Hey everyone so I'm reporting on one of the best weeks I have had in a long time. This week September 12, 2011 through the 17th was the worlds largest bicycle in where else but Las Vegas Nevada. My cousin Jordan flew in from Lethbridge Alberta, Canada to go to the show with me. He arrived Monday night after we picked him up from the airport we went over to “I Love Sushi” to show him how the Litchfield’s do FHE. On Tuesday morning we woke up early to a random surprise of crazy rain and thunderstorms showering the valley. Jordan and I decided that getting wet wasn’t going to prevent us from riding some of the industries top of the line bicycles. Jordan was in heaven we spent the whole morning riding bootleg canyon in one of the strangest rainstorms Vegas had ever seen. I rode an Ibis full carbon cx bike, and their carbon full suspension mountain bike, we also rode a gnarly GT downhill bike, and a sweet Santa Cruz 29’er. I rode several other bike but all things considered I thought that the Ibis Cross bike was the bike of the day for me. After a long day of riding and talking bikes we finished the day off with a tasty hamburger from In and Out. Later that evening Jordan and I went downtown to go to a club in the Palazzo Casio called the Lavo. Where we meet the original 7-11 cycling team for their new book signing. Because Jordan and I were some of the first people at the club we received free books, which we were able to get autographed by the entire team. It was awesome to see some of the greatest American cyclist and to shake their hands.
The next day we went down to the actual indoor portion of the show. This year there were so many retailers at the show that it filled not just one floor but two. We stopped by at all of our favorite retailers to see what new products they had for 2012. It was fun but my highlight for the show was watching the indoor mini velodrom race between two pro cyclocross riders. As you can see from the video it was a lot of fun. By the end of a full day at interbike my feet were sore and my arms and shoulders were tired from carrying all of my swag.
Later that evening we went to watch Crossvegas, which is the largest cyclocross race in North America. Its always fun to be able to go and watch the industries best riders go head to head. This race pumped me up for my first cyclocross race in a month or so. All I can say is I had better start preparing myself because these races look like 45 minutes of pure hell.
And to top off my epic week on Saturday I meet up with Miriam, and her sister V Nasty, Nate, Josh, and Ty and James to go see one of the greatest concerts of my life THE FLAMING LIPS. The concert was at a venue called the Great Salt Air. Which is some random concert venue built in the 40’s outside of SLC located right on the the great salt lake. Before the show started our group of friends decided to go walk around on the salt flats and enjoy the sunset. After play around out there for a bit we started to walk back to the venue when in the distance I saw a man walking towards us with big hair and a two camera men following us. I remember think to myself could it be Wayne Cowyn (the lead singer of the flaming lips)? Sure enough it was! We hung out with him for a bit and watched the sunset behind the mountains. It was awesome the best part of the night was when Ty picked up an old nasty preserved fish and decided to chase Wayne with it. He thought it was funny and said we were cool kids. After our personal encounter with Wayne it was time for the opening band to play. When the Lips came on the crowd went wild it was more of some sort of party that involved everyone in the audience then it was a concert. Wayne came out in a blow up orbe and walked on the crowd on the first song. From then on anything was acceptable. The band was shooting tons and tons of confetti at the audience. The music was great the band played with tons of energy. The highlight of the concert was the last song entitled “Do you realize”. Hands down their most popular song. When they struck the first chord of the song everyone knew what was coming and got extremely excited. At the beginning of the song Ty lifted me up on to his shoulders. It was awesome because we were front row and Wayne and the other band members were smiling and loving it, but the security guards were screaming at me to get down. Ty reused to left me down right away. There was so much energy in the room that everyone in our group got crowd surfed. Miriam unfortunately left the show with a gnarly battle wound on her forehead. Apparently right before Ty and I lifted her up some girl scratched her on the forehead, giving her a nice sized cut. She survived and has no regrets. All and all it was an awesome show and if you ever get the chance to see the Flaming Lips in concert you need to do it.
Sorry for the picture overload I don’t normally post this many.
Cheers Tate
