Columnist Susan Snyder: Wild wares peddled at Interbike

Friday, Sept. 29, 2000 | 10:46 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

As conventions go, the one that hit Las Vegas this past week could possibly take some kind of prize for attracting the oddest mix of people.

You had your pink-hair-and-piercings group. Your sweater-vests-and tassled-loafers group. Your T-shirts-and-baggy-shorts group. Your suits. Your Birkenstockers. And finally, your Mennonites. Yep, men in suspenders, women in little white bonnets -- the whole schmear.

But there's no law against a Mennonite owning a bicycle shop. And the business of selling bicycles is what brought this mishmash of 25,000-plus people to the Sands Convention Center.

It's called Interbike, and it's a convention where about 900 manufacturers of bicycles and related trappings try to lure dealers and shop owners into carrying their stuff.

Irvin Martin said he and his Mennonite brother-in-law traveled with their wives from New York to figure out what they'd carry in the shop next year. They were looking to expand their road-bike line. And they thought Las Vegas was weird.

But Interbike, which is closed to the public, offers more than just new bikes. It is the place for companies trying to make a name for their new products.

It attracts manufacturers and dealers from all over the world. Italy had its own pavilion, as did Taiwan. German, French and a variety of Asian languages were as likely to be heard as English.

So if your gig is to make millions off, say, a push scooter people can ride down a mountainside, Interbike is one of the best bets for getting sporting-goods shop owners to stock it.

Yes, much to the dismay of mothers across the globe, someone has invented such a contraption. The footboard is about the size of a regular skateboard, which is suspended in a frame with a small mountain bike wheel at the front and back. The front wheel has mountain bike suspension, handlebars and hand brakes.

Not sure why it has tires, though. Judging by all of the promotional photos, this thing and its riders spend most of the time airborne.

Why? Because people are stupid enough to try it, that's why.

Also pretty high on the Darwin-Theory-In-Action Scale was a thing called the FreeRadical. It's an apparatus that turns a bike you already own into "a sport-utility bicycle."

Noooooo! Is nothing sacred?

Attaching this thing to your bike frame makes the bike long enough to travel with a surfboard or kayak lashed to the side. The wood platform atop the rear is the perfect size for a passenger to stand on. They called it "surfing." They had a video.

High-tech additions to the cycling world included spokes that light up at night and computer software that allows people to ride their bikes without leaving the house. You use your own bike and control the video by steering your handlebars. You can race friends over the Internet.

Probably the most sensible thing on display was a simple, metal rod that attaches just below the seat of a child's first bike. It allows a parent to run along behind without stooping over and should sell like mad.

Which just goes to show people don't have to be high-tech to make it with something new in this economy. They can just be tired of bending over.