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Words ~ Ed Snyder Photos ~ David Ferguson (unless he's in the shot!)
As weary show-goers piled back in to the Sands Convention Center for the final day of Interbike 2007 there was still plenty of unfinished business. Cam had a full slate of meetings and the rest of us had our last chance to capture pics of the gleaming goodies, grill product managers, answer questions submitted on the NSMB.com bulletin boards and make a trip off-site to the mysterious home of the “Vegas Resistance”. It was going to be another day o’ full-on show madness so we had our steaming cups of weak, imitation Vegas coffee and manned-up. No rest for the wicked (tired)…
The fastest bike in the world has a frame just like this one.
Do you like to pin it? I mean really pin it? If so, Intense might just be the bike for you. I had a good time thrashing their Socom during the dirt demo (check it out here) but apparently I wasn’t event scratching the surface of this legendary bike maker’s potential. On September 20, 2007 Marcus Stoeckl piloted (and I do mean “piloted”) an Intense M6 to a blistering 130 mph down the Chilean Alps. ‘Nuff said.
The Intense Slopestyle (SS) is new for 2008. It’s a shorter travel version of the Socom frame meant to excel in venues like Whistler’s Boneyard..
High precision optics ... now with noseguard!
Oakley had a huge booth at this year’s show. Their product range has grown from its beginnings in optics alone to include shoes, casual wear and even watches. They still make a terrific set of goggles and their Thump Pro (MP3 player/sunglasses) is one of the coolest ways protect your eyes while pleasing your ears. Plenty of pros were spotted hanging in the comfy confines of the big O’s booth; ranging from young guns like Whistler local Alex Prochazka all the way up to veterans like Cedric Gracia.
Ever want to have the right tool for every fix your steed might need? Park has you covered with complete professional toolkit
You don't have to be a Gladiator to have a killer set of cranks.
It’s that magical P-word that makes tech-junkie hearts beat faster. Maxxis’ new Ardent tire.
Maxxis has couple of new tricks up their collective sleeves. The Ardent is an all-new tire that will go up to 2.6 in sizing and has 60 threads per inch in the casing. The other change in the Maxxis line is “true sizing”. Maxxis realized that most tire sizes have about as much truth and consistency in them as women’s jeans sizes. That made it nearly impossible to tell what you were really getting in terms of tread width, so Maxxis remeasured and relabeled all its tires to be true to a single sizing standard. Their new 2.4 is last years 2.5, this year’s 2.6 is last year’s 2.7, and so on.. It remains to be seen if other manufacturers adopt this straightforward approach or continue to put out rail-thin “2.3” tires whose casings only slightly outsize the average Polish sausage.
At this point of the show Fergs, Stu and I joined forces to hunt down the elusive “Vegas Resistance”. As not all manufacturers have gobs of cash in their marketing budget to lavish on a pricey Interbike booth, some manufacturers banded together in true dirt-bag style to take over a local motel, complete with courtyard and pool. They put up a website with some very Mission Impossible-esque walking directions from the Sands and encouraged those interested in products off the beaten path to come and “join the resistance”. Never averse to a little counter-culture marketing, your intrepid NSMB team made the trek to see what the shadowy work of the resistance was all about.
Companies involved in the resistance were Transition Bikes, Spectrum Techwear, Deity, Canfield and Rockgardn. We made stops at most of them and found some solid products at this unique bicycle bazaar.
Just like the old Soviet Union, women are encouraged to join the resistance: Transitions new female-focused freeride rig dubbed the Siren.
Transition Bikes is a rider owned company headquartered just over the border from B.C. in Ferndale WA. Owners Kyle Young and Kevin Menard have been pumping out shore-ready rides for the past several years and the company has seen some serious growth not only in sales but also in reputation. Last year’s Bottlerocket frame was a runaway hit (NSMB’s Ian Nelson rode one to the Crankworx superfinals this year) and this year the guys wanted to bring the same phenomenon to the ladies. They reworked the geometry and feel like they have the same lightning in a bottle. Transition lent a few of the bikes to the Vancouver-based Muddbunnies riding club and early returns have been very positive. Kevin has taken laps at Whistler on the bike himself and feels it is every bit as capable as the Bottlerocket. If that is the case, female rippers might have new dream ride to drool over.
The biggest hits always come from the blindside.
