As you might expect, a winter trade show is not all that important to a “Never a Ski Shop” bike shop. But, I went down to Salt Lake City to help out my wife with her womenspecific.com Scavenger Hunt promotion. I can’t say there was a lot of gear that’s worth mentioning in a bike shop blog, but one thing that immediately caught my eye was the human powered Mion shoes booth. The crafty folks at Mion figured that since the outdoor industry is going in the direction of sustainability they would step up too and help cut their energy usage with the help of show goers. They hooked a couple of bikes up to trainers provided by Windstream Power and hoped to generate up to 3000 watts daily. Nice work Mion! I wonder if we can hook that up to our Computrainers?
Taking up the task of powering our buzz was the Cloudveil crew with some help of Jon “JK” Klaczkiewicz. JK is putting the finishing touches on his new documentary about the Jackson Hole Airforce called Swift Silent Deep. He stoked up the crowd at the Cloudveil booth with a short teaser of the movie before the real fun began… Galande Quaffing! Apparently there is a long lost Jackson Hole Apres tradition that started with bartenders sliding mugs of beer toward a thirsty patrons. One day a mug missed its mark and flew off the end of the bar. Before the beer was lost forever on the floor, a swift handed skier waiting in the wings caught the mug in mid air and pounded the beer. As one might imagine happened in Athens when someone got pissed and threw his neighbors hammer across the street, a competition sooned formed… and JK is here to revive it! 4 person teams had a minute to rotate sliding mugs of beer to waiting team mates who slammed them and ran to the other end of the bar to take their turn as bartender. Yeah, pretty awesome! Jk handed out 1 point for a catch and chug, and 2 points for a catch by the mug’s handle and chug. After the foam settled I think the guys from Smith won, but I can’t really say and don’t really care since they wouldn’t let the Fitzgerald’s team compete. Something about us being sand-baggers or something. We are now in training for the Feb 27th Galande Quaffing World Championships at the V.C.!

The very best thing about OR this year, however, was the appearance by Michael Franti of Spearhead and impromptu accoustic set he played in the middle of the trade show! If you didn’t know that Michael is the man, I’m here to tell you. Spearhead is our generation’s Wailers and Franti our Marley. Check out his music and do not miss a chance to see them live when they are rumored to come this Spring to the Village. We went on to see Spearhead live at the Depot Saturday night at the Avalaunch Festival and it was one of the absolute best concerts I have ever seen! It’s the equivalent of a Southern Baptist revival for those of us whose religion is peace, love, and respect for our planet!