Interbike 2004 - Dirt Demo Day 1

A wrench in the cog of the Pinkbike machine caused by a non compatible internet connection at the western themed Frontier hotel, forced us to get out of Dodge and move to a better, information superhighway friendly Holiday Inn. We are now settled in our new hotel rooms with high speed wireless internet enabling us to efficiently serve you the content and information available at Interbike 2004.

Today was Day 1 of the dirt demo.We arrived at Bootleg Canyon just in time for lunch at the Drop In TV bus, parked at the site. It was filled with the usual suspects, Super T, Romeo-nuck, Dill, Bender, and the rest of the crew, gathered around Milkman’s G5 laptop, where he just finished the editing on an amazing teaser for Drop In Season 3. Check back in a day or so and I’ll have it available for download – trust me, you’ll love it and it’ll give you an idea of how the show is produced and edited this year. After talking trash for a while, D-Roque, Heidi and I made out way through the expo to check out some of the new offerings and more importantly ride those awesome goat trails on some fancy new rigs.


We stuck with tradition and started things of at Santa Cruz. Scott mentioned that this year SC, brought out a larger amount of bikes for testing, but the growing demand made even less available at the booth than previous years. I really wanted to rip on a new V10, but had to settle for a Heckler, D-Roque on a VPfree and Heidi on the fancy new Blur 4X bike.




As in previous years the cattle trucks loaded up all the bikers at the bottom and proceeded to shuttle. “Oh no, is this the same driver from last year?” was a common fear inspired question as the full sized transport truck raced up the mountain, running XC riders off the road, bouncing around the load inside, and slapping a look of death on many faces as the rig barely made the cliff trimmed switchbacks.


On your first ride down you should always take it easy, so we followed local Laura on some new rippin’ single track that made us work to keep a fun flowing speed, and was mellow and enjoyable. We traded up during the ride and were most impressed by the Blur 4X. I am not going to get into details on the bikes here. You will get it from the horse’s mouth in Pinkbike’s usual mp3 audio indoor interview with the manufacturer.



Second ride up we ended up chatting with the some Norway boys that wanted us to try the new Mongoose Black Diamond bikes. Nice looking bike, with a much different rear suspension than the usual.


The FreeDrive suspension is of course, supposed improve on all the deficiencies of other suspension designs. Big claim, and nothing you could determine in a single ride. Here is an informative technical quote from D-Roque after riding it “This feels weird! But it’s good” If in fact it turns out to be a working, effective and durable bike, than at the price point it will be much more than just good. Looking forward to getting a little more acquainted with that suspension design.


I on the other hand had a date with a King Fisher. I was at the Trek/.Gary Fisher product launch in Whistler a couple of weeks ago where this new Gary Fisher bike was rushed through prototype production to make the launch. I really wanted to get another look at a closer to production version, so I saddled one up. As destiny would have it I got a flat right off the top and had a nice 2 hour walk down. You know, it’s REALLY hot in Nevada!


I made it down in time for the 5pm closing of the expo and right on time for the scrambling of the Drop In, perfect-lighting-condition-filming-frenzy.


Ambrose (Back in the Saddles fame) was a guest camera jockey and along with the hardest working rider, Steve Romaniuk we headed up to the dirt jumps. Steve, after a crazy crash off the Gillard drop just 5 days prior, was back in the game sporting the Demo9 with all the latest and greatest SRAM gear.


A very welcome short cage rear derailleur and the 2005 Boxxer WC with ALL new internals. Last year’s Boxxers worked excellent but after extreme abuse the internals would start to give you trouble. The solution for this year’s model is to redesign all of the internals with bigger parts. The result is a smooth, firm stroke that lasts, just like Steve likes it.


The evening wound down at club Drop In with milk and cookies.