So after hearing from a variety of folks I headed off with my camera to see what I could find.

First – the golf cart. By now everyone has heard that “cycling is the new golf.” I was taking to Richard, the owner of Speedplay pedals – and he mentioned how many of his friends in San Diego had switched from Golf to Cycling – and he said “by the way – have you seen the pedal powered golf cart.” Now you can combine both – cycling and golf (well on second thought…).

Next I found Brad Hunter, one of the industry insiders “who knows his wheels” (he was the owner of Velomax – and then sold it to Easton), to take me around the floor and talk about what’s “cool” in wheels.

The first place he took me was Lew Wheels to show me their rear wheel carbon “triple flange” design. The triple flange allows the outer spokes to be radial (with relatively low tension) and the inner flange to have the drive spokes. The intent is to make a wheel that is very light (note this one weighs in at 428 grams) yet strong. If you would like to get a custom made wheels designed to your weight specifications (you need to weigh less that 150 lbs – which leaves me out) you can put your order in now along with the check for $15k. The “normal wheel set” is closer to $5k. As soon as they send us a set to test we will let you know what they are like.

Next we walked by Industry Nine, who has been known for the mountain bike wheels. The are now making a nice light set of road wheels. What impressed me most was the color (but then you have to remember I’m a photographer – not an engineer). Brad talked about how they make the parts out of single blocks of aluminum, the way the spokes are screwed into the hub, the fact that they are made in the SE US…and of course they are light.

We then visited Topolino’s booth. Brad like how they had redone the attachment at the rim and again the weight is impressive. I asked “what happens when you break a spoke – the answer is that there is a single piece replacement for the spokes that are on the side that broke.

The second wheel he showed me had a “damaged rim” that he was very proud of. There was a note with the wheel from one of the European pro’s describing what happened. He had crashed then got back on the bike and finished the race. It wasn’t until after the race that he noticed that someone put a pedal through the side of the rim; it hadn’t even come out of true, much less collapsed. Of course part of the reason Brad was so proud of the wheel was that his girl friend Elisa had designed the rim.

So other than wheels – what was cool

SRAM’s new Red Group with their cassette milled from a single block of Aluminum drew considerable attention.

One item that I’m likely to get is the Garage Gorilla. This has a electric winch attached to a long bar where you can attached bikes, kayaks, soccer balls (in a net)…. You lower the bar to the floor, attach whatever you want,then raise it back toward the ceiling. I guess this won’t do you much good if you have a seven foot ceiling – but if you’ve got a high garage it could be just the ticket for giving you a little more floor space.

Then there was the Uber Bike – a concept bike designed to go really fast. Need something to set a non-UCI sanctioned hour record – this could be the bike for you.

I could go on about Shimano, Campy, Mavic…no shortage of items to see.

But I was in Vegas, so after I OD’d on bike stuff – I wandered the halls of the hotel imagining that I was in Italy – or out to the strip and thought of Paris…Nah…it was still Vegas.