Whew - LONG day... beginning with a 2-hour drive from Springfield in the rain. We crossed into Indiana about 9:00 this morning and arrived at the Indianapolis Convention Center about 9:45am.
It was pretty quiet and registration was, for the first time, a snap! I was worried that the lack of chaos would bode for a poorly attended show, but the Show Daily stated that over 24,000 tickets had been sold, so I expect we'll see the big crowds tomorrow.
Brian and I spent the first hour walking the show waiting for Richard Schwinn's Fit Seminar for Framebuilders. Richard and I have known each other for decades and i must say, he did a quite respectable job with his "schtick". It had a little more "salesmanship" for my taste, but all-in-all he was able to convey the basic elements for a new framebuilder who is tentative about fitting.
Brian and I took a break to grab some lunch and get our stuff out of the car, including the camera. We're sort of still rooting around for the SD card though, so I won't upload our photos until tomorrow. There are PLENTY of photos already on line though at the NAHBS gallery.
We attended another technical session with Keith Noronha from Reynolds in England about strength vs. stiffness of materials. I didn't learn a lot of new stuff, and there was a lot of technical information that was really "engineering quality", but I did have much reinforced as I did with Richard's Fit Seminar. Then, I stayed put for a seminar on decals and learned way more than I thought I'd ever want to know about them! (Or at least about their application!)
Brian wanted to go to Don Walker's track frame seminar and I decided to spend the hour walking the show and catching up with old friends, looking at bikes, and checking out any interesting ideas.
The first people I sought out were our friends, the Bilenky's, from Philadelphia. We had travelled with them from Chicago to Portland last year and it was great to catch up with them again today.
I stopped into the Brooks booth and saw the the (1911?) "Imperial" style saddles with the cutout in the middle. Seems that Brooks had done this almost 100 years ago and when they introduced it again, a flurry of letters threatening them with "patent infringement" were quickly quashed when the original designs were hauled out of the vault and presented to the "offended parties". So much for modern day ideas! (Nothing new under the sun?) The B-17, one of the 3 models with the Imperial cut-out, will come with several color laces for personal "styling".
I'll get a continutation of this done tomorrow. It's off for a nightcap and some sleep.
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