Set up and industry day...

Wow, lots went on the last day and a half, so let's get to it...

Thursday afternoon our baggage arrived at the Portland airport so Bill and I jumped back on the train and went on a retrieval trip. I was so relieved to see that the stuff came through without further incident.

Once I lugged all the stuff over to the convention center the set up began. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the first box. One of the show bike boxes that was loaded up with a a very expensive parts box had the bottom of the box all torn out with some packing tape all wrapped around it...oh no!

Inspection found that at some point during shipping, UPS tore the crap out of the box, the parts box fell out, and nothing was ever put back. Gone was about $2000.00 worth of equipment. Not good.

Fortunately, that was the end of the troubles. I got set up with a few parts missing off of some of the bikes and an entire build for another, but stuff still looked pretty good.

Industry day was a hoot. Lot's of familiar faces came by as well as new aquaintences. One of the special opportunities of a show like this is to put a face to the names you deal with all year. It was really good to meet Lynette of White Industries and her boys...great folks; Gary Prange of SSSink, my supplier for those NOS Fat decals for restorations that are coming up; Maurice and Eric from Dirt Rag, Richard Cunningham, and the list goes way on.

Got to do a couple of video interviews with MTBR and Spains Mountain Bike magazine.

You can check out the MTBR vid here.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnbPquV3OtU

Got a lot of work to do today before the public show opens...they are expecting over 10000 people in the next two days...whew!

I promise I'll get some pics up tonight, I'm just going to hit the sheets for a bit.

cheers,

rody