It’s so hard to easily sum up everything at Interbike. Especially for newbies like us who still walk around with our jaw hanging open.

By far my favorite part of the show is the people we get to meet. I will attempt to put some of it together here… my apologies in advance to those I miss:

First person we ran into at the show was Jon Maus. We are both big time blogger geeks and have exchanged a lot of emails and phone calls on the subject. I’ve been helping a bit on the tech side of things for his BikePortland.org blog too. It’s gonna be big folks.

He also was the mastermind behind the blogger meetup. Lots of fun.

I’ve talked on the phone and exchanged some emails with Hannah Steffens while putting together her site and what not, but Carl and I actually got to sit down and spend an hour or so chatting with her. We talked a lot about the faith we share and very little about biking. It was a nice breather actually from the madness of the show. Then we got her to sign a copy of the Faces book put out by Outside magazine and had some pictures taken.

And yes, the fact that she is dating Mick Hannah came up. Hannah Hannah. Get it?

I also made sure to stop by the Elete booth and met Jeff Kerkove (aka “Mr. 24″). Chatted a bit about the show and the getting banned from the Worlds craziness.

Then last night we bumped into each other at the airport again and we all had time to kill so we ended up sitting around chatting for a couple hours before Jeff had to catch his flight. It was definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip for me.

Back a year and a half ago when Blue Collar started, the first person I ever emailed about it was Michael Browne, the editor of Dirt Rag Magazine. I figured I needed some help and advice and he’s stupid enough to put his email address in the front flap of the magazine.

He helped a lot with tips and ideas and links in their newsletter.

Fast forward 18 months and we’re standing around Interbike talking bike reviews, home renovation, coffee and used clothes. Go figure.

[Michael Browne picture goes here... DOH! Forgot that one!]

Through doing PR for the Slope Sistair event, Stephanie Nychka got in contact with me. We exchanged some emails and ideas we are gonna work together on in the near future. Can’t wait for what’s to come!

Of course we had to stop by the Surly booth to check out their new uni bikes and say hi to Andy Corson.

Carl was pretty stoaked to meet Marla Streb. After we heard the Luna team was gonna be signing at the booth on Thursday afternoon it was pretty much all he could talk about.

So I met Marla first. Pretty cool after doing the interview with her and IMing with her sometimes. So surreal. Then Carl took over and I moved down and chatted with Shonny some. Dropped the ball on pictures there to though. I think we were starstruck.

 

Then, of course, there was the big blogger meetup. We had a good time chatting it up about the world of blogs. Left to right… Jeff, Graham, Jon, Matt, me, J-Vicious and Carl. Good times.

Tim Jackson, the “Masi Guy”, wasn’t able to make it for the blogger meetup but I stopped by his booth on Friday and had a chance to talk it up with him. He’s a great guy that truly loves the Masi brand and blogging. My kinda guy.

Last but not least, while stopping by the VooDoo booth to chat about 29ers, we met Big Johnny of the Drunk Cyclist blog. He’s not what I pictured at all, but it was definitely very cool to shake hands with one of the first ever bike bloggers.

These were the highlights of the show for us. It is such a cool thing to meet all of these people we have so much respect for.