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Saturday 26 October 2013

AIMExpo Day Two

Day two.......we hit the expo floor early after an American breakfast feast at what is ironically named the International House of Pancakes. It's not that international....no toutons on the menu.



Today was the last day of the show, and it was time to put my media credtials to work, and start getting some media contact info for editor 'Arris. Being the last day of the show some vendors were showing the signs of fatigue and disinterest in being there. Most notably the bigger named brands. I won't name names.                              

Schuberth was not one of them. They gave me the full rundown on all their helmets, and brought me to another room to show me the new helmets for release in spring of 2014. If money is not an option, these helmets are really nice.


New C3 North America helmet


and for the ladies


Sena Bluetooth was very welcoming as well, and before long I was getting the lowdown from the marketing director. If you remember Pete and I used Sena comms on our Labrador trip and loved them. Now they have a small camera similiar to the GoPro, this one however records the audio from your headset, and anyone else linked in. Shit, where was this a couple of months ago. We could have used that during the BigLand trip. 


Vega Helmets and Technical gear was a funny encounter. Trying to break the ice with one of the guys there was painful, and downright cold. I guess he never heard of the CMG influence and was far from a wealth of information. I gave up on him, figured they must have enough sales, even though I barely heard of them before. I was about five steps out of their booth when I was chased down by their vice-president. She was excited to see me, and was very eager to tell me about their new jackets, by Richa. It features a Bionic Climate Membrane that reacts to changing temperatures and moisture, and makes you ultra strong like the Six Million Doallar Man. They were even interested in sending gear up to CMG for reviews.

Overall the smaller vendors were much more interested in sharing their products with the media, and were generally more interesting to talk to. I think some the big named people didn't even ride bikes. 

In the afternoon we took the shuttle bus over to the outdoor part of the show. Demo rides, and stunt shows were on the menu. As soon as we stepped off the bus we landed right in the middle of the stunt show put off Empire Freestyle. It was pretty impressive, first live show that I've seen.



After watching two guys with way more riding talent in their pinky fingers than I have, we decided it was time to dazzle the Floridians with our riding skill at the demo tents. 

Suzuki was first on the list, and we managed to get the leftovers to demo. John channeled his inner hooligan and jumped on a Hayabusa. Good luck getting that out of second gear in urban Orlando. I also wanted to be a hooligan and jumped on a DRZ400 super moto. I always wanted to ride a DRZ, and it was a lot of fun in the Florida sun. JC it was hot, 90 degrees and humid. Too hot for this boy. The 15 to 20min group ride was OK. Too many traffic lights and not enough sweepers. Florida will never be hotbed for bike riding. Well maybe the hot part anyway.



We hit the Yamaha tent next, and both of us were eager to jump on the Tenere, but were shit of luck, it had been booked up the whole day, as was the 650 VStrom next door. ADV riding is big. The new FZ09 was also taken. 

Not wanting to wait around in the oppressive heat for an hour to get the opportunity to ride a cruiser on a boring route while sweating my arse off, we decided to make a brief visit to the ATV demos. It was busy over there, especially on the UTV side of things.



John and I both had a full on sweat going at this point, and since there was only hour left to the expo we decided to seek reprieve from the heat in the form of a shaded pool bar serving a Dutch brew of barley and hops.

WIth the weekend coming to a close it was time to get to work, four days of recurrent flight training starts on Monday morning. 




 










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