 2008

Theres not much more that I can say about the Cackalacky Cup for this year except that it was a tremendous amount of fun. We had guests fly in on Friday and hang out at the shop all day. After the shop closed we drove down to Lancasters BBQ for some of the best food in the area and just to hang out. Saturday morning found us all at Lake Norman State Park for our double mountain bike time trials. The first TT is just over 4 miles with some technical obstacles to shake things up. The second TT is a fast as you can 6.25 mile loop on the Mombo loop. The totals were added up and prizes were given out and we even gave away a free wheelset to a random participant. We all hung out at the bike shop Saturday night with pizza and beverages and worked on bikes to make sure they were ready for our journey on Sunday which lead us to DuPont State Forrest. We took 12 from Statesville up and met up with 15 locals to ride some of the sweetest trails in the area. DuPont isn't just balls out technical but if you ride there and do not leave just praising the trails...you do not know how to have fun on a ride.

I will let some pictures do the talking for the weekend, for a full view of the photos click here

Darrell on the skinny
Photobucket
Lance off the skinny
Photobucket
We had an overabundance of juniors and first timers
Photobucket
going under the limbo
Photobucket
Brial Veil Falls in DuPont
Photobucket
riding NC slick rock
Photobucket
David from Pisgah Area SORBA and one of our guides...thanks David
Photobucket
Beautiful views
Photobucket
Great rock work at the end of Burnt Mtn Trail
Photobucket
Snack Time
Photobucket
Smooooooth ride
Photobucket
as I said above, you can see all the pictures HERE

Noah from NY has posted his pictures as well @ http://picasaweb.google.com/ngellner/Cackalacky#

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Trek World 2009

Friday morning the 15th found me at Greensboro PTI airport on my way to Madison WI for Trek World 2009. This was my first time at Trek World and I didnt know just what I would find in the land of cheese. I arrived early in the day and headed straight to the Monona Terrace to sit in on a couple of seminars including one on Red Shield which is an extended warranty program that Trek is offering. One on the new Shimano Saint and Dura Ace groups and couple on various things for our Ascend point of sale computer. All of the seminars had very good info on ways to make our life easier at the shop and help our customers better. I then went to check into my hotel and found the view to be the sight of the state capitol building. After that I spent an hour roaming the streets of Madison which had all of the flair that you normally find in a college town, lots of very cool stores. One store that I visited was The Yellow Jersey which is a bike shop that we acquired many many many(you get the idea) catalogs from a couple of years ago. I still have nightmares of the sorting that we had to do with all those catalogs but it was neat to see where they ha come from. Everyone met at the Orpheum Theatre which is an older building with tons of character where we were greeted by John Burke of Trek and told about all of the new things we will be seeing out of the Trek family for 2009. We learned about the new Gary Fisher road bikes from Gary Fisher himself. They went over changes in the Trek line and then told us bout the new shoe and clothing lines from Bontrager. We then headed back to the Monona Terrace for the official Trek World show and dinner. Everyone enjoyed a Big Guy Amber Lager in memory of Dick Burke, founder of Trek, who passed away this year while taking in the new bikes for this year.Photobucket

Right as I walked in the new Bontrager shoes were on the right and no one was at the booth so I went over and tried them on. I really cannot wait till these are available to really try out on the bike. They were extremely comfortable shoes. They use E-soles technology to help your feet feel all comfortable-like and I think they should do that job well.
Photobucket

Lots of eye candy including the new Fisher Roscoe, updated Fuels, much more and this guy.
Photobucket

The next morning found me at back at the Terrace for breakfast and a couple more seminars before catching the bus to Waterloo for a tour of Trek and bike demos!!!
The Trek tour was very neat, we got to walk through the process of the bikes being made in every material from Aluminum to Carbon(no pictures allowed)I did grab this picture of the infamous Fisher Excelsior Klunker. There are others of Lances tour bikes in my photobucket.
Photobucket At the demo I grabbed a Fisher Roscoe out of the gate to see how it compared to the already fabulous EX series. The Roscoe feels like a longer travel bike but steers incredibly quick which was needed on Treks private MTB trail system. There are quite a few skinnys that were very fun and a few just too high for me. My favorite was the wall ride.
Photobucket
Photobucket
I headed back to the tents and grabbed a 69er SS and headed back to the trails. Personally I enjoyed this bike more since I ride SS most of the time. The bike seemed faster but it might have been that I was with other riders for that lap. Here is the other rider in that group on one of the teeters
Photobucket
after a quick break back at the tents...
Photobucket
...
I found a Superfly and found the trails once again. THIS BIKE IS FAST is all I have to say and should be evident since I forgot to take pictures of it out in the field.
Just one in the pits
Photobucket

