My first full day in Vegas was spent at Bootleg Canyon at the OutDoor Demo riding several 2010 road and mountain bikes from a variety of manufacturers. I had the opportunity to try new rides from Orbea, BH, Pivot, Rocky Mountain, Felt, and Scott. The demos are a great chance to try different bikes and make direct comparisons since they are all being tried on the same terrain in the same conditions. As most manufacturers are really pushing their flagships, its also an opportunity to ride some bikes that I could never afford.
On the mountain bike side of things, I only sampled 29ers as I am a total convert to the big wheel thing. They just roll so well and handle the trails in my part of the world so well that I will never have another little wheeled bike again. The bikes I tried ranged from a full carbon Felt hardtail that was an absolute rocket, definitely a race-bred machine, to 4" travel full suspension bikes from Rocky and Pivot. Aluminum hardtails from Rocky and Scott filled the middle ground. The full-squishies were nice, but the inherent smoothness of the larger wheels has me thinking my next bike is going to be a 29er hardtail. One feature that a few of the bikes had that made a big difference in their handling was the new 15mm through axle front hub and fork combo. It just makes the front end track much more precisely and really livens up the bike.
On the road side of things, all the bikes I tried were plastic, oops I mean carbon, and were definitely some of the nicest rides I've had the opportunity to try. The upper limit was the BH G5 with Dura-Ace Di2 electric shifting. Way out of my price range, but what a race bike. After riding mountain bikes all morning, I nearly dumped it when I stood up to sprint on it as the handling was much quicker than I was used to. It wasn't twitchy or squirrely though, just very responsive. If you race, you'd love it. If you like to do 6 hour rides and look at the birds flying by, you might end up in a ditch after the late ride fatigue and inattentiveness sets it. And Di2 is simply amazing. Hopefully, the technology will become affordable before I'm too old to make use of it. After the BH, I rode a new 6700 Ultegra equipped Orbea Orca. This was definitely and all day type of bike. It was light and responsive (everything in this price range is) but more forgiving than the full-race BH. As for the new version Ultegra, I was underwhelmed. The shift lever effort has gone up considerably with the routing of the cables under the tape and the crispness of the rear shifting just isn't there in my opinion. I'll keep my 6600 thanks.
The best blend of raciness and all-day comfort was the Felt AR2. That bike felt perfect as soon as I rolled off on it. The Felt B2 time trial bike I tried however was a little dissapointing. I'm not sure what I expected and to be fair a TT bike is so much about your position being comfortable on it that without taking the time to fit it well, its tough to get a meaningful demo of one, but it just didn't feel all that fast or impressive to me.
As for observations from the show floor itself, after ten annual trips to Interbike, a lot of it looks the same, but a few things always stand out. The SRAM XX group looks pretty cool (although I'm sure out of most mortals' price ranges) and the rear cassette is an amazing piece of machine work. Last year, I raved about the Blackburn Flea lights and this year they've made them even better with a model that charges off of a USB port or even a solar cell. White is pretty widespread for mountain bike parts now as a color, but there are more disturbing color trends in the near future. For those of you who remember anodized parts in all the colors of the rainbow, they appear to be coming back with even large manufacturers like SRAM getting in on the action. And the color of choice for the coming year or two appears to be gold. Truth be told some of the gold parts and accents look nice to me, kind of a brushed brass look, but some of it is really, really hideous and should only be seen on a chain around someone's neck surrounded by a polyester shirt.
That's my take on the highlights of Interbike 2009. Only ten months to go 'til next time.........
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