Woke up in Indy this morning and made a final pass at the bike show. It was much less crowded this morning, so I actually had a chance to speak to some of the exhibitors that were swamped yesterday. I was surprised to find four builders from Austin made it up for the show. They were all very down to earth and as friendly as could be. I was really impressed with James Flatman from Alchemy (and not just because he gifted me a shirt as I was leaving his booth). He's from Australia and recently relocated to Austin. He used to weld for several bike builders, including all the ti frames for Dean in Colorado for a number of years. He's worked in ti, carbon, aluminum and steel - a real jack of all trades. I also enjoyed talking to Mike DeSalvo. He's got to be the most unpretentious builder to come out of Oregon - ever.
So I spent of a couple of hours at the show, then drove to Chicago to meet Belinda, who was flying in from San Jose for business. The drive started out nice - cold and windy, but sunny. That changed about an hour outside of Indy. It started to snow. And continued to snow for the next couple of hours - all the way to Chicago. If you've never driven in snow, it's not a relaxing experience. Here's what it looked like when it first started snowing. It got worse. Loop this for a couple of hours, and you can be my virtual co-pilot:
Made it to Chicago. Found a nice Italian place for dinner, and I ordered a prosciutto, artichoke heart, olive and egg pizza. The over-easy egg in the middle was a new experience for me. Not bad - but it made the pizza a little soggy.
Here are a couple of shots I took this morning on my walk over to the Convention Center. As you can see, I have a thing for industrial looking bridges:
And more bikes that I thought were interesting (the first 3 are from Austin builders, the last is from Dario Pegoretti):
4 comments:
egg pizza - not so sure about that one dude. like the blog though.
I knew it! They just play Mellencamp in Indy.
I like the belt drive bike, did you see/get a picture of the Black Sheep with 36" wheels?
I did see the 36" inch Black Sheep. Impressive - if you're into that whole size thing. It did have a cool titanium and wood Cane Creek headset.
And yes, Mellencamp is all they play in Indiana. However, they still call him John Cougar.
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