Well after a somewhat disappointing and crowded Saturday, I had a good time on Sunday again. I skipped all but one seminar . Though my mission from the outset was to talk to every single exhibitor (I think there were almost 100), by 3pm I was starting to go hoarse and had only made it through half of them, so I gave up. I had looked at every exhibitors website beforehand and noted down my favorites, but it turned out that quite a few of the people who I wasn't interested in before were actually really cool. For example, Dave Wages of Ellis Cycle had some really sweet brazed frames where he had run all the cabling through the tubing in creative ways-- and he won an award for it at the end of the show. I tried hard to find recumbent focused people too, and while at the Naked booth, realized I was talking to Sam Whittingham, the world land speed record holder on a bicycle. Towards the end I chatted with Keith Anderson about guitar builders, and there is apparently a decent overlap with bike builders. I decided to see if my other hobby-- homebrewing-- had any overlap, but sadly, despite all the beer paraphenalia at the show, only Gary Prange of decal maker SSI is a homebrewer. He talked at length about how to use bicycle decals to label your beer bottles (hint: use your tongue on the glue and spray clear over the top). I didn't get to ask him why the beer labels come off import beers much easier than they do off the American ones...
