Marty’s Rep Night

On Tuesday, February 16, Ryan and I apprehensively attended Marty’s Rep Night. Marty’s Reliable Cycle (saving the world with bikes) is a wonderful bike shop at all three of its locations: Morristown, Randolph, and Hackettstown. If you were wondering, yes, Marty looks exactly like the cartoon on the website.

Marty’s Rep Night is a night with the “movers and shakers” of the industry. We enjoyed free Snapple, coffee, chips, and cookies while checking out the latest bicycles, components, clothing, culture, and competition for 2010. In short, it was a great way to keep up the bicycle enthusiasm until the spring.

We really did not know what to expect… we’re not that big into constant upgrades to new technologies. But it ended up being really amazing. About 50 people attended to chat with factory representatives from: Specialized, Trek, Gary Fisher, Bianchi, Bontrager, Thule, Pearl Izumi, Mavic, Park Tool, SRAM, Zipp, Bell, Topeak, Haro, Shimano, CamelBak, Wilderness Trail Bikes, Yakima, Fox Racing Shocks, Fizik, Look, Continental, Action, Profile Design, CycleOps, and Vittoria. And special guest -Keith Bontrager- was there! Surprisingly, we actually learned a lot:

We inspected a fancy Specialized carbon fiber bike with cutouts to show how it was constructed – lots of fibrous sheets laminated with epoxy. My intuition tells me not to trust something with a 1,000-feather weight to support my 120,000-feather body. The examination proved that what you pay for a bike is inversely proportional to the weight of your bike.
We perused hundreds of cross sections of tires – Vittoria, WTB, etc. I now know how they get all that Kevlar in there.
There was a neat touring bike (totally forget the make). Its bolt-on couplings at the seat cluster and on the down tube allow it to split in two, fit in a box, and travel on a plane/train/automobile.
We got to check out Shimano’s new Dura Ace Di2 electronic (cableless) shifting. Actually, it’s not quite “cableless” because you need a wire going from the battery to the shifter and derailleur. Priced at over $2500, I’m not sure the upgrade is worth it. Of course, we would have all said that regarding wireless networks during WWII.
And we could not miss the sweet, new, and bright yellow Mavic clip-in shoes… they were really bright.

At the end of the night, we worked up the confidence (and there was no line) to talk to Keith Bontrager. As budding framebuilders, this is where the real bicycle education happened. Keith started as a physics student, then he raced and built motorcycles, then he worked at a machine shop, then he built custom bicycle frames, and now he designs components for Trek, who bought his company. His wheels were ridden by Lance Armstrong. He disclosed some framebuilding industry tricks, like pre-heating brazes and setting up machines to do your work. And, we got his autograph.

To top this fantastic evening, Ryan, who never before won a raffle before, won sunglasses! In fact, his new pair of Tifosis lost their virginity at last Sunday’s ride. In the end, Marty’s Rep Night was great, and I would recommend attending all bicycle events from this point forward because you never know what to expect.

Thanks Marty and crew!