Interbike Show Day 3 Report

Whew. We debate every year whether or not to spend the extra money and time to spend a third day at this show. With only two days, it seems like we spend all day going from one meeting to the next, without any time to just wander and check out cool stuff. I like having the third day, but by the afternoon, I felt like a zombie, walking around with numb feet, sore shoulders from hauling a bag full of catalogs, and wandering in circles seeing if there was any booth that I could have possibly missed. There wasn't...

Our first stop for Friday morning was the Tifosi booth, where Gary Thomas showed us there latest line of sunglasses, including a couple of new styles that we think will be pretty popular.

Do these titanium frames look familiar? This is the booth from the Chinese factory that makes the frames formerly known as Airborne! Airborne started out as a mail-order only company, but for a few years also sold through bike dealers such as ourselves. About two years ago, they changed their name to Flyte and went back to mail-order only. Now, they have gone out of business entirely. The frame factory is still in business, and they are looking for new American distributor. Derrick got one of their catalogs, and tried to talk to them, but nobody at the booth spoke English, and the catalog is mostly in Chinese as well. If you have a big warehouse and source for bike components, give them a call!

Burley has made lots of enhancements to their popular line of child trailers. Shown here are their pet carriers, the redesigned Tail Wagon (bottom), and the new Rover model (top).

White Lightning remains the best-selling chain lube in the world, so they haven't changed what works, other than redesigned labels and packaging. The new labels make it clearer which lube should be used for different conditions--the original wax lube for dry conditions, the Epic lube for all-weather use, and the Wet Ride lube for extreme all-conditions use.

This is the new model for '08 from Salsa, the La Cruz. They wanted to provide something to fill a niche beneath their aluminum Chili Con Crosso and Las Cruces framesets. This one has a True Temper OX Platinum steel frame and fork, compatible with disc brakes only. Set it up with a flat bar or drop handlebars; it's equally at home on the cyclocross race course or on commutes of pavement, potholes, gravel, and dirt.

Thanks for following my Interbike reports; we will see you back in Ohio!