Cruisin' The Strip

 In celebration of the twentieth year of this blog, I have a few tales to tell. This post is one of them. This series will occur off and on throughout this anniversary year, I hope to illuminate some behind-the-scenes stories and highlights from the blog during this time. Enjoy!

The 2008 "Urban Social" ride put on by Bikehugger on the Las Vegas Strip

 I hadn't been blogging for 3.5 years and I was at a point where I was going to Interbike, the former trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada, back then, and was covering the burgeoning 29"er scene for "Twentynine Inches", the site I was "working for", at the time. 

It was a crazy year at Interbike. This would be the last time I would be there working for someone else. The scene was pretty nuts with a house rented to put us up in and all sorts of craziness in regard to activities outside of the show and within it. 

2008 was a weird time for many reasons. The country was experiencing The Great Recession of 2008, social media was juuuust getting going, but hadn't really changed how we did things quite yet. And we were at the last strands of what I call "The Analog Age", or in layman's terms "how we used to do things". 

This extended to the trade show, and was exemplified by the activities surrounding it. Interbike, for years, was known as the trade show where bike industry people went to "blow off some steam". or in other words, "do stupid stuff they would never get away with back at home". Things like having drunken all-nighters, going to strip clubs, or just being stupid socially. Things that would end up on Facebook, Tik-Tok, and X and get you fired, cancelled, and more these days. Nuff said.....

I was there and heard all about some of this nonsense. I did not partake unless it was for the ever-flowing free beer at the end of each day on the show floor. That was my vice back then. Then there was the fun stuff, like the time I rode on The Strip with about 50 other folks from The Sands Convention Center to Mandalay Bay resort and back on bicycles! 

There was a guy with a cargo bike who had rigged a thumping stereo onboard and was pumping out the jams all the way out. Each stop light was a portrait of how bicycles and vehicles were somewhat at odds with each other. and how one was "fun" and the other was not fun at all. We got friendly honks, great comments, and thumbs up from many going out. However, on the way back? 

There were three of us that wanted to get back to our beds and we raced down the Strip on bicycles, avoiding taxis and traffic as though our very lives were at stake, which they probably were. Unfriendliness was shown in the form of angry honks and cars cutting in front of us. I was on a 26' wheeled Dahon folding bike with a single speed rear gearing set up and I was tapped out and spinning like a mad man trying to keep up with my two companions. I'll never forget that ride until I cannot remember anything. That was terrifying! 

But I got to ride The Strip in Las Vegas on a bicycle. Not too many folks can probably say that!