Minneapolis trip highlights – soul of the US bike industry
June 14, 2012 4 Comments
Test riding a Salsa Mukluk, one of the newer “fat tire” bikes in the market w/ tires that are 4″ wide. These monster tires just float over the snow or rough stuff with no need for suspension.
Melissa and John posing with a new Campagnolo Super Record EPS (electronic shifting) equipped bike.
I just realized that I hadn’t shared these photos from a trip from this past winter which gave me an incredible look into the behind-the-scenes action of the USA bike industry. Three of us from MSU Bikes (myself, Melissa Kwiatkowski, Asst. Mgr. and John Bieda, Service Mgr.) went to two industry conferences in the Minneapolis area in February: Quality Bike Products’ Frost Bike and Park Tool’s Tech Summit. QBP is the largest bike parts/ accessories distributor in the USA, and Park Tools is, as most in the bike shop business know, is the leading manufacturer of bike shop tools:
http://s794.photobucket.com/albums/yy225/msubikes/FrostBike-ParkToolSummit2012/
I’ll post more pics from the very cool bike shops and other bike facilities we saw while in Minneapolis soon.
About Tim Potter
No pix from the party at Peacock Grove (during Frostbike)? Probably a good thing.
We didn’t go to Peacock Grove; don’t recall hearing about a party there. There was a great party at a wonderful bike shop in Minneapolis though called One On One Bicycle Studio (http://www.oneononebike.com) complete with bike drag racing (literally, they were dragging junk bike frames behind bikes that were raced up and down the alley behind the shop; what a hoot!). I’ll get pics from that visit up sometime soon.
Thanks to share some thing about your trip from this past winter.
My pleasure. What a great bike city Minneapolis, the university and the surrounding communities are!