Saturday evening, I drove from Dahlonega to Conyers. Pandora Radio is awesome. I found this song that you should listen to while you’re reading (warning… contains light use of the “F” word):

I also experienced the absolute worst b******king ever administered from a GPS device when my route took me through every known shopping center between me and my destination. The sheer volume of traffic solidified my hatred of large cities like Atlanta. Memphis traffic is a cakewalk.

When I arrived, I stopped by the expo area to meet up with Mike (my favorite Niner rep ever) and to find out where Dicky & his roommate Chris were so I could find the room I was splitting with them.

Turns out, they were on an extended beer run from which the spoils were a bunch of Sierra Nevada and a 30 pack of High Life. In in attempt to keep everyone else from drinking the non-High Life, Dicky drank as many of the Sierra Nevadas as possible.

The hotel was nice. Apparently, the last people who stayed in the room thought so, also…

Sunday at the expo was a blast. I started out by riding a fridge green Niner WFO. The thing about a 5.5″ travel 29er that I didn’t realize from my previous mountain bike experience is that NOTHING SLOWS IT DOWN. Well, except for a big uphill. Honestly, though (and I’m not just saying this because I love Niners), with the exception of the additional frame/component weight, pedaling a WFO uphill feels exactly like pedaling a Jet9 uphill in the terms of pedal bob. Pretty effing awesome if you ask me… I was both grinning and puckering the entire ride. None of the downhills were appreciably long, but a look back on the Garmin file shows at least two spikes in speed above 30mph. Hey, y’all, watch this!

Next it was a slightly less airborne ride on a Scott Foil road bike. I’d ridden a slightly big 54cm at the shop, but the Scott guys had a 52 in the demo fleet so I could get a feel for how a better fitting bike would handle. I still stand by my statement that it’s the Air9 Carbon of road bikes as far as stiffness and overall badassness. It’s going to be a tough choice between that and the Cannondale Women’s Supersix, which has a geometry that’s closer to my current road ride, but I can’t imagine rides as perfectly as the Foil.

After un-funking myself, I checked out all of the other booths before heading back to Memphis. I was tired. Much truckstop coffee was involved.