I arrived in Vegas on Saturday the 19th, and as I stood in the concourse waiting for the train to the terminal, I realized I was surrounded by half-naked men. On every wall were posters for the Chippendales, The Brotastics (yes, that’s for real) and The Thunder Down Under. Six-packs, butt-chests and rippling arms towered over me as far as the eye could see. Each group had a sexy assortment of flexing dudes including Long Haired Guy, Asian Guy, African-American Guy and several iterations of Frat Boy. I was standing there alone, and I glanced around in amazement that there wasn’t a single girlie poster anywhere near. Eerily, it made me think of Minority Report, and I tried to figure out which camera was scanning my retinas. But finally I just photographed the Brotastics and thought, “Welcome to Vegas, baby!”
But honestly, Vegas is pretty crappy. The usual gripes: sustaining lasting damage to your eardrums while walking for miles through casinos to get to your hotel. Choking on the hooker stink/port-a-john chemical used in the casinos to cover up the smoke stench. Avoiding the weird dudes on the sidewalks slapping their decks of girlie cards. The tiresome difficulty of finding food that isn’t either horse-meat fast food or overpriced, time-consuming gourmet restaurant fare.
As a result, it’s great to spend the first few days of InterBike at Boulder City, where Outdoor Demo is held. Once you make the turn past a last, huge casino on the interstate, you find yourself in a reasonably normal town. There’s a Mexican restaurant, an ice cream stand, a wine bar. Whew. Best of all, there’s Bootleg Canyon, a rocky, dusty refuge where mountain bikes rule.
I arrived at ODD without a game plan, just ready to ride whatever caught my eye. I started Day One with the Giant Reign XO. And now I have made an official decree: Outdoor Demo shall henceforth always begin with a long-travel bike.
You get on the earliest shuttle you can manage, head up to the rockier trails, and hammer them right out of the gate. The plush travel is a great shot in the arm, getting you adjusted to the loose conditions (and 100-degree temps) with no fooling around on weenie cross-country bikes. Amen.
This bike was everything I wanted in a long-travel machine: fabulous ability to mow over everything in sight, decent pedaling, surprisingly light weight, and super-stable handling. Nice looks, too. I felt like I was gobbling up rocky trail with no trouble, and the bike still felt pretty nimble. I reluctantly handed it back to the folks at the Giant compound, hoping the rest of the day wasn’t going to be a letdown.
From there, fate led me on a tour of five-inch bikes, and within that realm, a sampling of all the new chick-related rides. It started at the Giant booth, where several guys pounced on me, asking me to ride the Cypher. They introduced me to Abby, the woman in charge of global product development for Giant’s women’s division, and she seemed genuinely interested in my feedback. So I took the bike out.
I’ll admit that I’m still learning a lot about how geometry and suspension setup affect bike handling. Which is part of why I love ODD so much — it’s an education disguised as fun riding. And the Tour de Chick Bikes was pretty eye-opening. Mainly, I learned that bike companies are realizing that we XXers are the last quasi-untapped faction of the bike industry, and they’re trying to find ways to make us happy. Which is cool.
And at the end of the day, I felt like Giant did it the best. I know, this sounds like I’ve become some sort of evangelist for Giant, but that’s my honest opinion. That said, my favorite bikes of the day were not the women’s models.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Cypher was definitely cool. Giant put in all the radness that the Trance X has — hydroformed tubing, Co-Pivot shock/linkage design, and the new “single spar” rear triangle. Plus it was pretty light, which always a good thing. If you only weigh 120 pounds and your bike weighs 30, it feels like you’re pedaling a refrigerator. And the geometry was reworked for the female body, which designers say has a lower center of gravity and longer legs relative to the torso (especially as a woman gets taller). I think I have a bit of the long-leg thing, as I’ve been too stretched-out on bikes in the past, but I have to say that the cockpit on this bike felt pretty small. In the photo, I’m sitting pretty damn upright. Granted, I didn’t spend any time checking the fore/aft position of the saddle or anything; nor is this some aero race machine. But still…it looks odd to me.
At any rate, the bike rode solidly, with a nice stable feel and point-and-shoot simplicity. I think women in general would find this bike very much to their liking as they take on rough terrain…it has a Weeble Wobble, crash-proof kind of feel to it. But I was left with a vague sensation of deadness…it didn’t seem particularly lively, like the kind of bike you want to flick around corners and loft over jumps. And again, I’m not knowledgeable enough to know why that occurs — it’s just my perception. But I give Giant huge props for making the bike look nice without adding annoyingly obvious “This is a girl’s bike!!!” paint schemes.
Next on tap was the Rocky Mountain Altitude (women’s version). I didn’t know yet that I was destined for the estrogen tour, so I asked for the men’s model, but their size small was out. So again, they got super stoked to put me on the female version. Okay, fine. Hit me. But right out of the gate, I thought the bike was hideous. Purple appears to be the new girl color, and this thing was decked out with a matching white-and-purple saddle. I shuddered as I spotted the doll-like female figure on the top-tube.
