"Interbike Is Not an Option... Plebians!"

The Interbike winds are blowing the Hawley crew to Las Vegas next week. Well, some of the crew as those of us in the trenches are left behind to fend for ourselves: cold, tired, naked..alone! But are we really alone? The simple answer is of "course not". The complicated yet duplicitous answer is "they have abandoned us, wholeheartedly and with extreme prejudice!". While they're lounging around the pool sipping colorful drinks and handling the latest in titanium this and carbon-fiber that, we'll be here knee deep in alloy kickstands and 24 inch Schrader valve tubes, feverishly prepping ourselves for the upcoming 2009 catalog tsunami with morning calisthenics, copious amounts of ole timey nerve tonic and fiery sermons demonizing the lazy and slothful. But we're not complaining. Sure, by the time our Interbike brethren return, the office will resemble a grotesque melange of "The Road Warrior" and "Lord of the Flies" (with a little bit of this thrown in), but hopefully the excitement of new vendors for 2009 and loads of free bike schwag will distract from the blood splattered walls, charred cubicles and crossbow arrow-laden sales department corpses strewn about the place as makeshift tombstones in the warehouse expansion construction site read "They died not in vain, but defending the freedom of the graphics department to eat freely from the accounting department candy dish".

As a piece offering to my mountain biking brethren, a sneak peek at some of Gaerne's new mtb shoes for 2009. Hot corn!!