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Endurance Sports Expo 2013

Last week I helped set up the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia‘s booth at the Endurance Sports Expo. I’ll never be a ride leader for the club (hopelessly directionally impaired), so events like this are a good opportunity to lend a hand in appreciation for the benefits the club so generously shares with members like me.

The Greater Philadelphia Expo Center is in Oaks, Pennsylvania.  It’s a conglomeration of pole buildings cobbled onto each other, but why not?  It does the trick; what you really want here is a lot of flexible space.

I took this picture on set-up day.  Once the show opened, things weren’t so quiet. There was a Home and Garden show next door, and a bunch of other stuff, too.  Parking was ample, thanks to an impressive amount of asphalt acreage, but that also means that you probably wouldn’t want to count on being able to leave your car near the door once the show opens.  (I’m not sure how biking would work out; I came from roughly an hour away, and the roads I took weren’t even marginally bike-friendly. Highways just aren’t.)

The endless pool was an intriguing start to the show; a couple of attendees volunteered to give it a try. I have an acquaintance who had one built-in, and who loves it, but it looks a lot like running in place to me — but with water.  I need wheels — but Tri athletes undoubtedly feel differently.

BCP’s booth was signing up new members and picking up renewals.  The fellow in the blue shirt is the club president, chatting with a visitor.

“Endurance sport” covers a lot of territory, of course.  But there were bikes

and jerseys, like these, some with brewery and civic themes

as well as some deals on end-of-season apparel, too.

There was quite a lot of running gear, an several large booths offering shoes for sale, too, along with booths from several community organizations and charities who sponsor runs or rides.  Most of those were ghettoized along a distant side wall, though.

The bright bold colors of the Philadelphia Triathlon Club booth were a real attention-getter . . . or do I think so just because I have an affinity for those colors? (Basil would have liked this booth best, I’m certain.)

One booth put forth a bold fashion statement:  Their hunky mannequin sported jersey and shorts in pink, trimmed in black, white, green and blue.  (Bicycle Revolutions, if I’ve identified them correctly, and I probably have since the tag line on their website is “Bicycles Art Culture”.) Speaking for myself, it’s good to see pink co-opted and moved out of its usual stereotypical place in the popular imagination.

This Calfee with a Lefty fork was the most unusual bike I noticed. The frame is bamboo — an interesting choice.  Is there some way to keep a bamboo bike safe from thieves? I’m skeptical.

This Surly flask gets the award for the most appealing accessory.  It’s quite vintage, I suspect.

Just the thing for a cold winter’s ride.  Dosed out by the drop, of course; BUI isn’t a habit anyone needs to develop.

I generally prefer bike shows to more general ones like this one, but there’s always something to see, and something to learn, at these events.

The biggest surprise for me at this one was the sheer volume of vendors hawking nutritional supplements, bars, fluids, and the like (including possibly dubious — or at least expensive — methods of trying to determine exactly what your personal body chemistry does with all that, well, chemistry).  They reminded me of old-time patent medicine sellers.