There was not a bunch of time left so I went over to the hybrid tent since we are selling tons of hybrids and found this guy
Photobucket
yup...thats a belt drive on a Nexus hub. Very smooth ride, Trek has worked on their FX line and added a bunch of really nice touches.

Back in Madison and a shower later everyone meet back at the Terrace for another speech from John Burke who introduced Jenn Dice from IMBA and they talked about the great things that Trek is doing for cycling like donating over $200,000 to IMBA in the last year by giving $10 for every Full Suspension bike they sold and a dollar per helmet. John then talked about the One World Two Wheels program that Trek has started and where they hope to take it in the next ten years. At the end of the speech he told everyone to go outside and grab a bike. We all walked out to find over 600 Trek Limes ready to take us to dinner.
Photobucket

Everyone hopped on a bike(yes we had helmets) and we took off with our police escort through Madison to another location where Trek had a catered dinner, and most importantly, beer waiting for us. I got to ride up front with John Burke and Jenn Dice which was pretty dang cool and the sound of 600 people skidding tires the whole ride was very cool.
Photobucket
Jeff thinks that it is Mr Bean in the picture above just behind Jenns head and I have to agree.

Here we are at the dinner location
Photobucket

a beer with dinner
Photobucket

Saris/Cyclops had a trainer set up powering a blender for people to ride and make margaritas
Photobucket
the outcome was me having a margarita and Reeses ice cream bar(after eating a couple of bratwurst)
Photobucket
Back at the Terrace after dinner Trek had the show available to see the bikes again. Most people took their Lime for a tour around Madison, me included. Madison is amazingly bike friendly. There are bike lanes everywhere
Photobucket
I was also able to find the protoype Trek Stop which is a vending machine of bike product(tubes, wrenches and other stuff that breaks while commuting/riding) Pretty neat idea especially in a commuter friendly place like Madison.
Photobucket
the view of Madison(where I started) at night from across the lake.
Photobucket

Sunday morning held a early breakfast and meeting on how to sale to women and more bike show. I met Travis Ott, the Fisher brand manager and we talked about MOMBAT and a couple of ideas to get them down for a visit.
A plane ride home and here I am again. There are plenty of other pictures that I did not put up that can be found in my photobucket

I really hope that I can go back again some time but am going to focus on the DC IMBA bike summit for next year. I had a blast!!

oh yeah, another reason to love Madison is that you can get my favorite paper The Onion for free
Photobucket

Sunday, August 3, 2008

DuPont ride

Jeff, Sean, Darrell, Matt and I set out from FFB this morning and picked Rick up in Morganton to make our way up to DuPont to meet our guide David Maida from Pisgah Area SORBA. We met David and Mike(??) at the Corn Mill Shoals parking lot and set out with three other guys(sorry I forgot names, I am good at that). We broke off from the three others and ended up with a 17 mile ride visiting Bridal Veil Falls, and riding Slick Rock along with plenty of other trails. We will be going back for the Sunday ride for the Cackalacky Cup. It is a great route with lots of different terrain. When pictures all get sorted I will post a couple. Make sure to mark your calendars for the 24th to come ride... you will love it. I got to put the first full ride on my new Route 29 SS and loved it! As always, if anyone is interested in trying out a Goat, I now have three (26 SS, 29 geared, and the 29 SS) give me a yell and we can set you up on a ride, just need to fit a 19ish bike.

Almost forgot that Taco Bell is quite possibly the best post ride meal that one can find....mmmmmmmmmm And thanks to Rick for the post ride IPA, that was pretty special in its own right