The ride wasn’t that rad, either; when I tried to climb, it squatted into it’s travel like a recalcitrant donkey and refused all efforts to go forward. It also had a dead, wooden feel on the descents. I was more than happy to hand that thing back. On the flip side, my cohorts Steve and Chris were very impressed with the men’s version of the Altitude, so….take what you will from this review.
Meanwhile, Stuart and Chris were hammering around on other rad offerings:
In the end, Stuart was sold on the Santa Cruz Nomad, which I was sad I didn’t try.
Rob tried out the jumps on a Norco:
By then, we were out of time for the day, since we needed to relieve our friends working the Mavic tent for the road bike demos. The rest of the mountain bike world would have to await its domination the next day.
Day Two: Rob and I spent the morning doing Mavic neutral support at the Hangover Ride road event, so we were a bit late getting back to the dirt. We joined the mass of people and tried to get something from Ibis. Size smalls are almost always available, so I got a ride on the Mojo. Rob couldn’t make that happen, so he tried out the Tranny, a funky carbon hardtail that abounds with possibilities. Singlespeed. Geared. Travel bike. You name it.
I neglected to shoot any photos, but were both pretty happy with our options.
After that, we met up with Stuart and discovered he’d been having trouble getting anything in size large all morning. Finally, we wandered over to GT to say hi to Louis and see what was new. The boys took out the carbon Force, and I wanted to try the new Sensor. As before, I got steered into the women’s version, and by now I decided I was on a fact-finding mission for Abby, so I went for it.
I didn’t love the paint job, but it was a sight better than the Rocky Mountain. I could definitely live with it. The bike rode well, like every other GT I’ve tried, but I still preferred the carbon Marathon Pro I have a home, a unisex size small. And none of these bikes were even coming close to the incredible feel of my Maverick. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the highly-tunable, ultralight and stiff DUC 32 fork.
Since the madness of Day Two was preventing us from doing as much riding as we would have liked, we oogled some clothing from Troy Lee Designs; Stuart bought some Giro sunglasses super cheap, and I discovered that I need a Giro Xen helmet.
Finally, to wrap up ODD, the three of us went to Yeti. We chatted with Abby Hippley and Ariel Linsley, then scooted out on the new carbon ASR 5s. No women’s version to be had, but it didn’t matter, because that bike was incredible as it was.
Although the fork was not tuned well for me and felt like crap, the bike wowed me in every other regard. First of all, in my size it weighed only about 24.5 pounds. Sick. This particular rear-suspension setup is more progressive than the 575, best suited to hard carving and jumping than hammering rock gardens. It doesn’t feel quite as bottomless as the 575, but I could see why that firmer sensation might be preferable when pumping the crap out of smoother trails. And boy, did it step out when you put the hammer down. Braaaap! We were all pretty impressed.
After all of that, I made a stop back by Giant and got in a really good conversation with Abby about women’s bikes. I gave her all the useful feedback I could think of, and she gave me a great education on the parameters of making bikes. She mentioned that her next project was pondering the validity of making a longer-travel bike for women — basically a chick version of the Reign XO. I told her that it sounded like a fantastic idea, and that Colorado would be a great market for it. Come on, ladies. You know you want to tear down the ski hills on that thing.
In the end, the standard Reign XO and the Yeti ASR 5 were my favorite bikes. They had the best overall feel and performance for what they were designed to do, at least from my personal standpoint. If I can round up any spare money, a tricked-out Reign will likely find its way into my garage. But it’s cool that the industry is working on a solid group of bikes for women. We’re not as invisible as we used to be, I guess.
As for the actual indoor show, it was cool; it was what you’d expect — rad bits and bikes everywhere you look. Notably, however, several big bike manufacturers (Giant, Cannondale/GT, Trek/Gary Fisher), didn’t show up. Outdoor Demo is starting to be the key place to show off your product, apparently, and why not — it’s far better to ride it than stare at it.
Cross Vegas was also a great time; we spent it in the pits, wearing our Mavic yellow shirts and poised to do rad wheel changes. But the race was all on grass, and there were no flats or mechanicals to be had. Sigh. Next year we’ll have to bring the tacks. Rob and Petar from Mavic raced in the Wheelers and Dealers division…acquitting themselves very well on a hilly, power course that featured two substantial run-ups. It was cool to watch the pro action unfold under the lights.
All in all, a great time was had. Even though no money was lost, no morals were corrupted and no vehicles were damaged (not even while driving the bright-yellow, Mavic-issue Ford 450 dualie — with the BMW GS 650 stored in the bed and a Thule rocket box on top — through the parking garage), we managed to have a blast in Vegas. But maybe next time I’ll go see the Brotastics, just to feel dirty in a way that doesn’t involve actual sand.
