So let's get this out straight first. Anything involving waking before 9am and traveling interstate on a compact aeroplane is going to require some pretty massive upsides for me to be interested. I mean, I will be the first to admit that I'm not a morning person, but if I'm getting out of a cosy bed and it's below 10 degrees outside whilst the sun is still not up - there is a good chance you could mistake me for some kind of missing link between humans and our ape-ancestors.
Let me give you some upsides:
- A first look at the entire 2011 Trek & Gary Fisher range
- Copious amounts of free coffee, food AND beer
- A demo ride day involving SuperFly 100's, Top Fuels, Carbon Remedy's and Scratch Airs, all on the trails at Mt. Stromlo
- The chance to meet the one and only Gary Fisher, and the owner of Trek Bikes - John Burke
Needless to say, my answer to the question; "Do you want to go to Trek World 2010?" was less of a vocal one, and more of a body-language one, involving me dry-humping someones leg.
The 2011 Trek Madone 3 series; sub $3k for a Trek Carbon road bike? You better believe it!
Whilst also sounding like a B-Grade blockbuster movie, Trek World involved getting a whole lot of people from all around Australia, to come check out the 2011 Trek range at their new location in Canberra, to learn all about the range, the people behind the company and for a chance to test ride the new range too.
A massive area for the display bikes gave us some much-needed exercise as we ran from bike-to-bike like excited school girls.
With all of us juiced up on free coffee (I think Trek may have regretted offering free coffee to a large group of cyclists over the course of 3 days), we met and mingled with all of the people behind Trek, including the Sales Reps, Marketers, Product Managers, Designers, Engineers, Accountants and Phone Sales-people, all of whom shared an infectious level of excitement for the 2011 bikes and the chance to talk to us about them. We were then given the chance to hear presentations from the Trek Engineers behind their suspension designs, carbon technology and frame design, as well as some very animated and inspiring presentations from the CEO of Trek, John Burke and from the "Professional Dude"; Gary Fisher himself (that is his actual job title by the way).
It's 11:30 am, we're posing with Gary Fisher, and drinking free Coopers - just in case you were wondering.
In my best attempt to describe the level of excitement that we had in checking out the 2011 bikes in the flesh, imagine a 14 year-old teenage boy at Sexpo. And yes, we were that excited.
Detailed bike displays, frame cut-aways, suspension tuning charts and carbon technology information cards sent my bike nerd scale off the radar. Often with the high-end technology on Trek and Fisher bikes, you will read about it in a catalogue or check it out on a bike on the shop floor, but actually being able to see how a carbon frame is made and learning how the kinematics work on a rear suspension design and how that affects the rider, is a completely different experience altogether.
Everything was displayed and described in such detail to show you just how much effort, design, testing and manufacturing goes into these impressive machines.
Impressive frame displays, detailing all the finer points separating Trek mountain bikes from the rest of the field.
That about wraps it up for Part 1, though stay tuned for part 2, where we'll give you a bit more of a look at some of the standout bikes of the show, and some of the bikes that you'll be seeing in the shop for the coming season.
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