I had a great time hanging out yesterday at the State Fairgrounds in Huron with Ken from the Trek demo program and Mike our Trek rep. We were there as part of the first South Dakota Outdoor Expo. The store was involved in kayak, bow hunting, air rifle and bike demos throughout the grounds and Josiah and I spent most of our day helping set people up for test rides on high end Trek and Gary Fisher bikes.
We arrived Friday night and took a look at where we were set up. They had built a demo track for the mountain bike stuff that needed some serious modifying. Think of a motocross track on a smaller scale with a simple out and back design. It was way too aggressive with some obstacles being completely unrideable for all but expert riders. We managed to track down a bobcat and tamed it down a bit. Unfortunately, the demo truck was closed up by that time and we had to wait for the next morning to give it a test run.
We arrived at about 7:30 Saturday morning and helped set up the tents and bikes. The demo fleet consists of 30-40 bikes hauled in a trailer by a beautifully decked out VW Toureg and Ken who handles bike demos from Toronto to Manitoba to Arkansas. He had been in Detroit the week before and goes to Winnipeg next. Ken's got a full assortment of tools, his service stand and everything else that you need for a successful demo.
Armed with bikes, Josiah and I headed out to give the course a go. Neither of us was horribly successful as Josiah got hung up between a couple of rises that didn't have enough space between them and wound up on his back and I came off of a table top obstacle and had to bail out when I lost control. Thankfully, I stayed upright and held onto the bike, but I didn't manage to actually stay on the bike. More course modification ensued and we finally had a course that we felt gave riders a chance to really try the bikes out without fear of death.
One of the fears that I had for the event was that it was advertised almost exclusively to the hunter/fisherman crowd and that we would go almost completely unnoticed. This fear was compounded when we saw that we were on the outskirts of the event behind several buildings. You were either going to have to really look for us or stumble onto us to know we were even there.
For the first two hours, we saw nobody and were getting pretty frustrated. Josiah and I had a chance to really work the course on some really great bikes, so it wasn't a complete loss for us. I started with the Gary Fisher Hi-Fi Carbon Pro and Superfly (both about $5000 retail bikes) and rode the Fisher Hi-Fi Pro 29 and Paragon and Trek Remedy 9, Fuel EX 9, geared 69'er and 69'er single speed and was the only one to do a road demo all day with a Trek Madone 5.2 with a beautiful Bontrager Race X Lite wheelset (an upgrade over the regular Madone 5.2).
I enjoyed pretty much everything that I rode, but kept coming back to the Hi-Fi Carbon Pro and 69'er single speed. I've never really had a chance to ride much full suspension, so the Hi-Fi was a whole new experience for me. I own a Fisher single speed, so the 69'er single was a natural fit for me. I did really enjoy the 69'er geared bike as well and know that was probably Josiah's favorite of the day. I don't know how many laps we rode, but I rode everything that came out of the truck and spent most of the day from 8:00 am to probably 5:30 pm on a bike.
We finally started seeing some action late in the morning and wound up doing 53 demo rides through the day where we would set up the rider, give them some instruction and then head out on the course with them. The course was still a bit aggressive for most of the riders that we saw and we had about an 80% crash rate, no injuries (other than pride) and lots of smiles. We had a lot of teenage riders and probably about 20 adults through the course of the day. Most of the riders learned how to navigate the course and wiped out less as they became more familiar with the speed they needed to carry.
We packed up at 6:00 and they are back at it again today, but I had to head home after grabbing some prime rib with the guys so that I could be home for church this morning. I rolled in about 10:00 last night and wanted to watch the news because KSFY had a cameraman at the event that shot some at the mountain bike course, but of course when the story aired, it was all about hunting and fishing. Go figure.
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