Another new bike for Transition in 2008 is the Blindside. It replaces the Gran Mal as Transition’s premiere big hit bike. The frame and linkage have been reworked slightly but the biggest news is the addition of a floating rear brake mount. Transition didn’t want this addition to be cost prohibitive to buyers, so they also designed their own floating brake assembly that will sell for less than existing systems on the market. Look for these 1.5 head-tubed monsters to begin railing down the bike parks and shore trails this season.
Hordes of skeletons: just in time to help you devour your Halloween candy.
Spectrum Techwear is another rider-owned company in Ferndale WA and they were sharing a “suite” with Transition. Spectrum produces shorts and jerseys with some real thought put in to little details that make them work well on the bike. By far the coolest item on display was this limited edition hoodie designed by an artist friend of the Spectrum owner. There will be a limited number produced and each one will be slightly different than all the others. The detail in the drawing is phenomenal.
Deity’s new finishing process is producing some beautiful parts.
Deity components out of Portland Oregon is a company that produces stout and stylish parts for the bmx/park/DJ set. As those worlds melt together with the MTB scene Deity’s parts have become more attractive to the mountain bike rider looking to do a little of everything. Deity owners Eric and Sadie have spent a lot of time over the last year sweating the all little details and it’s really starting to show up in the fit and finish of the entire line. Their new five-step finishing process produces a glossy durable finish that is as beautiful as it is tough.
A show of solidarity for the Vegas Resistance: The new Canfield Jedi DH frame adorned with a bevy of Deity parts.
After our swing through the Deity toy store we had a talk with Lance Canfield. Lance is a fromer Red Bull Rampage finalist and half of the brother team that makes up the always independent fame builder, Canfield. They've been working on a couple of new designs and brought both to the show. We got the chance to see them in action at the dirt demo (half way down this page) when we ran in to Lance on the hill. His new DH is the Jedi. It s a full reworking of the previous Canfield Formula DH bike. Lance recently took the top podium spot at DH race in Montana so the new frame’s race credentials are already staring to build.
Just like Neo, this bike is the One.
Canfield’s other new design is named “One” in reference to the elusive “one bike to do it all” concept. At first glance its tubed front triangle design belies all the complexity of the suspension. I thought it was a 5-6” AM bike and didn’t really give it another thought until the bottom of the hill, when I ran in to Lance again and got to take it for a quick spin. The One is actually a 7-8” adjustable travel bike that weighs in at 32 pounds despite sporting a regular selection of parts and a coil version of Rockshox Domain fork hanging off the front. It pedals very well and the travel feels endless. Lance reports he’s been riding the bike for everything over the past 4 months (he lives in Utah) and hasn’t found a reason to get off it yet. Has the elusive “do it all” bike really been created by a team of engineering brothers from Utah? Stay tuned for more coverage of this bike early next year as I am intrigued to say the least.
Just the thing to bling up a Lucite bar, the new Stroker Trail lever.
After being blindfolded, hustled off to a van and dumped back at the door of the Sands so we wouldn’t be able to rat out the Resistance, we met up with Cam and at the Hayes booth to look over their new Stroker brake line and see what they in the works for next year. In a word, “tons”. Hayes thought the El Camino was going to be its new flagship brake but only a few years after its release it became clear that was not to be. Hayes hightailed it back to the drawing board and created the Stroker. Early returns on this platform have been much more positive and Hayes is moving at light speed to create a full line of braking options based on the new design.
New cards on the table, from left to right the development model of a Stroker Ace lever/reservoir, the Stroker Carbon and the Stroker Ace dual-piston caliper hooked to regular Stroker Trail lever.
Big enough to stop a stock car? The new heavy-duty Stroker Ace caliper prototype.
They’ve got a heavy duty caliper/lever combination in the works. We got a sneak peak of the current mock-up of the lever and it will have a beefier lever and a higher capacity reservoir. This will mate an even more powerful dual-piston caliper and the whole system will be dubbed the Stroker Ace (Burt Reynolds fans rejoice). There is also a Stroker Carbon on the way that is looking much farther along in the design process. The example Hayes brought along looked a like a production piece so I would it expect its arrival before the Stroker Ace. You’ll be hearing much more about Hayes very soon as one of our testers recently completed his test run of the Stroker Trail brakes on the shore. Look for that review to hit the site later on.
Bonus Show Shot: How to turn the garage in to your own personal Batcave; Deity’s pimpin’ new jump saddle.
Ed Snyder
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Ahhh just one more. Smoke and the Ladies.
