Surly unveiled a long tail bike designed for hauling cargo at Interbike this year. They designed the back of the bike’s frame to accept Xtracycle accessories for people who want to mod their bikes for long tours. The good news is that you can also use it to haul around kegs in the afternoon and then your drunken friends later in the night.
Let the kid who can’t stand yet take your dog for a walk. This ski trailer is made to be towed behind a human, but as shown here you could just hook it up to Rover. Start teaching your dog a course to run when your wife’s pregnant and you might not have to ever take junior for a walk.
Calfee Design’s Bamboo Bike is made with heat treated bamboo tubes and lugs. They use a young bamboo fiber to form the lugs so the frame’s entirely wooden. In this picture the bike has Boss-Hog-style bullhorn handlebars and wooden rims, too. Now you have to worry about flat tires and your bike catching fire. Calfee says their Bamboo Bike is resistant to vibrations on long rides, and they say it’s okay for riders of any size.
Tacx virtual reality puts you on a magnetic-resistance trainer plugged into a computer that adjusts resistance when you climb, descend, and turn through your course. The Dance Revolution of cycling, Tacx lets you choose among a Velodrome with raging fans, an eXtreme mountain bike course, or several stages of famous bike tours—basically places you’d never have a chance of rallying in real life. Ahh, technology comes through with an easy answer for my failings again.
Quality Bike Parts has an odd presence at Interbike. The Minnesota-based company is the largest bike part distributor in the US. They buy parts from every bike accessory company and then mark everything up about 10% and gray market it to bike shops. Shops then only need to deal with one company and can fill their walls with fewer worries, credit applications, and order forms. The weird thing is that the people in the Quality booth are selling the same products from their neighbor’s booth at a 10% markup, but they’re packed with shop buyers from open to close.
