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.

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.


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


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.
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.


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

after a quick break back at the tents...

...
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


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

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.


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.

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


a beer with dinner


Saris/Cyclops had a trainer set up powering a blender for people to ride and make margaritas

the outcome was me having a margarita and Reeses ice cream bar(after eating a couple of bratwurst)

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

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.

the view of Madison(where I started) at night from across the lake.


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